"… A successful career does not require efforts, hard work, courage, or loyalty; it needs skillful manipulations of those who are in charge of rewards…"
Leo Tolstoy
"War and Peace"
Translated by MZ
Month: October 2011
Radiohead: A Case of Strategic Mismanagement
Speaking of Radiohead (I am referring to my last "Quote of the Week" post)…
No, let me first say that I LOVE Radiohead. They are one of my top 5.5 (it's complicated, ok?!) favorite bands. I have been to their shows, with pit tickets, standing for over seven hours in line to be in the first row, in front of the stage with big Ed's shoes in my face, watching Jonny Greenwood perform his musical voodoo, observing Thom Yorke drooling all over the mike, while articulating "I salivate like with myxomatosis," as if he was actually afflicted. I saw them perform "True Love Waits" for the first time ever. Good times!
And even though I usually religiously adhere to my own rule of separating the Artist from the Man (otherwise you end up hating everything – people, including geniuses, are nasty creatures), I agreeably pay attention to some of Radiohead members' personal principles: anti-music-establishment, free distribution, less flying, and stuff like that. At the same time, I am very objective. I don't idolize anybody. If something is stupid, I'll call it that, regardless of who did it. Plus, this is a CFO's blog, so when it comes to executive decisions I am especially vigilant.
Soooooo, the latest incident involving Roseland Ballroom (NYC) concerts really irritated me as a blatant display of a gross strategic mismanagement. Supposedly to make sure that real fans get them and not the scalpers, the release of tickets for September 28th and 29th concerts was held off until Monday, September 26th, 10 AM. And what was the wonderfully unique channel of distribution? The fucking Ticketmaster!!!
How out of touch with reality these people and their support staff are??? Don't they know that the days of conventional scalping are long gone? Today, you can be sitting somewhere in Nebraska with your little reloading software, buy tickets and immediately start electronically scalping them as PDF attachments.
I personally clicked "Find tickets" at 10:00 AM. The fucking Ticketmaster advised that my waiting time was 5 minutes. Nevertheless, in 3 minutes flat, I was informed that the tickets were not available anymore. 180 seconds – God bless the electronic age! Obediently I went to the "resale" (read – scalping) TicketsNow site (owned by the fucking Ticketmaster) – the tickets were already listed with prices ranging from $650-$1,500 for GA. The concerts turned out to be the exclusive events for people with money. Most of them cared more about the status of attending than about the music.
Talking about a complete failure of a business action plan! Is there anybody around Radiohead with a common sense to suggest a more intelligent strategy? You want to deliver yourself to your true friends? You are a super-group. Instead of going through Live Nation, you can rent your own venue and sell the tickets the old-fashion way: at the box office, with a limit of two tickets per person. Your real fans will sleep on the street through the night for a chance to see you! It's really not that complicated. But I guess, like with everything, it's too much to ask for a logical reasoning nowadays.
Essentially, a rock band is a small business – no different then, let's say an advertising agency. The set up is the same – there is a core creative staff and a bunch of supporting functions around it: administration, financial management, legal services, etc. My readers know how important small businesses are to me – I believe they need to be cultivated and nurtured as the only option for saving the world's economy. But, again, I am very sensible about it. It's not all businesses that need support – only the ones that are well organized and have smart leadership.
Hey you music fans, don't get mad at me (I'm on your side), but it's possible that most rock bands, after riding the initial fandom wave, eventually end up sucking because they don't know how to run their business well. There were only five really great songs on "In Rainbows" and this last album Radiohead finally squeezed out (I did say I was very objective) is really just so-so.
From time to time Mr. Yorke says that it "didn't jive in the studio," and I keep worrying that, after 26 years together, they will go out of business. I don't want that to happen, because I am sure many people, including me, would be happy to see them doing OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac stuff on stage for another 25 years, even if they don't write anything decent anymore. But they really need to figure out a sound business model to be able to do that. And, please guys, get some strategic management advice about that "tickets to real fans" program. I promise you, this will make already eternally grateful fans happy.
Quote of the Week: Occupy Wall Street
Intro to the quote:
Observing Occupy Wall Street protesters right there by Zuccotti park, my cynic mind could not help itself to see social, rather than political event. Guys and gals hanging around, having a good time. Many analysts from all over the world have been trying to understand if these people have any agenda, if their protesting have some sort of intelligent purpose. And there is nothing… Just young people with nothing better to do being upset that they cannot become rich and famous overnight. Very few of them have attained above average complex of general knowledge and they know nothing about work ethics. In their poorly constructed bursts of words they bring up "disappearance of the middle class," but none of them understands that you are not born into middle class – you have to work for it, and maybe after 20 years of professional excellence you can claim your rightful place among its members. The paper wealth of Wall Street phenomenon is a perversion, no question about that. But securities balloons are not the only reasons middle class disappears in this country. None of the protesters want to work real jobs to earn their daily bread, or start small businesses that would keep them physically and mentally busy 24/7. Instead they want to magically transport themselves into the very places occupied by people with million-dollar bonuses they claim to despise.
And then there was that September 30th plot concocted by the protest organizers in order to get more people on location by announcing a Radiohead appearance?! People who supposedly oppose the concept of misleading, blatantly lied to the general public! What's up with that? There could only be three possible explanations why these protesters did not run away in shame after the falsification was exposed – they are either blind, stupid, or really have nothing else to do.
Meanwhile, the electronics were polluted with the false news of Radiohead's "spontaneous concert", and exchanges among some people I know have produced some wonderful pearls (I know a few very smart people). One of my funniest friends felt sorry for the "poor hippies crawling over each other's stomped bodies."
But the first prize definitely goes to the following quote:
"It's the perfect cherry on top of their worship of spectacle rather than substance."
Zach Caceras
Quote of the Day
"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."
Goethe
The Frustrated CFO 