"Tour of Champions" 2013

[garfield]

Wow. Pages and pages of "is too!" "Is not!".

How about this - for a stable financial future, spend less than you take in. Thank you. Maybe I'll write a book.

DCI is nothing new or unique, these directors are following the well worn path of all professional sports teams in ramping up the spending arms race. Apparently all these brainiacs aren't smart enough to stop the merry-go-round and back off. It seems to me that the Gee-7 want to increase their own revenue, so at least they have figured out they need more money. Unfortunately they seem willing to take food from their own siblings to feed themselves, rather than find more income from external sources. Perhaps they have given up on that possibility. Maybe everybody has.

So that brings us to the other side of the equation, how can expenses be reduced? Shorten the touring season? Smaller staff size (oh no, that might mean less "excellence". So what?). Compete regionally with one out-of-region tour on the last couple weeks? Rent out a cheaper facility? What's DCI finals attendance dropped to lately? Can it be moved back to Whitewater? Would that be a cheaper venue?

Who knows? I read endless thoughts about how to bring in more revenue, and it doesn't ever seem to happen to the point desired. I don't read much at all about cutting costs. How about some exploration in that area? And if the answer is..... if you cut costs you jeopardize the product.... I'd have to throw the bullspit flag on that one. Excellence being such an ill-defined idea, anyway.

There's a saying in the investment business that's used when a company is cutting its expenses and hunkering down:

"You'll never be profitable cutting costs."

While I can't argue with running lean and mean, I think the majority of cutting should be done at the corps level and DCI should focus on growing the client base. If you're a successful corporate leader, the first thing you would say about DCI is "Stop the bleeding" but, in this case, it's the bleeding of fans away from the activity, not the money. The balance sheet of DCI (as represented by the 990's anyway) don't suggest corporate bloat. It suggests implosion.

Stopping the bleeding means halt the decline in irrelevance by exposure to new fans, not running the tour better. Then grow the base of support.by hiring a sales staff to go talk to the most obvious source of new fans: marching band kids. I don't consider using corps as a resume-builder such a bad thing, even though some say it's shortened the participation time for MM's (do one season, get it on the resume, then go to work to pay for college). In fact, I'd say DCI should make it so relevant that every music kid realizes he/she has to have it on the resume to get accepted to the best schools. Go sell that.

I keep hearing claims that DCI has failed to act on great idea initiatives that the directors have charged them to implement. But when you look into the details that caused many of those initiatives to fail, you find that the directors themselves failed to follow through on their part in the execution of the initiative, not DCI. DCI is asked to do or start something, then the egos on the BOD deep-6 the plan developed by the Executive staff, then claim the ED is incompetent. Then, in steps the savior savants of drum corps to, supposedly right the ship. It's just all too, darn easy.

It might be debatable that the staff crafted the wrong plan, or that they were inept at executing an effort, or executing the right effort, but I'll remind that most of the endeavors that DCI had attempted prior to 2010 were initiated by the same directors who later claimed incompetence by the guy charged with executing the plan. Again, look at the facts of those efforts. You'll find reasons different from incompetence on DCI's part for why efforts to restore relevance failed.

Remember the 5-year plan? It never even saw the light of day before it was deep-sixed. DCI-Next that was presented to corps BOD's last August? Commandeered by working groups made up of the corps directors themselves. It died a quiet death and resulted in the 7 presenting their proposal to the BOD at the Janual. Many people say that DCI should be run by men with successful business experience and the corps directors should focus on running their corps - how about we start with getting the director's noses out of DCI's business? If you look around now, you'll see men who run, or ran, successful businesses dot the drum corps landscape. Several of them are directly involved with staff activities at DCI.

Growing the activity among its chief consumers should be the primary goal. DLB and SS seem to be solid ways to do that, based on the sheer number of indications of interest in competing (from world-wide). I've heard some of the 7 are openly poo-poo-ing those efforts.

If history is a guide - and let's hope this new BOD does not represent history - it won't be long before the seven savants of drum corps hack it to death.

God, I hope not. A strong leader will tell the naysayers to shut the heck up and get behind the bus to push. We need that leader before we can even think about paying some exec $250-grand a year to be bludgeoned to death by the very people he'd be trying to save.

