The switch happened before we knew it and tons of people were suddenly making things from home.
Putting a stage show on camera sucks
Doing an IRL show without the live audience reaction, without the communal feel, without the environment, without the grandness, without the exclusivity, without the focus is like… a pizza without the mozzarella, sauce, or crust.
Without the pizza parts, we can have an empty plate or a cheeseburger. If a virtual show (live streamed) is going to have value, very little of it will come from the legacy of a live stage show. We gotta add in ingredients. A burger and a pizza are not very different in value, but only when they’re on the same level.
I talked about how to build that burger in another post, but let’s talk about pricing and value.
Value is an agreement
Value is set by what the buyer will pay for something. It’s based on supply and demand, quality, emotionality, randomness, and whether it has a Colgate logo on it.
There are tons of factors, so if you’re looking for a simple math equation to find value, you’re up a certain kind of creek. Why isn’t the phrase “down” a creek?
Value reducers
Entertainment, like cooking, takes practice. The entertainment we see today took lots of entertainer stage-time to develop as well as all the ancestral stage-time before it. The major loss of value for streaming shows (vs stage shows) is this history.
We can pull experience from live shows, tv shows, video games, and youtubes, facetimes, and other stuff; but we aren’t very good at this yet.
I don’t think I need to list all the things we lose from the in-person experience, I’ll leave that up to you.
Another thing to consider in lowering the value is event planners and show producers don’t know how to make money like they did from gatherings. They might not feel that entertainment has the same ROI as it used to.
Value Adders
In virtual events not just the entertainment changes. Let’s say you’re putting together a Zoom sales meeting… Here are some things (that cost you money) you don’t have anymore.
- a venue rental
- decor
- staff
- water bottles
- lighting
- sound equipment
- setup
- travel
- cleanup
In a way, the benefit of the stuff in bold above is provided by the entertainer. That’s some value added there!
Another major factor to appreciate is that, just as the entertainment side of this stuff is new, the online gatherings themselves are new. Likely, every part of the event will kinda suck. If entertainment can be added, it might be even more crucial to a good event than it would have been traditionally. Even low-quality entertainment will mix things up, and show the attendees that the producer really cares about their experience. This means A LOT in the clinical environment of online whatevers!
It must be new.
“Virtual show” is like “artificial pizza.” Nobody wants that. The entertainment that bursts with value in this environment is a new style of presentation that accepts the strengths and weaknesses of the medium.
Then, this new thing needs to be refined.
The advantage is with the inventors
If you’re looking for the entertainment company that can present real value in this arena, look for folks that are grinding and agile — most likely young people who have done lots of live online stuff. It may feel risky if you see an offering for something all new, but something all new with repetition is actually the lowest-risk sitch you can get right now.
If you’re an entertainment company, do five online shows today. Race to get to 100 experiences as fast as you can. Figure out what you’re doing. Figure out what you could never do before. Don’t offer a show – bookers and audiences never really cared about a show. Offer a transformative, modern thing. If stage-time is your goal, you could have more than anyone else in the world in a month.
Look at the big picture
Online shows are not good right now, but people need them. If there’s a need, there’s a value.
When computers came out, they were not good, they were difficult, they didn’t do a lot, but they did enough to have value in a computer-less world. Companies that understood paid well for them.
This is a time for producers to pay more and get the very best in a burgeoning field. This is a time for bottom-tier entertainment companies to redefine their status.