Why won't DCI follow this type of path?

[MikeD]

Like comparing independently run drum corps to scholastic marching bands?

You made your comment in response to comparisons of tactics, not finances. It is not silly to look for successful tactics in other organizations, even if they are bigger. (That is how they got bigger in the first place.) Imagine if Don Pesceone said back in 1975, "okay, MikeD, I will drop the silly talk about DCI pursuing sponsors".

Drum corps and marching bands are the same thing. Golf and drum corps are not.

It is indeed silly to look at a billion dollar organization of professional golfers and try compare it to DCI.

[Fran Haring]

No, not odd at all.

Those companies are not sponsoring golf for the sake of golf...they are sponsoring it to grab the people who watch and play golf.

Think of the country clubs around the country...or world, really. These are the high-powered and wealthy people who have the resources to purchase the Mercedes and Caddies, and they control a lot of decision-making in the business world, such as computer systems (IBM) and shipping (UPS). That list in the link covers a lot of high-end corporations.

Absolutely correct.

For example, it's no accident that Cadillac has been a longtime sponsor of the Masters.

And the PGA Tour, in particular, has a huge "community relations" factor, too. Each tournament donates a lot of money to local charities (in fact, I believe the PGA Tour and its tournament sponsors donate more money to charity than any other professional sports organization)... that "community connection" generates enormous goodwill and positive publicity for a tournament sponsor.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Fran Haring

[Fran Haring]

Drum corps and marching bands are the same thing. Golf and drum corps are not.

It is indeed silly to look at a billion dollar organization of professional golfers and try compare it to DCI.

I agree.

Like comparing apples to slabs of concrete. LOL.

[Jeff Ream]

That's exactly the wrong way to look at it. Look at it through the eyes of the sponsors - they are looking at who is the audience for the product, not who participates.

And when I look around most drum corps/football/baseball, blah blah blah audiences, I see plenty of Big Macs in the house (especially if you have the misfortune to attend a show at Boylan in Rockford, where the 300 pounders are large and in charge of the cramped bleacher seats).

So look at DCI's official pitch in terms of what they offer potential partners:

Wow. More than 400,000 people. Without any other information in terms of WHO those people are, this is not worth saying. Is it 400,000 people with average household incomes of more than $100k? Great. Say so. If not, than the number represents .001% of the population of the United States - not exactly an advertisement of the activity's wide appeal.

"High Traffic website" - and how many of them are different than the whoppin' 400k who come to see shows?

"Scholastic Music Industry" - so essentially, if you're not selling to high school bands, you're not being recruited as a sponsor?

"Extensive" marketing outreach - must be working like gangbusters, since it's delivered a whole 400,000 people to attend 135 events (that's an average of 2900 per event, for those who are doing the math; smaller than an average high school football crowd in most major market towns).

I'm not sure what's sadder; the fact that DCI feels ok publishing this lame an outreach, or the feeling that this really might be as good as they can do.

one problem....many of those 400,000 people are repeat attenders. I'll go out on a limb and say that's 30-40% of the audience.

and as far as selling to schools, as many of us have said, the approach DCI has used hasn't been working, so it's time for a new plan.

but...and I've said it here and other places....to a majority of the world, we're just band. We're not Ohio State with Ipads and light shows, we're not the HBCU's with their shows...we're bands doing all kinds of weird shows.

yes, I do believe DCI needs some serious marketing overhaul. I'm just not sure how much they'd actually be able to get because we're just band. We're the jokes in the American pie movies.

[drumcat]

"Some good ideas, most of which have already been asked and discussed, but the one about academic tax bases has me curious. Please elaborate."

Simply put, look at WGI. A good portion of their competition is academic, and all of their competitors pay WGI to have the right to attend their competitions. There are several ways in which you can get schools involved with drum corps, but the majority haven't been a DCI-wide initiative. OnQ comes to mind on wheel-spinning.

If I were King of DCI, I would want to find all ways possible to become a competitor with WGI and BOA. Those two soak up academically paid fees in their respective seasons. WGI is based upon this business model solely, and it works. If that means having SoundSport become the indoor division, or creating and incubating a WGI competitor, a fall band national competition competing with BOA, or anything that starts revenue on a less seasonal basis, do it.

I'd also like to see DCI ensembles recorded and packaged... the Xmas CD had a shelf-life of forever. I'm sure that if you had a "CD" every 6 months, it would consistently sell.

Someone is going to say "these are all old ideas". Yep. They never get carried through to completion though.

[drumcat]

There is so much wrong with this post, and I'm frankly surprised that it has two "likes".

Forgive me for replying in several pieces,

First, the above. I wonder, can you tell me where the stock market is going to finish tomorrow? Next week? Next year?

If yes, I'll start warming the chocolate bath.

But I wonder, what makes you so sure of your prognostications about the growth of drum corps?

Let's not forget that DCI is a $10million enterprise, even not including the ancillary GDP created by the individual corps operations. It's not monstrous, but it is significant, and that kind of revenue COULD attract the right combination of circumstances and events to allow for growth. We just haven't seen that correct mix - yet.

I'm flattered you ripped up my post like that. I'm not going to do the same.

What I will say is that you're clearly not on the same idea of what growth is.

There's 30 MLB teams. You don't need 75 MLB teams to say that baseball is or isn't growing. "Growth" in the paradigm normally presented is a red herring. The number of corps doesn't matter. The point, if you reread the post, is that growth in the activity needs to occur in the way that other sports and businesses grow without getting bigger in the sense of "expansion teams".