Let's start by re-programming the BOD to set expectations and hold DCI accountable instead of proclaiming they can do it better and trying to take over. Run your corps, directors, and let the business-people run the business. If they fail by the opinion of the majority of the BOD, fire them AFTER you have a better replacement chosen. Don't try to take over, don't try to subvert the rules to secure your power position, and instead focus on giving the business people a product that is salable as a goal to all those kiddies in school.

[cixelsyd]

I'm curious, not being argumentative, but is that exact language, or language similar to it, in DCI's actual mission statement, or written into their IRS classification statement as one of their purposes? If not, then I'm not sure anyone should be assuming that it's implied, since DCI isn't a a charitable organization designed to provide services to the community, but a non-profit sports league/co-op, there to provide financial return to their members.

Judge for youselves. The DCI mission statement, as last posted here, reads:

Drum Corps International is a cooperative fraternity of its member corps.

We seek:

To promote, develop and preserve the operational and artistic standards of the competitive musical sport;

and

To provide organization and leadership for the activity;

and

To develop and successfully operate musical events for the participating drum corps community.

Drum Corps International is the promotional, educational and service arm of the drum and bugle corps activity. It establishes rules and regulations; develops educational programs, such as the PBS broadcast of The Summer Music Games World Championships and the annual Management and Promotion Seminar; publishes DCI Today, a bimonthly publication; produces promotional videos and brochures; organizes judging seminars; showcases the top corps in North America in an annual summer tour; and promotes the activity worldwide.

My opinion would be that given the number of references to the activity, rather than just the member corps, DCI has declared their mission to extend beyond just their member corps. While Stu appeared to be overstating that at one point, his subsequent posts seem to line up with the above.

I don't know much about the "firing Dan A" elements of the backstory, but I'd agree with Danielray's assessment that DCI, if they want to grow, will probably have to start looking up the corporate ladder at one point or another. If they commit themselves to becoming a larger organization overall, they'll want executives who already have experience working on a larger level - perhaps not the top dog at an existing sports or event promotions company, but someone who is right near the top, and has both the experience and the connections to know how to build an audience. I'd strongly disagree with those who say you can't change public perceptions about what drum corps could be; if they think it's nothing but marching band, then maybe drum corps would have to evolve to offer them something that was clearly NOT marching band, and not 1960s drum corps either.

I have a feeling he's not a popular guy here, but I'll go a step further and also agree with Danielray that an outsider might have a better eye toward what would have to happen to grow the organization. Going back to my post about passion vs business sense, growing DCI wouldn't be about loving drum corps; you have to like it, of course, but the more important element would be the competitive strive to make it bigger than it is. Pete Rozelle came to the NFL as a public relations and marketing guy; George Halas and his fellow coaches and owners may have started the NFL, but it took a guy who'd never played the game (and wasn't an athlete at all) to turn them into a real business and make the the game more popular than it was.

The current DCI team appears to have been brought in to repair a problem back in the 90s, but it could be that they're not the team you need to design and implement the next step of the growth process. That's not a reflection on them as not being competent or good, but recognition that executive teams at any company are always a case of horses for courses; if you know you need to accomplish certain things, you go out and hire the 'horses' who know how to get those things done. And again, from the outside vantage point, it appears that the primary - probably only - goal of DCI right now is to rapidly expand their market and radically grow the overall revenue pie.

They probably don't need slow and steady so much as hard and charging, but in order to get that done, they'll need someone who can bring a killer list of corporate contacts with her (or him) to support a new audience-building offensive. There are probably a dozen or two folks out there who might find this kind of challenge enticing enough to come on board, but they're not going to be cheap ($250k and up for starters, plus performance bonuses for an early to mid-career star in the field), so the co-op members will have to be willing to put up some cash to help make the change, and be willing to take direction from their new CEO, not the other way around. I'm not sure that even the Blue Devils people are willing to go there.

Good - you get that too. Now, can you tell Daniel Ray?

[cixelsyd]

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.

As some are fond of saying here, you cannot compare DCI to major league sports.

