Slingerland

I would counter that unless any action is specifically designed to grow the business or increase DCI's efficiency, it's a wasted action. DCI has one purpose. Sell the events and shows presented by the corps, and pass the money on to the corps, and do both of those things better every year. End of purpose. Get everyone rallied around that very simple truth, and you are more likely to find consensus on issues that have been divisive in the past, because everyone brought emotional concerns to the discussion rather than business concerns. If it increases the overall efficiencies, strengthens the message or increases fan interest, and returns more money to the corps, directly or indirectly, it's good. If it doesn't, it's not worth doing. Look at everything through that prism, and make choices designed to achieve those ends.

Ok. Class division should be based on competitive placement, and the size of an organization's funding and membership pools. Hardly "outmoded", since that's how it's done most other activities that promote competitive activities, from European soccer leagues to the NCAA to Major League Baseball (who have the National & American Leagues, but don't have those teams playing against teams in the farm leagues). Putting like competitors in the same leagues with their peers is done because for most normal people, it makes sense. And in terms of why the discussion should be looked at from a business standpoint, it's because it IS a business that we're talking about. DCI is a business. Pure and simple. It's in the business of selling tickets and recordings, and returning the profits to the corps who provided the shows that they sell. Any discussion about DCI that isn't about growing the business and/or increasing its efficiency is a wasted discussion.

dupe

Yes - in 1983. The only people who would think that 80s style androgyny would be cutting edge today would be truly geekish.

And yet, one of the things that will mark DCI's (or someone's) triumph as a marketing company will be when they ARE able to convince mainstream audiences how cool drum corps is. The question is whether the drum corps themselves are willing to be partners in the game, by ditching some of the elements that make drum corps geeky (or "Gleeky", if you prefer). Without stepping on too many toes, I hope, can we agree that the men in the guards need to be playing "men", not 'unisex" characters, that the uniform looks, while traditional, don't usually scream "badazz" to a general audience, and that any piece of music that isn't developed with a payoff in mind is probably not going to help in creating a memorable production. DCI's shows are still working through the early 80s impulse to be seen as serious pieces of art rather than just being outdoors entertainment. Not saying you can't be both, but some corps really seem to have a little overly-high view of their artistic abilities. Oh, and no one, under any situation, use the word "pageantry", unless you want to give the band-geek cliche another day of oxygen.

It would require all of them to either find some pockets within their own Board members or structure a long-term loan from an outside source, neither of which would necessarily be bad if the influx of new capital allowed them to hire a professional marketing and promotions team who could increase the overall revenues and increase the payouts to the individual corps. Putting DCI onto a "pay to play" basis really would pull them more into line with NASCAR, and help establish who was serious about growing the overall business model for major league events, and who was really more interested in working in lower-risk, lower-reward vineyards.

I'm not sure why anyone at either league would find that idea objectionable. The primary thing would be to establish a series of standards that would have to be met by the organization, the same way that the NFL allows for expansion into new markets, but does so with an eye toward making sure that the new franchise ownership is dedicated to increasing the value of their league, and not just getting into the NFL in order to access the existing revenue streams. I'd suggested a "buy in" idea yesterday for either a re-boot of DCI or perhaps their creation of a new entity, one exclusively designed to showcase their national touring corps (by definition, corps who have the financial wherewithal to handle the demands of being on the road 3 months of the year and the competitive competency to compete for a title). The more I think about it, the more sense it makes, since no one who chooses NOT to do it could claim that they weren't given the opportunity, and no one who steps up and joins the new league could complain that others at their same table are 'takers' not 'makers', as seemed to be at the heart of the G7 proposal. And in the meantime, those who are interested in having fun with drum corps with younger members would be free to set up their own associations, regional circuits, etc. Were DCI to create a separate entity to manage those regional corps, THAT would be the organization that could rightfully claim that it's a youth services org, and seek outside charitable support to promote their activities (the bigger corps should really be looking at corporate season sponsorship rather than donations - they're different ideas). RE: SoundSport and Drumline Battle, I'd also heard recently that some of the DCI corps were a little surprised to hear of these two ideas. Typically you'd want to build some support from the organizations who should be counted on to support the ideas before you roll them out, so that the concept is much further along than just a name and a logo by the time it goes public. As much as I think they're good ideas and positive developments, the launch process seemed pretty badly bungled.

So by that token, could any individual or collection of corps go to DCI and say "cash us out, we want our share of what our company here is worth?" Probably not. How would they figure out how much each corps' equity is worth? I've said before (and will say again) that their business model is a cooperative, even if their actual operation is a standalone company.

