Spotlight - 2012 Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival
The very best in punk rock gather with their fans this weekend in Las Vegas for the 14th annual Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival. ThunderTix is proud to be the ticketing software of choice for this year's PRB and are equally proud of how well the event founders make use social media for event promotion and awareness.
From humble origin to marquee event
For the uninitiated, the Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival is a three day festival of amateur bowling and music. Founded by brothers Shawn and Mark Stern fourteen years ago, the event was originally an informal gathering of friends who like to bowl and play music. Shawn Stern explains the festival’s early days:
[Andre Duguay] mentioned that Fat Wreck Chords was doing a bowling league in San Francisco and that we should do one in Los Angeles. I talked to my brother and he thought since it was so cool, we should do it in Vegas. The first year there were 27 teams, and it's been sold out every year since. The place we used to use had 105 lanes and had a great, but small, casino we could take over. When we went back the next year--during year four or five--the sheriff came about a week before us and escorted everyone out for unpaid bills. So we had no venue.
From those humble origins Punk Rock Bowling has become a marquee event spread out across the city of Las Vegas in multiple venues.
As mentioned over and over by fans, the long lasting success of PRB is attributed to the great music. This year's line-up includes some legendary bands, including Cockney Rejects, Rancid, NOFX, Pennywise, The Adicts, and Youth of Today as well as more recently formed acts.
Command of the medium(s)
One need not be a fan of rowdy punk rock ( or the sport of bowling for that matter ) to appreciate how well the entire PRB staff makes use of social media for event promotion and awareness. In addition to exemplary command of the medium(s) for promotion, PRB is very responsive in answering attendee questions via Twitter "@'s", comments on Facebook and the event's website.
PRB prompting attendees to print their tickets on Instagram and responding to attendees needs on Twitter.
The PRB website ( https://www.punkrockbowling.com ) should be considered a reference standard on how to disseminate every detail of a successful event. If you are a venue owner or an event organizer, we encourage you to visit the website and take note of its structure and layout.
Next, we would like to direct your attention to how PRB makes expert use of all the available social media tools, like Twitter, Facebook, foursquare and Instagram to cultivate the shared experience for their event's attendees. We've written before how important cultivating the shared experience is to the long term success of your venue, tour or recurring event. PRB understands this as evidenced by the event being in its 14th consecutive year.
If one were to think of the shared experience as a story, the three chapters of that story are anticipation ( before ), self-expression ( during ), nostalgia ( after ). As of this writing, the Punk Rock Bowling shared experience is in the "anticipation" chapter with fans buying tickets and anxiously looking forward an event that is just hours away from starting.
Once the event is in full swing, all the aforementioned social media tools will be in use by attendees, including one that is a first for us here at ThunderTix...
Dedicated app
Key to the second chapter of the PRB shared experience ( “self-expression” ) is the Punk Rock Bowling app .
The app is the first ever for a ThunderTix event and we’re just thrilled that PRB is going the extra mile to make it available. The PRB app was built by InterFuel which specializes in “user experience” for "youth media".
Using the app, event attendees can manage their personal schedules, making sure they don’t miss their favorite band, look-up the location of venues, even send text messages directly with other attendees. iOS Snoops says of the app:
Our verdict: Hot! Punk Rock Bowling is a highly rated app (4.5-star). The app is free [and] is currently ranked #142 in free Music apps for iPhone.
By offering a dedicated mobile app for their event, PRB has definitely been raised the bar on what you can do to ensure a successful event!
Be like savvy Punk Rock Bowling
We hope this spotlight on the Stern brothers and PRB helps you with your event awareness as a great example of the how it’s done. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting many more “spotlights” on events, venues, our beloved ThunderTix users and some “secret” lesser known technical aspects of a successful event.