Two other things:

There's nothing bad about creating their own TV channel / aka TFN. In fact, it's the most innovative thing IMO they've done as an organization in the 21st century. (Disclaimor: I worked on it, so I'm very biased)

About the PGA reference... again, it's not about scale. Everyone gets so distracted about how big it is. It's not about being that big in terms of revenue dollars. The PGA is a great example of how a golf tournament isn't the whole story. Sometimes events are about raising funds, despite what's on TV. Yes, there's sport, but the secondary purpose is to get corporations to look good and thus give money to the cause.

Seriously, ExxonMobil has nothing to do with golf as a business. However, the PGA does such a good job with PR, ExxonMobil wants to be associated with them. What is DCI doing to be that corporate partner to make others look good? They're trying, but the example is that to grow in revenue, you must reach outside of Zildjian and Pearl.

[BigW]

true...but look at the Barnum show...for the last 2/3 years they dropped prices down to $5....and now, there's a huge chance the show goes under because Barnum Fesitval is hurting for $$.

There is also something else to think about- when you drop ticket prices that low, you also diminish perceived value of the product. Can it be that good that they're only charging 5 bucks to see it?

You really have to find the fine line between charging too much- and also not enough in that aspect.

[garfield]

I'm flattered you ripped up my post like that. I'm not going to do the same.

What I will say is that you're clearly not on the same idea of what growth is.

There's 30 MLB teams. You don't need 75 MLB teams to say that baseball is or isn't growing. "Growth" in the paradigm normally presented is a red herring. The number of corps doesn't matter. The point, if you reread the post, is that growth in the activity needs to occur in the way that other sports and businesses grow without getting bigger in the sense of "expansion teams".

Two other things:

There's nothing bad about creating their own TV channel / aka TFN. In fact, it's the most innovative thing IMO they've done as an organization in the 21st century. (Disclaimor: I worked on it, so I'm very biased)

About the PGA reference... again, it's not about scale. Everyone gets so distracted about how big it is. It's not about being that big in terms of revenue dollars. The PGA is a great example of how a golf tournament isn't the whole story. Sometimes events are about raising funds, despite what's on TV. Yes, there's sport, but the secondary purpose is to get corporations to look good and thus give money to the cause.

Seriously, ExxonMobil has nothing to do with golf as a business. However, the PGA does such a good job with PR, ExxonMobil wants to be associated with them. What is DCI doing to be that corporate partner to make others look good? They're trying, but the example is that to grow in revenue, you must reach outside of Zildjian and Pearl.

So, you just ignore all my counter-points because...why? Well, OK. You're entitled.

We may have different ideas of what growth is, but you haven't laid out very well what yours is. "Expansion teams" is relevant how? Use, say, Troopers, as an example and describe the idea of an "expansion team" so I can understand your idea.

I wonder if you'll describe how the PGA makes Exxon-Mobil look good. Because XOM is associated with a quality product? From my perspective, if DCI weren't making their sponsors "look good" corps would not be able to resell their instruments to bands that covet the activity. Now, can DCI make XOM look good? Oh, I don't know. Does XOM care about wholesome, musical competitions for kids? Seems most fans buy gas. Oh, and does XOM sell diesel fuel?

I wouldn't mind if you "rip up" my post. In fact, I welcome your further explanations.

[CCorps]

So, you just ignore all my counter-points because...why? Well, OK. You're entitled.

We may have different ideas of what growth is, but you haven't laid out very well what yours is. "Expansion teams" is relevant how? Use, say, Troopers, as an example and describe the idea of an "expansion team" so I can understand your idea.

I wonder if you'll describe how the PGA makes Exxon-Mobil look good. Because XOM is associated with a quality product? From my perspective, if DCI weren't making their sponsors "look good" corps would not be able to resell their instruments to bands that covet the activity. Now, can DCI make XOM look good? Oh, I don't know. Does XOM care about wholesome, musical competitions for kids? Seems most fans buy gas. Oh, and does XOM sell diesel fuel?

I wouldn't mind if you "rip up" my post. In fact, I welcome your further explanations.

I really think the guy has a point; think about it. Exxon-Mobil gets massive exposure through the PGA which is a well-known charitable contributor. DCI DOES in fact make its sponsors look good and thus the resale value but that's a market on a totally minute scale by comparison. Whereas band instrument sales are directly associated with DCI, Exxon has no connection to the PGA except that when someone looks at what Exxon's outreach is, they see that they're "doing good for the world." They're doing what DCI is doing but they're doing it to the public at large, not to a market that already "covets" the DCI product.

[cixelsyd]

What I will say is that you're clearly not on the same idea of what growth is.

Neither am I, apparently.

There's 30 MLB teams. You don't need 75 MLB teams to say that baseball is or isn't growing. "Growth" in the paradigm normally presented is a red herring. The number of corps doesn't matter. The point, if you reread the post, is that growth in the activity needs to occur in the way that other sports and businesses grow without getting bigger in the sense of "expansion teams".

So you are talking about business growth, not activity growth. Problem is, DCI has been focused on business growth to the exclusion of activity growth. That is how we ended up with an activity that shrank from 400 to 40. While the DCI office has done a great job of growing business (the task with which their bosses, the BOD, have charged them), the entire DCI hierarchy has allowed the activity to contract severely.

Activity growth would increase overall revenue on both sides of the sideline - more members paying dues, and more spectators buying tickets. It could even roll us back to a more comfortable position on the cost curve.