What i did!!!

As Director of Concerts for VTU I put in roughly 10-20 hours a week unpaid. Much
of this is marketing, doing audience research, or working a show. I decided that
since this is expected of me I would do something different for my Marketing
project. I decided to work with Ben Wade, the Director of Lively Arts for VTU.
Natural the event that jumped out to me was his concert: 1964: The Tribute. I
asked him what I could do to help. He had most of the marketing wrapped up by
the time I got to him, but he did let me help him make and format the program
for the event. This was a quick help that took only about 30min – hour. My time
really came when I help on the day of show with Load-in . Even though production
was light for this show it still took a good amount of time. We cleared the
stage dragged on the monitors, drum risers, made sure all the lights were
pointed in the proper direction. I put about 6 hours of my day into helping him
out with various tasks. It was a cool day because the guys in the band were very
laid back, and since they aren’t the real Beatles they were no pre-Madonna’s.
One of the guys in the band was actually a brand new addition. It was also cool
working with a new committee within VTU that I didn’t know that well. I met new
people and had a great time.



To be honest I didn’t learn to much. I have run about 20 national concerts, and
over 50 local shows so this was kind of clockwork to me. But since I was not
“running” this show, I guess I learned that it really matters how the leader
treats his crew and it is important to keep morale high. This helped me
understand more about arts marketing in that Ben marketed a concert as a lively
arts event and it was extremely successful. I think if I had marketed this show
it would not have done as well. Ben is working with the right target market to
have this kind of concert. This fits in with what we have learned in class
because the audience was very diverse and this made the attendance what it was.
It was also during “parents weekend” which was amazing foresight when booking
this show almost a year ago.

I found that marketing this type of concert to a theatre audience can be
extremely successful. There is not too much I would have done differently. I
think it went off without a hitch and the attendance far exceeded anyone’s
expectations. I had to use my strong physique to lift the heavy equipment, and
I had to work in a team to lift and put together certain things. I enjoyed the
work because I was around good people. I would like to do this again, but am so
busy doing my concert that I rarely have time to help with other shows. All in
all I really liked the experience if for nothing less than to see how someone
else runs an event like this.