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Change is inevitable, except in a vending machine. Look around you. The leaves are turning from green to yellow and red…change. Each week our football teams battle it out on the gridiron and the top 25 teams consistently move up and down…change. And professionally, who our students want to see perform live and how much they are willing to pay…change.

My vending machine analogy was pretty cliché, yet true. Deciding between a Snickers bar, a Kit-Kat or any of the numerous choices behind that plastic shield is similar to the choices that students have today. How do we fit into the mix in today’s age where X-Boxes, mp3 players and the Internet just scratch the surface of the entertainment choices that students have before them?

During his 2004 Concert Industry Consortium keynote address Rob Light said, “If we don’t stop just reiterating the issues and start trying some new and innovative promotions, we will stagnate and contract instead of grow.”

Those of us in the university setting face this pressing issue and find that reaching the student body is much more difficult than when we were in college. If we, as an industry, continue to place the same ads in our newspapers (that the students don’t read) or on radio stations (that they don’t listen to…thanks Ipod), we will not reach our students.

We need to get away from the cookie cutter approach that we’ve grown used to and find a way to inform this generation whose attention span peaks at about five seconds. We need to find new ways to reach them while understanding that they live in a world where computers dominate their lives. On their computers, they listen to music, they get lectures from class, and hopefully they buy tickets. So how do we get them to choose to come through our doors for an event? CHANGE!

One thing we found at Penn State, which should be of no surprise to anyone, is that marketing to this generation is extremely difficult. What works here may not work at Illinois or another university. Each of us has the difficult task of first understanding who our patrons are, and second, how to reach them.

I mentioned that the cookie cutter approach doesn’t work anymore. Let’s take a look at the mediums that we’ve been using and how they relate to today’s student:

Newspaper - You can’t just place an ad in the school newspaper and/or the local paper before the on-sale anymore. Today’s students are not reading the paper as much as we think. The key word is read. Yes, they may pick up the newspaper, scan the headlines and find out how their favorite team fared the night before, but they are not looking at the advertising, which is more than 50 percent of the paper’s content. More students are getting their news online instead of in traditional newspapers.

Radio – You can no longer give away a bunch of tickets or drop a substantial part of your advertising budget on local radio in order to build hype around an event. Why? More students than ever may be listening to music, but not necessarily to the radio. Ipods, mp3 players, computers, CD players and satellite radio are their music mediums. Even those who still listen to traditional radio know that they can change the station with the touch of a button (another useful tool to avoid listening to ads that they don’t really care about).

Television – Usually a pretty reliable medium. The only problem is that there are way too many options. With DirecTV and cable in upwards of 150+ channels, there are too few marketing dollars to spread around.

E-mail/Web – The latest and greatest method. They’re Generation Y. They’re computer savvy. There is no way this can’t work…right? Wrong. In a recent study conducted on our campus, students said that if they didn’t recognize who an e-mail is from (i.e., the venue, radio station, etc.), they delete it. If you get lucky and they do open it up, if your content isn’t easy to read and to the point, you’ve lost their attention and their potential sale. A similar study also showed that our students are more apt to check out a website like ticketmaster. com or musictoday.com instead of our venue sites. They claim that they feel more comfortable with these sites because they have a lot more to offer and are more user-friendly.

So how do we “change” how we do our business? The above mediums can still be useful; we just need to modify how we use them. There are no easy answers out there. Let me start by taking and adapting Brian Becker’s (Clear Channel) “Five Keys” to the future of our business and to what works best for your situation:

1. Work together to expand the universe of activity - Ask students for help. You’ll be surprised by their response.

2. Broaden the partnership between artists and events – Work with your campus, your promoter, and the agencies to make your event better. Try to offer a developing artist series that benefits the agencies and artists, as well as providing some inexpensive entertainment options.

3. Provide value to the fans – This is my personal favorite. Give your students and your patrons more value. Their choices aren’t going to get any smaller, so make coming to your venue “valuable” to them.

4. Bring fresh life to the concert experience – The first thing that will turn off your audience to your event is if they feel that they have “been there, done that.” Make their concert experience just that, an experience!

5. Embrace technology – Be an innovator when it comes to technology. Don’t be afraid of it. If you can stay on the cutting edge, you’ll have a better chance at reaching your audience and making it easier for them to choose an event at your building instead of another venue.

And while you’re pondering over what you can do in your market and you’re trying to decide between that bag of Doritos or a Baby Ruth, don’t forget the most important thing…CHANGE!

Al Karosas is the associate general manager for the Bryce Jordan Center, a 16,000-seat multi-purpose facility on the campus of Penn State University. He can be reached at awk1@psu.edu.