The Customer Is Always Right…

by:

Joe Patti

I have been seeing a number of claims that the full quote ends with “…in matters of taste.” As much as I would love that to be true given that retailers have been bludgeoned with the phrase over the years, it apparently is not. While Harry Selfridge is credited with creating The Customer is always right, there is no record of him completing it with a sentiment about taste.

Reinforces the idea that you always need to research such things before taking them at face value. Which is apt because according to wikipedia, the saying was used to create a sense of confidence in people at a time when caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, was the maxim of the day because malpresentation was so rampant.

While the phrase is attributed to various people, the intent was to assure customers in the early 1900s that the merchant would work to guarantee their satisfaction.

About 10-15 years later, various people were already observing that customers were taking advantage of the saying to bully merchants and engaging in a little misrepresentation of their own. So it has continued for over a century as witnessed by the fact that people are trying to append a few more words to the saying to create a counternarrative.

Certainly, more than a century later there is also plenty of misrepresentation coming at us through various media to warrant the use of caveat emptor as well.

Perhaps it is time for a new saying that both tempers customer demands and urges a degree of discernment before purchasing.

Varying How You Make Donation Appeals

by:

Joe Patti

Short, interesting piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy discussed research that found when non-profits varied their messaging on Facebook, they received more donations.

They are careful to say that these results may only hold true for Facebook as a social media platform and that they didn’t factor in other fundraising activities like direct mail.

They looked at 752 organizations which participated in a one day Omaha Gives fundraising events in 2015 and 2020.

The types of messaging the researchers categorized were:

Beneficiaries: Explaining how the group helps people.

Goals: Encouraging donors to help reach a fundraising goal.

Gratitude: Thanking donors for their gifts.

Mission: Focusing on how the organization helps people.

Social media engagement: Asking donors to share the post or change their profile picture to boost the campaign.

Solicitation: Asking for donations.

[…]

In addition to determining that using different types of messaging works best, we found that when nonprofits frequently share messages of gratitude or that highlight progress toward their goals, they tend to raise more money than if they just ask for donations.

Obviously your mileage may vary as they say. Similar efforts on Facebook may not yield the same results in 2025. Five years is an eternity in social media years. Also the fundraising dynamics in Omaha may not be the same in other regions of the country.

One of the theories the researchers had was that varying the messaging helped reduce donor fatigue by not always using the same appeal language in every post.

Understanding Barriers To Entry By Visiting Stores That Cause You Discomfort

by:

Joe Patti

Nina Simon posted that she had been interviewed on Kyle Thiermann’s podcast (also on YouTube if you want view a video of them talking.)

They talk for awhile about Nina’s transition from running Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) to writing murder mysteries while taking care of her mother as she dealt with an advanced cancer diagnosis.

Around the 40 minute mark, Nina starts to talk about how she came to be the executive director at MAH. I have written a fair number of entries over the years about Nina’s thoughts on creating an accessible environment for communities at arts and cultural organizations. One of the things she has talked about is creating figurative (though sometimes literal) new doors for people to enter to engage with the organization.

In this podcast episode she touches a little on the empathy that an organization’s staff needs to have to understand the barriers to participation people experience. She says she has gone to conferences and challenged people to go downtown and enter stores that make them feel uncomfortable and pay attention to what it is that causes that. Is it the decor? The way people dress? Rituals and practices you are unfamiliar with?

This resonated with me because I have had that experience and had the same thought about understanding how new audiences can feel ill at ease entering arts and cultural spaces. I have had the experience going to speak to social groups who have traditional practices they enact, but also going into an unfamiliar restaurant and not knowing where and how to order.

As I think about it, I have probably felt more comfortable navigating a new to me performing arts venue than some restaurants.

Nina mentions that you can put out all the messaging you want about people being welcome and how they should feel comfortable wearing what they want, but if the behavior of the other people they encounter sends a contradictory message your efforts may come to naught.

She says even if all elements align to reinforce the welcoming message you hope to convey, people aren’t going to trust your organization as much as they trust their friend’s rock band or knitting circle. Forging alliances and relationships with affinity groups in the community can help cultivate that trust.

Nina also mentioned that it was pretty humbling to realize no matter how much effort they put into creating welcoming environment and programming, it would never increase the engagement with the museum as much as the presence of a good coffee shop and bar in the food hall that was developed next to the MAH.

Take a listen for these and other insights. Also, check out her book on engaging audiences, The Art of Relevance. I just bought my fifth copy — I gave two as gifts, but two other copies I lent out never came back to me.

No Print At Home & Added Will Call Charge Increasing New Barriers To Entry

by:

Joe Patti

Over the weekend I received a comment on a post I made in October 2019. The post dealt with the theory that the response that an arts and cultural experience was “not for me” might be based in technological barriers people might experience. I had titled the post “How Long Before You Can Only Participate If You Bring A Phone?”

In her comment, Lady Jane said she couldn’t attend a performance because she didn’t own a smartphone. While she didn’t mind picking up tickets at will call, you apparently couldn’t enter the venue to get to the box office without some feature on a smart phone.

I had run into a similar situation twice in the last two months. A day after buying tickets for my niece and nephew as a Christmas present, I was informed there was no print at home option for the show so neither I or my sister could receive the tickets in that manner. The only option was to download a proprietary app to a phone and receive them that way. If we wanted to pick up tickets at will call, there was an extra charge.

Last month, when I was going to another performance, again there was no option to print at home and an extra charge to pick them up at will call. Because I have a pretty good familiarity with ticketing systems I was able to finagle a way to print at home rather than having to download an wallet app to receive my tickets. (This is a totally different venue than the one I purchased tickets for my sister’s family.) Had my gambit to circumvent the lack of print at home options not worked, I was going to grumble at the executive director with whom I have a relationship.

In the end there was no problem but most people don’t have the tech savvy to do as I did, nor the confidence of having a professional relationship to lean on.

My original post was made about 6 months before Covid concerns accelerated the need to have touchless interactions, (though there are just as many germs, if not more, on a phone passing a scanner than on a piece of paper undergoing the same motion), so it may have taken longer to reach this point had the pandemic not occurred.

I am not sure what is driving the move to no print at home option. The only thing I can think of is an effort to cut down on ticket resellers who transfer print at home tickets by email on the secondary market. It definitely appears to be creating a new barrier to participation for people. Especially if there is an additional charge to pick up tickets at will call.