Latest / The Scene Projects / Dawn Farrow on Marketing Evolution, Live Experiences, and the Future of Engagement

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Dawn Farrow on Marketing Evolution, Live Experiences, and the Future of Engagement · The Scene Projects

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  This program is part of the Scene Projects podcast network.
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  Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists
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  from across the Midwest.
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  Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are.
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  Welcome into a very exciting episode of the scene.
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  I'm your host Bubba Starts, and with me today is founder of On Sale Live, Dawn Farrow.
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  Dawn, welcome to the show.
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  Thank you so much.
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  Speaking to you from a very rainy and dark London.
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  I've heard it's like that.
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  I have a cohost of our daily independent music show, unsigned spotlight.
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  Shameless plug there.
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  And, he lives down in Torby.
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  Nice.
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  Well, I hope he I hope he's having a better day than it is in London.
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  It's probably about the same.
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  He said it's very, very cold.
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  And I live in South Dakota in The United States in the Upper Midwest, and I tell him that you
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  don't even know what cold is.
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  So Fair.
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  Well, Don, off the top, I know we got a lot of of great stuff to talk about with your company
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  that you founded just over a year ago.
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  But, I'd love to hear a little bit of your backstory off the top.
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  So I'm just gonna give you the floor and let you kinda give us a little bit of the
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  backstory.
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  Amazing.
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  Well, you know, this is interesting because I'm talking about my business on sale live today,
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  but actually, who knew that, sort of when I started my career and the reason I moved to
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  London, as I mentioned, was actually to be a dancer.
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  So my background is a childhood of dreaming to be on the stage and literally wanting nothing
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  more than to perform.
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  But actually, fate or life had something different in store for me.
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  And during my professional training, I ended up actually working behind the scenes,
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  specifically in a producer's office, a theater producer's office.
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  And I started marketing musicals, musicals like Cats and musicals like little musicals like
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  Starlight Express.
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  And that really filled such a a void, I suppose, for what was I going to do with my
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  career.
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  Fast forward, and that's what I did do.
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  I marketed musicals and plays, and then I started marketing slightly more unusual
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  experiences.
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  So immersive experiences, large scale comedy shows touring the world or big arena events.
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  And so, I then decided, hey, I can do this myself.
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  I shouldn't work for somebody else.
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  I'll go build my own marketing agency, which I did.
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  And I had an incredible company that turned over millions of pounds specifically working
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  with what we now call and now refer to as the experience economy.
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  And it was amazing.
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  And, COVID just before COVID, I actually decided to close that business, which was
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  incredibly well timed.
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  And now what I do is I consult and I work on major global live ticketed live experiences
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  such as the friends experience or Netflix's squid game.
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  And in parallel to that, I realized there were a whole host of not only problems, but also
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  opportunities to bring my community that work across sales, marketing, and communications
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  together.
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  And that's what on sale group does, and it's works in two ways.
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  We have this in person annual conflicts every May.
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  This time it will be happening in Kings Cross in London.
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  And we all come together as over 300 of us that come to network, learn, and share.
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  And we also have a training academy that's called the Global Institute of Experience
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  Marketing, where we actually train people in how to sell more tickets.
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  And we train them in psychology of selling.
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  We train them in AI for for actual selling tickets along with a host of other areas of
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  around advertising and ticketing.
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  Incredible.
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  And such a massively, forgotten about part of the live experience.
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  And especially for me because I come from the on stage talent side of it.
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  I'm a songwriter myself and know a lot of other songwriters and performers that we what keeps
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  us from going to that next level where we are selling tickets is the marketing, is actually
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  knowing how to take our art and our experience that we're offering with these live shows and
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  taking it from maybe a small bar and grill setting to the theater where we're but that
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  requires a little bit more investment and knowing how to capitalize on that investment.
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  And and a lot of people would go and spend the money to rent the venue and have no marketing
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  budget whatsoever.
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  So I love that you kinda have the education side of it, the consulting side of it, as well
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  as being someone who can flush all of these ideas out.
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  Yeah.
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  Thank you.
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  And and also you make such a good point that it's interesting that often marketing is
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  forgotten until you, you know, we we haven't sold enough tickets or got enough bums on
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  seats.
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  And then we start to go, oh gosh, like what should we have done?
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  Whereas actually, you know, part of my vision for the marketing workforce is to say, just put
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  us put us at the beginning of the conversation.
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  Like, let's talk about the venues you're going to.
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  Let's talk about their database.
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  Let's talk about how your vision for being an artist ties into their programming vision.
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  And are we aligned?
