Posted by Kevin frosch on September 9, 2014 at 6:25pm
Well with high expectations and all the promotor promises we drove to Huntington Beach, CA. 1st time shows worry me and a lot of other artists. The promoter pushed hard the $1,000,000 advertising budget, huge crowds,200 high quality art and craft artists, great food from local restaurants, fine wine tasting from local wineries and great music, such as Jefferson Starship and lead signers from great band of that era. The only thing that happened is the music which only had attendance of about 3000.What we got was a fenced in parking lot 1/4 mile long on the beach, pissed of artists, fancy painted food trucks, 3 huge BBQ food vendors a gated corral from cCoors brewing CoDirect Tv salesman, time share salesman and even get this a mattress co selling mattresses. They even had a gate fee of 18.75 to the art and food area and another 20 to get into the music plus you had to pay 15 to park on the state park parking lots which was the only parking available. The promoters man is Jay Freedman, nfuse360.
Btw, the promoter is a member here - I saw one of his comments on an earlier thread about the event. I'd be curious to hear his response to all of this - are the planning on holding another one of these next year and fixing all of these issues?
$350 booth fee plus travel expenses for some Artists (I would have been coming from Utah, if I'd gone. I would have had to rent a van and pay for a motel room, gas and food) is no small amount, Victor - it's a good thing you live so close! This is just awful - has the promoter responded to the email thread? Have they tried to provide proof of what types of advertising they did? All I could find were some ads in OC Weekly and a write up in the Huntington Beach paper. I read somewhere here on one of these threads that the promoter told the Art Gallery group that they didn't need them to jury, so they didn't have anything to do with the event. I'd be interested to get their take on the situation.
It's fairly typical in concert promotion (what they really do rather than art) is to count the full market value of any trade/sponsorship ads in their quoted ad spend. Radio time in LA is crazily expensive. That said, when you look at their ads, the art festival is barely mentioned.
Copying from my post on the other thread on the same theme:
By far the worst show I have ever been in. Many very specific promises made in the calls for artists, none of which were fulfilled. They very specifically said they would be marketing to the region's fine art buyers and would not be aiming at the beach crowd. The only people who came were there for the music, and there weren't many of those (on Sunday night, there were probably only a few hundred people left in the audience for Jefferson Starship, so even the music side was a bust). One of the national champion barbecue teams brought in for the food section told me he was in for $12,000 costs and was off his normal business by 95%. The promotor told me that only 5000 people came through the gate on Saturday. In their pitch to us, the projection was 50,000 each weekend day (due to the name music acts). They promised a million dollars in marketing, but as is usual in these cases, a large percentage of that is in-kind trades with local radio and newspapers, but LA is such a fragmented media market few people new the show existed. None of the locals in Huntington Beach I talked to knew there was an art festival at all, though some knew about the music side. I live in Newport Beach (the next town south and the area with an actual art-buying demographic) and saw absolutely nothing about the festival in any promotion other than Facebook ads (which still focused more on the food and music).
They also charged people $20 if they just wanted to come in to see the art festival and food (BBQ competitors and food trucks, when the marketing literature had promised fine dining). Of course, that meant zero impulse walk-up entrances from the beach crowd.
I wouldn't have done this show (the language in the pitch made to artists, the requirement of only a single example image in the application, plus my local knowledge about the types of crowds generally drawn to HB waterfront events were all red flags) except that I live only 10 minutes away, and there are no real major festivals in the area other than the summer-long Laguna shows (please, someone, produce one!), so it was a low risk. Not only did I not sell anything, I actually counted 12 people setting foot in my booth on the Sunday (over 9 hours). Two of those were so drunk I wanted them out before they could throw up on the art.
The one positive was that I got to know a lot of my fellow artists far better than ever before, since we were literally the only people there. There's a long email thread going around (the promotors didn't seem to know how to BCC emails) and the word "fraud" is coming up a lot. I don't actually think they set out to defraud the artists. It felt more like a giant out-of-control ever-growing pile of incompetance.
Every artist I've talked to is wondering what kind of compesation we might be offered due to the misrepresentations made. I only lost the booth fees and time, but artists came in from Florida, Montana, Washington, and more, so they took major losses. Very few people made back their booth fees.
I was at the show as well. This was the worst show I have ever done, it was misrepresented, disorganized and not advertised. First of all is was supposed to be a fine art show, it wasn't. There were people selling hats, tee shirts, as well as mattresses, chiropractors, plants,etc. It was supposed to be juried by the Huntington Beach Art Association - it wasn't - they were told they weren't needed. The staff was disorganized, they weren't set up when we drove in on Friday to set up. Everyone was to be set up by 1PM for the show to start at 3PM on Friday, artists were still coming in and setting up after 3PM and didn't move their vehicles until after 6PM. Artists starting leaving on Saturday and on Sunday artists packed up and left all day long everyone was so upset. We did not get the expected traffic, no signage, the local residents were not aware of the show, the hotels were not given any flyers, etc. Even if it is a first show the lack of basic marketing did not occur. From the road it looked more like a swap meet than an Art Show. I would not do any shows put on by this group again.
This show sounds like the one at hermosa beach on memorial day and labor day, Hermosa did not have a sales person selling mattresses that is a first. I also was thinking of doing the HB show but with all the fees to the public not likely And HB on labor day is last weekend of summer in Calif with surfers and beach goers
He's on these boards - he commented on Connie's original thread about this show...I wonder if he's planning on doing another one next year and if he'll take some of the suggestions everyone is giving...
