Can buy me Love

I am in Las Vegas this weekend, and thought I could collect all sorts of good ideas to report from the marketing capital of the country. Unfortunately, the take-home messages have been as expected: sell via lots of skin and sparkling lights – which I totally do already – so nothing gained there.

I did notice that various smells were being pumped into the streets outside the casinos: bakery smells outside the Paris, orchid smells outside the Mirage, so on, so forth. Forget music, Carnegie Hall – pump croissant scent onto 57th street and the industry will be saved!

What else. The casinos love Trajan Pro, but everybody loves Trajan Pro (most notably Aaron Sorkin, who used the font for time/location stamps on both The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip…I mean, come on now). I even saw a few advertisements for post-concert artist meet-and-greets, which I think are essential in our business, but again, no lessons learned:

I did learn something, however, about ticket prices. Before we left for the trip, my father sent my sister and me the following text message: “Got Beatles tickets 4 Fri. Bad news have 2 pack our own food 4 trip, tkts 2 much, no more money.” The tickets for the Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love show were undoubtedly expensive: $168 each, to be exact. The fam and I had seen two Cirque du Soleil shows before, though, and were duly impressed; it was worth it (”  “) to see another, we decided, and Dad approved the costs.

Worth/value is a complicated issue. What’s worth X dollars to you may not be worth X dollars to me, and vice versa. Visions of new purses and good dinners-out danced in my head as the slot machines ate my twenties, whereas people who love to gamble are happily paying for the thrill of the win; that’s “worth it” to them. Meanwhile, the rigatoni alla ricotta at Pomodoro’s on Columbus and 71st is worth it to me every time, while someone else might cry, “Make it at home, you lazy girl!”

So value is complicated, but sitting through the phenomenal Love, I thought, “Would I pay $168 of my own money to see this again?” As three VW Bugs and a guy on trombone-stilts went across the stage, Paul, John & Co. silhouettes were projected on screens around us – magically talking to each other during their “rehearsals”, speakers were in our seats, and the annoying made-me-think-I-should-have-dropped-by-Pilates-before-I-left-New-York girls were flipping around on ribbons, I thought, yes, this is worth it, if we were staying in Vegas longer, I would go again on my own dime. The creative forces behind Cirque du Soleil are so impressive to me. I pay attention, but I’m convinced that if I saw any one of these shows three, four, five times, I still wouldn’t notice all the impeccably designed details that lead to a plotless-yet-full final works. And what must these custom-designed costumes and props cost? And the electricity to run shows like that? And the production team? And the acrobats/dancers? And what of the music, in this particular case? The Beatles singing their own songs, plus archival footage and voiceovers throughout the show? My $168 would probably cover the rights to the first chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” for one evening of performance. Adopt-a-Chord.

My point is that in my experience, Cirque du Soleil consistently puts forth virtuosic, passionate, unique and completely thought-out productions, and that’s worth high ticket prices to me. Can the same be said about your local symphony orchestra? In New York, top tickets to the Philharmonic are $100-plus; am I guaranteed an awe-inspiring performance every time? Again, we get into matters-of-opinions here, but in my experience, no. That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen amazing Philharmonic concerts, it just means that I wouldn’t spend over $50, probably, because I’m not fully confident in the product.

High classical music ticket prices are often blamed for the lack of young people/new audiences at concerts. And now a question, which I realize is complicated: why are classical music concerts so expensive? You watch Love, and it looks expensive – The Beatles are talking to you, for Lennon’s sake! You watch an artist in front of a stage of people; yes, all those people need to be paid, the soloist is impressive, and one assumes everyone’s instrument is pricey but…$104 dollars for two hours? You even see a Broadway show and, while I think it’s rare that Broadways shows are worth $100 for two hours, you see all the pieces and think, that show is expensive to put on every night. I am not – not not not – saying that orchestras need Star Wars projected behind them while they accompany Ewoks on screen to somehow prove they’re suitable to spend money on, but I understand why an outsider would look at a standard classical concert and think, that’s not worth it.

Let’s think about the costs. I will probably forget some. Salaried, health-insuranced orchestra members, music director, commissions of new works (though I highly doubt American orchestras are breaking the bank, there), union costs, production team, administration, house-management, advertisement, Playbill printing…soloist fees? Are soloist fees the root of the problem? I think my artists deserve every cent they earn, but it’s certainly a lot of money. [Meanwhile, Paris Hilton gets paid 50K-odd dollars to simply show up at a club; Itzhak Perlman doesn’t deserve at least that to play for 45 minutes?] “Deserve” rivals “worth” for complication, of course. A friend of mine once asked if my artists ever got annoyed that they worked their entire lives on one instrument/artistic pursuit, and a pop star could be discovered and processed and make more in a year than Joe/Jane classical artist would see in a lifetime. Maybe, I replied, but I don’t think they let themselves get caught up in that.

So orchestras and presenters blame high ticket prices on high artist fees. Is that it? Game over? It is a valid point. Should these unbelievably talented and hard-working artists take one for the industry team and solve this thing?

But then there’s another problem, which I was reminded of by an article in this month’s Vanity Fair that referenced a former Stella Artois slogan: “Reassuringly Expensive”. If ticket prices for classical concerts were decreased, would the current audience come? Or would they think the quality had somehow been lessened with the cost? Does the industry actually benefit from being expensive?

What I learned from Love, ultimately, is that with or without VW bugs and trombone-stilts, a great show is worth money, and if the highest caliber of performance is put forth every time, audiences will come and pay.