Seth Godin made a post last week that aligns with the idea that it is easier and cheaper to retain a following rather than constantly trying to acquire new customers. Aubrey Bergauer will often post on social media about the issue of audience churn in the arts along these same lines.
Godin uses a slightly different, though very applicable, framing to illustrate his point
A farmer might yearn for twice as much land. But it’s far more efficient to double the yield on the land he already has.
Marketers often hustle to get the word out. To reach more people. And yet, activating the fans you already have–the ones who trust you, who get the joke, who want to go where you’re going–is far more reliable.
[…]
This is the overlooked secret of my book streak. I write books for my readers instead of trying to find readers for my books.
Source
Obviously this doesn’t mean one should abandon efforts to better connect with a broader segment of ones community which are core to the purpose of arts and culture non-profits. Since the long time base of arts audiences are dwindling there is a need to add new people.
Godin notes in part of his post I didn’t quote that it is better to double down on those that agree with you and encourage them to bring their friends than to spend a lot of effort convincing those who oppose you.
There are often segments of the community who are inclined to attend, but haven’t yet. Activation efforts focused on existing fans can envelop them as well. I had someone stop me on the street a week or so ago to tell me how interesting an event promoted on a marquee poster looked and assured me he would bring his family to see it. They didn’t attend the event. However the fact that he was engaged enough to stop me on the street and tell me he viewed one of our programs as something he and his family would enjoy was an encouraging sign. I suspect we will see him and his family in our space before the summer is over.
Last month an article in The Guardian reported that the number of parent reporting that they enjoy reading aloud to their kids 0-4 has dropped from 64% in 2012 to 41% for the same age group in December 2024.
Among the things I found most concerning is that there appears to be a degree of gender discrimination in terms of who gets read to as well as a difference in how different generations perceive reading aloud as enjoyable.
A significant gender disparity was identified, with 29% of 0- to two-year-old boys being read to every day or nearly every day compared with 44% of girls of the same age.
[…]
Gen Z parents are more likely than millennial or Gen X parents to say that children’s reading is “more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do”. HarperCollins said that parents in this age group grew up with technology themselves, so may think “fun comes more from digital entertainment than from books”.
The survey was conducted by publisher HarperCollins and book data company Neilsen so there may be a degree of biased self-interest involved. However, I don’t think they are off-base in their concern that children may grow up seeing reading as an academic subject you are tested on and can either succeed or fail at rather than a pleasurable pursuit.
The survey findings suggest that though it is less than a majority, many adults still do find reading with their kids to be enjoyable. Research has shown that reading with and to children increases the likelihood they will find reading an enjoyable lifetime pursuit. HarperCollins and Neilsen encourage parents to continue reading with their children even after they appear to have mastered the skill.
Some parents stop reading to their children once they can read by themselves, assuming that their children will choose to continue reading, or that if they continue to read to their child who can already read, “it will make them lazy and less likely to read independently”, reads a report accompanying the survey. “None of these beliefs are true.”
I would have liked to know more about why those beliefs about negative impact of reading to children after they mastered the skill were incorrect but I didn’t see a link to the study in the article.
Interesting bit of research by Jeff Apruzzese who looked at whether opening for a major band on tour provided a bump in fame to launch them to stardom.
Apruzzese had been a live musician on tour with the group Passion Pit for about six years. In his experience, going from doing your own shows in from of 3000 people to opening for a band playing in front of 15,000+ felt a little alienating.
Reality was different. After playing our own packed shows where fans cheered and called for encores, we suddenly found ourselves in 15,000-capacity arenas, where it seemed like everyone was ignoring us: chatting among themselves, still getting to their seats or waiting in line for food and drinks.
It was a wake-up call. The transition from being a headliner at a smaller music venue to opener for a major act didn’t feel like a step forward. It felt like starting over.
He conducted a study of bands who opened for major groups and found there was often a surge of listenership on streaming platforms of 18-20%, with some even seeing a 200% bump. However, that listenership often faded relatively quickly after the tour was over. Success that was promised by hitching ones wagon to a big star rarely emerges.
Apruzzese suggests that musicians face a more difficult job trying to gain a following because people aren’t invested in curating their own listening experience leaving the choices to an algorithm.
In a landscape defined by passive consumption, there’s still something powerful about the shared experience of live music. A performance can create an emotional connection that a stream simply can’t.
Today, discovery often starts with a playlist. Someone hears a song and maybe adds it to their rotation. But they rarely click to learn more about the artist. Listeners follow the playlist, not the person behind the music…
Live performances offer something different. A great set can turn a casual listener into a true fan. I’ve heard countless people say a particular show changed the way they experienced that artist’s music, that it left a lasting impression and forged a bond with the singer or group.
That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from an algorithm…
Prior to going on sale with the $11 tickets on May 1, they did offer fuller priced subscriptions to two of their venues ranging from $137-$666 for the series at the Academy of Music and $17-$166 for their Flex Package at two other venues. Both were promoted encouraging people to get their seats before the $11/seat subscriptions went on sale.
So to a great extent this is a matter of how important it is to you as an audience member to get the seats you want and how much you are willing to pay for them. If your risk-reward calculation suggests you can get acceptable seating waiting for the $11 on sale, then you wait and see.
There weresome stories out about the return of $11 tickets in early April. There was also a video announcing the return of the pricing and addressing the critics. Essentially, they say they got the audience cross-section they were seeking and the attendees were invested in the experience. At the end a woman in an Instagram Reel says she saw everyone having a great experience. Opera isn’t dying, “it is just too daggone expensive.”
According to the article, over the last five or so months, the booth hasn’t done a huge volume of sales for local organizations. From what I have read elsewhere, the service in Philly licenses the TKTS brand so it doesn’t have the resources of the Theatre Development Fund behind it. But on the other hand, those running it don’t have their attention and interest spread across multiple markets.
Previous efforts by other ticket discounters didn’t meet their promise and left the city. The TKTS booth is locally owned and run by the Philadelphia Visitors Center Corporation and so is more invested in the success of local organizations.
Those interviewed attributed the low sales volume passing through the booth to lack of awareness. but they have high hopes. Those using the TKTS service are counting on it to raise their profile and awareness among both locals and visitors.
Services like Gold Star and TodayTix “didn’t step up in my mind. All the work was on us,” Flannery said. ”But the genius of TKTS and what Visit Philly and the Visitor Center are doing is that it’s focused on Philly.”
Quintessence’s collaboration with the TKTS booth makes her hopeful. “It’s a win for Visit Philly, the Visitor Center, and a win for the bigger arts community,” she said. “It’s especially perfect for us because we’re in Mount Airy. We’re not in Center City, so it takes a little bit of city knowledge to find us.”
In time, Flannery said the TKTS booth could play an integral role in bringing Philly theaters back to pre-COVID numbers. But more broadly, she expects Philly arts to become a more recognizable part of the city’s identity, similar to the Rocky Steps and Liberty Bell.
They are using the example of the effort to develop the show, 3 Summers of Lincoln, for Broadway as a backdrop for the discussion of all the forces that come into play when trying to make a show succeed.
My favorite, probably unsurprisingly, is the second episode that primarily focuses on the business side of things, including the role the owners of the Broadway house play.
For those who aren’t aware, 33 of the 41 Broadway theaters are owned by one of three companies – the Shubert Organization, the Nederlander Organization, and A.T.G. Entertainment. So they have a lot of influence over what shows appear where and how large a share of the revenue they will take. As one Broadway producer says, “ It’s a fantastic business. It’s heads I win, tails you lose.” No matter whether the show does well or not, the house always wins because they get paid first.
Of course, they also talk about the labor costs of putting on a show when 13 different unions are involved. One of the producers admits that some of the more arcane rules in the union contracts are likely the result of someone trying to cut corners at some point and creating an unsafe or exploitative environment.
But all these things are predictable. Even after 100+ years of Broadway, the producers interviewed for the episode all pretty much admit that no one really has any idea why shows do well or not. Show that were smash hits in the past get big budget revivals and fail. Meanwhile, smaller budget off-Broadway shows become unexpected runaway hits.
Even as producer Hal Luftig talks about why people may decide not to see Broadway production of Legally Blonde, there is a clear sense that while his hypothesis has merit, he simply doesn’t really know.
Shows don’t work on Broadway for a whole host of reasons. it doesn’t have to be that the show is awful. You come to Broadway, let’s just say you have 30 other choices. What people choose can be a byproduct of where they are at that moment. We learned this on
Legally Blonde. If you are coming into the city and you have two kids, a boy and a girl, invariably, the boy said, “Oh, I don’t want to see that. That’s a girl story.” So they choose another show that everyone’s happy with.
There are people who feel like I don’t need to see that on Broadway, I saw the movie — not really comprehending that a good adaptation has its own vocabulary. It’s not just the movie on stage. If a movie is associated with a star, as was Legally Blonde with Reese Witherspoon — “Well, is Reese in it? No? I’ll go see something else.”