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  And how good is their database?
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  And is it right for us?
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  Those sorts of really important questions.
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  And it's so hard especially for musicians and that's obviously, you know, the world that I
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  come from, and that's our live experience.
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  But we spend so much time and energy in the creation of the art.
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  And at the end of the day, the performance that happens on stage has nothing to do with how
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  many people are in the crowd.
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  Right?
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  Like, it's all about the marketing and can you package and sell that experience to people that
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  don't have it.
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  And so many people that we work with are independent smaller acts.
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  And really what they need help and what they need budget in is more the marketing than new
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  speakers and microphones.
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  And, like, to me, that's all such secondary stuff.
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  Nobody's gonna care about your $2,500 guitar if there's nobody in the crowd to care.
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  No.
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  You you make a really good point.
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  And I remember, you know, as as a when I was a dancer and a performer, I remember really
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  clearly, you know, that that sense of it doesn't matter if there's two people in the
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  crowd or 2,000 people in the crowd.
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  It's the same performance when when it is happening.
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  But I think it is increasingly difficult to guarantee people in a room or guarantee these
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  bums on seats.
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  And I I particularly think, you know, we're all doing more for less budget.
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  And in that world, particularly, you know, I think there's part parts of arts and culture
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  such as music in particular that really really can make the most around fandom.
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  And the problem with fandom is it's so flipping fickle.
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  And, you know, like, fans are wonderful one minute and also a huge distraction.
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  And maybe that's why sometimes it's just easier to go out and buy a new guitar.
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  No doubt.
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  And and it's honestly, it's just out of their wheelhouse, which is why having groups like
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  yours that are not just built for marketers to learn and network from each other, but
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  somewhere that these, you know, the performers or the stage experience can now come to and
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  feel, confident in the abilities of those marketers to do the job that they need to and
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  people that understand selling to a or selling a live experience rather because it's so much
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  different than selling a product.
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  Yeah.
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  That's that's exactly it.
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  And we describe it as experience marketing because let me tell you whenever and I was
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  thinking about this earlier today.
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  Whenever I have found great marketers from outside of live and ex outside of the
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  experience economy, whilst they are great people, they stay in our industry for a
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  nanosecond because experience marketing is so hard, is so pressured, is so you know, there's
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  so much emotion in it because you not only emotion because you want to do well and you're,
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  you know, you're proud of your work, But also because of the person on stage, right?
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  You like you like, we wanna do a great job so that when you go out on stage, you feel good
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  and you can feel the people coming back, you know, from the audience.
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  Like, it's a very difficult part of the the marketing wheelhouse to decide to build your
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  career in.
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  Do you find that it's so hard because unlike a product or service that is solving a problem
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  that is very tangible and concrete, that you are solving problems that are a little more
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  esoteric?
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  Yes.
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  I'm saying come to this experience.
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  I will it it will make you feel like x y and zed or the benefits of being in the room are x
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  y and zed.
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  And I and we absolutely rely on this kind of social proof.
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  So the idea that, you know, testimonials, quotes, reviews, like they're so important to
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  selling experiences.
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  But that only works once you're up on the road and once you're open and once the you know,
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  you're actually in the building.
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  So so much of what we do as experienced marketers is think about how do we position
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  events and experiences prior to that so that we can convince someone that it's worth, you know,
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  it's worth taking three hours out of your weekend, or it's worth getting the babysitter,
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  or it's worth trying to get a group of friends together and and taking part in this activity.
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  I'm gonna make a big assumption here, but is most of what you end up doing short form video
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  content?
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  Well, that's a really it's a it's a good point.
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  What I would say is we are seeing much more short form video a 100%.
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  Now, what I can't work out is whether we're being pushed into that because essentially the
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  meta algorithm says this is what we want to serve.
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  Or whether we have ever said, wouldn't it be great to have loads of short form video?
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  Now, I think it's more about what performs best from an advertising perspective.
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  But that also presumes that you've got great budget for advertising.
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  What I have seen increasingly is and this this will be true of, you know, brand marketers as
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  well.
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  It's obviously the power of influencers, which is another form of social proof.
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  But again, to your point, it's absolutely about short form video.
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  But we talk a lot about actually needing to build the brand, which, you know, can't
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  necessarily just be achieved through video.
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  There's lots of different things we have to do to really talk about the values of that brand.
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  Do you feel like the follower counts and some of those vanity metrics are less important now
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  because so much of it is just the short form content and people aren't really, like, landing
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  on your page necessarily for that part of social proof and that it's more that connection
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  through personal storytelling.
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  Absolutely.
