First successful product demo with Home Routes artists
The Pitch’s extended pilot period saw another milestone tonight: we presented a product demo for Home Routes artists involved in a digital concert program, The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show.
We walked artists through The Pitch from the presenters viewpoint, followed by how artists and presenters can use The Pitch. First, we spent some time showing how the search works to find artists and agents based on filters and keyword searches. We also viewed a few examples of effective, entertaining pitches that artists have uploaded as part of Manitoba Showcase in October-November 2021. The speed of the platform and its ease-of-use received top marks.
The agent and artist view is all about putting your best foot forward so concert buyers and arts presenters can find and view artists’ pitches and profiles that interest them. Account creation until the end of April is simple – identify your role, submit basic contact info and you are in for a six months free trial! No fuss.
Log in happens with a unique verification code each time, sent to your mobile phone or email.
Following the simple account set up, users then set up their profile. This is where genre information, self-identification, audiences and performance formats are gathered, both through canned items and free form keywords.
From there artists – or agents on behalf of artists – can create a show pitch. The first step is to upload performance videos (read the guides!), a brief introduction and an extro, along with still images, key text elements in the pitch asset library. That private work area is then used to populate the pitch template using the pitch wizard. This may sound like magic because the drag and drop functionality really makes this fast and efficient.
These pitches can then be aggregated along with other pitches in a Showcase Room. Anyone on The Pitch can create a Showcase Room and anyone at all can be invited to view a Showcase Room, regardless of whether they have an account on The Pitch or not. Especially in this early phase, The Pitch wants to encourage use of the platform with the fewest possible barriers.
Anyone who is in the touring and presenting sector can create an account today and start to use the platform. In exchange for the free trial and first mover advantages that come with it, we appreciate getting reports of any bugs or functionality issues. (Any software at this stage of development has bugs or unintended ways of working.)
We have worked through many usability issues and bugs in our regular quality control procedures and through ongoing user acceptance testing. However, when many users start to use the site, we expect to encounter more issues related to how different web browsers interpret the platform (Safari is problematic and we recommend using Chrome or Edge or similar instead. ) and how older browsers behave. We will also see how users’ brains process the information on the site and what it takes for them to learn how to make best use of this new business tool. As we receive support tickets, our tech help desk will get back to users within 24 hours, and let you know if this is an easy fix, a simple matter of the sequence of steps you have taken, or something that will take a little longer to address.
Working in partnership with users we believe has been key to getting The Pitch off the ground and advancing toward a useful digital showcasing model that serves the entire performing arts eco-system. As we are in full deployment mode now, we look forward to your feedback so we can make this the best digital showcasing platform for you.
For More Information
Inga Petri
Project Manager
inga@thepitch.ca