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DCA '15, 35 corps, great performances, not-so-great attendance


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Congratulations. Not one solid idea.

People make their Labor Day plans well before Labor Day.

They are staying away from DCA in droves and no advertiesement the week of Finals is going to sway them to skip whatever plans they made. A banner or tv commercial is not going to create an a-ha moment where a family says "Let's skip that trip to the beach and go to DCA." You get em long before that, or you dont.

Labor Day is a habit. 4th of July is a habit. Want proof? What did you do for 4th of July this year? About the same thing you did last year. Labor Day plans are made well in advance. Either DCA is one of the choices or its not. But even the locals werent aware it WAS a choice. Come on.

Excuses (waaah, the Buccaneers are too good) and arguing over whether or not you saw an ad or banner doesnt mask the fact that this years attendance SUCKED and next years doesnt look any better.

No new ideas show up and zero supportive comments for anything positive show up. No one has stepped up to the plate to say "I'll do THIS" or "I'll do THIS". Its more of the same. Blame and run? That's it? Nobody wants to even talk to a customer? You assume the customer just doesnt want to go (from California) because the Bucs are the perennial champion? And that's it. And you argue the point. Pretty succinct.

What if the customer doesnt care who wins, but wants to have a good time and has no real expectations any more about what that means?

Everyone trips over each other to show how smart they are but, and I re-read all this, came up with nothing but criticism for other people and places or other vague ideas that "dca" or dci should do...but no plan.

Its not the venue. Its not the parking spaces or the fair at Allentown. DCI week on a Tuesday? REALLY?

4000 seats and not one person says "we have an awesome product! We can do this! 4000 is a joke! We've done double that before!" Instead its all this negative nancy crap and how dead DCA is.

Guess what? You might be right.

Very sad. :(

Edited by wishbonecav
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Gotta chime in on one issue here. I have to respectfully disagree with the concept of increasing attendance by "making DCA more competitive". First of all, I'm not sure what is implied by that. Let's call a spade a spade and focus this conversation on Bucs. Their winning streak is unprecedented and like them or not they have been at the pinnacle of the activity for a very long time. Are we supposed to just give another corps a championship just because Bucs have been too long at the top? REALLY? If that's the case, I don't want it.

I am in one of those corps chasing Buccaneers and I can guarantee you that it is because of their excellence, and that of others, that my corps has gotten significantly better over the past several years. There is absolutely nothing I would like to see more than my corps being announced in first place, but when/if that should ever happen, I want to know that we beat Bucs (or Cabs, or MBI or C2 or whomever) at their best. I am not interested in a hollow gift of a championship. The same argument happens on the DCI side with people complaining about Blue Devils. Who do you think is driving the continued growth and improvement of the other corps?

Bucs...you just keep on raising that bar. It's pushing us and driving us to better and better products. I don't have the answer to DCA's attendance issues but I can tell you they are not due to the success of any one of it's member corps. I would like to think that it is the quality of our product that puts people in the seats...not the number of championships we have. If that were the case then our home show would have zero attendance since we have zero Open Class championships. Doesn't make sense to me.

Just my 2 cents.

Dan

Bravo!!

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Congratulations. Not one solid idea.

People make their Labor Day plans well before Labor Day.

They are staying away from DCA in droves and no advertiesement the week of Finals is going to sway them to skip whatever plans they made. A banner or tv commercial is not going to create an a-ha moment where a family says "Let's skip that trip to the beach and go to DCA." You get em long before that, or you dont.

Labor Day is a habit. 4th of July is a habit. Want proof? What did you do for 4th of July this year? About the same thing you did last year. Labor Day plans are made well in advance. Either DCA is one of the choices or its not. But even the locals werent aware it WAS a choice. Come on.

Excuses (waaah, the Buccaneers are too good) and arguing over whether or not you saw an ad or banner doesnt mask the fact that this years attendance SUCKED and next years doesnt look any better.

No new ideas show up and zero supportive comments for anything positive show up. No one has stepped up to the plate to say "I'll do THIS" or "I'll do THIS". Its more of the same. Blame and run? That's it? Nobody wants to even talk to a customer? You assume the customer just doesnt want to go (from California) because the Bucs are the perennial champion? And that's it. And you argue the point/ Pretty succinct.

What if the customer doesnt care who wins, but wants to have a good time and has no real expectations any more about what that means?

Everyone trips over each other to show how smart they are but, and I re-read all this, came up with nothing but criticism for other people and places or other vague ideas that "dca" or dci should do...but no plan.

