The Guns n’ Roses Singapore Incident: Why going Digital means more than just technology

What happens when you cross a big rock concert with the latest in digital technology? No, this is not the opening line to a schoolyard joke, but rather the premise for what may go down in history as one of the most spectacular failures in the short history of Singapore’s entertainment industry.

For those who aren’t fans of rock music, Guns n’ Roses of 1980’s fame have recently kicked off a world tour. The anticipation for this tour has made waves around the music world due to the reunion of three original founding members of the band, ending decades of very public feuding and fulfilling the dreams of rock fans across the globe.The band played their first ever concert in Singapore on Saturday night and it was the largest concert ever staged in the country with 50,000 in attendance at the remote location of Changi Exhibition Centre (beating Metallica who played to 40,000 fans at the same venue in 2013).With ticket prices ranging from $200 to $2000, fans were undeterred and the event was sold out; the stage was set for an epic show. In short, the event had all the ingredients of excitement and scale that give big rock concerts a special place in history. 

Ticketing Tech and a Cashless Concert

In the lead up to the event, the promoter of the event, LAMC, touted the use of innovative technology to make the event the most streamlined concert in Singapore to date. As well as the ability to buy tickets online, invite friends via social media, and the ability to pre-book parking, shuttles and other transport online, the majority of the hype surrounded the use of wearable RFID wristbands that would be issued to ticketholders and swiped for all purchases at the event including food and drinks, effectively making it a cashless event. 

Making headlines for all the wrong reasons

Unfortunately, expectations didn’t mesh well with reality. Monday morning saw the concert making the front page of Singapore’s major newspapers for all the wrong reasons.LAMC, the promoter, had their Facebook page and other social media flooded with complaints about the poor organization of the event. Among the complaints were reports of traffic jams to the venue lasting up to 2 hours, hour long line ups just to charge money on the RFID tags in order to be able to buy food or drinks, and another 2 hour lineup for the bar. To add insult to injury, the venue ran out of food and drinks before thousands of people even made it to the venue.LAMC issued a public apology and have vowed to process refunds to those affected. This, combined with the cost of service recovery and loss of future business means they will likely end up showing a loss on the event. It will also no doubt serve as a cautionary tale for other large acts looking to visit the country, potentially impacting the broader industry.By all accounts, the performance rocked, but the event itself was a catastrophic failure. 

Digital is more than just technology – and it could have saved the day

Despite the use of technology at various stages of the concert booking and attendance process, everything that could go wrong did. So what could they have done differently?Digital is as much about how we do things as what we do. One of the biggest misconceptions is that by applying technology alone, we can “digitize” an organization. The reality is that taking a digital approach requires a comprehensive consideration of people, process AND technology. 

The 5 Core Values of a Digital Operation

How might the concert have been different if the five core values of digital were applied?

1. Human CentricConcertgoers were asked to pre-charge their RFID tags with credit online before the concert, with the promise of skipping the queue and buying drinks with a swipe of the wrist - How exciting! Unfortunately, the reality saw people lining up for up to 2 hours only to be told their tag hadn’t been linked to their ticket and hence they have no credit. How did this happen? The organisers forgot to scan tickets at the entrance! By focusing only on the technology, no one considered the end to end customer journey (ie. The bits that happen in between the technology encounters). As a result, the technology actually created a huge bottleneck rather than a solution.

2. AgileIn the few hours leading up to showtime, traffic on the single 10km stretch of road to the venue ground to a halt, causing many to miss the beginning of the concert. Two lanes of traffic stood at a standstill, but the two oncoming lanes of traffic remained empty (obviously no one was leaving the venue at that point). By preparing beforehand with a flexible system that is able to adapt to change, the organisers could have arranged for one or both of the oncoming traffic lanes to temporarily be allowed to flow towards the venue. The result would have been a 50% reduction in waiting times. The same concept could have been applied to many of the event’s issues: rather than assuming the original design would be perfect, a better approach would be setting systems up in a way that can adapt to change and get smarter over time.

3. Data-DrivenEven the best of hypotheses can be 20% informed and 80% guesswork. The good news is, tech unlocks a whole world of data that can help us adapt to real world situations as they unfold, removing the need for crystal ball gazing. For example, LAMC could have analysed pre-event social and e-commerce data to gauge demand levels for parking, F&B, etc. This could then be used to influence behavior to even out peaks in demand for individual services, prompting shuttle bus promotions, offering special F&B packages for early bird arrivals, and revising estimates for the volume of food and drinks that need to be ordered.

4. Fail EarlyVIP ticketholders were offered pre-event entertainment before the show itself, meaning the organisers had a captive audience arriving early in the day with which they could have tested their systems. They could have pushed the use of the RFID system earlier to test the system’s limits, and upon learning that it wasn’t working, adapt their approach to revert to a lo-fi backup system that would be able to cope when the tens of thousands of additional fans started to pour in. By failing early with a small sample of customers, they could have better served the majority and avoided catastrophe. 
5. CollaborativeThe best systems are ones that embrace diversity and allow participants to co-create value. By allowing concertgoers to self-organise in certain scenarios, natural efficiencies can be unlocked: Taxi passengers could have alighted kilometers from the venue and hitched the final way with those driving private cars for a small fee, potentially facilitated via Grab Hitch or another transport partner. People were spotted buying boxes full of drinks to avoid multiple trips to the bar – venue staff left idle once the concert started could have been briefed on relevant RSA guidelines and been allowed to set up small distributed stalls with these boxes selling drinks for cash, reducing waiting times and reducing the hoarding and consumption of warm beer.

 It’s promising to see event organisers catching up with other industries in their use of technology, but the happenings of this week have demonstrated how it can go very wrong. By understanding that Digital is as much a methodology as it is about implementation of tech, these organisations will be able to serve better experiences for their customers and in turn keep the relevance of their industry alive. Here’s to a rosier future.