(Before we go any further, let it be said that I am a big Sabbath fan, and this is more of a post about the capabilities of Social Media than about the band or their fans.)
On Friday 4th July, Black Sabbath will play Hyde Park with their British Summer Time Black Sabbath Time gig.
Tickets cost from around £69 (what happened to the days when I could go and see them for a mere tenner? Am I THAT old?)
However, in a deal with the event organisers, employees of that company could buy tickets for a massively discounted £2.50. Everyone was told, undr pain of death, that the link for the £2.50 tickets was to be kept private and not given to anyone outside of the organisation.
It’s 2014, Social Media is more popular than ever – can you guess what happened next?
Of course, the link was leaked.
Twitter went mad:
Any Black Sabbath fans? Barclays is selling £2.50 tickets to see them in Hyde Park at the moment. http://t.co/QBfqtYkJpR
— nɯɐp (@Damu89) June 27, 2014
Black Sabbath for, er, £2.50. If this isn’t a good deal, I don’t know what is… https://t.co/FXcdZSvVga
— Jayne Nelson (@kakapojayne) June 27, 2014
Facebook, Reddit, Google+ and other social networks followed suit. Before long the link had been forwarded thousands of times and thousands of fans were snapping up those £2.50 tickets. And who can blame them? A fiver for a couple to see Sabbath. Faith No More, Soundgarden, Motorhead and more heavy metal legends?
Some wondered whether it was legit, but most people were happy to possibly lose £5 against the chance of a great offer.
How did Hyde Park events react?
To my mind, in the best way they could – they agreed to honour the orders. A post on their Facebook page states:
Hi All, A staff ticket offer was leaked earlier today and some members of the general public were able to purchase reduced price tickets to certain Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park concerts. That offer has now been stopped.
“If you were lucky enough to purchase a ticket from this offer rest assured that your ticket remains valid.”
Where did it go wrong?
Well, let’s face it, in this day and age, a publicly accessible link such as that was not going to stay a secret for long, was it?
It only takes one employee to send the link to a friend, and before long it has snowballed exponentially. From one little tweet, millions of people can be reached through retweets and posts on other social networks.
I’m shocked that Hyde Park didn’t at the very least password protect the link – it wouldn’t have been bomb proof, but it would probably have saved them a few thousand pounds (although let’s not feel too sorry for them, I’m sure they’ll still make millions from merchandise, drinks / food and usual price tickets, plus of course sponsorship so they’re not going to feel this too badly.)
It seems to me that someone or some people just didn’t think – or of course, this could be a very clever PR ploy to gain positive PR 😉
What can we learn from it?
A number of things:
- If you don’t want it shared, don’t make it publicly accessible – protect it or put it on a company intranet.
- You can’t control Social Media – once it’s out there you’ve lost control of it.
- How you react can be the difference between positive and negative feedback – reputation management is key.
- Your author was offline in meetings that day and missed out on her £2.50 tickets – RATS! 😉
Did you get cheap tickets? Let us know when they arrive in the comments below!
