TOC/G7 Related Discussion

[cixelsyd]

None of which disproves my point; that corps who place 4th place and corps that come in at18th place corps can and do spend comparable amounts of money. There's not necessarily a correlation between budget and placement once you get to certain spending levels.

Crown had $1,588,600 in expenses in 2011, and placed 4th. Pacific Crest had $679,854 in expenses in 2011, and placed 18th. I think that does disprove your point.

[BRASSO]

You just gave the DCA folks here a heart attack! :tongue:/>/>/>/>/>/>/>

Its inevitable, imo.

Maybe not right away, but I see it happening.

I was around when some of the DCA folks had a coronary with the thought of allowing females into the Senior Ranks... others later got heartburn with the thought of a 14 year older marching right beside a 48 year older. But as we found out later, the fears were unwarranted.

DCI followers might get " a heart attack " now when I suggest here and now that perhaps its time to scrap their age limit.

Most 22 year olders will leave DCI at 22 anyway. But I see no valid reason anymore why they should be FORCED too leave. DCA Corps have shown that Corps can travel on busses to long distances without problems. If you got a problem marcher in your Corps, its not his or her age thats the issue, its his or her moral compass thats broken. And THAT Marcher shouldn't be in your Corps at ANY age to begin with.

If DCI allowed marchers to march over 22, some of the Corps below would actually get stronger imo as they wouldn't be losing so many of their marchers to the elites as they do now. This adds to stability across the board for the entire activity, imo

We have aligned ourselves in kinsmanship with the College Marching Bands. Ok, so thats cool. But do these College Marching Bands require you to leave at 22 ? No.. they don't. Do they see it as a problem when these marching bands go into competition with one another ? No, they don't. So DCI should just scrap the requirement that you've got to leave now as you are now considered at the ripe " old age " of 22 to be over the hill to march. As I said, MOST will leave on their own ( some do now before 22 ) as jobs, school, career, marriage take over. But not for all, and many tell us that they wished they could have marched another year or a few. I say... so let them. I see no harm in it, nor any benefit to DCI to tell them " ok,.. now get out "

Edited March 4, 2013 by BRASSO

[MikeN]

Based on the 990's thread, the only corps that really bucks the trend about expenses vs. placement is the Colts, but they also run a number of other programs. While not an exact correlation, budget = placement is generally true. (The flip side of that, though, is you could argue bigger budget = good management = good staff = better shows...)

Mike

[cixelsyd]

DCI's outside charitable support in 2010 was $330k, a little less than 4% of their total revenues. YEA's was $360k, about 9% of their total income. One member corps brought in more charitable support than DCI did. That's not a sign that DCI has a major base of outside support for their non-business related activities.

No - another organization that runs a marching music circuit brought in more charitable support than DCI. And of course, that one piece of data is the outlier, owed to that Chase donation. I give YEA! credit, as they certainly worked to drum up votes to maximize their Chase ranking. But I would not dismiss DCI as not having any kind of support base of their own.

[corpsband]

No - another organization that runs a marching music circuit brought in more charitable support than DCI. And of course, that one piece of data is the outlier, owed to that Chase donation. I give YEA! credit, as they certainly worked to drum up votes to maximize their Chase ranking. But I would not dismiss DCI as not having any kind of support base of their own.

Picking a single year of data is probably not very useful. Something like 5 year averages might be more appropriate.

[Slingerland]

Crown had $1,588,600 in expenses in 2011, and placed 4th. Pacific Crest had $679,854 in expenses in 2011, and placed 18th. I think that does disprove your point.

Crown's 2011 990 shows $980k on drum corps expenses. That's about the same amount of program expense as the 18th place corps this year, and the 3rd place corps in 2012.

Once you're at a certain level, placement isn't purely determined by budgets. There are other factors at play. And if someone thinks that you NEED a lot of money to succeed, Pac Crest and Oregon Crusaders and several others can show you that you don't. It all cuts both ways.

I keep waiting for ONE positive suggestion from you, however. All I'm getting is how much you despise everyone at the top of the field, but nothing about how to make DCI bigger and stronger.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Slingerland

[garfield]

All good points. In terms of competitive ranges, to an extent, there are already three different tiers of activity for drum corps at the junior level, with differences that are large enough to make a three-tier approach a possible solution (or maybe Sound Sport is the third division? That would make some sense.)