Its not the venue. Its not the parking spaces or the fair at Allentown. DCI week on a Tuesday? REALLY?

4000 seats and not one person says "we have an awesome product! We can do this! 4000 is a joke! We've done double that before!" Instead its all this negative nancy crap and how dead DCA is.

Guess what? You might be right.

Very sad. :(

You may not wNt to hear this but I'll say it:

Rochester all the time for many people is far less appealing than Bucs winning. I still found a way to get to Annapolis her first two summers of life even if I drove down every day. Rochester isn't a day trip for a majority of people that live within an hour or so of the majority of NE corps. Annapolis is. Other places mentioned are.

Attendance had been slowly shrinking up there since the start in 06. Plus with how the stadium is built, you can only get so many seats between the 30's. Pay $60 to sit on the 20? No thanks. Scranton for all its faults had better seat options than that.

I don't know what official attendance was in 12 or 13, but I'm pretty sure it was at least as good if not better than the last two years up there.

I'm not bashing Rochester. I'm just stating a fact people don't wNt to hear. It may be a great deal for the corps, but the fans are very "meh" about it

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I agree with you.

He makes some very good points that alot of people are not getting past because all they read is Bucs killed drum corps.

Read

"There are ways to achieve parity without penalizing one corps. You can revise the judging system, so it objectively rewards more than one style of show design, you can reward show design that is not modeled on a pre-existing DCI show or corps, you can move a corps into “grand world champion” exhibition status for one season after three, four or maybe even five consecutive championships, and you can help foster growth and competitive development in new corps though various programs. None of these solutions are easy, and some of these ideas may not work at all. Frankly, there is no perfect or simple solution to achieving parity in a drum corps “league” where one corps has a seven light year lead. Unfortunately, there is no member draft to help DCA solve this issue, like the NFL and NBA have at their fingertips."

As he states the NFL and NBA have draft issues that prevent one team from piling up. Other activities like Archery, golf have divisions that once you reach a certain caliber of being a Archer or golfer you get bumped into another class so you are not dominating your class all the time.

"To solve this will require outside the box thinking and vision, and the Reading Buccaneers have to be part of the solution for it to have any chance of working."

The Buccaneers are already part of the solution. Their formula for success is an open book. Line up staff as early as possible, and let them get to work. Recruit. Align with local band circuit, the closer the better. Recruit. Rehearse regularly. Recruit, especially locally so that you can rehearse regularly with everyone there. Raise funds. Recruit. Put out a presentable performance at every contest, not just Labor Day weekend. Recruit. Host a show (or two) to promote the activity locally, and to raise more funds. Did I mention recruiting?

Who else most closely resembles that description? Notice a correlation between that and where they place competitively?

Punishing a corps for consistent success (exhibition status) is not going to encourage anything positive. And I do not see what show design has to do with it, given that none of the top 7, 8, 9... were let down in that department. And I cannot think of a single show out of all 20 that was "modeled on a pre-existing DCI show or corps".

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I marched during those days... with a corps that won DCA championships.. and I can tell you that by late July/early August, we were nowhere near peak form. Even with a weeknight rehearsal during the summer (Wednesdays in our case) to go along with the weekend stuff. Even with the talent level and dedication level we had... and both levels were considerable.

But in retrospect, you (and your peers) were in far more satisfying form mid-season from an audience perspective. Today, DCA corps attempt more visually demanding shows, and the difference in performance quality over the final 5 or 6 weeks is more obvious. (wishbonecav, I know this is off topic, but just felt it needed to be said.)

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Congratulations. Not one solid idea.

People make their Labor Day plans well before Labor Day.

They are staying away from DCA in droves and no advertiesement the week of Finals is going to sway them to skip whatever plans they made. A banner or tv commercial is not going to create an a-ha moment where a family says "Let's skip that trip to the beach and go to DCA." You get em long before that, or you dont.

Labor Day is a habit. 4th of July is a habit. Want proof? What did you do for 4th of July this year? About the same thing you did last year. Labor Day plans are made well in advance. Either DCA is one of the choices or its not. But even the locals werent aware it WAS a choice. Come on.

Excuses (waaah, the Buccaneers are too good) and arguing over whether or not you saw an ad or banner doesnt mask the fact that this years attendance SUCKED and next years doesnt look any better.

No new ideas show up and zero supportive comments for anything positive show up. No one has stepped up to the plate to say "I'll do THIS" or "I'll do THIS". Its more of the same. Blame and run? That's it? Nobody wants to even talk to a customer? You assume the customer just doesnt want to go (from California) because the Bucs are the perennial champion? And that's it. And you argue the point/ Pretty succinct.

