Encore Tickets in Atlanta, Dallas and LA

Encore Tickets, Get Up Close

Encore Tickets Background
Encore Tickets was a major player in the world of secondary market ticketing for many years. Specializing in a majority of the local major events such as the Masters Tournament, Chick-fil-A Bowl, SEC Championship and PGA Tour Championship, Encore established itself as the one of the most reputable and reliable ticket companies in Atlanta and across the nation. Atlanta Braves tickets, Falcons tickets, concerts at Philips Arena and Gwinnett Arena were all available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Get Up Close
Early in my tenure with Encore Tickets, I took on the challenge of creating a company tag line. I wanted a tag line that would be short, punchy and easily recognizable in the marketplace. Encore Tickets' unique specialty was offering the really great seating locations. First ten rows, Club seating, Floor access ...anything you could imagine for any concert, theater or sporting events.

What a semantical challenge. How does one sum up all of those entertainment types plus promote quality seating all in one catchy tag line?

Then one day it just hit me - Get Up Close - It didn't matter whether you were a Madonna fan looking for front row tickets, a baseball fan looking for dugout seats or a New York Broadway junkie hunting the center aisle; Encore Tickets could help you "Get Up Close".

"Encore Tickets", Get Up Close. It just worked.

Get Up Close would become the staple of all the advertising campaigns that I developed for Encore Tickets and EncoreTickets.com. Print, radio, web, and even some TV all centered around the concept of Get Up Close. As promotional items, we developed Get Up Close rubber footballs, logo t-shirts, hoodies and mint tins. We had the Get Up Close newsletter and email list and naturally, the Get Up Close upcoming events calendar plastered all over media web sites from Access Atlanta to WSBTV to 790 the Zone Sports Talk Radio. We even had the Get Up Close billboards along major highways, interstates and back streets throughout Atlanta and brandished a Ford Excursion wrapped in Encore Tickets logos.

We were everywhere.

"Getting Bad Tickets Sucks"

Encore Tickets may be gone, but not forgotten. The amount of ticketing, media, and technology experience I gained during our tenure was simply incredible. Here are examples of a few of our grassroots marketing materials which proved successful for getting us noticed in the simplest, most cost effective way possible.

The "Getting bad tickets sucks..." campaign was our first, real campaign on the radio and in print media. The goal was to drive home the message that having great seats for sports, concerts and theatre events was the foundation for a great entertainment experience. Our budget was limited and we didn't have the luxury of saturating the stations, so we had to make the most of our thirty second spots. This spot worked well and got a lot of attention from the very first play. You'll be pleased to know the voice talent in none other than, ...yep, me.

Encore Tickets Radio Spots

• "Getting bad tickets sucks" - Aired on Everything Alternative, 99X [mp3]
• Bad tickets creativity - This silliness was a favorite on 99X [mp3]

Encore Tickets Web Campaigns

Below is an example of an Atlanta staple at AccessAtlanta for a couple of years. The Encore Tickets Hot Tickets Calendar. This 300x600 piece of code was used to occupy home page space typically used by banner advertisers at the entertainment site; however, since it was code, I had full editing control and disallowed any third-party link serving. For this idea to be worth it's weight in gold, the links had to be clean, direct links to the content.

At the time, it was 2002 and just about the time that advertisers were growing increasingly aggravated with the ineffectiveness of banner advertising on the Internet. I was eager to find a better way. Armed with a new found discipline called search engine optimization, I set out to take advantage of the benefits of text links on big media web sites. Not only did you have the human element associated with visitors clicking your ads, but you also had the little known (at the time) HUGE benefit of major media 'text linking' to your web brand. As most marketing 'experts' now know, text links are the cornerstone of successful off-page SEO and quality links from quality sites are Internet Marketing gold.

As Encore Tickets, we jumped all over this idea and I am proud to say that we dominated our Atlanta media space where web inclusion was concerned. At one time we were plastered all over the home pages of major media web sites including local television news sites, radio station web sites and magazine/newspaper content sites. Although a lot has changed with this phenomenon, back then, it was powerful and this power got us a tremendous amount of eyeballs both in Atlanta, and across the nation with a strong search engine presence for simple ticketing-related search terms.

As I find more and more elements, I am constantly updating this page. I hope to someday have as many of my Encore creations as I can round up pasted right here on this page. Encore Tickets was my passion and while yes, I am moving on in the new monster corporation we have become, I will always look back on those days with best memories of fun, friendships and phreakin' hard work. Much love for Encore Tickets.