NASCAR is a privately-owned company, not a non-profit, and they charge a fee for drivers and team owners who want to enter their events. By that token, they're closer to Danielray's idea of a privately-owned DCI (over on another thread here somewhere). They don't really "owe" anyone anything but whatever it is they've agreed to pay them. Drivers often make more from their team sponsors than they do from their NASCAR performances, so for even the best competitors, the money they make from NASCAR isn't the engine that drives them. Were DCI to become a big enough thing that corporate sponsors could be found to sponsor 16 or 18 drum corps, great, but they're a long way off from that. Also worth noting that getting on the circuit means making the financial commitment to showing up pretty much wherever the NASCAR bosses tell you to go, since they're all about filling up 43 slots, not caring about the costs involved in participation. If you want to keep racing, you'll show up, whether you can afford it or not. I'm not sure there's a lot that DCI can be taking away from NASCAR except for their success in marketing the product. Bluntly, it's a mystery to me as to why people like it, but then again, I could only use that as proof that if you could get 50 million people to care about cars circling a track, you could probably find at least 1 or 2 million who'd care enough about drum corps to pay it some mind.

They were allowed to participate in prelims, but the original group of 13 excluded a few names (Kilts and Muchachos, among them - Kilts had been national champions just a few years before, so that was a pretty major exclusion).

Not necessarily. Looking at the 990s thread last night, there were a few corps down in the rankings who would likely have the financial capability to work with their Boards and their communities to come up with some money for a fresh capitalization. I think what people forget is that the original members of DCI all made personal guarantees in order to get the thing off the ground; that sense of shared risk was helpful in letting them work together and seek consensus in hiring their first executive team (Pesceone and Whitely(?) and in making decisions designed to improve their visibility and financial capacity. They'd all taken a risk, they were all going to share in the reward. A fresh capitalization would serve as a put-up or shut-up gut check for some of those who are currently talking big about DCI's future. If the guys behind Crown and Vanguard and BD et al really think they're ready to kick it up a notch at the DCI level, then here's a chance to provide the seed money for their own expansion without having to go out on their own to do it. Anyway, as I said, it was just thinking aloud.

I was a fan of the early-70s look, especially on Rich Maas. White short sleeve shirts, clip-on black tie, epaulets, plasticized mesh baseball cap. Pure catnip to the ladies.

Baby, you can say you sell the best jelly donuts in the world, if you want to, but it doesn't necessarily make it true. DCI's self-description and its actual operations focus are at odds with each other. You can choose to believe what they say they do, or you can believe what they actually do, but for most people, it's what you do, not what you say that carries the day. A fraternal collective? Ok, but what business is that, exactly? Are they in the business of providing fraternal love among the members? They sell tickets to events on behalf of the member corps. They don't provide any direct services to kids. The corps do that themselves. It could be why most of the major corps blow DCI out of the water when it comes to how much direct charitable support they receive; a donation to Phantom Regiment or Troopers is going to provide food, transportation, and instruction for those kids; a donation to DCI is going to provide.....what? Those stylin' golf shirts the judges wear? They're a classic example of the old school producers' cooperative, which is cool. So is the NFL, comes down to it. The owners of businesses pool resources to market their products, and get the greatest return on their effort they can by leveraging their shared efforts and resources. But in order for coops to work, there has to be an understanding that either everyone is bringing about the same effort to the table, or that there's a mechanism in place to make sure that those who are the most productive or whose products bring in the most money are protected from feeling that there are others in the group that are benefitting at a much greater level than their own participation would deem reasonable. Again, it's hard because people are so passionate about everything related to this activity, but if we looked at it purely from a business standpoint, it would make sense to consider changes that would either boost the productivity of those whose efforts are returning the least value to the group, or look for ways to perhaps modify the structure altogether so that everyone who's at the table feels confident that there's a shared amount of risk and reward. Thinking aloud, maybe it's time for a total re-boot of DCI, with a buy-in similar to the letter of credit that the original founders had to put together in order to get the first championship underway. If DCI said they were looking for 18 members to come in at $150k each, that would give the re-booted venture $2.7 million in new capital to go out and hire some additional marketing and sponsorship folks, find a way to put the product back on tv, and do a serious re-branding of the whole enterprise.

