Pulling Out Of Gigs And The Danger Of Word Of Mouth ...Word of mouth has become one of my most used phrases this week and on a cold Sunday morning I find again it's the first thing on my mind
Just 2 weeks ago I had a really bad customer service experience at Tesco's in Altrincham. On my non-music role I blogged about the whole experience on www.altrinchamhq.co.uk - the blog got retweeted to over 22,000 people and Tesco's customer service had to step in and try and resolve the situation. A face 2 face meeting with the store manager ended up in a £250 charity donation to my Justgiving page for The Christie. Naturally I blogged about this and they managed to turn a negative round somewhat - read the full story by clicking here
I want you to keep thinking about how Word Of Mouth can affect things when I bring it back to music again
Last night I had one of those experiences which happens about once every 6 months for a promoter - the last minute just before doors band pull out with no genuine reason. To top it off - its never a phonecall - just a text, facebook, email to let you know!!!
In one bad decision these are the list of people they've affected
* 1 promoter who works with several venues
* 1 venue who has 5 regular promoters
* 1 touring band with management team
* 20 local musicians
* 1 sound engineer who works across countless Manchester venues
* 572 people who saw our facebook post apologising for the last minute pull out
* The bands that wanted to play the gig we had to turn down as slots were full
* And their own fans who probably won't make the effort againAll of these people might not necessarily tweet about it like in the Tesco's scenario above, but you can be sure it will come up in conversation every single time they talk about the gig.
Ask yourself do you really want to be known as "that band that pulled out last minute" to what is a well connected music scene in Manchester or do you want to be the band that blew people away like the other 5 bands did that night
When bands pull out last minute I always recall one great story we had earlier this year
Many of you will know CJ from Dead Retinas who regularly guest blogs for us. The band were playing a touring support to Four Short Of A Miracle, so very similar situation to what could have happened above with the last minute pull out. It get's to 7.30pm on the night of the gig after doors opens and it starts to become apparent their singer can't do the gig due to personal reasons. Did they pull out of the gig? Did they f**k - CJ stood in as guest vocalist for the very first time in the bands history, rocked the room and BOOM - positive word of mouth from all the parties above goes around. Photos taken from the gig picked them up a stack of new fans on tumblr and we're blogging about the scenario here to a few thousand more
Next time you're thinking of pulling out of a gig last minute - just reread this blog and think for a while
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