A core reason I liked this episode is that it did look at all levels of the life cycle of Broadway shows. Not only the original productions and revivals, but the economics of taking the show on the road for a tour and then licensing it to high schools to produce. Sometimes a show that failed economically on Broadway ends up doing pretty well on tour and/or generating a good revenue stream in high school productions.
One of the cases they mention is the Broadway adaptation of the movie Newsies! which was only intended to have a token run on Broadway for a few weeks to placate fans. It did well on Broadway because the production costs were kept low. It did well on tour because the Broadway set was designed to be taken on tour. And it has had a great career as a high school show because the cast requirements are flexible and scalable to the needs of schools.
As ever, I am paying attention to data on various trends, one of which is the level of perceived trust of cultural organizations. Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience have reported that trust in cultural organizations has increased, particularly since the end of the pandemic.
Last week they released some findings about perceptions during the first quarter of 2025. In general they found that trust of museums has held steady and trust in performing arts organizations has seen an uptick. But they warn that it would be a mistake to assume this trend will continue. (emphasis original)
On average, Americans trust cultural entities more than the daily newspaper, other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), state agencies, and federal agencies – and this has not changed since the administration changed and attendant new policies were issued!
[…]
It is also not reasonable to infer that trust perceptions will continue to increase or remain unchanged. We are looking at national perceptual changes on a short timeline (i.e., one quarter of a year). The American public may still be watching cultural organizations’ reactions closely, or they are trusting that these entities will remain true to their previously stated missions and values.
One of the aspects most valued in cultural organization is being mission-driven. Dilenschneider and company had reported on this about a year ago and I summarized a bit in a blog post then. At the time they warned not to assume younger audiences valued the mission focused elements of an organization more than other generations because they were deeply invested in the mission of organizations. Rather, IMPACTS suggested it may just be that they haven’t been marketed to for as long as previous generations.
In any case, they recommend organization continue to focus on and communicate their mission as they tackle challenges they may face as they move into the future.
What particularly caught my eye in this latest bit of data analysis is that the survey data reflected a belief that organizations should recommend behavior. This is certainly something to think about.
Generally speaking, Americans do not love being told what to do. However, a majority of Americans “agree” or “strongly agree” that exhibit-based and performing arts organizations should suggest or recommend certain behaviors or ways for the public to support its causes and mission…
Even now, Americans generally expect cultural organizations to recommend behaviors to help elevate their communities as it relates to their missions. Depending on your organization, this may mean suggesting ways to further art education, keep the ocean clean, protect endangered species, cultivate native plants, advocate for theater, bring music to emerging audiences, make science-based decisions, or any number of things. And these action items may range from signing up for a program, to becoming a member, to donating, to attending an event, to telling folks about an organization’s important work.
She discusses the need for cultural organizations to align their programming, practices, and operations toward meeting outcomes desired by audiences/participants/community members. She provides some practical examples of organizations around the world who have achieved this by doing everything from publishing a children’s book, sending postcards to children, offering wellness classes, and centering activities around a decommissioned fire truck.
These support her proposal on how to shift organizational business models:
Shift the value proposition from showcasing artistic product to delivering audience outcomes (e.g., wellness, belonging, inspiration, emotional restoration).
[…]
Expand resource allocation to include different talent, tools, and partnerships—especially those outside the arts sector (e.g., wellness practitioners, educators, social service orgs).
[…]
Reframe success metrics to measure what matters to your audiences, not just what matters to insiders or funders (e.g., social connection, personal growth, first-time participation).
Rebuild your value network by cultivating funders, partners, and press outlets that validate outcomes instead of just prestige, tradition, or aesthetics.
Something she wrote at the beginning of her piece coalesced a lot of disparate concepts for me:
Historically, the arts have been one of the few avenues for accessing beauty, intellect, and high-status cultural capital. The product itself was scarce, revered, and gatekept.
But since the early 2000s, the digital revolution has shifted power to the consumer—creating a world where people expect personalized, on-demand experiences that deliver clear value and meaningful outcomes. Shaped by pre-digital norms, the arts sector has struggled to respond.
It occurred to me that it may not be entirely true that the shift started in the early 2000s. I have always attributed my feeling that I have had permission to access cultural experiences to the fact my parents would take us to performances, museums, and historical sites when I was younger.
But my lifetime has seen increased access to experiences. I have gone from three channel over the air television to cable to VCR to video rental stores to dial-up internet to high speed internet to video on demand (including YouTube) to streaming content.
The practice of gatekeeping experiences has always seemed silly to me. Now I wonder if it was shaped in part by the increasingly accessible world (even though neighbors had color tv, cable, and HBO years before I did.)
I suspect that even if others did not have the same perspective and experiences with cultural opportunities that I did, their expectations of accessibility were being shaped in a similar way.
In other words, I think it is perhaps a mistake to believe this shift of expectations began with generations whose first experiences with technology began in the 2000s. There has probably been a subconscious awareness of unmet need and expectations far longer than that.
Therefore it would be a mistake to think what Ruth proposes is targeted to engage and increase the participation of younger generations.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Long time readers know that subscribe to the idea that just because you can measure something, it doesn’t mean the result is meaningful. Bowen illustrates this by pointing out that having goals to increase participation among people who meet certain demographic characteristics doesn’t advance your understanding of why they are there, how you can make them feel welcome, and make it easy to decide to return.
For a lot of organizations the answers to those questions are central to their mission and vision.
Goodhart’s Law reminds us that mirroring demographic ratios in museum content is not an end in itself because ratios have little relationship to a museum’s ability to fulfill a role in a city or region.
What counts isn’t who people are on paper, but what progress they’re trying to make in their lives. Demographics might tell you something about who is in your space, but they reveal nothing about why they came or what they hoped to achieve.
Bowen admits that it is possible for progress in their lives can fall victim to becoming a meaningless target, it is is more difficult to do. What everyone needs to achieve their goal is differs from person to person even if they have the same goal. Thus it is tough to focus on providing a standard solution to everyone. And because what everyone feels they need is specific to them, organizations have to engage in more direct and active listening to provide the outcomes community members seek. (emphasis original)
Supporting a community goal like “helping parents cultivate their child’s curiosity” requires understanding the diverse approaches people take in pursuing that goal and the alternatives people in a particular place might turn to as they seek to achieve their goal. You can’t reduce it to a single number. Second, progress metrics require ongoing listening rather than predetermined solutions. When you focus on supporting goals, you have to constantly validate whether your approaches are working, creating a natural correction mechanism.
This year they found that a number of museums have lost followers on Twitter/X which they chalk up to people deleting their accounts on the platform rather than ceasing to follow the museums. One museum deleted their Twitter/X accounts while many other stopped posting on the platform.
At the same time it doesn’t appear many museums increased their presence on other platforms. While people with Instagram accounts automatically received a Threads account when Meta created the platform in 2023. However, museums which post content on Instagram either didn’t start posting on Threads or stopped posting there. Few of the top 100 museums started posting on Bluesky which was viewed as the prime alternative to Twitter/X by many who left that site.
The Art Newspaper staff didn’t make any observations about increases or decreases in usage of Facebook.
The social media platform with the biggest increase in the past year has been Tiktok. The article suggests the increase might have been more if the platform wasn’t continually under a ban threat in the United States.
After an initially slow adoption of TikTok as a platform for museums (only 21 of the top 100 most visited museums had TikTok accounts according to our 2023 data) it is becoming increasingly popular, with 56 of the 100 museums now owning accounts. Russian museums in particular are finding an audience on the Chinese-owned app, no doubt in part because the US platforms Facebook, Instagram and X are banned in the country.
[…]
…Meanwhile, the Met’s incredible year on TikTok—gaining around 900,000 followers—will have been in vain if the US government goes ahead with its planned ban of the app, over concerns about national security, on 5 April.
Seth Godin had a recent post on the “knock, knock” promotional business model. The way he describes it put me in mind of the Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come,” approach to advertising. Godin says this model works in cases where a movie or book is announced featuring a famous actor (or by a famous author).
The level of high anticipation creates a tension you can use to sell the product. You don’t have to share much of the content because people have already sold themselves on the idea.
However, he says there are offerings like those from cultural organizations that succeed better with a different approach.
Mass media was the way creators could spread the tension and announce their work. You’re waiting for “who’s there!”
It’s worth distinguishing these knock knock offerings from cultural organizations, communities, and tools. In these cases, you can tell the whole story, give away the entire idea, and the IP is worth more, not less.
He goes on to cite movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or songs that become anthems which only gain in influence as more people become familiar with them. He discusses the value of focusing on abundance and connection rather than scarcity. He admits it is a difficult process and perhaps not as well supported by research and evidence as people may like.
Many of the creators I’ve worked with over the years feel this tension and then fall into a gap. They have a fine knock knock on offer, but promotion is grating, endless and feels demeaning. Hustle isn’t the solution, not any longer. The best way for this sort of work to become popular is for people who have engaged with it to tell their friends (see the Blair Witch Project for an example). But “getting the word out” has never been more frustrating or difficult than it is now. The web is not TV.
