TOC/G7 Related Discussion

[cixelsyd]

DCI's fees to their top corps don't come close to covering the costs of getting their kids down the road.

Now the kids belong to DCI? "Their kids"?

Once more, since you still miss this point - DCI is an amateur sport. In amateur sports, the competitors pay part of the cost of participating. I do not see you railing about the Olympics failing to cover the costs of training, travel and all else for their aspiring amateur athletes. (For that matter, some pro sports teams operate this way too.)

There isn't enough money coming in to make DCI work.

There is plenty of money to make DCI work. A few of the corps, however, may be spending beyond their means.

Either the revenues need to increase, or the costs of running DCI need to be cut significantly in order to increase payouts. Since I'm not sure what can be done on the latter half of that formula, it puts us back to trying to come up with a way to increase revenues at the top and boost the payouts.

Or the costs of the overspending corps need to be cut.

[cixelsyd]

I'm sorry, but there's no credible evidence out there to show that the biggest 14 or 18 or 20 corps are going to scale themselves back to doing a 6 day tour on a school bus with a bread truck to haul all the equipment.

No one is suggesting that (especially the bread truck).

National tours cost what they cost, and the amounts being spent by most of the full-summer tour corps are fairly consistent across the spectrum.

As has already been demonstrated, costs vary quite a bit among the corps who tour all season. Regardless, if anyone has a problem with the cost/revenue balance, I think both sides of it ought to be looked at.

[danielray]

By condensing implication you have just established that a) you only see value in having the Open Class around if it is merely a feeder system for the elite; and b) you have no desire to help develop Open Class corps enough to become a part of the World Class division.

[Fred Windish]

Wonderful photos, danielray! Sometimes, pictures DO speak louder than words.

[Slingerland]

As has already been demonstrated, costs vary quite a bit among the corps who tour all season. Regardless, if anyone has a problem with the cost/revenue balance, I think both sides of it ought to be looked at.

Not as much as one would suppose, given the relatively large range of scoring from top to bottom. As demonstrated this past season, it's perfectly possible for a corps in the 16-19 range to have a budget as big as a corps who places in the top 5 or 6.

There isn't enough money coming in to DCI, and 15,000-17,000 paid at Finals isn't a sign of success. Those 12,000 seats that used to be sold but aren't now are worth at least $600-800k on just that one night.

[HockeyDad]

All good questions, garfield, and I'm not sure we quite know the answers unless DCI has contacted the former " Friends of DCI " to find out why they left.

And why would they do that !?! After all they're still in the mode of arguing with their customers over what those customers should want. There's a forumla for success!! (NOT).

Unless DCI just doesn't care why Friends are leaving, they sure better be figuring out what's going on. And be determined to fix it.

[HockeyDad]

When was drum corps ever more about entertainment than today? Certainly not pre-DCI VFW era, when there were just as many points for 'cadence' and 'inspection' as there was for GE (10 for each). When there were 30 points for marching ex, and 20 each for music and drumming.

Oh, how about 1974 or so thru 1989 or so. Just by coincidence those years seem to be looked back upon fondly as the salad days of dci. And please, spare us the..."oh what about so and so corps in 2007" as the exception to try to discredit the claim. Been there done that. Example, I LOVED last year's Cadets. Funny. The show our snobs look down their noses at - too easy...Christmas music-how cliche...how dare they put a "Jesus fish" on the field...oh, I'm so "offended"....(as if one has a right to not be offended).....Hey look at me typing random streams of consciousness - Just like GH!

A few corps have held onto the idea that entertainment is important. Most others have not, for reason Kickhalts has very nicely explained. And, people vote with their wallets.

Edited March 10, 2013 by HockeyDad

[danielray]

And why would they do that !?! After all they're still in the mode of arguing with their customers over what those customers should want. There's a forumla for success!! (NOT).

Unless DCI just doesn't care why Friends are leaving, they sure better be figuring out what's going on. And be determined to fix it.

Friends of DCI was actually a ticket play. A lot of people buying the tickets have closer relationships to individual corps than to DCI. They ended up instead buying tickets through individual corps than DCI, because they were then able to buy tickets in good areas, in blocks where they could sit with others they knew from the corps they were buying from.

When finals was moving around a lot to different cities and stadiums, availability and ticket blocks were less predictable, so it was always better to go through Friends of DCI to ensure you got great seats. Now, with finals in the same place until the end of time, individual corps have very predictable blocks... making the Friends of DCI program sort of obsolete for many individuals who have some sort of connection to (alumni, volunteer, donor, fan, etc.) any member corps.

It is not so much that Friends of DCI is something that should be chased after (I do think member corps can likely do a better job of selling blocks of tickets than DCI), but instead replaced with new lines of revenue.

Edited March 10, 2013 by danielray

[garfield]

Ok. How?

Is there some special discount code that can be applied to everyone's insurance bills that will lower them from $50,000 or more to a few thousand dollars? A special fuel pump where diesel is still $1.10 a gallon?

A world in which the members are all local, and live at mom and dad's on the weekdays, until late July, when they go out on their 10 day "summer tour?"

We all did that. It was 1960s and early 70s drum corps. Like muscle cars that got 12 mpg on $.29 gas, it was fun back in its day, but its day passed a long time ago.

