Marketing Treatise for Park Place/Gameofficial.com

The small business that we are going to analyze for this exercise is Park Place Studios. Park Place Studios is a private recording and audio production facility that specializes in Rap, Rhythm and Blues (R&B), Jazz, and Soul music. There have been projects that venture outside of their primary concentration, but the aforementioned genres are their principal focus. Park Place Studios has been in business since 1999, where it was founded in a small apartment in Riverdale, Maryland. The business has recently completed the first phase of its expansion into a larger studio space. It is now located in Upper Marlboro, Maryland in a private facility that exemplifies the comforts of home while recording. The vision of this facility is to provide a comfortable place for artists to be creative to express themselves in order to change the world with their works of art.

Arrangements were made to interview the owner, Samson Dixon, during the month of February. Samson Dixon also serves as the chief engineer, musician, and producer within the Park Place organization. The opportunity was granted to observe the physical environment of the studio on several occasions in order to complete this analysis. On the first occasion, an actual studio session was observed as part of the interview process. Several notes were taken as to the progress of the session and the business that took place. The client for the session was Avail, an up and coming urban clothing company. They were completing a recording with an independent rap artist who is based out of the Washington, D.C. area. This artist was contributing a song as part of the launch of their inaugural clothing line. During the recording session, interactions between Park Place staff and the client were observed carefully. Notes were taken to determine the approach utilized for client relations and overall customer treatment.

There were two other occasions in the physical environment of the studio was observed. These were the occasions in which multiple interviews of the owner Samson Dixon were conducted. During these interviews a complete picture of the organization was provided that included the organization’s history and its success and failures. The physical recording facility is comprised of three rooms: Studio A, Studio B, and a vocal room to record vocals and other instrumental overdubs. Studio A is utilized primarily for all of the recording sessions and Studio B is used for pre-production and for BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) services. The advent of technology in the recording process makes BCDR an important of studio operations. It was pointed out during the interview process that equipment often malfunctions for various reasons. These malfunctions can occur during crucial junctures of recording sessions and workarounds must be figured out instantaneously in order to maintain the continuity of the session. BCDR services are crucial to this operation because if a particular piece of equipment is malfunctioning then it often has to be switched out at a moment’s notice. In addition to the physical recording facility, there is a separate space for the corporate office. The corporate office contains the business records and other pertinent marketing materials (business cards, pamphlets, etc.) required to advance the business of the organization.

Park Place Studios is incorporated as a limited liability company in the state of Maryland. The incorporation serves as the foundation of the organization’s business structure in which other elements are built upon. This includes the organization's internal environment, which is a small but efficient environment in order minimize expenses and maximize profitability. It is composed of two salaried employees, numerous interns that are critical to relieve excess workload requirements, and contractors that provide the critical advertising, marketing, legal, business, and other outside musician and engineering requirements necessary to achieve success and maintain viability. These elements within the organization are organized in a top-down approach to establish a positive corporate culture, which is conducive to proper employee behavior. The management style exhibited is a progressive one, empowering employees to make many of their own decisions within established guidance and direction. Changes in philosophy and/or leadership style are under the control of the owner.

Park Place Studios has expanded to become an organization with a diverse product offering. They currently provide the following distinct services:

1. Recording Studio Services - Use of the studio complete with a highly skilled audio engineer. The base price of the studio rental is $40 per hour. Equipment rentals and musician services are available to the client at an additional cost.

2. Music Production Services – This includes the services of Park Place’s music production team, which is inclusive of music composition and programming. The base price of a Park Place production is $1500 per song. Upon completion of the said tasks, the artist is presented with the finalized music track.

3. Artist Management and Development – Inclusive of comprehensive career planning services, handling of complex contract negotiations. Park Place Studios is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the artist portfolio including voice sessions, training, scheduling and travel for appearances, choreography, music development, artist short tern and strategic financial planning. The cost for these services is presented as two options: 1.) 20 percent is taken from the artists’ earnings or 2.) A consulting fee of $70 per hour for services rendered.