There's no butt or but monkey in the room. DCI can claim anything they want, but the actual review of what they do shows that the focus is and always has been on providing media products and selling tickets to events featuring drum corps, not providing any direct service to the kids in the corps. Coop venture, not a charity. I'm not sure why anyone would object to that very accurate description of what they are. It's not like being in a cooperative is operating a ponzi scheme.

Selective editing. I mentioned that DCI calls itself a youth organization, but I then went on to say "and that's misleading", since it is. DCI provides no real direct service to the kids marching the corps; their food, instruction, medical care, transportation, uniforms, etc, etc, etc are provided by their individual corps, not by DCI. It's a producers cooperative, not a direct services organization, and most certainly not a charity in the genuine sense of the word.

They're all very easy to separate, actually, and yes, you read what I wrote exactly correctly. All of those characteristics you cite are pretty much shared by the same group of corps. Open Class is there to give their kids a chance to do drum corps, learn how it is played, have some fun doing it, and not have to sell a kidney in order to finance it. That's a beautiful thing - the thing that would make it even better would be if all of the marketing efforts went to promoting them as stars of their league, not as "also on the program" performers, as happens now all too often. Organizations who don't have the interest, ability, need, desire, or means to tour nationally and compete with the corps who DO have the interests and means to do all those things should be competing in a different league altogether. Put that in front of most normal adults and they'll agree with my positions. The worlds of sports and business normally sort themselves into logical affiliations, either by regions, capacity, product categories, or competitive level; DCI is resistant to that in part because (I suspect) some adults associated with the various corps would feel offended if their corps was classified as a regional corps rather than a national touring corps. Again, you have to look at the situation as a business question, not as anything having to do with pride or passion or ego. The business of DCI s to sell tickets to events and other products and bring in money that can be returned to the co-op members in exchange for their work. The ability to do that would be enhanced, not weakened, if the message and the imagery they were able to use was consistent and clean, if their product could be easily defined as "the Top 16 (or 18) drum corps in the world." To be brutally honest, there are some organizations that are now classified as "World Class" by DCI's system who really aren't. We all know it, we just hesitate to say it out loud for fear of offending the members and supporters of those corps. If DCI ever went the route of hiring a professional executive team who came into it with business, rather than 'drum corps' being their motivating interests, I would imagine that such a re-alignment and clarification of status would be one of the first things that would be addressed. Some people might feel stung, but in the long term, it would be a very healthy development for all concerned.

DCI does indeed classify themselves as a "youth organization" (I just checked their 990s), but it's misleading. They're still really a business co-op set up by a bunch of other youth organizations. Since they don't directly provide services to the kids in the corps (the members pay dues to their corps, not to DCI, and DCI doesn't pay for instruction, food, or transportation), it's a bit of a stretch for them to call themselves a youth org (IMHO, of course). That's a characterization that doesn't sound like anyone I've ever met in drum corps. Look, purely from a business standpoint, DCI isn't working as well as it could. My position is that this is because DCI is trying to be everything to everybody, when it wasn't originally designed to do that, and has never really built a financial infrastructure to support that notion. It was built to give drum corps who were good enough to make Finals (or at least come close) a chance to compete at big shows, set their own rules, sell tickets to the shows and recordings of their work, and collect the cash at the end of the season, pretty much in that order. At the time, they probably figured that the other corps would keep doing things they way they'd been doing things; focusing on doing parades to make money and doing shows for fun, but the rest of the activity didn't necessarily decide to do that. And with the collapse of the veterans orgs as drum corps sponsors (something that would have happened anyway), DCI ended up having to take on more responsibility for junior drum corps than they were built to handle. Well either the business model would need to be radically altered to accommodate that extra load, or the business model needs to be modified to allow the two different worlds of junior corps to do what they do as efficiently as they can. You can do a lot of things in the real world, but turning back the clock is a hard one; trying to make it so that every drum corps survives on local members only, and spends no more than $200-300,000 a year isn't likely to happen, simply because doing so would make the product less impressive, hence less appealing to the core audience, and even less appealing to any potential audiences. So you can move forward, and look for ways to grow the revenues, and pay the performing units an amount closer to what they're worth, or you can watch as everyone gets burned out and decides to just stop, since it feels like they're working harder and getting less return. There's a lot of potential out there for community drum corps, but it doesn't lie in the national touring model. The sooner that community corps focus on putting together a competitive format and creating associations that benefit themselves, rather than waiting on table scraps from DCI, the sooner those directors will be free to unleash their own creativity, free of feeling like they're supposed to be competing with the corps at the top. You can still leave avenues open for the most ambitious OC corps to move up to national touring, but that should be seen as an option down the line, rather than the goal of any OC corps. In short, there IS a future for all of this, but being honest about the different needs and goals of the two different types of junior drum corps would be the first step toward taking the right kinds of steps to make sure the overall activity can remain viable.