I mean, there ARE cheaper ways of doing drum corps with mostly local members, but those corps are designed to be part-time, rather than full-time. Force every drum corps to adhere to the part-time, locals only model, and you can kiss national touring corps goodbye - or more likely, you can kiss at least 15 or 17 of the top corps goodbye, as they'll take off to form a new organization.

The old model simply doesn't work, and making changes designed to cheapen production doesn't have a long history of success in this world. It's why Schlitz is still held up as an example in business classes of the dangers of going cheap, rather than going bigger and better. They thought they could cheapen their way to survival, and they killed the brand instead.

The way forward rarely involves shifting into reverse, except for cases of purest survival, and even in those cases, it's usually the first step toward putting up the "going out of business" sign. Ironically enough, as I think of it, my moniker here is another example of the dangers of cheapening, rather than committing to growth. A once dominant brand, killed by a drive to make it cheaper, rather than make it better.

I'm talking about a business as a business. If money changes hands, and someone pays cash for a product, it's a business.

DCI is there to sell events and distribute funds, however best they can. The rest of their mission is contingent on them doing a kicka__ job of selling and distributing. They DO this so that the drum corps can afford to stay in the business of providing a place where teenagers and college aged musicians can have a place to push themselves to a level of excellence they can't touch in the rest of the world.

I'm sorry, but there's no credible evidence out there to show that the biggest 14 or 18 or 20 corps are going to scale themselves back to doing a 6 day tour on a school bus with a bread truck to haul all the equipment. That being the case, I don't waste time pining over an ideal that can't and won't ever happen. National tours cost what they cost, and the amounts being spent by most of the full-summer tour corps are fairly consistent across the spectrum. Either DCI has to find a way to increase the amount of revenue coming in OR come up with a marketing strategy that increases the overall exposure for the drum corps at all levels (so that individual corps can leverage that exposure to sell their own products better), but hoping that the corps whose presence sells most of those tickets DCI uses to stay in business that they have to turn themselves back into mom and pop corps from the 60s isn't the solution.

Not only is this not " a solution ", its now impossible. The " changes " that have occurred over the last 40 years has insulated DCI from ever " going back ", so its not an option even if there are a few alive out there in Drum Corps Land that might pine for this.

The dozens of local circuits that once flourished throughout the USA and Canada are now gone.

Dead and gone. Even the fingerpointing as to who is most responsible for this is simply water over the dam by now and nonproductive in the end in my view.

Its now up to the few Corps still remaining in DCI to now try and figure out how to move forward from where they now find themselves.

These three posts carry the same theme, that DCI can't ever "go back". That old model is broken and it can't be retained. I'm all for "moving forward" (I hate that phrase, like "going forward", as if we could do anything else). But stepping back, and maybe going back, is and can be a valuable strategic move. Ask any successful business-person - and I bet this has happened to them...

Several years ago, after about 20 years in my business, I had hit a plateau of success that, while comfortable, left me feeling bland, inactive, and not growing - something I had not become accustomed to throughout my career. During a discussion with a mentor he suggested I spend time trying to find the answer to this: "What did you do to get to this point? Do that." Once I started to look at my old business plans, I realized that, although I was very active, I had stopped doing those things that had propelled my career up to that plateau. When I decided that I wasn't comfortable standing still I found ways to streamline my activities to create the time necessary to go back and do those things again. Within months I was back on a growth track.

While adapting to new circumstances with agility is admirable as a business tactic, strategies that made you successful shouldn't be necessarily cast aside in the process.

In my view, drum corps as an activity *IS* successful at what it does and the problem is that it's not growing. That problem is not, necessarily, correlated to what it is; rather, it could be a symptom of what it's doing. And what it had been doing in the decades prior to 2010 was concentrating emphasis on, and power in, the decisions of the "Top Corps". The way the activity has been doing "what it is" has been largely directed by those same "Top" corps directors.

And yet, here we are, supposedly about to collapse because, STILL, the activity hasn't done enough of what these directors have demanded was the right tactic over the years.

Now we hear that the only path forward is to change the nature of what drum corps "is". It's proposed here that DCI needs to lead the activity to become an "Entertainment Company", funded by corporations, with the singular goal of selling seats and delivering profits to corps - an action promoted by the same corps in line to receive the supposed greater, but yet unsubstantiated, profits in the greatest proportion (not coincidentally, by following a formula developed by themselves).

Nowhere in that supposed solution set does it recognize that drum corps is, at it's core, a youth activity - the one thing that all agree was the genesis behind those military vets organizing city kids to march, and was the recognized nature of the activity up until this idea of an "Entertainment Company" was born, likely back in the late '90's. The argument is rarely that the activity isn't serving enough kids, it's mostly that there's not enough money.

There are solutions a-plenty to growing the activity, some better than others, regardless of which definition of what drum corps *IS* is decided. But I would suggest that, before we buy in to a solution set, we'd best define - or re-define - what drum corps is, and is supposed to be. And I'd suggest that the answer may not be the black-and-white solution that's being promoted here. It might be a combination of the two.

But if that solution includes "going back" and renewing activities that made drum corps successful in the years leading up to 2000, I won't consider it to have the negative connotations of those who say we can only "move forward" with something completely brand new. "Going back" to define what the business *IS* could be, and, in fact and for me personally was, one of the best strategic business decisions the activity could make.

Edited March 10, 2013 by garfield

[garfield]

The kid down front carrying the tuba on his shoulder is a natural!

Great pics, Dan.

Kudos.