Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit the Kansas City Symphony with my daughter’s school class.  It was a great experience – they had an very educational focus – a program aimed at the kids that started before the concert.  My daughter enjoyed it and likely learned a lot from the event.   I also like the symphony a lot – wishing I could go more often.  I played the French horn up through High School and I love music – so the symphony has my sympathy and support.

What was interesting though was how concerned they were about people taking pictures or video of the performance.  I wonder if they should be encouraging people to take pictures/video or should continue with their policy to ban it?   It is in their best interest to tightly control their content or should they engage with their audience – encouraging them to share about their experience?  

I believe in this day and age they’re missing an opportunity to spread the word – to build support and community for their organization – by encouraging pictures and short videos.   I respected their policy and took no pictures – even though if I had pasted that on Facebook it might have encouraged others to do.   In my case this wasn’t a formal concert – but a short educational event that I payed a grand total of $4.00 for.  So it wasn’t like this was a big money making event for them – or having some special event/guest, etc. they had a responsibility to protect?

I literally saw them going on around asking people to put away their cameras and phones – taking time and energy to do this.  There was a child “conducting” the orchestra at one point – and they asked someone to put away their camera during that time.  I understand their concern – but it seem out of sync with today’s world.  Look at the following questions with me and help me think through this:

  1. Would it help or hurt if people took pictures of the concert and posted them on social networks?  Would they lose control of their brand or gain from the free publicity?  Would it hurt if they took pictures of the concert hall, themselves at the concert, etc.?
  2. Would it hurt if people took a short video, like with their cell phone, of the concert?  If they posted that to Facebook or their blog would that be “stealing” from the symphony – or helping them?
  3. Would doing the above two encourage people to go to the symphony – or discourage them from going?
  4. Let’s do a worst case – someone took a video of the whole concert and posted it online (too long for YouTube by the way).  While I agree this is not their content – it’s the symphony’s  - how would that impact the symphony?   Would people just watch the concert online – instead of going?  Would it really impact their sales of say, DVDs, of the performance?  Or would it encourage people to go – as they like what they see?  Not that I would encourage something like this – but it’s the worst fear of content owners.

It feels like this is a tension between the old and new way of engaging with your customers.  It’s the fear of piracy vs. the gain of working with your customers.  It’s especially sad as an organization like a symphony is not a profit company – but supported by the public. Maybe I just don’t get it – but it seems like they’re missing an opportunity here.

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