DCI as a 501©(3) is structured that way because it's a non-profit, not because it's a charity. They're not really the same ideas, even though both of them operate under the same designation on the IRS code. DCI is a business co-op, not a widows and orphans charity.

Then we're in agreement. Now the next question is whether we also agree that two items that are both important - to their patrons, and to each other - but also very different in their goals and abilities, should be promoted and sold by one managing organization, when their salient marketing points and organizational goals are so very different from each other. I would say that they don't; that the form has to follow the function, and that the needs of a high school-age corps who wants to focus on limited touring and limited budgets are different then the needs of an organization with older performers who are focused on doing national touring and competing at the highest levels.. There's a reason why the NFL doesn't manage high school football and why MLB doesn't feature any farm league schedules on their home page. Because those activities, while vital to the success of both leagues, aren't "the same" as their primary focus. That's not to say that both leagues aren't paying attention to the younger athletes who play their games, but that they recognize that they have a limited amount of bandwidth in the public consciousness, and that their best shots for promoting their sports as a whole lie in promoting the cool factor of their professional teams.

Very famliar, yes, thank you. DCA used to be "senior corps." Now it's "all ages." So, by definition it's open to junior corps. And their schedule is exactly the model that fits a junior drum corps that is locally based and isn't interested or able to support national touring. Open Class isn't about the national touring model, and the membership is local rather than international, as with most of the WC corps. The budgets are going to be in the $150-300k range, rather than $800-1.2m range. The members want to compete, but know that they're not directly competing with Blue Devils or Cadets so much as they are other OC corps with similar limitations and abilities. In terms of goals, budgets, etc, there's actually a lot more in common between Open Class and DCA than there is between Open Class and World Class. Aside from some adult egos being bruised by having to compete in a lower-profile circuit, there's really no logical reason why this sort of re-alignment wouldn't make sense. DCA and DCI already have some cross-promotion going on, so it's not like having Open Class moved into their own division within DCA would mean that they would disappear from the DCI radar. But it would free DCI up to focus purely on the most competitive teams in the league, promoting them without having to divert focus and resources outside of their core product. Do a better job of promoting the unique aspects of drum corps as evidenced by the most impressive teams, and you make more people curious to give it a shot. Heck, if you want to, have DCI corps adopt a policy that tells prospective members that their preference is for members who've spent some time in the OC world, and give those who are 15 or 16 and want to march in a big corps an additional incentive to go spend a summer doing OC (some would find that counter-intuitive, but to my mind, it puts WC corps into the roles of promoting marching in Open Class, something that they all give some lip service to now, but has no teeth behind it.)

My support for the idea of aligning drum corps whose managements don't have the inclination or ability to raise a million dollars a year to run a national touring operation with OTHER drum corps whose don't have the interest in doing a national tour is driven by simple fact-based rationality. If you have a drum corps league out there that is geared toward limited touring and lower-budgets, than it makes sense to have those drum corps whose managements want to run those kinds of corps go compete with their peers in that league. I realize that strikes some people (it sounds like it strikes you) as "elitism", or whatever you want to call it, but it's really just looking at a situation dispassionately, and pointing out an obvious opportunity. You yourself say that Pioneer isn't competing with Blue Devils. Well why would a business that's supposed to be a league of equals/competitors want a situation in which some teams aren't really competitive with the rest of the league? More importantly, why would a corps director who really valued the experience he or she offered their kids want their kids to be competing in a league where they were all but sure to be clobbered every night? Why wouldn't they embrace an opportunity to put their kids in a situation where the best work they can do, at their level, gives them at least a fair shot of success against others who are at the same level? The brightest, shiniest objects in the tool box are going to be the most marketable to a wider audience (and yes, that includes the band parents, who are going to be more impressed by PR or Cavaliers than they are with some of the smaller corps who are performing simpler, smaller shows). There's absolutely nothing wrong with community-based drum corps; I think you'd find that everyone who's ever marched would be in favor of finding ways to increase overall participation, but part of that process will be finding ways for give fledgling corps and younger members something realistic to shoot for within their budgets and programming capacities. Take the adult egos out of the equation, and recognize that some drum corps are there primarily to teach the members how to do drum corps and how to handle themselves on their own, and others are there to give the most competitive college-aged musicians the chance to compete on a bigger stage. They're both valuable, but they're not "the same."

