Ageing musicians still touring, and ageing fans still wanting to go to their concerts, might prefer an afternoon start time rather than waiting until 9pm or later for the main event. It’s not just Festivals that should schedule afternoon concerts – maybe every band should do so.
The theme of this week’s “jump into the future” is that we should be open to questioning what is considered “normal” in our industries, especially when doing so could open us up to new opportunities, markets and customers.
What’s “normal” in your industry? And what experiments could you try to see how you could change that?
TRANSCRIPT
Come with me to the future where all the best music concerts happen in the afternoon.
This is ThrowForward Thursday, my name is Graeme Codrington and maybe this one, I’m going to have to be honest, I’m showing my age just a little bit, because I’m a little bit tired of having to stay up until 9:00 or 10:00 at night for a massive concert to start. And because a lot of the music that I like is from the 1980s and ’90s and those old baby boomer musicians are still touring, and we are still going to their concerts. I’m guessing they also don’t like staying up until 9:00 or 10:00 to start their concerts. Yeah, I’m thinking of the likes of Bruce Springsteen and the rest.
So why don’t we do these things in the afternoon? This is after all what we do at festivals. Where we have long days and evenings of different bands and often the headliner comes at the end of the day or at those peak times. But this is a thought about what the world looks like when quite a lot of people are heading into the second half of their lives, let’s call it that. And they still want to go to concerts they might even if their children of the 1990s and 2000s even went to go to Raves but they want to look after their bodies, they want to look after their lifestyles as well and so maybe the afternoon is not a bad thought. If you’re indoors doesn’t really matter what’s going on with the lighting, if you’re outdoors it just feels like a festival there’s no downside.
As I say, I’m not sure that this is something that is really a future-forward scenario similar to what we normally put out on a Thursday. Maybe it’s just me getting old and desperately wanting to build a world that I would enjoy. Either way, these are the types of things we need to think about as we live in a world with an aging population, a world filled with diversity, and a world in which opportunities are everywhere. Maybe we need to be thinking about what normal is for concerts.
We probably need to be thinking about what’s normal in our own industries. One of the things that everybody just takes for granted, is the opening and closing times of our retail stores, when we take our weekends, what we consider to be a working week and working hours, the ways in which we connect and communicate with people. There are norms and standards industry systems that sort of nobody questions.
One of the things that futurists really do encourage you to do, is to question all of those. What would happen if we were to change some of the industry norms and standards? Could it, would it, might it, create an interesting opportunity and a potential competitive advantage, and if so, isn’t it worth just a little experiment?
Hey Bruce Springsteen, the boss, if you’re listening, I’d come to a 3:00 show, no doubt. Thanks for joining me in the future, I’ll see you again next week.
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Graeme Codrington, is an internationally recognised futurist, specialising in the future of work. He helps organisations understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next ten years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you Re-Imagine and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.
For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognised brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.