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  And I, you know, it's I remember, you know, we would talk a lot about you need loads of
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  followers, you know, like before we even announce, we've got a we set up a new page and
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  we're and we're gonna create get loads of followers from somewhere.
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  And you're you're just you're a 100% right now that what we talk about a lot is being seen,
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  heard, understood.
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  So when you're creating content across your social channels, they're they're the three
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  things that you should be thinking about in relation to the community that you're that
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  you're wanting to serve.
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  And it really, you know, I'm not liking a video because I've seen how many people follow you.
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  It's I'm I'm liking it because we are by nature as humans really, you know, quite selfish
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  people.
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  Right?
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  I just we just are.
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  And if we feel seen, heard, or understood in the content you put out, it feels like it's for
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  me, and I think I'm going to interact with it.
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  Where do podcasts fit into this in your in your mind?
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  I think podcasts are a phenomenal way of building brand awareness.
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  So they are a much more interesting way within the marketing mix to really talk more about the
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  messaging in relation to relation to an experience or a brand.
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  And I think that what's so interesting about podcasts is the not only the growth, but also
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  how they now very much run-in parallel to say a great radio show.
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  I don't whilst we do call them two different things and we and you know, whether it's
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  appearing on a podcast or running advertising around a podcast, it it you know, we we we're
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  choosing as a marketer.
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  I'm talking I choose about I look at broadcast and I go, okay, is it podcasts?
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  Is it radio?
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  Is it video on demand?
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  Or is it terrestrial, you know, traditional TV advertising?
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  So it sits side by side of those very well established other broadcast channels.
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  Selfishly, I really like that last part.
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  Did I say the right thing?
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  Yeah.
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  Well, I think it's very important because I say it a lot.
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  I'm not Joe Rogan.
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  Right?
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  You're not gonna come on to my show, and all of a sudden, you're going to get millions of
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  followers and hundreds of millions of people are going to see your face.
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  But what I am going to give you is a very well produced show and an opportunity to share your
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  story that then can be delivered to your people.
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  We're going to chop it up into a lot of shorts and to share those out there.
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  But, ultimately, it comes back to the guests themselves to take that content and share it
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  with their communities.
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  And then hopefully that their community shares it with their communities and grows in that
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  way.
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  And it's been a long time training kind of our guests to say, hey, you need to know how to use
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  the content that we're providing the production for.
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  You're so right.
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  And and also, within that, it's so interesting because we often think of our our world as
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  being quite niche.
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  And so you're right.
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  Right?
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  This isn't about securing trillions of followers, but it's also worth us remembering
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  as a shared experience economy that I think the forecast, the current forecasts say that by
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  2028, the experience economy will be worth $12,000,000,000,000.
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  So we're not some, you know, tiny little interest industry that doesn't know what it's
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  doing.
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  We are absolutely specific, but when and we're niche in as much as, you know, we are called
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  the experience economy, but there is so much happening within there and there's so many
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  audiences and also so many incredible people working within it that we can celebrate.
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  And the more, you know, you and I are aligned in terms of that telling people about how
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  incredible our industry is.
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  And for me as a podcaster, I I take my show and perform it live.
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  We have songwriter showcases that are a me interviewing an artist, but also allowing them
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  to share their music, not unlike, you know, MTV or VH one did a long time ago.
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  Now MTV completely defunct and gone.
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  But bringing that and, yes, we are still a podcast, but we are delivering on a live
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  experience as well.
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  So I see a lot of alignment and a lot of work being done between the two of us and our
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  communities in that and in training other, creators that you need to have a live
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  experience.
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  Because with AI being what it is now and the video AI that's coming out and only
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  accelerating, people are going to start to tune out to what they see on the Internet.
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  And they're going to want to and be involved more with physical communities.
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  And the AI is actually driving up the value of those live experiences, at least in my mind.
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  Honestly, I think it's such it's such a great thing to remind us about because I think some
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  of what we do, and I think particularly, there was a huge rise in podcasts say during that
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  three year COVID period, for example.
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  But what we've also seen is since then, this this need and actually this, you know, this
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  human desire to get back into rooms.
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  So to get back into ways that we can experience things.
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  And we saw, you know, that all of the data in terms of post COVID, in terms of, you know,
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  what did people do when we came out of COVID, they did experiences.
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  They did experiences with people they wanted to spare time with.
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  And it's exactly the same as you getting your community together and and, you know, I get my
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  community together on sale live or indeed our training master classes.
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  Because we we learn more, we soak in more, and all of this is incredible.
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  Right?
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  Everything online.
