Pete Lally is president and CEO of Spectacle Live, a concert promotion and management company with 10 venues throughout New England. He jumps into the live music trenches daily solving problems and working to sell more tickets.
Hypebot’s In The Trenches series is sponsored by venue, festival and promoter marketing solution Bandsintown PRO. It features the unsung heroes who make live music happen. As head of one one the largest independent live music companies in the region, Pete Lally of Spectacle Live definately qualifies.
Pete Lally of Spectacle Live: In The Trenches
Please introduce yourself including your current job and the path that led you to it.
My name is Pete Lally. I’m the president & CEO of Spectacle Live, which is a concert promotion and venue management with operations throughout New England.
I started in the industry while at the University of Miami, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Industry and a master’s degree in PR & Communications. While I was in graduate school, I began promoting small club shows on Miami Beach.
I eventually moved back to the Boston area (where I grew up) and worked for my first venues – The South Shore Music Circus and Cape Cod Melody Tent. After spending the Summer of 1999 at the tents, I became the Marketing Director and Talent Buyer for the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. I spent 13 years at the Lowell Auditorium before launching Spectacle Live in early 2013.
Since its founding, Spectacle Live has grown from a one-man shop to a team of 40 full-time and over 200 part-time team members across three states (MA, NH, and RI). I also taught in the music business program at University of Massachusetts Lowell as an adjunct professor for 17 years.
Tell us about your company and venues
We have touchpoints across 10 venues in booking, promotion, marketing, ticketing, production, food & beverage operations, and venue operations. Our venue portfolio focuses on alternative markets in New England, and range in capacity from 300-3000.
What does your typical workday look like?
Typically, my mornings start with email catch up and reading post-event reports from shows that took place the night before. Then, I typically have meetings with departments or department heads from late morning into mid-afternoon. Late afternoons are either traveling to shows, more meetings about developments within our venues network, or continuing the inbox battle!
What ‘go to’ tools, strategies and outlets do you use to market most shows?
I started in the industry as a marketer, and I still find it one of the more interesting parts of the business. The constant evolution, education, and experimentation with new tools and technology is a process I find very interesting. Thankfully, I’ve got a great team of really smart folks that develop and execute our marketing strategy and plans. I enjoy learning from them, as well as adding perspective from many years of learning lessons from promoting all kinds of different shows. I think the next 5 years of the intersection of marketing and technology is going to be really interesting, and open up a lot of new tools. I’m excited to see how it develops and how our team utilizes these tools.
What newer marketing tools, strategies and outlets show the most promise?
There are solid go-to tools from META and Alphabet that are the bedrock of our marketing strategies. And I think that will continue. But I see tools coming from smaller (relatively speaking), more specific players that I am looking forward to exploring and implementing. There’s always room for improvement, exploration, and refinement. And unlocking that next successful tool or strategy in our marketing stack is always an interesting process. I think the tools to evaluate the marketing data loop are also going to become more valuable and guide us to how best to invest in and deploy various marketing assets.
Name a show or campaign that you were involved in where you felt you had the most impact and why?
Shows where we are well aligned with an artist and their team are the instances that I think are most impactful. Working with an artist multiple times in multiple venues gains a synergy and knowledge with an artist that can really make for successful campaigns and a successful on-going relationship.
What do you wish more artists and teams would do differently that would make your job easier and help sell more tickets?
I think there could be an increase in the synergy of the digital media platforms of artist, venues, and promoters to be more in sync on on-sales and closing campaigns.
I also think we could all do a better job educating fans about how to buy tickets on the primary market, rather than getting sucked into secondary sites when there is plenty of inventory on the primary. This is a huge issue from the standpoint of the brand of the industry, artist, and venue. And a huge customer service issue. I think an industry-wide educational effort could go a long way toward bettering this situation.
MORE: In The Trenches with Shannon Wiles of Le Poisson Rouge
Bruce Houghton
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In The Trenches with Pete Lally of Spectacle Live first appeared on Hypebot.com.
