City Stages 2008

What is City Stages?  City Stages was started in 1989 by former Alabama Lieutenant Governor George McMillan  It is a 3 day weekend long music festival that is held on the third weekend in June, in and around Linn Park which is in the heart of Birmingham.  The festival features many different types of musical performers, both national and local, which will perform on one of the twelve stages that covers over three city blocks.  The different music genres includes everything from rock to jazz to country to hip-hop.  City Stage is also a non-profit organization that also gives back to the community it serves. It sponsors annual music scholarships for high school seniors interested in pursuing a career in music

What are the problems with City Stages?  The entertainment is slowly beginning to become uninteresting.  The acts that are asked to perform are enjoyable, but not good enough for today’s growing music industry.  The amount of tickets (both day passes and weekend passes) sold is gradually declining due of bad entertainment.

What are the goals?  The main goal for the year 2008 is to have more well known national musicians/groups to perform and also to put City Stages in the spotlight as one of the best music festivals in the nation.  The acts that would be considered for the 2008 festival would be acts such as Nickelback, T.I., Carrie Underwood, Journey, Rhianna and Fall Out Boy.  Having these bigger well known acts would also raise ticket sales because more people would want to come out and see these artist perform.

Objectives  Hand out surveys  Design highway billboards  Create radio commercials  Design newspaper and entertainment magazine ad’s

Who is trying to be reached?  The people of Alabama  The people of the surrounding southern states

Strategies and Tactics  Pass out surveys to the public  The surveys will be a simple way to get an idea on who the public would like to see perform at City Stages.  Create and release radio ad’s to major radio stations  The radio commercials will be a minute to two minutes long message informing the public about the new and improved City Stages that is planned for the summer.  Design and distribute highway billboards  The highway billboards will appear all over the state of Alabama. These billboards will contain information such as dates and ticket prices  Create and release newspaper and entertainment magazines ads  The newspaper ad’s will be placed in the states major newspapers and entertainment magazines containing information such as dates, ticket prices and performers.

Budget  Surveys = $1,000  Radio Commercials = $200,000  Highway Billboards = $150,000  Newspaper Ads = $100,000 Total cost of all advertisements needed = $451,000

In conclusion, having better well known acts at City Stages will…. Attract more people therefore increasing ticket sales Make it more enjoyable for those people who do attend Put it in the spotlight as a great music festival