We need this sort of thoughtful, long-form scholarship, but the business model for it is shaky indeed. The breakthroughs happen via peer-to-peer promotion, not hustle.
At the same time, it’s never been more productive to build tools and communities. And it helps to do it with intent.
He basically goes right to the heart of a big pet peeve of mine. Even though he cites current streaming sites, the practice of offering lower introductory rates to new subscribers goes back decades. All through my youth I would hear pitches from long distance phone services, cell phone carries, cable companies, cable channels like HBO, Showtime, etc., which would offer discounted rates to new users while maintaining higher rates for loyal long term users. The message was clearly that your loyalty wasn’t valued.
In the two minute video, Reich spends over half emphatically reinforcing the fact that they haven’t raised the price in three years and that this increased price only applies to new and returning subscribers. Since the new rates don’t go into effect until May, interested folks have a month to become classified as an existing subscriber. Meanwhile, he reminds viewers that the cost of their Netflix subscription has jumped twice in the time it took to watch the video.
The rest of the video he discusses that Dropout has increased their spending sixfold in the last three years to create more product, that the increase will help pay the staff a fair wage, and that as the CEO he does not own a boat.
While I first assumed he was implying he did not receive an exorbitant salary I later realized he might want to buy a boat. (Given that Dropout is comedy content the intended message may be both.)
So in this spirit, I will close by suggesting folks might want to consider using the analytics function of their ticketing system to identify people who have regularly attended over the last 3-5 years and send them a coupon code for a discount or some other benefit to thank them for their loyalty.
The problem is simple. You don’t have a tactics problem. You have a strategy problem.
Borrowing tactics from someone with a useful strategy isn’t going to help because it’s their strategy that’s better, not their tactics.
And using tactics from someone who got lucky isn’t going to help either. Someone needs to get lucky, and it was them. It’s not their tactics that made it happen. Going to the same bank as Charlize Theron isn’t going to make you a movie star.
When in doubt, focus on your strategy. The tactics will follow.
This reminded me of a quote from Joseph Campbell about the Knights of the Round Table embarking on the Grail quest
“‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at the point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.’
“No way or path! Because where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.”
Apparently this quote has stuck with me for awhile. In searching for the 2007 post I originally used this quote in I found at least two more instances I used this quote, including in conjunction with another of Godin’s posts.
Perhaps I have used it so much because this is sentiment comes up often in relation to things like copying bylaws from other non-profits or using the same marketing and advertising techniques.
Every organization and community is different with different relationship dynamics. At one point in our lives I am sure we all realized that we couldn’t have the same close relationship with a friend that they seemed to have with another person in their social circle. On paper there may be no difference between you and that third person, but for some intangible reason your friend and they seem to share a significant affinity for one another.
The same is true to a greater or lesser degree on a community scale except some individuals may feel a stronger affinity than others. As Godin says, in relation toa collective you are targeting your tactics need to emerge and be informed by your strategy rather than borrowed. Otherwise the disconnect between the two will feel inorganic and inhibit the relationships you seek to develop.
Yesterday I received an email letting me know that Colleen Dilenschneider and her colleagues at IMPACTS Experience had released a new post titled Ticket Purchasing Frustrations Are On the Rise. (subscription required) I knew this would be a topic I wanted to write on.
An hour later, I get an email from someone who knows I have a subscription asking if I had read the piece. In turn, people had emailed him knowing of his interest in the topic asking if he read it.
Clearly I needed to address this post sooner than later, but I had a lot of meetings and wasn’t able to digest the piece. I don’t usually post on Thursdays, so here is a bonus post for you all.
The second paragraph of the piece reads:
Think twice before assuming that this article merely points out areas for independent ticketing systems to improve! These hassles may in fact be the fault of cultural organizations themselves.
That is pretty much what the research has found. Some of the issues are due to the design of the ticketing system, but a lot of the problems originate with organizational policies and procedures.
As usual, the data is broken down between exhibit based and performance based arts and cultural organizations. While the frustration is rising for both groups, the negative attitudes have increased most for exhibit based organizations – especially those with timed entry tickets.
According to the data Dilenschneider and IMPACTS present, reported barriers related to the ticket purchasing experience between 2015 and 2018 were pretty low and stable. Once the pandemic hit, ticket purchasing moved toward the forefront as an issue.
The barrier value of “Hard to purchase/transact” skyrocketed…That’s an increase of 146%! In this span of years, we experienced many more potential visitors saying that it was just too hard, complicated, confusing, or inconvenient to purchase a ticket to make it worth the effort.
[…]
But you’ll notice another alarming jump in “difficult to purchase or transact” as a driving barrier just last year! Today, this barrier is approaching the 100 index value threshold wherein the sector risks losing attendance and people are choosing to do something else because of ticketing-related issues…
Timed entry is an additional frustrating factor for visitors to exhibit based entities. Attendees would rather enter when they are ready rather than during a specific window. There is also a concern about committing and then having kids get sick, scheduling conflicts pop up, being delayed by other factors.
Obviously, these are concerns people have when attending performing arts events too, but it seems that since the requirement to show up at a specific date and time has long been part of the process, it isn’t as big a barrier. Though it does still present a barrier as people are increasingly able to have the experience they want on their schedule.
While being difficult to purchase or transact certainly remains a modest barrier to attendance, it’s not a prohibitive barrier for many performing arts organizations. At the end of the day, performing arts programs have long been date and time specific. As a result, guests are habituated to selecting a timed and dated ticket.
Also, as performing arts leaders know well, some programs and performances secure more patrons than others. Attendance to performing arts organizations is especially dependent on how interested folks are in the specific programming. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that far greater barriers to attendance for performing arts institutions are simply preferring an alternative leisure activity.
One thing that plagues both exhibit based and performing arts entities roughly equally is the data entry burden. People don’t like to have to enter all their information in a number of boxes. If they have to hit next to go to a new page rather than fill everyone out on one screen that adds to the frustration.
If they have to fill out a marketing questionnaire as part of the process that can present a deterrent. (my emphasis)
As explained above for exhibit-based organizations, it’s not uncommon for some institutions to “throw in another question to collect data, while we’re at it!” From additional questions ranging from how someone heard about the organization, to their length of stay in the city, to asking if they’d like at attend or qualify for an additional event, to any number of additional queries requiring a response or even a “next” click, organizations benefit by contemplating the potential negative impact of holding up the transaction. It may seem quick and easy to add on an additional question or two (with internal benefit, no doubt) from the view of a staff member, but these are a rapidly growing annoyance for potential patrons.
The takeaway isn’t to avoid collecting helpful information from patrons, but to consider how doing so may impact the transaction experience.
They point out that many consumers are used to doing a one click purchase on Amazon which allows them to skip entering information into different fields…and leaves the customer feedback survey until after the transaction is complete.
As I always write in connection with these posts based on data IMPACTS has crunched I am only summarizing part of the whole. They also cover factors like pricing confusion that can be associated with packages, discount eligibility, and dynamic pricing; availability of payment types; digital ticketing; and purchasing interface on desktop vs mobile.
There was an article on Fast Company this week that discusses customer churn. For the most part the piece is written from the perspective of being a company that has sold another business a product/service that they choose not to renew. Some of that part of the article can be view in parallel with subscription renewal, but there is a fair portion of their advice which applies to single ticket sales as well.
The article notes that the decision not to renew is often made six months prior vs. in the last 30 days or so before the renewal discussions are scheduled.One of the issue identified in the article is the onboarding not matching the promise of the sale pitch. Clearly that can be an issue for customers of arts and cultural organizations when they find their experience isn’t what they expected based on the promotional messaging.
Satisfaction surveys are problematic in that they only measure satisfaction at a specific point in time rather then over an entire span and they don’t record the subtle signs that a decision to disengage has been made. The author of the Fast Company piece, Ron Carlson, suggests being proactive and interactive with the process of collecting feedback from customers, both current and past.
Instead of relying on static surveys, consider having real conversations with both current and past customers to uncover what’s actually happening. What you’re likely to hear in these conversations will shock you.
Customers Don’t Feel Heard: “We raised concerns, but nothing changed.”
The Real Pain Points Were Missed: “We didn’t leave because of price—we left because we weren’t seeing value.”
Your Biggest Risks Are Invisible: “We made the renewal decision months ago.”
Instead of simply sitting around waiting for a renewal conversation, take active steps to retain your clients:
Listen To Lost Customers: Post-churn interviews reveal patterns you won’t see in dashboards.
Map The Customer Journey: Identify weak points before they become churn risks.
Have Regular Check-ins: Not just to “touch base,” but to understand evolving needs.
Ask Why Customers Stay: Understanding what’s working helps reinforce those behaviors.
Issues like not feeling heard and decision to leave being based on value rather than price are factors I have discussed across a number of posts in the past. Likewise, identifying weak points which might include external issues like parking, dining and safety as well as the ticket purchase and staff/volunteer interactions are also topics I have raised.
I think it is also important to pay attention to that last point -analyzing what is working is just as important as identifying problems. It is easy to view anything people aren’t complaining about neutrally. But it is just as important to catalogue what people say they value as assets and invest in reinforcing what is great about those aspects of the experience.