4. Gameofficial.com – This sector of the company is the distribution arm in charge of managing music releases and go-to-market items via online music vendors and traditional retail outlets. Gameofficial.com takes 50 percent of revenues generated and passes the other 50 percent to the artist, making the situation a joint venture.
Park Place Studios differentiates itself from its competitors by providing all services in one physical location, with quality-trained staff at an economical price for both the company and artist clientele. Its competition is defined as any recording studio or urban production company independent or major that provides audio production services. The customer population that Park Place Studios markets its services is the up and coming recording artist who has a vision of establishing a recording career. This population segment is not limited to a particular age demographic. However, there is some market analysis required for Park Place’s services where payment is not an upfront fee, but a percentage of earned revenue. In these situations, it is important for Park Place to conduct a market analysis and a feasibility study to determine whether a particular situation is viable for investment. The reason being is that as a small business, there are time constraints for Park Place resources. These constraints make it imperative for Park Place to be prudent in participating in any artist situations that prevent Park Place Studio from maintaining profitability. Park Place’s prudence allows it to maintain flexibility combined with the required attention to detail that is paramount to positioning itself to meet, beat, and exceed the competition.

The primary marketing strategy utilized to appeal to the desired customer population is strategic ad placements in prominent publications on the street and the Internet. Example websites and publications include the Washington City Paper, Yellow Pages, and Craigslist but are not simply limited to these outlets. These are outlets that allow Park Place Studios to develop a consumer base from scratch without a track record to fall back on. However, the most successful forms of marketing for Park Place Studios has been word of mouth from successful clients and strategic product placement. Successful projects such as the recently released album from L!ssen on a prominent independent record label have made a significant contribution to the consumer base of Park Place Studios. The use of social networking sites such as Myspace.com and Blackplanet.com have been instrumental in providing a repository for prospective clients to preview sample works before establishing a business relationship. Future marketing strategies to be employed are participation in key tastemaker events for our customer population. These events include the Dynamic Producer Conference, NBA All-Star Weekend, The Grammy Awards, and the Winter Music Conference. Participation is critical because it affords Park Place Studios with the opportunity to interact with prospective clients from all parts of the world. These clients have the resources to facilitate recording project on both the independent and major record label level that is crucial for record label growth. Another future marketing strategy is product name branding on Park Place recording productions and at shows which some aspect of Park Place is an active participant. This strategy is critical because marketing is a reinforcement exercise in order to stay on the mind of the customer population. Continual reinforcement is required to maintain a competitive edge over the competition.

Park Place Studios employs the number one rule in customer service, “The customer is always right!” in developing and maintaining good customer relations. As part of the interview process, it was observed that the session was structured for complete catering to the client. This does mean that the engineer was completely subservient, but if there was a case where constructive criticism needed to be levied or boundaries needed to be enforced, then the resolution was performed in a manner where complete respect and session integrity was maintained. It was observed that control of the recording session and expert knowledge is required as part of the customer relations process’ for the client to be comfortable with the overall result of the recording session. Maintaining quality customer relations is critical for Park Place Studios to maintain a competitive edge over the competition that has grown to be vast in today’s marketplace.

During our interview we had an opportunity to discuss the various publics that affect Park Place’s ability to achieve its objectives. It was acknowledged that although financial publics were not involved in the inception of the organization, it would be required to facilitate future growth. The reason being that increased competition has cut into revenues that come from the studio operations. This competition comes the development of technology that has reduced the entry cost of developing a recording studio and establishing recording projects. As a result, artists are feeling empowered to develop their own studios to save money and maximize time and convenience. These challenges have forced Park Place to establish a diverse product offering in order to maintain a consistent stream of revenue. But the diversification comes with a significant cost to Park Place Studios. Which is why the greatest marketing challenge as seen from the owner’s perspective is establishing value in the eyes of the financial publics in order to acquire the necessary funds in order to complete expansion. This involves translating the creative endeavors of Park Place Studios into documented financial statements that can be effectively communicated to the financial institutions in order sustain funding.

In conclusion, the key thing that I learned from my visit to Park Place Studios is that Park Place Studios is an organization that successful, but still has room for tremendous growth. There are strengths and weaknesses were observed in Park Place’s operations that pose a direct challenge to the organization’s growth. How this organization facilitates this growth will ultimately determine whether it elevates itself into an American institution or succumbs under the pressure of immense competition. It should be an interesting journey to watch, observe, and document for the future.