If you have taken on the role of a concert coordinator on your college campus, this guide will assist you in choosing your act, booking them, and promoting your show.
Instructions
Understanding Your Role
1. Determine your budget: As a concert or event coordinator on a campus, you should have a relatively nice sized budget. This will go to more than just booking the bands. Keep in mind that you'll be ordering food, beverages, holding meetings and running the show. Figure out how much money you want to spend per concert, per semester.
2. Meet your team: You'll have a lot of people helping you behind the scenes. There's probably an organization that you'll be purchasing your acts from, a faculty advisor, a venue supervisor, etc. Make sure you speak with them in advance to introduce yourself. Proper communication with those who you will be working with is crucial to a successful event.
3. Access the situation: Before you begin to decide on a sbook, take a look at prices. If you are going through a talent buyer or a booking organization, they should have a list of prices for every act. Browse through to learn the different price ranges. After a while, you will understand how pricing tends to work. This will help you out quite a bit when making up a list of acts that interest you.
Booking Your Concert
4. Pick your genre: Determine what type of show you want to put on. It should be pretty easy to gauge what your campus is listening to. Decide if you want one large act, or several smaller acts. Once you know what type of show you're putting on, it's a much easier process.
5. Shop responsibly: Keep your budget in mind. Speak with your talent buyer daily. They will be able to let you know who becomes available, who might be less expensive, because they are in your area, and who is less than pleasant to work with. Their advice and guidance will be a valuable resource for you.
6. Set a deadline: Pick a date that you want to choose your show by. Be sure to give yourself time to pick additional acts in case the artists that you want are no longer available, or do not accept your offer.
7. Place your bid: When you decide who you want to book, work with your buyer on placing a bid. This is typically the standard price that the act will accept, though at times, you can get away with lower than that. If the artists team accepts your offer, a contract and riders will be sent to you. Riders are the technical and backstage requirements that the artist requests.
8. Secure the final details: Once you have your show booked, be sure to work out the final kinks. Finalize a ticket price, work out a ticket sales point, hire a production team, secure your venue, fill the riders, arrange for a comfortable backstage area for the artists, finalize travel, etc.
Promoting Your Show
9. Get a team: Find volunteers who like the artists. They will hopefully want to be a part of the show. You can seek them out through posters, online, etc. When you have a team, hold meetings once or twice a week leading up to the show. Be sure to thank them for their work. During your last meeting, order in some food, and have a party. If you are able to, surprise them with a meet and greet, or an after party.
10. Contact campus media: Speak to the campus newspaper, radio station and television station. Offer them press passes so that they will want to cover and promote your show for you.
11. Hang up posters: Make posters for the event. Get your team to split up across the campus to post them on walls, in buildings, etc. Make a poster sized flyer to post, and a quarter page sized flyer to hand out to students. If you are able to get professionally made posters as well, they are a good idea.
12. Chalk the campus: This is a fun way to promote the show. Get your team to meet you one night, as the event gets closer. Meet late at night, and ask everyone to wear black. Purchase buckets of street chalk, and distribute them amongst your team. Map out your campus, splitting everyone up into groups that cover the entire school. Have each team take chalk and chalk up the sidewalks with the information about the show and tickets. Have fun with this. Let them go crazy. You may want to do posters at the same time as the chalking so that the next morning, when students are going to class, they see all of the work that was put in the night before.