But seriously, unlike NFL vs. HS football, the needs of open class and world class DCI corps are in far greater alignment. The open class corps tour for fewer weeks, but they still need to eat, sleep, practice, and transport similar equipment day after day in the touring environment. They are both youth activities premised on music and visual arts education coupled with life skill learnings through competition. Sports at the high school level has similar ideals, in stark contrast to the highly paid adults who earn their livings in the NFL, and the difference in scale between the two is of far greater magnitude than OC vs. WC drum corps.

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.

I agree.

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.

Why not?

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.

But that just presents DCA with the same problem you claim DCI has. Remember that very few of the DCI corps we are talking about are weekend only - nearly all do several weeks of through-the-week touring.

[Stu]

I'm curious, not being argumentative, but is that exact language, or language similar to it, in DCI's actual mission statement, or written into their IRS classification statement as one of their purposes? If not, then I'm not sure anyone should be assuming that it's implied, since DCI isn't a a charitable organization designed to provide services to the community, but a non-profit sports league/co-op, there to provide financial return to their members.

And co-ops deliver return to their members at different rates all the time, so there's not necessarily a promise in there that simply appearing on DCi's list of 'members' guarantees everyone the same payout.

I don't know much about the "firing Dan A" elements of the backstory, but I'd agree with Danielray's assessment that DCI, if they want to grow, will probably have to start looking up the corporate ladder at one point or another. If they commit themselves to becoming a larger organization overall, they'll want executives who already have experience working on a larger level - perhaps not the top dog at an existing sports or event promotions company, but someone who is right near the top, and has both the experience and the connections to know how to build an audience. I'd strongly disagree with those who say you can't change public perceptions about what drum corps could be; if they think it's nothing but marching band, then maybe drum corps would have to evolve to offer them something that was clearly NOT marching band, and not 1960s drum corps either.

I have a feeling he's not a popular guy here, but I'll go a step further and also agree with Danielray that an outsider might have a better eye toward what would have to happen to grow the organization. Going back to my post about passion vs business sense, growing DCI wouldn't be about loving drum corps; you have to like it, of course, but the more important element would be the competitive strive to make it bigger than it is. Pete Rozelle came to the NFL as a public relations and marketing guy; George Halas and his fellow coaches and owners may have started the NFL, but it took a guy who'd never played the game (and wasn't an athlete at all) to turn them into a real business and make the the game more popular than it was.

The current DCI team appears to have been brought in to repair a problem back in the 90s, but it could be that they're not the team you need to design and implement the next step of the growth process. That's not a reflection on them as not being competent or good, but recognition that executive teams at any company are always a case of horses for courses; if you know you need to accomplish certain things, you go out and hire the 'horses' who know how to get those things done. And again, from the outside vantage point, it appears that the primary - probably only - goal of DCI right now is to rapidly expand their market and radically grow the overall revenue pie.

They probably don't need slow and steady so much as hard and charging, but in order to get that done, they'll need someone who can bring a killer list of corporate contacts with her (or him) to support a new audience-building offensive. There are probably a dozen or two folks out there who might find this kind of challenge enticing enough to come on board, but they're not going to be cheap ($250k and up for starters, plus performance bonuses for an early to mid-career star in the field), so the co-op members will have to be willing to put up some cash to help make the change, and be willing to take direction from their new CEO, not the other way around. I'm not sure that even the Blue Devils people are willing to go there.

a) Dan Acheson has the support of the directors of 35 corps (16 WC and 19 OC); he is not popular with 7 WC directors.

b) Even if DCI is listed as a sports team/co-op it still is a 501c3 'youth' organization; as such, while they do not have to split the pie equally they still have an ethical obligation to help 'all' units within their co-op and not spit the weak out to feed the already strong. You do not see any other 'youth', and the key word is 'youth', 501c3 corporations killing off services of the weak in the name of feeding the strong. Even in something that is more competitive than DCI like the Little League World Series seen on ESPN; they would never spit on weaker teams to support and promote 'just' those who have a shot at the gold.

c) As for the ideas of D-Ray: I have no problems with increasing the quality and efficiency business aspects of DCI; and D-Ray does have a number of good ideas. Where I draw the line is that since DCI is a 'youth' 501c3, whether designed as a charity or a sports/co-op, the services should be about the youth of Legends and Genesis as well as the youth of the Blue Devils or Cadets.

