The finale session at EEMAGINE’15 turned out to be one of the more invigorating and interactive sessions with many potential solutions in the Talent Management being discuss. The panel discussion moderated by Roshan Abbas, Patron – EEMA, started with opening remarks by Mohomed Morani, Director, Cineyug. Morani posed the first issue the industry is facing in Talent Management, from the event agency’s perspective, that of differential pricing / quoting for the same talent.
Rahul Gomes, Director Oaks Management added one more issue as faced by the event management fraternity, that of last minute cancellation and no liability by the artist and artist management agencies.
To these 2 issues, Vijay Subramanium of CAA-Kwan suggested that things were changing and the artist management function in India was getting more and more organised, which would take care of the issue of differential pricing. He further suggested a solution in, “Collaborating and working together as a team, both artist managers and event agencies such that issues of differential pricing are discussed openly and a solution can be devised.”
Suggesting a solution for this in the artist and artist managers relationship, Tarsame Mittal said there were six essentials in this relationship, “Trust and transparency; Accessibility; Loyalty, Being genuinely talented; not being Egoistic; and being a team player.”
Suggesting a solution for artist cancellations and tantrums, Vijay Nair presented what practiced OML followed with independent artists that his company usually manages and promotes. “We have taken up an international practice of ding a ‘landed deal’ (where the artists fees is determined for the time after they land at the event, such that it includes travel and logistic expense, and they handle these aspects themselves).” He mentioned that artists were receptive to this and so long as they kept to their end of the contract so did the artists.
Nair also said that when there is an issue, it is important to pick that fight, because only after that does the situation better.
Taking the discussion forward Mohomed Morani admitted that on the Bollywood end of the spectrum, things were quite different and relationships mattered more than paper work. “Having said that, even though I have a great relationship on direct terms with many artists, now since they have a management agency I respect that and go through the agency when booking the artist,” Morani elaborated.
Subramanium added, “Artists now want the advice of a manager and this is only an increasing trend, so its best the industry embraces this.”
Revisiting the topic of artist costs and the issue of adhoc pricing by artists, Nair suggested that artists’ pricing should depend on the amount of revenue they are able to generate from fans in a ticketed event.
Subramanium further re-inforced the importance of collaboratively working to find a solution in adhoc pricing as well. “As EEMA we should sit together with all the talent management companies in India and determine a cap for each artists such that no unrealistic numbers become the standard just because one client is willing to pay that amount. Also artist costs should be dependant on their ability to generate ticket sales.. Not an adhoc number..”
The discussion led into a QnA session where Abbas took on questions of entertainment curation, the need for proper paper work and contracts and the importance of having more dialogue like these within stakeholder of the industry to unearth more solutions.
