MCC Marketing Group

MCC Marketing Group Boutique live entertainment marketing agency. Paid social, campaign strategy & audience development for artists, venues & promoters. 15+ years. Proven results.

Contact: [email protected]

Two artists moved to an island off the Kerry coast and made Ireland's first vermouth. During lockdown they dried gorse i...
08/03/2026

Two artists moved to an island off the Kerry coast and made Ireland's first vermouth. During lockdown they dried gorse in jam jars to learn the flavors. This year, Falstaff named it one of the top 10 vermouths in the world.

Last July, Orla and Anna Snook O'Carroll brought it to Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, introducing Valentia Island Vermouth to American buyers, bartenders and distributors. The first pours landed stateside in May.

Look at the backbars already. The Dead Rabbit, where the US launch party poured. Bar Snack, ranked #3 bar in North America. The Basque Connection at Bar Monto, one of the house's top-selling cocktails. Bar Americano. BarFly. BLT Prime. Loafer in Brooklyn. Tara Mor. And in Boston, The Dubliner and McGonagle's.

Out this week? Here's your order: ask for a Valentia Island Spritz. At Bar Monto, it's The Basque Connection. Purists, take it over ice with a twist of orange and thank us later.

20 botanicals, an organic Verdejo base, gorse foraged on the island, and a saline finish straight off the Atlantic. As Orla told IrishCentral: "We want them to taste Ireland, taste County Kerry, taste Valentia Island."

We are so proud to partner with this wife-and-wife founded, Irish-born brand. Two entrepreneurs who built one of the world's top ten vermouths from scratch, now winning over the toughest cocktail rooms in America. A better fit for MCC is hard to imagine.

They call the vermouth an ode to the island. America is raising a glass to that.

Sláinte, Orla and Anna. The next chapter is already pouring.

🍸 Bartenders and beverage buyers: want Valentia Island Vermouth behind your bar? In New York, order through MHW. In Boston, Atlantic Beverages. Or message and they'll point you to your rep.

Follow along for the stories behind the brands and shows we help build their American audiences.

The most common mistake we see has nothing to do with the artist, the venue, or the price.It's the campaign that started...
08/01/2026

The most common mistake we see has nothing to do with the artist, the venue, or the price.

It's the campaign that started six weeks out when the audience needed six months. The targeting that aimed at everyone and reached no one. The ad that could have been for any show in any city - we've genuinely seen them go out missing the artist's name.

Specificity sells tickets. Urgency sells tickets. Making the right person feel seen sells tickets. That was true when we first said it in April, and the receipts have only stacked up since.

Honest question 👇 when a show is slow at your venue, what gets blamed first? (The real answer is almost never the thing that gets blamed.)

If you're the one filling the room, you're in good company here. Follow along.

Quick story. Years into working at Madison Square Garden, I was home in Ireland when the radio presenter announced, "Her...
07/31/2026

Quick story. Years into working at Madison Square Garden, I was home in Ireland when the radio presenter announced, "Here's a classic - Uptown Girl, by Billy Jo-ELLE." And I LOL'd, because I'd completely forgotten: that's how we all said his name growing up. Billy Jo-elle, on the radio in every Irish kitchen, every car, my whole childhood.

Which is what made it so surreal when I ended up on the marketing team for his Madison Square Garden residency.

Two years ago this month, Billy played the final night of that residency. Ten years. 104 monthly shows. 150 lifetime nights at the Garden, and a banner in the rafters like the athlete he was in that building.

By the end it wasn't a concert series anymore, it was a destination. People flew in from every corner of the world to experience it - a New York landmark you could buy a ticket to. MSG called it the greatest arena run of all time: the first monthly arena residency of its kind, and nothing has matched it since.

I was there the day we announced the bittersweet final run of shows. You could feel what it meant, to the building, to the city, to every one of us who got to be part of it, and of course to Billy himself.

Here's what a decade of sold-out monthly shows taught me: a residency like that gets built, month after month, by a building and an audience showing up for each other. By analyzing and assessing the sales data. By knowing the right moment to roll into additional shows, and the moment to hold fire and be patient.

Billy said it himself from the press conference stage: "We could continue to sell tickets, but ten years, 150 shows – all right already!" The demand never dried up. The story simply got its ending.

That's what "venues become iconic" actually looks like in real life, and it's the standard we strive to carry into every room we work in now.

Two years on, nobody's filled that slot. Some experiences are just irreplaceable.

If you're somewhere on the road to filling rooms like that, you're in good company here. Follow along.

Every venue has them. The rows you check before your coffee, the corners dying on the manifest while the rest of the hou...
07/30/2026

Every venue has them. The rows you check before your coffee, the corners dying on the manifest while the rest of the house fills.