There is a lot of conversation among arts organizations these days about the need to create connection and show the value of arts organizations to the community. I worked with an artist this weekend who really exemplified this aesthetic.
We presented the Masters of Hawaiian Music which is typically George Kahumoku and a rotating roster of 2-3 other notable musicians from Hawaii. In this case it was Herb Ohta, Jr. and Sonny Lim. Kahumoku has been hosting the Maui Slack Key show for over 20 years and has been a musician for far longer than that. He was trained as a visual artist, but is also a farmer, cook, writer in addition to being a sculptor and printmaker. Definitely a renaissance man.
When I initially contracted the show, the local museum was planning having a quilt exhibition around the same time that was going to have 2 out of 20-30 quilts from Hawaii. Over the course of the year that evolved to 100% Hawaiian quilts. I arranged for Uncle George Kahumoku to speak about quilt making the night before the performance and then join the members of a local organization for a potluck and mini-cultural exchange.
The local organization said there would be 15-20 from their group at the talk and potluck and the museum didn’t know how many would attend from their mailing list.
We got to the museum and there were already 40-50 people gathered in the gallery. Uncle George turned around and told me to go back to his hotel room to get his guitar. He really enjoyed the experience because he had never seen so many Hawaiian quilts in one place. He would watch his grandmother and her friends make quilts for every newborn, but he had never seen one placed on a bed and used because they were treated as heirlooms.
He joked when he inherited his father’s quilt, his dad let him look at it and then closed the chest up a few minutes later and told him to never open it again. He didn’t mention if he gave his son the same instructions when he passed it on.
Later at the potluck, upon learning some students of hula came an hour to hear the museum talk, he made everyone move the tables and told them to dance while he played familiar songs on his guitar.
The next night, before the show he was out in the lobby greeting audience members and handing out slips to fill out to “win stuff.” The slips were obviously a way for him to collect address so he could contact people in different parts of the country to attend his shows when he was in the area. But he was also very much making himself available to the audience to chat with him rather than delegating this job to subordinates. (Okay, so he pressed me into helping him so maybe there was a little subordination going on.)
He was back out in the lobby at intermission with Ohta and Lim chatting with the audience. (I had to nudge them back on stage.) Then they were back immediately after the show until everyone left.
It is difficult to communicate the vibe and dynamic via text. His agent may have explained it best when she mentioned his instinct leans toward creating connections and socialization. She mentioned he was likely in his happy place at the museum talk and potluck more than even at the concert.
As much as he was trying to gather people’s contact information, his goal wasn’t to optimize that process. He started drawing names to give things away as soon as I introduced him rather than waiting until the end of the show and taking the opportunity to gather more names at intermission.
Also at some point he managed to collect the names of every staff member and volunteer in the building and acknowledged them all before the performance started. The morning after the public show, I got a long text from Uncle George telling me how much being able to see the quilts meant to him and how he would write about the experience in his memoirs. Again he praised our staff.
I knew by then that he was an exemplar of the level of sincerity and investment that arts organizations need to manifest in their interactions with their community.
In my post yesterday I briefly referenced research Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience have released showing that arts and cultural organizations have gained an increased perception of trust since the relaxing of pandemic restrictions.
Generally, exhibit based organizations (zoos, botanical gardens, museums) are regarded as being entertaining. That isn’t as true for performance based organizations. (my emphasis)
Other than live theater, performing arts organizations are on the whole perceived to be less entertaining than exhibit-based organizations.
But before you panic, symphonies/orchestras and other performing arts organizations, remember that these data represent market research, which includes perceptions from people who both do and donot attend these types of organizations. Those who visit with regularity tend to rate the entertainment value more highly … This finding may represent one of those perceptual mismatches between “insiders” and the broader market, where regular attendees who are more familiar with the type of experience offered will likely find it more engaging than those who do not know what to expect…Seeking out opportunities to increase relevance and help potential attendees engage with experiences may offer a potential pathway forward for creative performing arts leaders.
There is a similar result in terms of perceptions of being welcoming to people like me and likelihood to recommend. Live theater is perceived as being more welcoming and have a higher tendency to be recommended than orchestras and other performing arts organizations.
Interestingly, when it comes to perceptions of being assets to the community, live theater and orchestras are about on par with each other with other performing arts organizations trailing slightly. They attribute this to a mix of high level of trust performing arts and exhibit based organizations enjoy, perception of being educational, and existence as a venerable community institution (for longer established orgs, naturally.)
I am skipping over an immense amount of content they provide. I have almost completely omitted data for exhibit based organizations and probably could have written an entry three times as long based on the performing arts data alone. Additionally, after they provide a macro level view of these trends they drill down on each of the 11 organization types with a short description and infographic summarizing the perceptions that act as headwinds and tailwinds for each.
Last month, Forbes website hosted an article “6 Things That Arts Leaders Should Do Right Now” It is written in the context of all the funding cuts and policy changes being promulgated on the federal level.
Except for the suggestion to emphasize the economic impact of your work in the community to garner the support of local businesses and community leaders, the advice is generally to move away from transactional relationships with the community and focus on your core cause and role in society.
Identify the role that your organization has in society.
Magladry, who advises a number of museums, recounted how many museum directors are reviewing the various role that museums can play in communities (e.g., truthteller, protagonist, convener) and how their institutions can act in these roles. This strategizing might require more collaboration between managers and board members as well as artists and community members.
[…]
Many of these recommendations are echoed in Alex Sarian’s book, The Audacity of Relevance, … Sarian argues that arts leaders must ask themselves: What are we good for? rather than What are we good at? In order to answer those questions, arts organizations should have a viable value proposition that tells people why they might engage with the organization and choose its goods and services over other institutions in a clear expression of its plans to address their wants and needs.
Karen Brooks Hopkins, formerly president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, suggests that arts organizations need to move away from thinking in terms of only philanthropy to thinking in terms of investment. “When communities that have a density of arts organizations are successful – economically, socially, and of course, artistically – then there is a reason for cities and municipalities of all kinds to make an ongoing financial commitment to them,”
The also article emphasizes the importance of changing the internal culture and structure of the organization to be less siloed so that everyone is working collaboratively to achieve these goals.
Break down siloed work environments.
Adapting to new challenges will require more internal collaboration between departments and more partnerships with other organizations in finding ways to serve audiences and communities. Reaching out and being open to new ideas and approaches may result in finding new funding sources and new audiences for your work.
It can be worth considering that we often don’t know the motivations behind complaints. Often people legitimately want to bring about some sort of change or resolution. Other times the endgame might be an increase in status or affiliation in the estimation of others or perhaps even for oneself.
In one of my early posts which I can’t find with the blog search function I noted that while people may be used to the idea of a money back guarantee, it isn’t a refund they really want when they register a complaint at a performing arts event. That is just sort of a default concept that has circulated.
If you have spent time getting dressed, going to dinner, finding parking, perhaps arranging for a babysitter, a refund probably isn’t going to provide actual satisfaction unless you are motivated by a desire to establish dominance, lower expectations, or perhaps manage blame for problems you have created. Even then getting the money back isn’t as important as having gotten compliance.
In that original post I had advised finding other solutions to resolve a person’s complaints than sending them home with their cash back. Despite not being able to find the post, I know that is what I advised because I have been operating under that philosophy for decades. To a certain extent Godin’s list somewhat solidifies that approach for me because he lists even more reasons for complaints than I had conceived of which may be more important for the complainer to achieve than getting the money back.
But the range of solutions you need to offer may need to be broader than just offering vouchers to other performances or drink tickets. If someone is complaining to advocate for things like greater accessibility for themselves or others, the changes they seek may be more significant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you are wondering what blurbs are, you aren’t alone. In a totally non-scientific survey at a book seller the NY Times article writer conducted, 18 out of 20 people responded they didn’t know what it was. Once they were told, they said blurbs didn’t impact their buying choices as much as the summary of the story on the book jacket/cover. Those that buy books online said they place more importance on what other buyers have written about the book.
And in fact, there is no data that the blurbs help to sell books at all. Like their customers, shop owners interviewed for the story said that other than some really recognizable names, they hadn’t seen customers pay attention to blurbs.
Blurbs are basically words of praise that other authors have given to a book. Most authors don’t like soliciting those blurbs because it is time consuming and potentially humiliating if someone you admire refuses you. Not to mention the whole process cultivates a bit of an incestuous quid pro quo environment.
In his statement, Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster said:
Trying to get blurbs is not a good use of anyone’s time,” Manning wrote. He commended “the collegiality of authors,” but pointed out that “favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.”
A number of authors are issuing sighs of relief while others are hoping this practice becomes more widespread.
This story resonated with me because about six hours before I saw it I had picked up a book related to arts management and after scanning the nearly two dozen blurbs, muttered that none of those giving blurbs really had any relevance for me. If I was thinking that as an arts insider, it was a lesson to me to consider how little things I did think were important might mean to audience members.
