I’m With the Band
Trampled Under Foot is a highly acclaimed and award-winning blues/rock band from Kansas City, Missouri with an international following. (From l-r) Mike "Shinetop Jr." Sedovic, Danielle Schnebelen, Nick Schnebelen and Jan Faircloth are the current members of the band.
Get on the bus.
I had the opportunity recently to travel with an internationally recognized and award-winning band from Kansas City, Trampled Under Foot (TUF), managing the sales of their merchandise at venues throughout the country. The opportunity to implement my marketing and retail sales experience to venture into a pop up store was just the challenge I needed.
The Situation.
Trampled Under Foot is a touring band on an national and international scale, were traveling in support of their album Badlands which had debuted as #1 on Billboard Blues Chart, iTunes Blues and Amazon Blues. They had also announced they would be dissolving the band at the end of the year. My role was to oversee sales transactions, interact with fans, and work directly with festival workers, venue managers.
I arrranged the merchandise display to push the new album as well as their other merchandise including: t-shirts, koozies, stickers, a DVD and previous studio albums. It was important to move as much of the merchandise as possible and some aggressive marketing tactics were needed to increase the overall sales.
The Solution.
Most people at the music venues were already supporters of Trampled Under Foot and familiar with their live performances. I realized some of the audience were anxious to interact with the band for autographs and photos after the shows. This provided me an opportunity to keep them at the merchandising table longer to sell more items. I used the statistics of the awards and accolades that the albums had generated as talking points especially focusing on promoting a special pressing of Badlands available on LP. This item appealed to the wide ranging demographic of a Trampled Under Foot audience; those who had vinyl originally and the younger hipsters who thought it cool and eclectic to have it now.
To tackle the issue of the overstock of limited size t-shirts, I developed a "TUF Two-fer" promotion that offered two shirts for the price of one. By using an eye-catching hang tag, I highlighted the band's name for brand recognition and the discount boldly on the front with a QR code on the back linking to the band's online subscription page to build their email marketing list beyond the clipboard and directly to a database.
One thing certain about band merchandise, people want to touch it, look at it up close, feel it and size it visually. It’s a very tactile process at times. I would often tell you're creating a memory of this show.
The hang tag was developed to draw attention with its bold color scheme, and was written generically enough to apply to any of the merchandise items. It also provided the opportunity for the fans to stay informed of the band's touring dates and other news through an online subscription to their web site.
The Results.
Determining the hard sales numbers is difficult because each venue was as different as the audience
that attended the performances. I based the results for the merchandise marketing on:
• Selling all the overstock of t-shirts at the limited sizes utilizing the marketing hang tag
• Band merchandise inventory had to be replenished more frequently (sell sheets to verify)
• Keeping the merch sales at least 20-25% above what TUF would sell regionally
Selling merchandise for a band like Trampled Under Foot, I realized every time I set up shop that I had to make a connection with the audience to make the sale, regardless of the circumstances. Having never done this type of selling before, the overall experience made me a better marketing professional because I had to think differently each night as to how I could adapt my approach to the demographic of the audience. After one particular show where I sold the merch in ankle deep bayou mud on an alligator farm, I realized that I can sell stuff. I can really sell stuff. Of course, the band's energy and talent was the best sales tool I had to work with as well.
“Lisa has done a great job with marketing our products and has increased our revenue tremendously making her tactics and ideas very valuable to our company, Trampled Under Foot, LLC. Her skills at color/design gave her the ability to tie our older products in with our new products giving us an overall streamlined appearance. Our product line now looks a lot more polished and desirable since Lisa has redesigned it!”
