Closedown

This blog will no longer be updated by me.

Thanks for reading.

David

Guestlist available

Don't know what this is all about? Read "How to get on the guestlist" for all the information you need.

Club: Kinky Malinki
Venue: Pacha, London
Date: Saturday 15th July
More Info:

Album launch party: Jay and Dom, Grant Richards, Paul Gray, Percussion by Ali Bongo.

10pm-6am

www.kinkymalinki.com

If you want to get into this event for free and you are prepared to take pictures and/or write a review then follow the instructions at "How to get on the guestlist"

Tag: guestlist

The End and Red Bull give something back

It’s not all sex, drugs money and hedonism: The cynical clubbing industry occasionally drops a genuine surprise.

This time it’s The End and Red Bull who have come up with £70,000 to sponsor a 3 studios that allow large numbers of disengaged young people to learn skills in mixing and music production.

We have been sufficiently inspired at Gurn to request an interview to get more details. Great PR for both companies.

How do they make it even better?

Get some of the kids involved to blog or podcast about their experiences.

Something missing from Express DJs

If you are DJ you may have had the same email we had recently about a new service called Express DJs.

The idea is to save DJs time on sending in chart returns and reaction sheets. As I have a puny DJing career it doesn’t interest me, but pro DJs may well benefit.

I say "may well" because until you sign up there is no way of finding out if it works or how it works.

My experience could be the same as many looking into the service. The idea sounds good, possibly something we could plug on Gurn.net to our DJ membership.

So we read the email and click the link.

We get taken to the Express DJs landing page that tells me more about the service and asks me to part with my cash.

How can we trust that Express will do as they promise?

It’s here we want to be able to trust Express. It’s here we would benefit from testimonials, screenshots, a blog, a no obligation free trial and maybe access to a forum filled with DJs who already use the service and love it.

We could even review the service on Gurn in our clubbing features section.

Right now we just don’t care enough. It’s bad for sales and bad for PR.

The service sounds like a great idea though.

Maybe the folks at Highlight Media (for it is they who run it) want to get in touch with me to tell me more?

I’m sure the Gurn.net DJs would like to hear about it. Now over to you...

Some clubbers are more equal than others

How do you get people through the door of a club night?

Put up posters, hand out flyers, get your listings online?

All good methods of attracting clubbers but none of them answer the fundamental question everyone asks when weighing up a night:

"What’s in it for me?"

For many the answer comes from their mates – the clubbers with the inside knowledge and wide social circle. Sometimes these people are called opinion leaders, sneezers, connectors or maverns but it’s all the same end result:

Genuine word-of-mouth from one clubber to another. Marketing generated by a passion that can’t be faked.

How does a club promoter build a relationship these influential people?

It’s a complex question. After all, these people have reputations to protect.

But you could just start talking and start trying to build a community.

All the best club nights feel like that.

Plus, It’s got to be better than flyering at 3am in the cold.


(Some links via The Viral Garden)

Why do only celebrities suffer from exhaustion?

The clubbing world suffered one celeb lands biggest excuses recently.

Dutch DJ Sander Kleinenberg has "exhaustion" and has cancelled all his gigs.

While noone wants to mock the health of any other person (famous or not), exhaustion is something that normal people just don’t get.

When did being tired become a legitimate reason to have a month’s holiday?

Especially when your job is playing other peoples records.

Being exhausted smacks of a cover up of something more sinister.

That said, we certainly hope that is not the case. Everyone at Gurn.net wishes Sander a speedy recovery. We are big fans of his production (especially The Fruit) and have had a great time going out clubbing and seeing him DJ.

And maybe when he is better he can work on his PR.

If you were Sander, how would you have spun it?

How much do clubbers spend at festivals?

According to Cream, the average person spent nearly £100 on stuff like buses, taxis, trains, drinks, food and accommodation for last years Creamfields.

The economic windfall of the end of summer festival for local businesses is likely to be more than £3 million.

No wonder 90% of residents were in favour of the event moving to Daresbury. The licence was granted this week.

Hopefully our funkpills legal high stall will get a slice of the action.

If you are going to Creamfields make sure you pop over and mention the Gurn blog. I’ll give you a freebie so you can spend your £100 on other stuff.

Keep clubbers together outside the club

A big part of clubbing is the feeling of being part of something: Joining in a community of like-minded souls (no matter of freaky your mind).

How promoters create that feel outside the club?

An innovative way would be to use Ning – a website that allows you to create simple but stylish "social" pages online in a few minutes. You can manage members, post pictures, advertise events and even have a forum.

It won’t be the same as getting wasted in a club and being everyone’s best mate for a few hours, but it will help create a community around a night.

Which will get more like minded people through the door.

DJ Tips & Tricks Video Demonstration – A no brainer for Allen & Heath

How do Allen & Heath get DJs to fall in love with what they do?

How about this: They make a mixer that DJs have been waiting for - The Xone:3D - and then put videos online of a great DJ like Ralph Lawson using it.

How can they make it even better?

Put it on YouTube, make it easy to share and invite others to show off their tricks with their own Allen & Heath mixers.

Free advertising.

7 things The End (or anyone else) could do to improve

Club websites are crap. There is too much style over substance, reliance on big name nights or DJs for creating buzz and focus on information over conversation.

Luckily for us there is an exception.

The End in London’s clubbing site is a welcome respite from death by Flash.

What makes The End so good?

Firstly the layout looks great and is easy to understand. You can go where you want and get back without fuss or hunting.

But the real winning touch is the extras. You can go to The End’s site for the listings and hang around exploring stuff like the in depth DJ profiles while listening to their mixes, looking at the gallery or reading the interviews.

It’s nothing groundbreakingly amazing but it shows time and thought have been put in to what people want.

That said, The End still has some work to do to take it to the next level.

After all, modern marketing is about a 2-way conversation.

Here is how they (and any other club with a website) can improve even more:

• Setup a subscription feed – There is a handy dandy email link, but how about a subscription link so fans don’t even to give their email address. No need to worry about spam for them and loads of extra subscribers who are much more likely to read the site.
• Flickr photos – Put the clubbing photos on a service like Flickr and allow fans to comment on them and setup groups of End Club fans taking snaps. Give the best ones a prize every month.
• Features on the shop – Get resident DJs to review the latest Endrecordings tunes and feature it. Let the DJs be honest. If they give a good review sales will be higher than just sticking up a link saying "shop".
• Allow trackbacks and comments – These will let clubbers talk to you and about you. You will be able to see every bit of feedback in real time. You will know exactly what people think.
• Give something away – Free mixes are great, so are listings. But how about podcasts? Discount vouchers? DJ tips and tricks? The possibilities are endless and the more you give away, the more people will spend time on your site.
• Join everything up – Go where the people are online. Make a MySpace profile, a Squidoo Lens and a DSI group. Use them to build a clubbing community. Link everything together through the main website. Allow clubbers to move between the pages and get back to where they started without feeling like they have gone anywhere too far away.
• Use press releases to show off – Given the right angle, a press release offering something for nothing would certainly get press on Gurn.net (and I’m sure other places too). Don’t be afraid to show off the stuff you are giving away.

Can you think of anything else? Have you tried these things and succeeded at other clubs? Let me know what you think.