Do the math on yours: 200 slow seats, 30 performances, $45 a ticket. That's $270,000 sitting in the dark every season, and the instinct is to throw more money at the same ads. But the buyer on your site wants the best seats she can get at a decent price, and no boost sends her to your slow rows. Slow sections need their own play: a discreet offer on just that inventory, the seat bundled with the night, the corner repriced as the smart family 4-pack.

Slow sections are usually a targeting problem, not a demand problem. Save this for the next campaign that's closing slow.

Tell us 👇 which section is yours? Every house has one.

If you're the one filling the room, you're in good company here. Follow along.

If Instagram disappeared tomorrow morning, what would you actually own?Not your followers. Not your reach. Not the audie...
07/28/2026

If Instagram disappeared tomorrow morning, what would you actually own?

Not your followers. Not your reach. Not the audience you spent years building. It all lives on rented land, and the landlord can change the locks any morning they like.

IRL: An act with 1.1 million monthly listeners sold 12 tickets in Chicago. An act with 25,000 listeners sold 350 in Vancouver. Streams aren't fans. Followers aren't buyers. The only audience you own is the one whose names sit in YOUR database.

Data is power in this business. Slide 8 is the sequence we use to build it.

Tell us, which slide hit hardest? 👇

If you're the one filling the room, you're in good company here. Follow .

"Joy is so unconfined as to make laudatory adjectives redundant." That's The Irish Times, five stars, on The Sound of Mu...
07/27/2026

"Joy is so unconfined as to make laudatory adjectives redundant." That's The Irish Times, five stars, on The Sound of Music: the largest professional musical ever staged in-house on Emmet Place, selling out night after night, extended through August 23.

Swipe left for the full review.

🎟️ Tickets at the link in bio, while they last.

Follow along for the shows and venues we help sell out, in Ireland and across the US.

Opening week at Cork Opera House, and the city is absolutely buzzing with The Sound of Music.The largest professional mu...
07/27/2026

Opening week at Cork Opera House, and the city is absolutely buzzing with The Sound of Music.

The largest professional musical ever staged in-house on Emmet Place: 37 performances, 45 cast members led by West End star Matt Blaker and soprano Wendy Carr, a 16-piece orchestra, and an offstage crew more than 100 strong. Shows are selling out night after night, and the run has already been extended through August 23.

And this morning The Irish Times made it official: five stars. "Ecstasy is here delivered... Everybody is ready to burst out singing, and not only on the stage."

For this Cork girl, helping fill the hometown house is about as good as this job gets.

We're proud to be part of the team behind the ticket sales, working alongside CEO Eibhlín Gleeson and a venue that believes in what Irish-made musical theatre can be.

If you've been meaning to go, this is your window. 🎟️ Tickets at the link in bio.

Follow along for the shows and venues we help sell out, in Ireland and across the US.

📸 Shane J Horan + Clare Keogh

Honest question, from people who've lived most of the answers. What's the hardest part of the job nobody outside it unde...
07/24/2026

Honest question, from people who've lived most of the answers. What's the hardest part of the job nobody outside it understands? We read every reply. If you're the one filling the room, you're in good company here. Follow along.

Every job taught me something the next one needed. The internship taught me to say yes before I felt ready. The coordina...
07/22/2026

Every job taught me something the next one needed. The internship taught me to say yes before I felt ready. The coordinator years taught me that details sell tickets. Madison Square Garden taught me how tickets move at the biggest buildings in the world, and that the marketer’s work is the quiet engine behind every loud night. Founding MCC at 42 taught me the rest.

Twenty years of filling rooms, now showing how it is done. That’s the whole story, and it’s all this account talks about.

If you’re somewhere on that same road, you’re in good company here. Follow along.

If you checked TM1 this morning before you brushed your teeth, this account is for you. I know the routine because I liv...
07/21/2026

If you checked TM1 this morning before you brushed your teeth, this account is for you.

I know the routine because I lived it. The midnight refresh of the ticket count before you go to bed. The pacing report open in one tab and Ads Manager in the other. The soft Tuesday counts and the sick feeling that comes with it, that feeling that you have to fix it and there’s no one to ask HOW. Nobody teaches this job. You learn it live, on-sale by on-sale, with seats to fill and money on the line.

That’s why this account exists. I share the audience development behind the sold-out show, what healthy pacing looks like, what I do in the weeks when it isn’t, and the real numbers behind all of it. Twenty years of learning it, from intern in Ireland to leading the marketing team at Madison Square Garden and then founding my own entertainment marketing agency.

The show gets the applause. You’re the reason there was a line outside. If that’s you, you’re in good company here. Follow along.

Michelle McCarthy, Founder & CEO

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New York, NY

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+19177539970

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