If you are asking, “Okay, so what is negative substitution,” IMPACTS explains it like this:
Negative substitution is a phenomenon wherein the number of people who profile as active visitors leaving the market (i.e., by way of death, relocation, or migration) outpaces the number of people who profile as active visitors entering the market (i.e., by way of birth, relocation, or immigration). Essentially, people who fit the profile of a cultural visitor are leaving the market faster than cultural entities have been able to replace them by expanding their audiences. The result is a shrinking visitor base.
Engagement cycle is how the average time between when a person first visits an organization and when they return. For exhibit based organizations, this is an average of 24.7 months. However broken down by different disciplines it varies. For aquariums it is 23.8 months; art museums it is 24.1; Children’s museums it is 29.7 months.
Similarly, for performing arts organizations the engagement cycle is 28.5 months, but for symphonies it is 28.7 months and for theaters it is 25.8 months.
They break down these rates for 11 different organization types in the article. These examples are just a sample.
Negative substitution rates vary for each of the 11 types as well. For aquariums the substitution rate is .991; art museums is .955, children’s museums is .92; symphonies is .907 and theater is .946.
As an example of how these two numbers come together in a relevant way, here is an example using the general exhibit based substitution rate of .982 and engagement cycle of 24.7 months:
An organization welcoming 1,000,000 visitors per year may be engaging their current audiences effectively (via marketing, exhibits, etc.) and yet they could reasonably expect to engage only 982,000 visitors 24.7 months after that, and 964,300 visitors 24.7 months after that. Every visitation cycle leads to progressively fewer visitors, even though our hypothetical organization is doing everything right by their current audiences!
Because this organization is not actively working to expand its audience profile, it is losing attendance over time simply due to shifts in the population.
They provide a similar breakdown for each of the 11 organizations if you want to see the trends for your particular corner of the cultural landscape. Some of the numbers become a little sobering. For example, an orchestra serving 1 million people in 2025 might expect to be serving 822,600 people at the end of the second cycle in 66.2 months.
His first point about audiences not making it easy to learn what boxes they need checked reminded me of an Arts Hacker post I made which mentioned the “5 Whys” technique often required to drill down to discover root causes and motivations. This is because the first answer you often receive often just reflects a surface understanding.
The first why might elicit a response that someone values the symphony for live performance. Asking why live performance is important might get an answer of extraordinary experience. Why does that matter? Makes me a better person. Why is it important to be a better person? Creates a sense of inner harmony.
Freeman says if you only asked Why once or twice, you will end up focused on product features and benefits and not really learn about what people see is a value of the experience to them as a person.
Godin’s point about everyone not having the same boxes and that great work finds emotions, stories and possibilities dovetails with a lot of what Ruth Hartt espouses for marketing the arts in a way that responds to audience needs. Many of the marketing message examples she uses resonate with a desire to de-stress, have a sense of harmony, spend time with family and friends, and other things people may want out of an experience.
Among the most effective ways to communicate that you offer those sort of benefits is through messaging and images that tell stories and evoke emotions. To some extent using this type of messaging may help audiences create new boxes to check–or rather validate that their root needs from an experience are worth verbalizing more frequently rather than concealing.
It isn’t just the crowds, but also poor signage, flow of attendees and long waits despite holding timed admission tickets which upset people.
On Monday, a 74-year-old clinical psychologist from Paris, who said she had been a regular visitor to the Louvre for 40 years, exited the popular temporary exhibition, Figures of the Fool, feeling battered.
“I’m leaving in a state of extreme fatigue and I’ve vowed never to visit again,” she said, declining to give her name. “The noise is so unbearable under the glass pyramid; it’s like a public swimming pool. Even with a timed ticket, there’s an hour to wait outside. I can’t do it anymore. Museums are supposed to be fun, but it’s no fun anymore. There’s no pleasure in coming here anymore.
A day earlier I had seen a piece on the NBC News site where French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major renovation to the aging museum facility which would include moving the Mona Lisa to a space “accessible independently of the rest of the museum.”
I am not sure if that means it would be permanently located in a separate space or if it is only temporary for the term of the renovation. Given that many people only visit The Louvre with the express intent of viewing the Mona Lisa and leaving, it may be wise to maintain that arrangement.
As I was reading these stories, I recalled that I had written a post about organizations discovering during the pandemic that visitor satisfaction increased when capacity restrictions were in place. I had remembered that Disney had decided to limit park attendance rather than go back to pre-pandemic levels in an attempt to preserve that level of customer satisfaction.
I had forgotten that the article I cited also mentioned the Louvre was scaling back admissions from 45,000/day to 30,000/day for the same reason. I had wondered if they had reverted to admitting larger numbers again, but upon re-reading the NBC News piece, apparently they had maintained the lower capacity numbers.
In 2021, des Cars became the first woman to head the Louvre, a symbol of French culture around the world. Since then, she has introduced several measures to make the museum more accessible, including a cap on visitors in 2023 to reduce overcrowding, extending opening hours, and pushing for the creation of a second main entrance.
If they are admitting fewer people, have an additional entrance, and longer operating hours, I wonder if the dissatisfaction is more a matter of their timed ticketing being out of synch with the flow of people into and through the museum. Perhaps they aren’t spreading admissions out over a long enough period of time. (They may have extended hours, but people are still buying admission tickets during a super concentrated period of time and later hours are fairly easy to get.) Or perhaps as people say, the signage and directions are so poor, people are taking longer to move through the galleries once they are admitted and things get backed up.
Colorado Public Radio has a weekly Q&A feature they run. A recent question about why some sports teams are named for Denver and others for Colorado even though they are all based out of metro Denver reflects the ways in which technology and connectedness change our perceptions.
Reporter Ben Marcus noted that older teams like the Denver Nuggets and Broncos are generally named after cities because many cities in the state had teams which would play against each other. In that situation there was value in emphasizing associations with the city.
As cable television helped distribute games to larger audiences, team owners recognized there was value in creating broader geographic associations. Marcus cites the examples of the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies baseball teams.
Not to mention there was financial benefit in appealing to a broader geographic base. Apparently the residents of Denver rejected a tax increase to support building a stadium for the Rockies. However, voters in the adjacent cities of the Denver metropolitan area approved the tax measure and the stadium got built.
And the Rockies draw attendees from throughout the state, a situation the executive director of the Colorado Baseball Commission attributes, in part, to the name.
Success off the field, however, is undeniable. Despite being one of the worst teams in baseball last season, an average of 31,361 fans attended games.
“A lot of the attendance at Rockies games even now are people coming from other parts of the state,” said Macey. “Grand Junction and Lamar and also from a lot of the surrounding states. So having Colorado as the name is kind of all-encompassing, and helps attract all of those people to games.”
I bring up this story to inspire some thought among arts organizations about whether there are elements of their name and branding which creates psychological and perceptional limits about who they geographically serve which is in conflict with the organizational vision of who they serve.
I know there are a number of arts organizations who effected a name change to encompass a larger geographic area. The first that comes to mind is the Honolulu Symphony becoming the Hawaii Symphony about 10-15 years ago.
But before anyone makes that change, you may want to consider the bit of insight shared at the end of the Colorado Public Radio piece which suggests streaming technology is increasing the geographic region of people which might form a relationship with an organization:
Jason Hanson, the historian, said the rise of the internet and streaming services means team owners may one day think globally, well beyond cities and states.
“You could easily imagine some kind of shake-up in the NFL, where a team moves, and as their new name picks you know the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific coast or something that would be bigger, that would have sort of more meaning in other parts of the world.”
League of American Orchestra’s Symphony.org site had an interesting piece on concert start times recently. It wasn’t really surprising to learn that organizations were experimenting with different start times to better suit the needs of their audiences.
I was, however, surprised to learn that in 2006 and perhaps even more recently, there were classical music recitals starting at 10:30 pm and selling out. (Though perhaps to be expected given they were in the city that never sleeps)
In 2006, a New York Times critic reported that the Mostly Mozart Festival’s “A Little Night Music” concerts, held at 10:30pm, were “almost always sold out,” and raised a question: “Why should cabaret acts and jazz sets be able to start late, but not classical recitals?”
The general theme of the article is that people’s expectations have changed, especially post-pandemic. The Houston Symphony apparently tried an earlier start time about a decade ago only to revert back to their regular time when the change proved unpopular. However, they have recently shifted to 7:30 pm to 8 pm and not only was it well received, surveys are showing a trending preference for a 7 pm start.
To some degree they credit the increase in people who are working from home who don’t have the commute from office to the theater with perhaps a trip home and dinner in the mix. Though other organizations report complaints that earlier start times don’t provide enough leeway between work and the performance so there isn’t one standard best time for all communities.
In some places they are finding that matinees are better attended than evening performances. In my own experience I am seeing that trend with renters who specialize in choral and operatic genres as well as recitals by dance schools. This probably isn’t news to many since the core audiences for both types of shows tend to want to be home earlier.
The article quotes Gwen Pappas, vice president of communications and public relations at the Minnesota Orchestra, referencing the fact that people are used to being able to access their experiences on demand.
