Alex Towers - Ticket Master
‘You can work on something your passionate about, but you wont learn anything. If you work on something your not passionate about it will teach you to become a better marketer.’
Background:
Worked in various marketing worlds within the music industry
Wanted to be a journalist however changed mind – didn’t believe in what they were writing
Friend recommended him at a PR agency got an interview at SONY but never actually had a proper interview they just sat him at a desk and started that day
Sony – 1 year – during uni – taken by a good project manager – press release, promos, editing DVD footage.
Graduated
Take experience as it comes, you need to grasp any work experience with two hands because to get into industry you need to have previous experience, it decreases your risk within the company
Worked for fat boy slim label – product manager – PR, manufacturing, distribution – internationally
Second mistake of career – start ups are Risky always proceed with caution as your job may not be very stable.
Ticket Master:
Exists to sell tickets
Maintain client relationship 5 people work there – 120 uk maintaining client relationships this can be between: Ticket agents – promoters – booking agents – marketing agencies – artists
He was responsible for the Flash sales concept and was very proud of the project.
4 designers, blog manager, media managers are just a small fraction of the company as a whole and part of the marketing team
The industry has changed over 3 years due to the rise of Netflix as they are solely responsible for the rise of the Algorithm based marketing, personalized recommendations. This is data formed of personal likes, searches and watch history. They are becoming vastly popular within the industry due to the rise of the “me generation” where everything is for you / selfies/ search options etc big companies such as Amazon and Netflix are using coders make the UX (user experience) more tailored and personalised to its customers and subscribers.
Every company has a social media platform, branding and campaign management that needs to be managed.
Festival promotions – responsible to market festivals – how they present festivals as a brand – creative element how you represent these types of things
South Londers do not want to travel – so heat maps are suggesting that inner city festivals are booming
Reading – people who live in reading buy the tickets
Always going to need a human element algorithms only work up to a point, there is still room for creativity as you can tell someone what they like.
Favourite campaign- flash sales – on leap day – 29th feb – every four years (Similar to black friday, this day only happens every four years so makes it special and thus Alex and his team wanted to emphasis this, and to do so they made there 'own' black friday'
Q & A:
Is there still a gap for innovation? yeah – 'things come and things go – algorithms – Spotify campaign personification – 3,000 the end of the day as we know it on the day we found out of BREXIT last year (poster campaign) there will always be a need for creativity.
How far can you take Ticketmaster? Changed in the last 6 years since he has been there, can only take it do far – American owned – branding comes from America, different market compared to UK – making money from second hand sales like Stub hum / Viagogo
Ticket master had an issue with customers ripping the company to shred on Twitter. Inital response from the company was to ignore the issue that was at hand however Alex changed the perspective in that they can use the power of social media to communicate to its customers. It breaks down the robotic element of the company and provides a human element. Twitter has helped to improve brand image, push people to other venues and other available tickets when all tickets for certain arenas have been sold. Allows the company to be seen as a bit more human/ helps to break down barriers.
Why do they sell on their tickets to a secondary market? Tickemaster own 2 secondary site, invested in the secondary market as there is a lot of money within it. Completely comply with legal reasons with secondary. Its better to have it legal and not illegal
Get me in bought by Ticketmaster 5 years ago – Seatwave last year
What would you want to do next? Brand management – would never work for an agency – campaign management – 12 years in music agency – sometimes you need to recognize to move on