What if the customer doesnt care who wins, but wants to have a good time and has no real expectations any more about what that means?

Everyone trips over each other to show how smart they are but, and I re-read all this, came up with nothing but criticism for other people and places or other vague ideas that "dca" or dci should do...but no plan.

Its not the venue. Its not the parking spaces or the fair at Allentown. DCI week on a Tuesday? REALLY?

4000 seats and not one person says "we have an awesome product! We can do this! 4000 is a joke! We've done double that before!" Instead its all this negative nancy crap and how dead DCA is.

Guess what? You might be right.

Very sad. :(

Well, that was uncalled for. Not one solid idea?

You already posted twenty solid ideas on this thread. I apologize for not complementing them all - I thought most of them were so obviously sensible that the supportive comments of others were sufficient.

I also apologize for not being able to solve the marketing challenge personally. My life circumstances may allow me a few moments to post on DCP, but not to serve DCA in that larger capacity. But I did perform one act of tangible support - I attended the championships in Rochester.

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Ok, I'll bite.

How will moving DCA championships to Indianapolis, and holding it on a Monday and Tuesday in early August going to make money for anyone?

Be specific. We'll wait.

i just looked outside, and thought I saw Hell beginning to freeze over. :tongue:

Edited by Fran Haring
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Capacity: 4,032 front side

Corps at Champs: 35

Corps members at Champs: 2,700 (using NE Brigand's number as the official-unofficial count and adding 100 for i&E participants not affiliated with a corps this year and 100 for the Hall of Fame Festivities and 6 staff members per corps)

People accompanying a marching member or participant to Rochester: 1,800

(lets call it 0.67 per person. Some bring their spouse or friend, some bring mom or dad, some bring nobody, some bring 2 people (mom AND Dad)...

statistically, lets call it 0.67 people accompanying our 2500 members. Thats 1800 people that come to DCA because they have a dog in the fight. Put another way, they were coming to Rochester anyway.)

Marching at Finals : 15 corps, 1,100 (wrist bands for them)

Non-Finalist Marching Members: 1,400 (wrist bands for them)

People that go every year that don't need, want nor respond to advertising and basically wouldn't be kept away by wild horses: 1,000, most of whom are former marching members.

That's a total of 5,300 people. Let's say half go to Finals and half stay at the hotel or go home. And of the 1,000 that "go every year", lets say half indeed ARE kept away by the wild horses.

If the venue was described as 2/3 full at Finals (!), attendance estimates at 2,700.

That's right at half of the people listed above: Marching members, people they brought, staff, Hall of Famers and guests and a few alumni. But, again, only about half.

This really isnt an event so much as it is a get-together.

How many non-affiliated drum corps or just plain music "fans" actually make it a point to go to the DCA Championships or attend as a result of a sales and marketing effort from DCA?

The number might well be zero.

PS DCI is an event. There isnt a home corps within 200 miles, so the draw isnt the local outfit. The Blue Devils win all the time and apparently #### everyone off, yet they keep showing up in greater numbers.

Let's say every one of the 30 corps in Indy averages 100 kids, that's 3000 members. Each kid could bring 4 people (5x the number I used in my DCA methodology) to the show and that's only 12000 of the 24000 that went to FInals. That's double the travel and at twice the price. That's an event. Big difference.

PSS If DCA has been in ROC for 5 years and not one email address, corps alumni list or bona fide facebook page has been created to capture that and create institutional memory and a sales channel for future events, that has to start as soon as possible. DCA will be in ROC in 2017 also, so it is not too late. Unless, of course, the new Media buys for the broadcast are filling the hole. At that point, an effort to improve/expand the live audience may be a reasoned cost-benefit decision.

Edited by wishbonecav
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When have you seen a DCI ad locally? Ever.

Many times. Shows have run ads in newspapers, and via internet. TV commercials have been run, both for championship week and for other shows. I have seen banners over streets and messages on hotel and church signs announcing upcoming shows. Flyers in area restaurants are common. Once I even heard a drum corps show plug slipped into a TV weather report. Championships in Madison had radio stations hyping DCI events all week, and you could not travel two blocks anywhere in the greater Madison area without seeing some reference to DCI on a hotel, church or school sign.

I have regularly heard from people I talk to in the stands at DCI shows that they were attending because they saw the show publicized in local media.

DCA has made some efforts in this regard. They sold tickets via Groupon at Annapolis; I remember seeing the line for that option, and it was pretty long.

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