There are many ways in which a communal performing arts experience can’t be individually curated but where we are able to give people options. They really seem to appreciate it.”
In 2023, the Minnesota Orchestra moved its Saturday night concerts to 7pm and introduced 2pm concerts on select Saturdays. Some subscription programs come with any of four different time options over a week: 11am, 2pm, 7pm and 8 pm.
My first thought is that with so many different options for concerts to start, there might be some headaches communicating the different times to inattentive single ticket buyers. The last concert they attended started at 8 pm, now they are late for the 7 pm concert or vice versa. You might be arriving for what you thought was a 2 pm matinee only to find everyone leaving from the 11 am event. I suspect they have found some good ways to address that issue, though there will always be a few people who overlook the reminders, etc.
As part of the study, the authors created a hypothetical concert venue which they used as the basis to ask people about their seating preferences when seeing a favored artist performing a favored genre of music including what price they would pay, whether they preferred reserved or general admission. Additionally they wanted to explore how willing people would be to purchase a VIP package based on cost and type of access they might be granted.
Six levels were chosen for the VIP package attribute, each comprising different combinations of three VIP services: meeting the headlining artist, taking a backstage tour, and accessing the venue early to watch the soundcheck.
Noting that people may have different seating preferences based on the venue they were attending, the researchers conducted a pre-study survey to determine the best general characteristics for their hypothetical venue.
Each area differs in terms of distance from the stage, elevation, and viewing angle. Variations in distance and angle were communicated to participants through the hypothetical venue map, as displayed in Table 1. Additionally, participants were informed that Areas 1 and 2 were located on the ground floor, Areas 3 and 4 on an elevated level, and Areas 5 and 6 on the upper level.
Here is an example of how the choices for seating, pricing, and VIP package was presented to survey takers when the artist was Taylor Swift.
Among the findings of the study are that people value being closer to the stage than further away. Reserved seating is more valuable than general admission seating. However, for people with children and older respondents, reserved seating held significantly more value. The researchers suggest that people without children and younger attendees are generally indifferent to whether seating is general admission or reserved. Whereas those who are older or have children are more willing to pay a premium for reserved seats.
In terms of the VIP package, people were more interested in meet and greets with the artist than backstage tours and early admission to soundchecks.
In terms of price, the study found that there isn’t a lot of consistency associated with specific consumer characteristics and as a result, there are limits to what artists can charge based on assumptions about consumer groups.
…there is little evidence of substantial preference heterogeneity associated with consumer characteristics. This is turn implies that limits exists with regards to musicians’ ability to practice price discrimination by targeting specific ticket types at particular consumer groups.
Furthermore, the evidence on variation in venue area preferences implies that there are limits to the returns musicians can generate by employing between—and within—venue area price discrimination.
While I was reading this study i was comparing their findings to the writings of folks like Sean Kelly at Vatic, a company that specializes in using data to dynamically price venues in order to optimize ticket revenue. My first thought was that because they were having people choose huge sections of seating, they weren’t really drilling down to discover the specific preferences people have about their seating and the price they are willing to pay.
When they look at those yellow sections in the maps above, they are imagining themselves sitting in a specific seat for which they would be willing to pay the suggested price. Ten seats to the right or left of that (or away from the aisle), they may not be willing to pay as much.
On the other hand, the researchers say there is much more capacity for musicians to generate revenue through offering VIP packages. People seem to show a greater willingness to pay more for those experiences. Though there is a suggestion that the mix of experience and cost would be specific for each artist to discover.
However, research shows that offering VIP packages can create dissatisfaction among non-VIP fans so artists who wish to cultivate an environment of fairness may choose not to offer them. Similarly, dynamic pricing may also result in a perception of unfairness. There is apparently an association made between dynamic pricing and non-traditional distribution methods which appear to disadvantage the average ticket buyer.
Indeed, the use of dynamic pricing may be constrained by consumer concerns associated with perceived fairness, and the disdain consumers typically display for non-traditional allocation methods (Sonnabend, 2019; Roth, 2007).
Indeed, important parallels exist between the contemporary experience with dynamic pricing and that of ticket auctions, the use of which has declined over time despite evidence that it enabled the market to work more efficiently (Budish & Bhave, 2023). If consumers continue to respond with repugnance to non-traditional pricing strategies in the music industry, understanding how musicians can engage in optimal posted ticket pricing when organizing concerts will remain important.
A couple caveats to note. 1 – There were a number of hypothetical elements in this study despite referencing real music artists. 2 – While there are lessons applicable in other areas, this study was conducted with self identified attendees of five specific genres of music – Pop, Rock/Alternative, HipHop/RnB, Dance/Electronic and Classical. It doesn’t include other music genres, theater, musical theater, family theater, dance, etc., so may not be completely reflective of the preferences of those audiences. Nor may it be applicable to smaller venues.
Seth Godin made a post about elite vs. elitism a couple months ago. His argument is that people can operate on an elite level (i.e. Olympic athletes, surgeons, teachers, etc) but that this doesn’t automatically result in elitism.
Elitism is a barrier, where we use a label to decide who gets to contribute and who is offered dignity. A law firm that only hires from a few law schools is elitist–they have no data to confirm that these recruits are more likely to contribute than others, they’re simply artificially limiting the pool they draw from.
Opening our filters and seeking a diversity of experience undermines elitist insecurity and creates the possibility for even better solutions and connection.
[…]
The scientific method isn’t elitist, nor is a stopwatch used to record the 100 meter dash. Seeking coherent arguments, logical approaches and a contribution that leads to better outcomes isn’t elitist, in fact, it’s precisely the opposite.
I need to make my usual observation that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the number you arrive at has validity to a claim you are making. Sports fans will happily speak for hours on the fact that a high scoring game or high win record doesn’t mean a team is operating at an elite level if they have been facing weak opponents.
Generally his thoughts align with a general conversation among cultural organizations in terms of removing the filters of tradition and past practice to explore other options. Similarly, there is a lot of conversation around making data driven decisions.
As Godin says, elitism often results from limiting the pool from which you draw after defining those pools as the source of the best product. That is one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations face today. There is a self-reinforcing definition of what is superior, but not a lot of evidence gathering about whether the product they offer has any perceived value in the community.
For a time during the pandemic I would see a number of videos of farriers shoeing horses. It was fascinating and somewhat satisfying to watch horses have their hooves cleaned and repaired so they could move about more comfortably. Many of these farriers are among the elite in their trade, but most people don’t keep horses these days so the market for their skills is fairly small. Fortunately, the supply of good farriers probably reflects demand.
A similar thing is happening with piano tuners. As I wrote in 2023, there is definitely an unmet need for piano tuners among arts organizations and the lack threatens performing arts organizations’ ability to host concerts. At the same time, people can’t give pianos away and many are ending up in the dump.
Much of this is due to changing lifestyles and expectations. So while it is likely that there will always be some arts and cultural organizations operating in traditional ways which will always find they are in high demand, the number of organizations are likely to dwindle if they are not responding to the changing lifestyles and expectations.
I got to see a performance of The Rose of Sonora this weekend. It is a concerto in five scenes performed by Holly Mulcahy and composed by George S. Clinton. I had first written about it around 3 years ago.
One of the things that piqued my interest was that the piece tells the story of a heist, jail break, ambush, and revenge carried out by a female outlaw in 19th Century Territory of Arizona and had its own narrative and images meant to accompany the performance.
I was a little disappointed that the images weren’t used as part of the performance. That is likely because the composer was there to read each part live.
The composer did an interview with Symphony of the Rockies conductor, Devin Patrick Hughes, about his career. Brief explanation of Rose on Tiktok and longer interview here.
The Rose of Sonora was the last piece performed by the Symphony of the Rockies as part of a whole night of Western themed music. The program included music from The Magnificent Seven and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; William Tell Overture, and “Hoedown” from Rodeo.
The whole orchestra was dressed in Western themed clothes. At one point 2/3 of the violin section was wearing their bandanas over their mouths. The conductor made a production of drawing his baton from a holster.
It should be noted that the concert was occurring in Denver on the night the Great Western Stock Show started. So it was all very much in theme.
It also bears mentioning that Holly grew up in greater Denver and got paid to perform with the Symphony of the Rockies as a teenager. During the Q&A after the concert a young violinist asked how Holly remained so calm and poised. Holly told her she would let us know in 20 years because not only did she perform before her friends and family, many of her teachers and mentors were in the audience that night so she felt a lot of pressure.
I overheard a lot of positive comments from people around me during Holly’s performance that weren’t made during the rest of the night so the piece seemed well-received. During the Q&A I really wished there were a way to have gotten up and ask attendees what their thoughts were on having a bit of narration between movements since that doesn’t generally happen during orchestra performances.
The conductor had made some comments at the beginning of the evening suggesting Rose of Sonora would provide an opportunity to create a story in our minds. With the one-two sentence prompts provided at the start of each chapter, I wonder how vividly the story unfolded in each person’s mind’s eye as they listened to the music.
