Success measures for micro-business entrepreneurial attendees at significant events : two case studies from the world's largest music industry event

The academic and popular business literature has much to say about 'success' and what a good thing it is to pursue. In more recent times there has been increasing attention to performance measures, KPI's, and both financial and marketing metrics. Much of this, however, has been focussed on medium to very large trading companies and public sector entities who must increasingly justifY themselves in an atmosphere of growing economic rationalism. There is much less known about entrepreneurial micro-business "success", especially when it is connected to participation in a special Event where objectives are more in terms of initial exposure, credibility, promotion, distribution and networking rather than an immediate trading opportunity that can be measured fairly well in the accounts. This paper will discuss this context using a case study approach that looks at the involvement of 2 artists, Shane Nicholson and 'End of Fashion', both managed by "OneLouder Management", in the South by South West Music Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas, the world's largest music industry event. The paper looks at what literature there is on the main performance and success metrics and the main factors that have been associated with success/failure, and then comments on these in relation to the objectives that were set by the artists' managers for the event as well as any measures of possible success that they had identified. The paper also examines the specific criteria more closely aligned to entrepreneurial efforts to enhance the careers of creative artists in an international event environment. Here the paper attempts to integrate some of the literature on 'success' in international new product/service launches, in celebrity marketing, and in event involvement. The 2 cases suggest that, rather than being dwarfed and rendered insignificant, a micro-business can achieve most of their objectives and considerable success in attending a large event provided they set realistic but challenging goals, give meticulous attention to detail, give as much attention to pre-and post-Event work as the event itself, and utilise the fundamentals of both small business management and celebrity marketing, both within the micro-business' particular industry but also the general principles available in the literature.