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  But it it we will never take away from being in person, especially at, you know, when we see
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  the rates of technology advancement.
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  I think you're absolutely right.
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  There will the the the implications of that is that we will want to be in person more, and we
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  will want to see authentic people, you know, doing their thing.
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  And learning, and growing and networking and making friends and having conversations and all
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  of that.
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  I was very fortunate to attend, a couple of business conferences in the last twelve months,
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  and I'm relatively new to the broadcasting world and the business world.
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  I was a welder a few years ago, so I wasn't attending regularly conferences and things like
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  this.
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  But having been to a couple, podcast movement, especially down in Grapevine, Texas last
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  August, we were we were given one of their scholarship tickets because they identified us
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  as someone that they want to have there.
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  And I was so grateful to have the opportunity to go down and to talk with people inside of an
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  industry that I was still a relative newcomer to.
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  You know, the podcasting industry has been around for quite a while now, almost twenty
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  years, and I only have, you know, at that time, maybe a year and a half in.
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  So I was very grateful to go down, and now we're taking it upon ourselves because I come
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  from the live music and and event space to say, well, I could put together something like this.
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  Maybe not at the scale that they did in this massive, you know, convention hall, but I could
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  do that inside of a venue that holds maybe 500 people and to get creators together to explain
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  some of these things that I've learned to other creatives in the music space and and beyond
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  outside of that.
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  So we're doing a creator convention unofficial during the week of South by Southwest down in
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  Austin, Texas where we're having showcases and honestly running cameras on everything because
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  capturing those moments and these conversations is what we're all about.
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  So really looking forward to doing that and it sounds like you're doing much of the same with
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  your community of influence marketers as well.
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  I just think that's so cool.
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  Yeah.
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  I I honestly, I'm I I love this because we are so aligned in how how you, you know, you build
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  a community and then you get in a room with everybody.
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  And and and what I love about all of this is that it's it's rooted in wanting everyone to do
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  really well.
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  And and I think that's a shift, you know.
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  I certainly grew up you know, I've been doing experience marketing for over twenty years.
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  And I grew up where, you know, I was very much trained to not share.
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  So you you know, you worked more hours than there were in a day, but you definitely didn't
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  complain and you definitely did not share any information about what worked and what didn't.
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  And what I love about bringing the experience economy together, so we've got theater people
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  next to immersive people, next to music people, next to attractions.
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  Actually, people are saying, hey, are you having a rough time?
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  Like, what's working for you?
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  I had a good summer.
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  Oh, I didn't anything I could learn from you?
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  And it's just this sense of like building one another up rather than that kind of older
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  school approach which is like, you know, I'll I'll just go ahead and leave the rest of you
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  behind.
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  I love I just love where we're moving towards from a community.
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  Yes.
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  Instead of stabbing each other in the back with our swords, we're using them to sharpen one
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  another.
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  The old iron sharpens iron, comes to mind here.
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  And, you know, something that a a guy like Joe Rogan says a lot that a rising tide raises all
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  ships.
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  And I think that both of us really buy into that wholeheartedly, and we are doing in our
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  communities everything that we can to make sure that everyone is learning and growing together.
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  And that's what's really going to change this world as a whole is an attitude like that and
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  people getting together and simply having conversations.
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  Totally.
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  Totally.
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  And I hadn't heard that saying.
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  So thank you.
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  Yeah.
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  It's brilliant.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, Dawn, go ahead and share where everyone can find you before I let you go.
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  And, if you don't mind, I'd like to, keep you around for a few minutes off camera to have a
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  little chat as well.
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  But, go ahead and plug everything that you're doing and where people can find you.
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  Amazing.
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  Thank you.
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  So if you are a traditionalist and you like a bit of LinkedIn business chat, then I'm just
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  search for Dawn Farrow.
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  You'll find my face.
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  I'm very easy to find.
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  If you like Instagram, dawn.onsalegroup is the place to find me.
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  And then if you just want to explore more about our in person event in May, is Kings Cross
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  London, that's onsale.live.
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  And if you fancy a bit of training, then go to the gm.com.
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  But either way, find me on one of those channels, ask any questions.
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  If you would like to, you know, see what we're offering, be part of our WhatsApp community,
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  join the newsletter.
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  Honestly, just come and engage, explore.
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  It would be lovely to see some new faces.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, I'm gonna be jumping in on all of that stuff as soon as we jump off camera here.
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  But, Dawn, thank you so much for giving me some of your time today, and thank you for being
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  part of the scene.
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  Thank you.
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  And thank you for having me so much.
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  It's been great.