Hey Reader,

Happy Tuesday to you! I took yesterday off after spending four days at Sonic Temple. It was great. I am sunburned, sore and tired. Cannot recommend taking Monday off after a hard weekend enough.

A little housekeeping up front. Last week's newsletter included a link to my presentation on social media marketing basics for haunted house owners. Or, at least, it was supposed to. A few folks reached out to say that the link was broken. Not sure what happened, but here's a new link if you'd like to check it out!

Now, on to the topic of fish in barrels. I spent this weekend at a music festival. Approximate attendance for that festival was around 185,000 people. I'll admit, that's less than 200,000, but that figure doesn't account for festival staff, vendors, media, etc. Plus, "185,000 Fish In A Barrel" doesn't make for a catchy subject line.

After spending the weekend as 1 of those ~200,000 fish, I have some thoughts.

Fish in barrels can't leave.

Like many modern music festivals, attendees cannot re-enter the festival grounds after leaving each day. That means anything a festival goer wants or needs must be acquired within the metaphorical barrel. Whether it's beer, food, sunscreen or a new t-shirt, they have to buy their goods inside.

Something that became clear pretty quickly was the laziness of some vendors, specifically the food stands. Most of the food stands were representatives of local restaurants, but they weren't labeled as such on site. If you checked out the festival app or website, the participating restaurants were listed. But at the festival, the food stands were labeled by what they were selling. (i.e. CORNDOGS or LOADED WAFFLE NACHOS)

That's a bummer for a local restaurant because it makes it hard to promote your business, but it doesn't make it impossible. Some food stands used branded packaging, others had their staff wear branded shirts. Some food stands did neither of those two things and were effectively nameless concession stands. If you're one of the only options for 200,000 fish, make sure you stand out from the rest of the barrel.

Clean barrels keep fish alive.

This one is pretty straight forward, but when you're covered in dust, sweat and sunscreen, a little cleanliness goes a long way. There were a handful of festival areas that I didn't visit because they were just gross. A few of those areas were around particular vendor booths who didn't seem to care as much about their surroundings. If I have two options for lunch, and one of those options has wiped off their condiment counter and the other hasn't, I'll buy lunch from the place that doesn't look sticky.

You'll never catch all 200,000 fish.

Something this festival did very well was provide options. There were 5 stages and there were typically artists on at least two of them. Because Sonic Temple featured over 140 bands, there were some overlapping set times and difficult decisions were necessary. When it was initially announced that Electric Callboy and DragonForce were both playing at the same time, I was pretty upset. I figured that it would be too difficult to split time and see both of them. To my absolute joy, that really wasn't the case. In fact, providing more options seemed to help the traffic flow of the festival.

The downside of providing more options is that you'll never catch everyone at once. But do you need to? If your 200,000 fish are already in a barrel, do you really need to hold them all in one hand? I think there's a concern that, if you offer too many choices, customers won't get the full experience. The blisters on my feet feel like I got the whole experience, as does the sunburn on my forehead.

One More Thing

I'm working on a video about my favorite piece of marketing I saw over the weekend. It should be out this week. Follow me on TikTok if you want to see it first!

-MC

p.s.

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Making content is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things the hard way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Watch the video

Here's a quick peek at that Haunted House Convention Longer version coming to YouTube soon! Watch the video

Shout out to my friend and former coworker Tiff for reaching the 5 year anniversary of her podcast! Creating content is super difficult and maintain an online presence for 5 years is no small feat. If you're looking for a new listen, check out
​Hey Everyone, It's Tiff wherever you get your podcasts! Word on the street is that Tiff may be back to regular production soon... 👀

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Let's celebrate your wins next. Ask me how!

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