d) The 'team', as it were, which was established to fix the problems and suggested all of the so-called fixes (many of which brought us to the current conundrum) was, um, the same directors who penned the G7 proposal.

e) The challenge always has been, and always will be, convincing potential sponsors, many of which through spit balls at marching band kids when they were in school, that DCI is not a geeky marching activity. Again I state: The viewership ratings went up each year on ESPN2; the Finals broadcast was in the upper percentile of watched programing on that channel; yet even with much marketing many ad agencies would not support what they envisioned as a geeky flag twirling 'one time at band camp' activity. And that, sorry to say, we cannot change in enough time to bolster up a Major League idea.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Stu

[Slingerland]

A strong leader will tell the naysayers to shut the heck up and get behind the bus to push. We need that leader before we can even think about paying some exec $250-grand a year to be bludgeoned to death by the very people he'd be trying to save.

Let's start by re-programming the BOD to set expectations and hold DCI accountable instead of proclaiming they can do it better and trying to take over. Run your corps, directors, and let the business-people run the business. If they fail by the opinion of the majority of the BOD, fire them AFTER you have a better replacement chosen. Don't try to take over, don't try to subvert the rules to secure your power position, and instead focus on giving the business people a product that is salable as a goal to all those kiddies in school.

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.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Slingerland

[garfield]

So much wisdom in these short few words in my opinion. If DCI brought in an outside management consultant firm to do a detailed analysis of what it would take for this actvity to grow a wider audience ( thereby increasing revenues to Corps ) they may very well come back with a suggestion on "the product that we sell" that many in our very small niche activity may not want to follow in recommendation. Anybody that is familiar in the business world and with what management consultants do with ailing organizations know that they tell that organization even before the scrutiny bregins is that they'll be some toes stepped on regarding people and product and that while some will say they are " for change ", when that change that comes forth recommends a massive change in product and/ or people in the organization there will be strong resistence to implementing the change the " outside " management consultants will recommend. As mentioned earlier, DCI matkets currently to mostly music majors... to students and schools. This is their " customer " that pays for their services, which is primarily education, ie instruction. Their primary customer is not the public. As such, trying to grow a wider audience with " the public " will require fundamental changes that perhaps quite a few are not prepared to make. Which brings us right back to square one, and right where we are today.

For better or worse, DCI early on decided to change its product to more effectively cultivate its new customer base it saw as its future... the music student in the schools. This is a noble and worthy endeavor. The product became more professionalized and glossed and shined up and made much bigger, and larger. And DCI did effectively become much better selling its new and improved product to its new customer... the parent of the student. But of course, the public didn't respond any better than it did in earlier eras. No surprise here as the public was not involved, and nobody from DCI asked them what they wanted in DCI's " product ", and the scoring sheets were altered over the earlier years to actually diminish the public's feedback in their response to the product they were paying for with their ticket purchase.

So now we arrive at a place where some on DCP want to know how we can grow a wider audience base with the public. Well, again, this might very well require fundametal chaanges in both the product and the judging sheets that many may not want to adopt. This is because up to now, the non student music major's input has never been properly valued at all, nor implemented. Absent fundamental chsanges in THAT approach, then we are just going to continue to market this product to the parents of music students in the schools and somehow hope continuing to do this will somehow bring in thousands of new fans... if we could just "get business people involved from outside", and just "learn to market this product better" to the public as they'll love it as much as we do here "if they could just see it and hear it". Well no. The first thing you do if you are REALLY serious about increasing the want and desire and need for your product with the public is to find out what they want and give it to them. Sounds simple. But some people make big bucks getting people to grasp and implement this simple business principle #1

Yesterday, I took my son to participate in the annual Ohio State Univ. middle-school honors program. Fascinating. The University had directors from all over the state nominate 1 or 2 students from 7th and 8th grade to attend a day-long teaching and performance event, brought in a guest conductor, assembled the kids at the University's music school, put them on a bus and took them to lunch at the Huntington Bank Club level at Ohio stadium (the "Shoe", if you live in Ohio), then prepared them for a performance for their parents at 4:00 yesterday afternoon. Music scores were distributed digitally after the kids were chosen. Sponsors - the local music stores - paid for everything. The kids got a T-shirt, an individual photo with the guest conductor, an award to hang on their wall, and the chance to digitally download both photos and videos of both the day and the performance. It was remarkable, and remarkably well-run by two -TWO - grad assistants at the school of music who were introduced and applauded for their efforts in organizing the entire day.

