140. Hot tip for larp organisers: Bring-a-friend tickets are a great idea

Not too long ago, we (Dziobak Larp Studios) instituted something new: The Bring-a-friend ticket, which our Marketing Boss Olivier came up with. It’s simple, really. If you buy a ticket for an event and have a friend that hasn’t been to a given event before (CoW, FM, CoT, etc), you can buy a discounted “Bring-a-friend” ticket as an addition.

There are already larps out there that use paired signups in one form or another, but it’s the first time we’ve done that. I also haven’t seen it in this version before — where it’s dependent on whether the other half of the pair has been to this specific larp before or not.

But try it, we did.

Here are five reasons why we decided to give it a shot.

1. A discount may make it easier to get someone else to go with you to an event and try it out — whether you split the discount between you, or one of you “takes it all”.
2. It gives economic incentive to go as a two-person party instead of a one-person expedition, and often that’s more comforting psychologically. Especially if you haven’t gone to an event before!
3. There’s a mindset that’s suddenly very apparent. “Hey, we think it’s cool if you go two people together!” makes people automatically think “Hmm… maybe we SHOULD go together.” just like group tickets make people think in group terms.
4. For us, it means that more people are likely to get introduced to more of our larps. We like that! Of course, this isn’t enough to get anyone to make a decision, but it might be the thing that overcame the tipping point.
5. It encourages conversation. Just the act of asking someone “Do you want to go to this larp with me using a Bring-a-friend ticket?” means there’s at least awareness, and that’s nice from an organiser perspective.

And does it work? Yes. Yes, it does!

It’s not even a month since we introduced the Bring-a-friend tickets (when we launched the College of Wizardry events of 2018), and we’ve already had lots of participants taking advantage of them.

And perhaps most tellingly, it didn’t take more than three weeks before another big international larp jumped on the bandwagon. To us, that’s a great sign that we’re onto something. Or, as the wordsmith Oscar Wilde puts it:

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

On a personal note, I hope that more larps start doing this, because it means that more people will come to me and say “Hey, Claus, I’m going to this cool larp. Do you want to go with me on a Bring-a-friend ticket?”

Connection, opportunity and conversation — based off how ticket sales are structured. At the end of the day, that’s behavior design that I like.

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