About a year ago Holly performed the Rose of Sonora on the other side of the state in Grand Junction, CO and apparently word of mouth saw a line around the block for the second night of performances.
As I drove home Saturday, I was wondering if that was a reaction to the quality of the piece or that the imagery/narration and topic made the experience accessible. Basically, was the audience for the second day aficionados or people who really want to try the orchestra experience but were intimidated and heard a great deal of the mystery was removed in this piece?
Thinking back to the post I made on Monday about storytelling notes next to visual art works helping people focus better on the work before them, would providing similar storytelling prompts with orchestra pieces help people enjoy the music more if they are able to provide their own mental video accompaniment? Many symphonies have started using video in conjunction with performances. But I wonder if people will feel the music is more relatable if they are creating their own narrative in response to an evocative prompt.
Noor Gillani, Digital Culture Editor, at The Conversation interviewed five experts at different Australian universities to get their take. Three of the five said it wasn’t important.
Interestingly, two of the responds cited label content focused on children.
Kit Messham-Muir, a professor at Curtin University voted No, but said:
Curators can spend many hours writing the “why”. Some explanations are great, some are not. Those aimed at kids are usually better. Either way, I’d argue you have all the information you need from the who, what and when.
Naomi Zouwer, at the University of Canberra, voted Yes and wrote primarily with children in mind. She cited different eye motion studies of how adults and children interact with visual art works than I wrote about yesterday.
When an artwork does grab a kid’s attention, they’ll usually want to know more about it. And my experience shows they’ll likely want to know what it’s about more than other details such as the medium or when it was created (unless it’s really, really old, in which case there’s a “wow” factor).
[..]
However, it’s not one size fits all. My advice is to ask the kid what they want to know and approach it that way. While the label may not answer all their questions, it might help start a different conversation. That’s the great thing about art: it creates opportunities for deeper thinking.
Other experts focused on the capacity of people to understand the labels as the basis for their response. How long visitors typically engage with a work and the label before moving on factored into their opinion on the value of labels.
Chari Larsson at Griffith University, voted Yes and put the responsibility on the museum to provide meaningful content
Labels should be able to “speak” to a broad range of audiences: from a casual and curious visitor through to a subject-matter expert. Turgid “art jargon” is notoriously difficult to decipher and can negatively impact the visitor’s experience. This is a breach in the museum’s responsibility to their audiences.
Cherine Fahd at University of Technology Sydney, voted No for similar reasons. Poorly written labels get in the way of understanding the work in front of the visitor. She encourages people to look at the art before the label.
Many artists want viewers to bring themselves to the work, to freely interpret and be active participants. The problem is we aren’t taught how to do that with art. We expect meaning to be handed over and the didactic label sets up this expectation.
Perhaps this is an Australian condition, wherein art is often dismissed as impenetrable, or something to grow out of, or something a “five year old could have made”.
Some research how adults and children focus on visual art pieces in different ways provides some insight into how to write and present introductory and educational information to children. Not only for visual art pieces but things to call attention to with performances and other types of experience.
In an article Francesco Walker, Assistant Professor in Psychology, Leiden University, wrote for The Conversation, he talks about using eye tracking technology to see what children focus on when given different types of descriptions/prompts in advance.
Walker cites some past research which had found that children tend to focus on bright colors and bold shapes in paintings. While adults viewing the same work will call upon existing knowledge and information and orient on other elements like brush strokes.
Walker and his colleagues conducted their study tracking eye motions around three works at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. They watched how children age 10-12 interacted with the paintings after they had been provided with existing adult oriented explanatory labels, playful storytelling labels, or no labels at all.
What they found was that children who had been provided adult oriented labels interacted with the paintings in the same way as children who had not been provided any labels at all. Whereas children provided with the playful spent more time engaging with the work and were focused on specific areas.
The children provided with child-focused, narrative-driven labels engaged with the artworks in ways we did not see at all with those who read adult-focused descriptions. They directed their gaze towards key elements of the paintings highlighted by the playful descriptions, and spent more time examining them.
In contrast, the children who received adult-oriented explanations behaved in the same way as children who received no information at all. Their attention was scattered and unfocused.
The high vantage point of this painting turns it into a sampler of human – and animal – activity during a harsh winter. Hundreds of people are out on the ice, most of them for pleasure, others working out of dire necessity. Avercamp did not shy away from grim details: in the left foreground crows and a dog feast on the carcass of a horse that has frozen to death.
The child oriented text for the same painting
He could have painted me anywhere, but where am I? Right in the middle of the picture, with my snout on the ice! The spot where everyone can see me. A man in blue pants almost trips over me. Two girls next to me giggle at my clumsiness. But I won’t give up. I’ll get back on my feet and keep going. Before winter is over, I’ll be skating like a pro!
The article provides heat maps showing where attention focused based on the three content scenarios.
Walker suggests the results of their study suggest that art education classes should shift from textbook based classroom lessons toward a more storytelling mode. He notes that art history students find it difficult to connectwith the art when the information is transmitted in lectures or via text book.
And by the way, the two studies I linked to in the previous sentence were studies conducted with undergraduate students, not grade school students so a storytelling approach can positively impact everyone’s experience and engagement
An interesting intersection of art and technology I saw in an article in The Harvard Gazette where an assistant professor of bioengineering, Shriya Srinivasan, created a phone app which would allow audiences to feel dancers movement through a smartphone’s vibrations.
The app makes use of the haptic feedback tools built into smartphones. When you type/dial on your phone you may experience a small vibration which reinforces the fact you successfully depressed button. (Haptic is only related to touch. The artificial click you may hear as a confirmation is audible feedback.)
Because the vibrations on a phone can vary in intensity, Srinivasan’s app is able to convey a range of sensations to the viewer. Her inspiration for creating the app was her own artistic practice in bharata natyam Indian dance. She and her team developed sensors which are attached to the ankles of dancers which transmit a signal to the phone app.
Srinivasan says the technology has the potential to make dance performances more accessible for the lay viewer, as well as visually- or hearing-impaired people.
To make the haptic feedback stimuli convey the feel of the footwork, researchers set the vibrations to different intensity levels. Light, flowing movements were represented by vibrations targeting surface-level mechanoreceptors in the skin, while more intense, punchier movements penetrated to deeper skin layers,…
They worked with Indian Classical Dance group Anubhava Dance Company to use the devices in a performance called Decoded Rhythms. PBS discussed the technology on their Nova program. I also found the following video the dance company posted which briefly discusses the use of the sensors in performance.
They think a rebrand and a re-logo are the same thing, they’re not. A rebrand happens when you change the promise that you make, and the expectations we have for you. A re-logo is cosmetic. Rebrand at your peril, especially when the old brand is trusted, iconic, historic and connected to a basic human need. It’s a mistake to focus on clicks, not magic.
It is that statement about changing the promise that the company/organization is making that caught my eye. I think there is definitely a case to be made that many arts and cultural organizations have been intentionally working post-pandemic to change their promise and consumer expectations in a more constructive direction.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean a rebrand is required. Especially, as Godin says, if your current brand is already associated with a degree of trust and your efforts are seeking to deepen that trust.
Godin quotes the managing director of Jaguar talking about the need to be relevant, desirable and future-proof for the next 90 years. Godin suggests that statement won’t stand the test of time. Yet there is a lot of conversation in the arts and culture sphere about striving to be relevant. I have been advocating in that direction for close to a decade.
But I have also been saying not everything you can measure necessarily matters for an even longer time. Godin says much the same thing:
Clicks are not purchase intent.
Awareness is not desire.
Gimmicks are not marketing.
Social media followers aren’t following you.
Noise is not information.
Burning down your house draws a crowd, but it’s a lousy way to renovate.
Just because you are getting a measurable response doesn’t necessarily mean you will achieve the results you desire. In fact, there is a danger in becoming so enamored with the attention you are getting that you abandon pursuit of those meaningful results.
Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS experience released some more great research last week. This time regarding tolerance for online transaction fees. (subscription required)
High-propensity visitors to cultural organizations will likely tolerate online transaction fees up to $4.95…provided the organization charging this fee has been deemed competent and successful in terms of the guest experience, the online purchase experience, and favorable reputational equities. Critically, these data may be more insightful for market leaders considering implementing transaction fees than for those organizations which could be struggling to meet their audiences’ expectations.
Before you click away having decided that is all you need to know. There is more to consider. Number one, notice they use the term high-propensity visitors which means people who already have an inclination to attend exhibit or performance based experiences. Tolerances can differ for people who have less of an inclination for the experience. The other thing to note is that the organization must have already earned the confidence of audiences in terms of quality of difference experiences and reputation.
There are other factors like perceived value —which they take pains to note is not the same as price. An experience can be viewed as expensive while also being perceived as having high value. Readers may recall a post I made in August where IMPACTS found that free and low cost organizations often receive lower satisfaction score and intent to return responses. So low price does not always result in high satisfaction or perception of value.
Looking at perception of value, willingness to recommend to others, and intent to return, intent to return seems most impacted by online fees followed by perception of value and willingness to recommend.
