Jul 09 2009
Jackson Memorial Sets Standard For Online Ticket Processes
It is becoming more and more apparent that email contests and online drawings must be thought-out completely before being executed. This is especially true nowadays with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, whose word-of-mouth capabilities expand the reach of such campaigns drastically and quickly, while also serving as a potentially treacherous criticism forum. Earlier this year KFC demonstrated what can go wrong with an online giveaway – their free meal offer not only brought down the website hosting the coupon, but the offer also inspired restaurant sit-ins, chicken riots, and overall negative feelings and publicity.
Now compare that experience to how the Staples Center , AEG, and Michael Jackson’s family recently tackled the huge task of distributing Michael Jackson Memorial tickets. The Staples Center, AEG and the Jackson family created an easy-to-follow, seemingly error-free, and clear process in the Michael Jackson Memorial ticket giveaway. They did everything right! Hopefully this model will set a new standard in large online giveaways.
The memorial, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on July 7th, was a gigantic media event. If there had been even the slightest error during the drawing process, the resulting feedback would have been 100,000,000 times worse than any chicken sit-in. In the first 90 minutes of the lottery registration Web servers counted a half-billion hits. That is equivalent of 12,000 ticket hopefuls a second! Seven hours into the lottery’s announcement, more than half a million people had registered via email, vying for free tickets. When the dust settled and the lottery site closed, over 1.6 million email addresses registered for 8,750 tickets. The odds of winning tickets were long – just one of every 182 entries were chosen. This resulted in a very few extremely ecstatic winners and a whole lot of disappointed losers. It would have been catastrophic if there was a glitch in this system. (Luckily, there was not.)
Here is the process that the Staples Center, AEG, and Jackson Family created to run their efficient and effective online ticket giveaway. Watch and learn!
Step 1: Create a clear website and registration process
The Staples Center website made it clear where interested visitors needed to go to register for tickets. The one-step form was also simple and clear. All that was required was an Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Zip Code and Date of Birth.
The event information, including when the registration ended, who was eligible, the rules, and how to get more information, were all available and clear.
Step 2: Notify winners and losers
Both the winners and losers were notified via email if they did or did not win tickets. Here is the losers’ email. (I, unfortunately, did not receive a winning email 
The winners’ email instructed those lucky few on how to contact Ticketmaster to claim their tickets. Winners were also provided with a secret code and instructions to appear at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday (the day before the memorial event) to claim their tickets. These winners needed a picture ID and were given a wristband to demarcate themselves and prevent them from reselling tickets. It was seemingly impossible to resell or scalp tickets with this policy in place.
Each winner received two tickets, bringing the number awarded in the lottery to 17,500. Just 11,000 of those are for seats inside the Staples Center, while the other 6,500 are for viewing the memorial telecast across the street at the Nokia Theater.
Key takeaways from this promotion:
- Make a clear start and end date for any promotion.
- Allow only one entry per email address when applicable.
- Be sure to notify winners and losers promptly and accurately.
- Map out the promotion process from start to finish looking for any potential errors, mistakes, or missteps.
- Always anticipate that the promotion will reach the entire world. A single email or tweet can go a long way. Be prepared to deal with increased web traffic, email traffic, questions, and responses.
I agree! It is very impressive they managed to handle everything in such a condensed amount of time. The only thing that would’ve made this better is if I’d won tickets!
There’s no better demonstration of the disconnect between marketing departments and technical reality than the time-based Internet giveaway. KFC and Popeye’s were lucky they didn’t start cyber-riots with their ill-conceived promotions.
Great post – Just subscriped to your RSS feed.. Thanks
[...] year ago, Jordan wrote an excellent piece on the flawless online ticketing process carried out for the Michael Jackson Memorial. Well, I suppose for every yin there must be a yang — and I can tell you firsthand that the [...]