The live entertainment community is one of the most collaborative environments I have ever worked in. Think of how many people, companies and organizations (unions) are involved in one production. From Broadway to Las Vegas to most of our non-profit pool of clients across the country, think of the variety of stakeholders – theatre owners, producers, general managers, marketers, advertising, public relations, group sales, subscriber services, education, fund raising, board members, musicians, actors, unions, etc. It’s actually quite incredible and it’s clear that despite many difference that may exist between stakeholders, the industry continues to think and act collaboratively in order to survive.
If you’re a producer, it may often feel like a drag to lead such an army. I’d argue though this training over the years may very well be one of your great advantages in a digital age. Ideas and technologies fly at the speed of light and living in an open source world and having a wide net to share ideas and opinions on is an inherently good thing. As an industry, we should welcome competitive voices into the industry, rip down closed platforms (which unfortunately many of the ticketing systems still are) and make sure producing teams have enough generals on the ground to really manage the collective thinking that is ultimately needed across all facets of the production.
As an agency, we live and die by collaboration – while we have 50+ full-timers, we are more like a 100+ when you incorporate our international collaborators who help keep our thinking fresh and our work evolving. Keeping that open collaboration is not easy – it takes time, investment and the will to challenge your own thinking.
So, while I too am for smaller marketing meetings, I am also the one that wants an management team infrastructure on productions that offers the widest possible net for innovative thinking which I think is what is really needed (particularly when we take a good look at the ten year path of attendance figures.)