I'd actually go a step further and say that maybe what needs to happen is to have DCI, WGI, and DCA sit down together with an eye toward a potential merger of all three. DCI would still be the senior circuit (from a budget standpoint), but there are enough crossovers in terms of marketing, potential sponsorships, etc, that it could make sense for each of them to have a particular portion of their area of expertise while still sharing certain costs related to marketing and promotions of the three related activities.

I once saw a documentary about the making of the The Godfather. In an out-take, Michael Corleone said:

"Once a prostitute and a john identify themselves, everything else is just negotiation."

In other words, one has to first accept that there is a problem in DCI that requires a solution. Only then can we get down to the negotiation of what fixes are appropriate.

I'm not convinced that there is a problem in DCI that isn't related, directly or indirectly to either:

A) That the leaders of the Seven have been the leaders of DCI for more than a decade, and

B) That the turmoil leading up to, and following, the May, 2010 G7 proposal has been a major distraction to DCI's effective management, pulling the leadership is polar directions when it was not completely frozen in uncertainty and indecision on the part of the BOD

I add to that the fact that DCI is successfully running a tour and, simultaneously, returning more money to corps than it ever has in its history (both in real dollars and in percentage of gross revenue), and I have to ask...

Is there really a problem in DCI that hasn't been embellished by the actions of the BOD, past and present?

[Slingerland]

Is there really a problem in DCI that hasn't been embellished by the actions of the BOD, past and present?

I'd suggest that it's not always necessary to identify "a problem" so much as to ask some basic questions the same way every healthy business does.

• Are we as successful as we could be? Is there a saturation point that we've hit, or surpassed?
• Are we offering the best products that we can?
• Is our product mix relevant to what the consumers want?
• Do we have a unique position in the market?
• Has everyone who might be interested in the product been approached?

The answer to a lot of those questions is almost always either "nope" or "not as much as it could be", which is reason enough to be looking for better ways to do what you do.

I would absolutely agree that the tempests of the last few years haven't helped keep the organization focused, but I'd also suggest that there's nothing in that that couldn't be fixed with someone deciding to take charge, rather than allowing the mice to run the kitchen. Bill Cook accurately predicted that too many corps directors having too much self-interest, combined with an executive team who was there to "manage" more than lead, would lead to exactly the situation DCI finds itself in now.

But it's nothing that can't be addressed. Everyone really wants the same thing; more kids marching, more people watching, even higher performance levels, and more affordable experiences for everyone involved. Scaling the activity up is key to almost all of those issues. Trying to get simpler and smaller, on the other hand, is usually the first step toward the press release that announces your business will be closing its doors.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Slingerland

[BRASSO]

. Trying to get simpler and smaller, on the other hand, is usually the first step toward the press release that announces your business will be closing its doors.

We agree with this. I'm pretty sure that DCI doesn't want to get any " smaller ", as its " too small " now as it is.

The other thing is... DCI ( nor the G7 ) shouldn't be involved in the proverbial navel gazing when it poses these questions essentially to itself.

It needs to pose these questions to the public.

Then listen. Then respond accordingly in their future products to what they were told in that feedback.

Edited March 4, 2013 by BRASSO

[Slingerland]

It needs to pose these questions to the public.

Then listen. Then respond accordingly in their future products to what they were told in that feedback.

10-4 on this. DCI - and their member corps - need to find out exactly what their audiences think about them, and the thoughts of those who COULD be audiences, but aren't. This, btw, is something that there is corporate money available to help underwrite; it might not be sexy, but there are companies who will put money into helping non-profit orgs improve their positioning and communications. Not sure if they'd still do it, but at one point, American Express underwrote an extensive study of Americans' attitudes toward live performing arts, research that's still being used today.

Would be sort of interesting to see what kind of responses DCI would get if they could launch a rebranding of the activity that specifically took on the band geek stereotype, since my own belief is that the stigma attached to being in a marching ensemble is one of the things that holds the activity back, overall.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Slingerland