We arrived at 3:00pm and the music school concert hall was packed - standing room only - with over 500 people. Parents, grandparents, friends, and siblings of the 100 7th graders and 100 8th graders who took the stage and beamed out at those watching. We sat next to a family of 7 who had come from a small town about 40 miles away. Their daughter was the only one in their town who was chosen for the honors band; they weren't going to miss it (she's a trumpet player).

That's DCI's audience.

I have a business contact in Chicago who's 14 year-old daughter is a trumpet prodigy. The high school band directors at her school have asked her to march next year when she's in the 8th grade. The mother knew nothing of drum corps, neither did the daughter. When I mentioned a corps just west of her she had no idea. I did my best to sell drum corps to her, and it was easy. I'm going to see her at a business meeting next month and she made me promise to bring some drum corps DVD's for her daughter to watch during the two days I'll be in the city. She was on the Fan Network Friday night, using my login and password, and sent me a text saying they sat up until 11:00 watching shows on the computer. The daughter is flipped out and wants to go see Phantom next week.

That's DCI's audience.

That's not a $50million contract with a major corporate sponsor who doesn't know a thing about the kid business. That's music schools, music kids, their parents, and local sponsors.

[cixelsyd]

So much wisdom in these short few words in my opinion. If DCI brought in an outside management consultant firm to do a detailed analysis of what it would take for this actvity to grow a wider audience ( thereby increasing revenues to Corps ) they may very well come back with a suggestion on "the product that we sell" that many in our very small niche activity may not want to follow in recommendation. Anybody that is familiar in the business world and with what management consultants do with ailing organizations know that they tell that organization even before the scrutiny bregins is that they'll be some toes stepped on regarding people and product and that while some will say they are " for change ", when that change that comes forth recommends a massive change in product and/ or people in the organization there will be strong resistence to implementing the change the " outside " management consultants will recommend.

That is so true. As an example, I recall some time ago, people from both sides of the discussions here suggesting something along the lines of handing a portion of the GE judging (maybe 5 or 10 points) over to people from outside of the DCI trained judging pool. Whether they be experts from related arts activities, celebrities, or just randomly selected members of the public, the idea meets with vociferous resistance.

[garfield]

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.

Have you laughed recently? You missed the joke entirely.

But I'll reply by saying you didn't include the Marines among your contention.

That was my supposed-to-be-funny post.

Sell it to the Marines.

They fix things.

And they don't take any guff.

See? Funny.

Ha Ha

[Stu]

Judge for youselves. The DCI mission statement, as last posted here, reads:

Drum Corps International is a cooperative fraternity of its member corps.

We seek:

To promote, develop and preserve the operational and artistic standards of the competitive musical sport;

and

To provide organization and leadership for the activity;

and

To develop and successfully operate musical events for the participating drum corps community.

Drum Corps International is the promotional, educational and service arm of the drum and bugle corps activity. It establishes rules and regulations; develops educational programs, such as the PBS broadcast of The Summer Music Games World Championships and the annual Management and Promotion Seminar; publishes DCI Today, a bimonthly publication; produces promotional videos and brochures; organizes judging seminars; showcases the top corps in North America in an annual summer tour; and promotes the activity worldwide.

My opinion would be that given the number of references to the activity, rather than just the member corps, DCI has declared their mission to extend beyond just their member corps. While Stu appeared to be overstating that at one point, his subsequent posts seem to line up with the above.

Thank you for posting the most recent official DCI statement; and I will be glad to continue standing up for the truth.

[Slingerland]

But that just presents DCA with the same problem you claim DCI has. Remember that very few of the DCI corps we are talking about are weekend only - nearly all do several weeks of through-the-week touring.

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.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Slingerland