Not at all. It gives DCA that many more member organizations who all operate on the more or less same construct; local membership and limited performance touring. Drum corps for "fun," without spending thousands of dollars to compete at the highest levels with the best college-aged musicians. OpenClass corps and DCA are already natural fits, the only question is why this re-alignment hasn't already happened.

And yet (playing Devil's Advocate), it's unreasonable to expect that the members of a co-op, which is what DCI is, should have no interest in making sure that their co-op's executive team is acting aggressively - yes? If the directors of a co-op have no confidence in their executive team, it's not surprising to see them making noise. It sounds like everyone at the DCI level agrees that growing the audience is a problem. But the solutions seem to come down to an either/or approach; either you focus more time and attention on the top units, promoting them as being "the act", or you try to keep moving forward on a more egalitarian, but less promotable path, where everyone in drum corps is an equal participant in Drum Corps International, and it's more like a youth athletic league than it is a type of entertainment business. It seems that the current exec team and many of the lower-ranked corps want to go the second route, but doing so necessarily hampers the ambitions of those at the top, and (to my mind, anyway), makes it harder for DCI to hit the gym, start toning up, and relaunch themselves as an action sport that involves live music performance at the highest level. I'd agree with some of the earlier posters that the competitive standards would also have to change, so that showy and effective is more important than "artistic" , but that's something everyone could adjust to easily if they could see the dollar sign attached to the change. In terms of the money, you guys have to be aware that $250k for an executive with the types of credentials you need for the job is baseline - the ones who are already working at other $20-30million companies are making a lot more than that at the top. But thinking that you can defer that kind of personnel investment until some other things change is a non-starter, since nothing will change until you have an executive who has both the cred to bring in big money with her/him, and the confidence to look at the Gibbs and Hopkins of the world and tell them to focus on running their corps and to let her/him build the audience. It's a personality thing; you won't get the type of stud you want until you offer the type of stud you want the kind of money they'll expect to be paid, and studs, by definition, don't see themselves as underlings to the Board members who hire them. Does Dan A have that kind of personality? I don't know him personally, never met him, but my instinct is that no, he doesn't. If he did, he would have met the uprising a couple years ago with a coup of his own, and led the other members of DCI to oust the G7 corps from DCI altogether for a year. It could be that he's a peacemaker, not a fighter, and that's fine, but at a certain point, you need to understand that the true power in any negotiation belongs to the man who's willing to kill the deal. The G7 put up a front, and the insurrection should have been handled then, rather than punted. Now, unfortunately for him, he's damaged goods until he or his team get together and pull an Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, and start dictating to Hopkins and Gibbs, rather than the other way around. If that happens, and there's a hard and fast plan for growing audience, with actual dollar signs attached to it, he's got some hope; if he listens to certain others in drum corps, and pushes on with the idea that everyone in drum corps is equally important, there's no hope of him lasting much longer. That model is simply never going to grow anything except resentment.

Most of those are relatively modest, privately-owned specialty brands, or have individual divisions that are interested in being seen with DCI, but don't necessarily bring their entire corporate heft to the table (Sony and Yamaha). What D'Addario (Evans) sells in a year is Target's gross revenues for a day, and it's the Targets and CocaColas you need to provide the kind of money that it'll take to establish better public awareness of what DCI offers.

Hockey Dad, I think it's pretty clear that there's a difference in perceived excellence between the smallest and most frugal organizations and the largest and biggest budgeted, so I'm not sure that part of the argument holds water. What DOES make more sense is for everyone to agree that, as with football, there are different levels of achievement that are out there, and that the best course might be to recognize that the capacities, needs and interests of a small corps on a limited budget are very different from those at the top, the same way that high school football is different from the NFL. They both exist, quite happily, in the same world, both of them relying on each other to help keep the overall public interest in the game going. There's no reason to assume that the two types of drum corps - community based vs international brand - can't have the same type of relationship. It IS probably a stretch to think that one organization can effectively manage both elements, however, without letting their overall position in the public eye become badly muddled. From that standpoint, DCI would probably do well to split off the smaller, community based corps into their own separate league, or negotiate with DCA to have all weekend only drum corps going under the DCA aegis. There are costs that could probably be cut from some of the biggest corps, but reviewing the 990's thread, it doesn't appear that any of them are spending extravagantly on staff or management, and almost all of them are within a few percentage points of each other, with the exception of a few who are sitting in the bottom third of the World Class group.