Playbill Layout

So it is right about now that there should be a strong understanding of where your page allocations stand for your12-13 Season playbill. Allocation for ad sales as well as content pages. In the sales campaign, you have probably lost some advertisers from last Season, gained new advertisers (that should have more than compensated for your lost advertisers) and there should have been some advertisers from last Season that you were able to convert to a larger ad for the 12-13 Season. There are probably some advertisers from last Season that have not yet committed to the 12-13 Season. This is normal. These advertisers are the procrastinators. The way we like to forecast for this bank of advertisers is that if there is not an 85% probability for them to renew, count on them as not renewing. After you get a strong sense of where your pages stand, now there should be some considerable scrutiny on getting to that “perfect signature” ( see blog for perfect signature here:"Perfect Signature" blog   

How to accomplish this: Does it mean cutting pages, then which pages? Well if you have managed the number of budgeted pages for advertisers, there should not be any issues there.  On that note, here is an interesting scenario that just recently played out for us. We had a situation in which we had undersold by a half page color for a performing arts group. Here is how we were able to solve the problem very quickly. In this particular playbill we had not sold the inside back cover, which we typically sell as a premium to one advertiser. We immediately re-contacted some of the opportunities that we had cultivated early in the sales canvass. These were opportunities that had eventually declined participation for the 12-13 Season. We were able to sell a half page color (at a premium rate) for half of the inside back cover. We then approached our half page advertisers and offered them an upgrade for the other half of the inside back cover.  We were able to maximize our inventory, without sacrificing rate. We actually increased the rate. The reason the sales took place so quickly is that we presented it as a limited opportunity. It was a classic supply and demand equation. The next place to look for page allocation is content. There may be some tough decisions that will need to be made on this end as well, but these pages are generally easier to manage than ad sales, because you can’t negotiate the ad dimensions.   Hope this is helpful. By the way…I have had a tremendous amount of response from the "How To Make The Perfect Bloody Mary" blog. Go figure…
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