Kevin, how were the Artists, by the way? Were they good quality? And were there a lot of Artists or was it mostly vendors? Were there any painters or drawers?
I can't believe they had such a high cost to get in! They were obviously hoping that would cover the cost of the bands and permits, I'd imagine, but they would have pulled in a LOT more people with a lower entry fee (even in that area).
Comments
Btw, the promoter is a member here - I saw one of his comments on an earlier thread about the event. I'd be curious to hear his response to all of this - are the planning on holding another one of these next year and fixing all of these issues?
$350 booth fee plus travel expenses for some Artists (I would have been coming from Utah, if I'd gone. I would have had to rent a van and pay for a motel room, gas and food) is no small amount, Victor - it's a good thing you live so close! This is just awful - has the promoter responded to the email thread? Have they tried to provide proof of what types of advertising they did? All I could find were some ads in OC Weekly and a write up in the Huntington Beach paper. I read somewhere here on one of these threads that the promoter told the Art Gallery group that they didn't need them to jury, so they didn't have anything to do with the event. I'd be interested to get their take on the situation.
I can't believe that so many artist would believe a promoter had 1,000,000 dollars to spend on advertising.
Copying from my post on the other thread on the same theme:
By far the worst show I have ever been in. Many very specific promises made in the calls for artists, none of which were fulfilled. They very specifically said they would be marketing to the region's fine art buyers and would not be aiming at the beach crowd. The only people who came were there for the music, and there weren't many of those (on Sunday night, there were probably only a few hundred people left in the audience for Jefferson Starship, so even the music side was a bust). One of the national champion barbecue teams brought in for the food section told me he was in for $12,000 costs and was off his normal business by 95%. The promotor told me that only 5000 people came through the gate on Saturday. In their pitch to us, the projection was 50,000 each weekend day (due to the name music acts). They promised a million dollars in marketing, but as is usual in these cases, a large percentage of that is in-kind trades with local radio and newspapers, but LA is such a fragmented media market few people new the show existed. None of the locals in Huntington Beach I talked to knew there was an art festival at all, though some knew about the music side. I live in Newport Beach (the next town south and the area with an actual art-buying demographic) and saw absolutely nothing about the festival in any promotion other than Facebook ads (which still focused more on the food and music).
They also charged people $20 if they just wanted to come in to see the art festival and food (BBQ competitors and food trucks, when the marketing literature had promised fine dining). Of course, that meant zero impulse walk-up entrances from the beach crowd.
I wouldn't have done this show (the language in the pitch made to artists, the requirement of only a single example image in the application, plus my local knowledge about the types of crowds generally drawn to HB waterfront events were all red flags) except that I live only 10 minutes away, and there are no real major festivals in the area other than the summer-long Laguna shows (please, someone, produce one!), so it was a low risk. Not only did I not sell anything, I actually counted 12 people setting foot in my booth on the Sunday (over 9 hours). Two of those were so drunk I wanted them out before they could throw up on the art.
The one positive was that I got to know a lot of my fellow artists far better than ever before, since we were literally the only people there. There's a long email thread going around (the promotors didn't seem to know how to BCC emails) and the word "fraud" is coming up a lot. I don't actually think they set out to defraud the artists. It felt more like a giant out-of-control ever-growing pile of incompetance.
Every artist I've talked to is wondering what kind of compesation we might be offered due to the misrepresentations made. I only lost the booth fees and time, but artists came in from Florida, Montana, Washington, and more, so they took major losses. Very few people made back their booth fees.
You can be very happy about not being there.
I was at the show as well. This was the worst show I have ever done, it was misrepresented, disorganized and not advertised. First of all is was supposed to be a fine art show, it wasn't. There were people selling hats, tee shirts, as well as mattresses, chiropractors, plants,etc. It was supposed to be juried by the Huntington Beach Art Association - it wasn't - they were told they weren't needed. The staff was disorganized, they weren't set up when we drove in on Friday to set up. Everyone was to be set up by 1PM for the show to start at 3PM on Friday, artists were still coming in and setting up after 3PM and didn't move their vehicles until after 6PM. Artists starting leaving on Saturday and on Sunday artists packed up and left all day long everyone was so upset. We did not get the expected traffic, no signage, the local residents were not aware of the show, the hotels were not given any flyers, etc. Even if it is a first show the lack of basic marketing did not occur. From the road it looked more like a swap meet than an Art Show. I would not do any shows put on by this group again.
This show sounds like the one at hermosa beach on memorial day and labor day, Hermosa did not have a sales person selling mattresses that is a first. I also was thinking of doing the HB show but with all the fees to the public not likely And HB on labor day is last weekend of summer in Calif with surfers and beach goers
Sounds pretty bad, Kevin...thanks for giving us a "heads up".
He's on these boards - he commented on Connie's original thread about this show...I wonder if he's planning on doing another one next year and if he'll take some of the suggestions everyone is giving...
Kevin, how were the Artists, by the way? Were they good quality? And were there a lot of Artists or was it mostly vendors? Were there any painters or drawers?
I can't believe they had such a high cost to get in! They were obviously hoping that would cover the cost of the bands and permits, I'd imagine, but they would have pulled in a LOT more people with a lower entry fee (even in that area).
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