- The lion’s share of the market that this magazine addresses is the Corporate Staging/Rental market. While there’s a significant amount of business being done around the country for concerts, music festivals, Hollywood premiers, etc., it’s been generally acknowledged that the corporate staging market is where there is the most growth potential.
- Entertainment staging and smaller entertainment event staging is a great business. But the conventional wisdom has been, for several years, that demographic trends do not favor the music/concert business, that the entertainment industry in general tends to consolidation and therefore a shrinking pool of customers, and other dynamics. There are only so many rock and roll tours that go out every year-and it’s been a shrinking number in recent years, the thinking goes. And film production, music publishing and promoting, and even the theme park world have seen consolidation in recent years to fewer and fewer corporate parents.
- Corporate events on the other hand are generated by not just the Fortune 1000, but by thousands of smaller companies. (And don’t forget the Association event business—it follows a similar dynamic as the corporate event business.)
But it may be time to rethink this conventional thinking. There are many new trends in the economy that could reinvigorate the “entertainment” side of rental and staging.
There are other trends that we will follow in these pages in the coming months. But the common thread is this (a phenomenon that we follow in our sister magazine Marketing At Retail): the marketing world is now witnessing two converging and very strong forces: While the consumer is drifting away from being a captive audience of mass media advertising (the TIVO effect-consumers can skip commercials or even abandon old media completely in favor new media and instant messaging), there is a simultaneous new crop of technology tools that allow marketers to reach audiences where they circulate: in the store, on the street, on their cell phones, etc. And this is where we come in. We are a technology/media/information/display industry. Yes, we do big screens on big stages, but if we don’t all realize that the world is indeed now a stage, with the average consumer reachable by any number of screens anywhere, we may miss out on one of the biggest new growth opportunities to come along since the introduction of digital projectors: the use of “AV” and staging/event technology for marketing and entertainment events, whether for grand product rollouts, or simpler cross-media promotions. Stay tuned for coverage.
Speaking of on the road: we have two more Rental & Staging Roadshows this Fall: in Chicago on November 5th, at Production Plus’ impressive headquarters. Next we will be in Burbank, CA on December 3rd. Stay tuned for more info on the location and hosts inBurbank. The Roadshow is a day of training, seminars, and exhibits presented by the Rental & Staging Systems Magazine and InfoComm, and a great opportunity to get some training for your team (and for your CTS holders to earn Renewal Units from InfoComm). Register now at www.rentalandstaging.com.
LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVID KEENE
