Anja Arvo
Over the past 18 months, I’ve interviewed so many ticketing and live event professionals who have been having a legitimately tough time surviving in the pandemic era. Consequently, it was nice to talk to someone recently who freely admits:
“I’m one of the lucky ones! I didn’t go through any major crisis. I had already been working remotely, so the situation did not change for me. I’ve sat at my desk each day like I’ve always done. But I have been really pleased to see the company adopt some great, modern working methods during the crisis. I now work a condensed, flexible, full-time work week. I work four longer days, and that allows me more dedicated time with remote staff and clients in different time zones. I think it also resulted in more productivity. Another great result is the company has gone really green. We’ve eliminated more and more of our environmental footprint by working in this modern way. Our lease went up on our Edinburgh office, and now we just have a drop-in office as staff there have a lot more flexible working conditions.”
The industry pro talking is Anja Arvo, and the company she’s referring to is Red61, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based ticketing technology firm for which she serves as Presales Manager. Red61 offers an innovative audience management and ticketing system for venues, festivals and attractions. Early in the COVID-19 crisis, Red61’s executive leadership chose to close the firm’s physical office in Edinburgh and allow full-time remote work as a means of keeping all staffers safe. “We already had remote employees,” Arvo says. “I, myself, am in Canada. But we also have employees in Australia. So, we were able to do this efficiently elsewhere and support each other.”
She continues, “We maintained our continuity of service. That was important. We immediately moved to all remote meetings on the Zoom platform, supporting our existing clients. We also had to support our other clients who were creatively selling things other than tickets. So, there was a temporary lull. And in that time, some of our clients sold advanced memberships. One of our festival clients did an early partnership with Netflix. One of our other clients ran an old-school TV telethon campaign, and they had their staff in flip-flops and suits, reaching out to people to say, ‘Please donate to keep our festival alive.’”
Through it all, Arvo was amazed that Red61 continued to grow its business and was able to add new clients and add staff during this time. “We attracted new clients who were keen to implement technology remotely,” she says. “So, we did completely remote installations. We would go on-site when we could. We also brought on new clients who applied for grants and loans during the pandemic to implement new technologies. We never stopped supporting our clients. What we did do was add some more client support staff, some more product development staff, and additional account and customer support staff who worked closely with clients on their reopening strategies to understand what their new needs were. We asked questions like ‘What new technologies [have you implemented]?’ and ‘How are you expecting to increase your sales volumes?’”
That’s not to say Red61 wasn’t still impacted by the real-world realities of the pandemic and its impact on live events. Limited seating capacities, for one, had an indirect negative effect. “We’ve had to help some clients through some difficult times,” Arvo says. “And, of course, their reduced revenue equaled our reduced revenue. When they’re not selling as much, we’re not selling as much either.”
The hard work and dedication to customer service has helped steer Red61 through to 2021’s “great reopening.” The main objective has been to work with clients on what was most critical for survival. “Social distancing seating rules was one of the first things we put into our venue configuration,” Arvo says. “We also integrated with digital streaming solutions. We had a digital wallet and a ‘pay-what-you-wish,’ so many of our clients are now using all of those. The Edinburgh Festival just went live on all of them in August. It’s the largest arts festival in the world. We also had a Canadian client just after that used all the features, as well. So, they’re learning from each other. We’ve done the hard test drives, and now they’re flourishing!”
Moving forward, she believes venues worldwide are going to adopt many of the good practices that were forced by COVID-19 and hopefully throw out some of the outdated ones. Arvo says, “One thing that Maureen Andersen has said several times that will remain are flexible exchange and cancellation policies. The old way is gone! One thing I personally wish for are cleaning protocols and policies being forever enhanced. It’s great going anywhere now because things are so clean. I think we’ll also see crowd control expertise continue. There used to two or three checkpoints into events. Now, the industry has become as good as an airport for the different checkpoints you have to go through. Other things that will continue are contactless, digital ticketing; live hybrid streaming options; and, best of all, ticketing professionals have proven that we can and are completely prepared to ticket anything, anywhere, anyhow!”
In general, Arvo is feeling optimistic for the rest of 2021 and the start of 2022. She concludes, “Something good always has the potential to emerge from something bad. And, in this case, something bad was COVID-19. Before we were all alive, there was the Spanish flu. There is a great commercial I keep seeing during COVID-19 that says, ‘Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.’ That’s the best summary of how I feel. It’s not going to last; we have to be tough!”
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