(CelebrityAccess News Service) — Industry veterans David Cooper and Bill Bullock of the FoxMan Group are back at it again. Having first written a calendar driven event management system more than 20 years ago, they are currently launching and building a new set of tools to allow holders of content, products, services, or information to sell directly to their fans/customers.
Over the years their systems have been used by a large majority of recording artists, talent and sports agents, promoters, venues, ticketing companies, record companies, and touring companies all over the world. Now they are moving more towards using the technology to market directly to the fans to provide content, information, products and
services that these fans want.
Having built ticketing systems for Pearl Jam, NASCAR track owners and NBA team, Cooper explains, “During these years we built systems to track and collect information, mostly used for reporting to the financial bean counters. What we learned was most of the true value of the data collected was never really used to its fullest (as part of the data mining process). No one was selling to their list of customers; most people didn’t even know their customers.
Now The Foxman Group is going to help change that. We are going to mine the gold in this data.”
“It’s a CRM (Customer Relationship Marketing) type application that is a cross between marketing and technology,” Bullock says. “The tool sets have many applications across many industries but we are again focused on the entertainment market, with an emphasis on artist centered fan direct merchandising.”
From past experience, Cooper says they have learned that most companies don't want to manage technology, they just want to use it. “The tech department of most entertainment firms is understaffed and overwhelmed; so we are going to be an outsourced service," he says. "All you need is a browser and Internet connection to get hooked up. Finally, there will be something that actually helps sell more; and, it’s based on the business truth that most of
your business comes from repeat customers.”
Cooper says the Foxman Group offers its services to anyone who wants to deal directly and offer their fans (customers) information, products, services, or content. “For example, if an artist with a fan club (from their website), or a venue selling tickets (with a download from any ticketing system), or a record company tracking inventory (sales by outlets), then we are there to help,” he explians.
The Foxman Group is also writing a “how to” book explaining how an artist’s revenue streams of royalties, publishing, ticketing and merchandising flows, and how to directly affect its relationship with their fans to keep larger shares of the revenues by doing more work in-house. — by Jane Cohen and Bob Grossweiner
