Nick Morgan can trace his love of events back to his student days nightclubbing.
“The euphoria of going into a nightclub where people forget about their woes, it was that escapism that resonated with me. Additionally, you’re the custodian of maybe 2000 people – the duty of care sits with you.”
These days, Morgan has progressed well beyond the realm of nightclubs. Indeed he is a man who wears many events hats – in addition to being the Chair of UK Events Outdoor Group, Vice-Chair of UK Events and a member of the LIVE DCMS Workforce, he is the CEO of creative and strategic placemaking agency We Are Placemaking; award-winning live production agency The Fair; and operational management and event safety agency We Are OPS.
Between the three agencies he estimates he’ll be working on around 100 events this year alone. Here, Morgan puts that experience to good use as he highlights five key areas that event organizers need to be careful not to overlook…
1. Lack of Customer Focus
This is very basic, but the customers are the most important thing.
They’re the ones that are underwriting the show. They’re the ones that are enjoying the experience. But I see it time and time again where there isn't a lot of thought around that customer experience. So whether it's the selection of brand partners – we've seen it with Barclays being involved with Live Nation. That probably wasn't the best brand partnership, but obviously I imagine highly profitable for that promoter.
But right down to the F&B proposition. You'll often see what I call a conglomerate F&B proposition, not necessarily that good, they do mass volume, they probably pay more for pitch fees. We spend a lot of time with promoters looking at provenance of food – working with local breweries, things like that. It really does make a difference.
Customers want more selection, they really care about food, they really care about drink, they want to support local businesses.
2. Poor Counterterrorism Planning
External to shows, looking at the protective measures that you have in place.
We're in an environment where the threat level remains globally. So you do need to have some plans around that, because it'll be catastrophic. For obvious reasons, events are a good target.
But because the customers aren't aware of [these measures] – they're not invested in the aesthetics of the show – they are some of the things that get cut. Whether it is as simplistic as the boundary of the site feeling robust and secure. And then you have vehicle mitigations around different shows – they're very visual, customers can see those. But what we don’t want to do is make the experience slightly uncomfortable for people coming to those shows.
But you see it in everyday environments at shopping centers, loads of counter mitigation controls, it's everyday life. So you should see that in parallel in that show environment.
3. Absence of Budget Control
Budget control is really, really important. And understanding the cost impact of different things.
So reducing a fence line is not going to save you thousands of pounds. However, with multi-stage shows, pulling out one of those stages has a huge cost impact. It's not only the talent, but it's the crash barrier, it's the staging itself, it's all the tech, then the support, the security positions that would be needed on that crash barrier.
And also modeling every single sort of ticket increment and what that impact has. It’s horrific, I see it time and time again, promoters losing hundreds of thousands of pounds, and post-show there’s nothing you can do at that point. But being proactive during that process, there are things you can do to reduce that cost base. And you need to make those decisions and they're pretty hard decisions to make.
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4. Creating Bills That Are Too Similar and Broad
The shows that are selling best are those that a) really know their audience and b) are specific in their music genre. For example, I know two reggae shows here have actually smashed it and sold out. So for me, it's trying to get into a real sort of niche.
Most of our shows, I'll be honest, are very niche. This year, we're working with a promoter for Jazz Café – it says what it is. Instantaneously, you know it's in its own genre. It’s a new show – no one's launching new shows this year. And he's doing really well on tickets.
And some organizers just aren't paying attention to that, it's more around the brand. And they’ve been running it for years, and it's a brand associated with multi genre festivals.
It's really, really competitive, [and] the temptation is to take whatever artist that agent may be selling at the time on a tour schedule.
We're seeing lots of shows, multi weekends, very similar lineups. You see that with conglomerates, because they're getting better deals going to that one agent and going, ‘Look, we can give them 50 dates across the world.’ But for me, it’s starting to destroy some of those shows.
So it's trying to keep to a genre, or identify what that show is really, really about.
5. Not Paying Enough Attention To Zone X
We talk about something called Zone X – that's what happens externally to a show, up to generally the nearest transport hub. But I think focusing on that, and on the ingress – so when people arrive – just thinking of the experience people get.
So immediately when they get off that train or whatever that transport hub represents, they’re a customer. And I see it all the time where there isn't a lot of effort from that transport hub, it’s just around facilitation rather than welcoming people, better wayfinding, things you can do on the route, toilet provisions.
For our big shows we almost take it as a separate event. So we have different event managers who just do Zone X, who focus on the externals, working with stakeholders, whether that be residents, working with security, we have stewarding all the way outside that transport hub to keep people safe. At some shows I see a severe lack of that, if any.
That's the first impression people make, as soon as they get out of that transport hub. You also want to engage with the local area, you want them to be part of it. And if you're creating mass havoc, that is not going to help you. We do loads of work with residents, we have mediation meetings, we have consultation where we talk through our plans, how we’re going to work with them, so they're part of the event as well.
Visit We Are Placemaking here, We Are OPS here, and The Fair here.