Overall, intent to return begins to decline at the $3.00 mark, value perceptions begin to decline at the $5.00 mark, and willingness to recommend visiting to a friend starts to decline at the $6.00 mark. Depending on myriad factors concerning content, programming, reputation, the online purchase experience, and broad value perceptions, the ill-advised deployment of a transaction fee may risk a negative impact on an organization’s market potential and its ability to attract guests.
One other thing they called out – labeling additional fees as “convenience fees” elicits increased negative perceptions. Purchasers don’t necessarily see it as convenient for them.
There is a lot more nuanced analysis and cross-refencing to earlier posts they have made in this recent post so it is probably worth taking a closer look if you want to know more.
For the record, I am not on the side of singing along with the movie in the theater.
That said, I think it is to the theater world’s credit that there is a notable debate raging about whether people should be allowed to sing along during screenings of the movie based on the Broadway musical Wicked.
The movie is very much based on the musical since it is only part 1, though it isn’t advertised as such, and even as Part 1 has a longer running time than the original musical. According to some reviewers the movie doesn’t seem to drag even though it is being stretched out.
Part 2 will apparently contain new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz which may mitigate concerns about people singing along to some degree when that movie comes out.
One of the obvious solutions to the sing-a-long issue is for movie theaters to offer audience participation screenings and no audience participation screenings. After all the same issue came up about a year ago with the Taylor Swift concert movie where some fans felt like there was too much audience participation while others were upset that the next screening over seemed to be creating a more communal experience than they were having. If theater were paying attention the last time, they could proactively address those concerns for Wicked.
I should probably amend that first sentence of this post to say I am not on the side of a sing-a-long when I am not expecting that experience. I have definitely tried to license the sing-a-long version of Song of Music and have hosted a number of screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where participation is expected.
As I said, I think it is great that the debate is occurring with Wicked because it will likely raise awareness about the Broadway show and perhaps generate curiosity about other Broadway shows.
Though stretching the story out across two movies creates a tenuous situation. If the extended version is boring and drags, that could reflect badly on the original show. (I’m looking at you movie adaptation of The Hobbit) If it is well received, it could create expectations that a Broadway show half the length (at least) can’t meet.
Seth Godin recently wrote about how, as an MBA student at Stanford, he went into an interview with the CEO of Activision waving a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article and claiming Activision was in danger of succumbing to the Marketing myopia described in the article. Godin says he was just about to be thrown out of the CEO’s office when someone came in waving a report that Activision had 9 of the top 10 video games on sale at the time.
By the time the CEO came back to his office, he forgot why he was angry with Godin and offered him the job. But Godin said the time he spent cooling his heels convinced him he was right about Activision being too focused on making games for the Atari console.
Godin tells this story as an introduction to a HBR piece he wrote about strategy myopia His main point is that strategy deals with uncomfortable uncertainty based on questions about what the future may hold based on how technology, society, and other factors are unfolding. The tactics and plans a company embrace need to derive from the strategy, which again, holds no concrete promises.
In part this myopia comes from what we expect from a new strategy. Strategy is not a plan. A plan might come with a guarantee: “If we do this, we win.” A strategy, on the other hand, comes with the motto: “This might not work.” Strategy is a philosophy of becoming, a chance to create the conditions to enable the change we seek to make in the world.
When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.
What really caught my attention was a passage that echoes the on going conversation about arts marketing being focused on the product being sold rather than the audience/consumer. (my emphasis)
Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve, and focus on what we seek to produce instead. Empathy gives us a strategic advantage.
A tactical, short-term focus is based on the past. We can try to defend the machines and processes already in place, working to maximize the assets we’ve got. Or we can visualize the customer and serve their needs as the world changes.
[…]
Empathy begins with the humility to acknowledge that you don’t know what others know, want what they want, or believe what they believe … and that’s okay. If we’re not prepared to move to where our customers are hoping to go, it’s unlikely that they’ll care enough to adopt what we care about.
A year ago I wrote about how the musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony were blindsided by the organization declaring bankruptcy. There had been no communication prior to the declaration indicating there were any financial concerns. Indeed, the symphony had negotiated a pay increase with the musicians a month earlier.
Last week there was news that the organization was emergingfrom bankruptcy. From what I have read this seems to have been a result of creditors forgiving their debt rather than an immense fundraising campaign so the future of the organization remains to be seen. There will be a few concerts performed at a church to close out 2024.
A column in the Waterloo Regional Record cited the board chair, Bill Poole’s, belief that it may be some time before the organization returns to offering a full series of concerts with their former complement of musicians:
Poole acknowledges that the previous setup, in which 52 instrumental musicians were full-time employees, might not be deemed viable in the future. It isn’t clear yet what that working relationship will look like.
The musicians will have work, he said, and there will be concerts starting in early 2025 for which the symphony will pay them. But right now, the musicians don’t have steady jobs.
He can’t say if there will be a 2025-26 season that music lovers can subscribe to, nor if the concerts will happen at Centre in the Square, which was originally built for that orchestra.
Poole acknowledged there is a lot of trust to be earned back. I imagine that is the case with both the audience and the musicians. Though according to Poole, the musicians invested a lot of effort into helping to restore the orchestra to its current footing, precarious as it may be, including helping to recruit new board members.
The musicians raised nearly $500,000 Canadian through GoFundMe to produce their own series of concerts, support the unemployed musicians, and provide legal services.
Ruth Hartt had reposted an Observer debating what sort of information and how much makes for a good museum label. It immediately occurred to me that this can be a tall order based on the fact that museum visitors may have different agenda every time they enter the doors. Thinking about the types of museum attendees discussed by John Falk, people may be coming to explore one day, facilitate friends and family another day, approach the experience through a more professional lens the next time, or just want to unwind and recharge.
My thoughts went to the Axios.com site which uses Zoom In, Zoom Out, and Go Deeper sub-heads in many of their articles. I thought that might be a good format so that people could decide how much detail they wanted about an object. However, there were people interviewed for the Observer article who not only thought less is more, in some cases they advocated that nothing is more.
Ours is a literate culture rather than a visual one, and “there is a comfort in reading a label,” Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, told Observer. “You are offered facts that are very relatable, whereas artworks themselves aren’t so easily contained. Labels are a left-brain experience, while art is experiential and not a test of knowledge. In my world, people wouldn’t need the damn label at all.”
[…]
“Every year, I take my students to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which doesn’t provide any labels for artworks on display,” James Pawelski, director of education at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center, told Observer. “There is no intermediary between the viewer and the art, so students have to deal directly with the art.” He is not opposed to labels per se, but like many others, Pawleski has something to say about the many museum placards he sees. “You don’t want the label to take away the mystery of the artwork, what makes it interesting and inspiring. That’s why I prefer labels that help people become immersed in a work of art.”
Some of those that do use labels engage in a lengthy creation and editing process that spans different departments, acknowledging that museum professionals are so close to their work they often use insider terminology or emphasize aspects that appeal to professionals rather than the lay person.
At Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, labels originate with a curator, “written with the assistance of curatorial research associates,” and are then passed to the Department of Museum Interpretation for a review of “clarity of narrative and messaging, tone of voice, reading level and word count,” Mekala Krishnan, the museum’s associate director of museum interpretation, told Observer. But they’re not done yet. “There is usually some back and forth between the curatorial and interpretation departments before it then gets passed to our editor, who is the final gatekeeper for formatting, spelling, grammar and punctuation, as well as for overall clarity….
Some institutions keep working on their labels even after they are installed, with staffers watching visitors as they move through galleries, timing how long they stand in front of any object and watching their eyes to see if they are reading more than looking. Visitors may be questioned about what they saw: “What did you take away from this exhibition?” or “What do you know now that you didn’t know before?” This is quite labor-intensive and expensive, but it may be the only way to know for certain if the label did its job.
The article goes much deeper into the nuance and considerations that factor into label design. There is a fair bit of overlap between the philosophy of what to include on museum labels and performer bios and performance notes for live events…not to mention promotional materials. It is worth reading the article even if you aren’t in the exhibit based world in order to gain something of a disinterested perspective you can apply to experiences you may offer to audiences.
Last month, the Bloemencorso Zundert, caught my attention. It is the largest flower parade in the world held in Zundert, Netherlands. Twenty hamlets compete to have their parade float judged as the best. Apparently, they only use dahlias are used in the Zundert parade and six of the nearly eight million flowers are cultivated in Zundert. The parade started in 1936 with 17 hamlets. The other three have joined more recently.
The entire effort appears to be volunteer run from the cultivation of the flowers, to the design, to the assembly of the flowers just days before the parade. Not to mention the movement – the floats tend to be human powered. If you look closely at some of the videos below, you can see the feet of the people acting as the internal engines. The webpage for the event translates relatively well into English.
Being a Tolkien fan, a video of the Khazad-Dum float is what had initially caught my attention and led me to do some further investigation of the event.
One of those asked to respond was Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter, a site that has essentially become the alternative to foundations, governments, and institutional funders as a funding source for creative projects.
He says a partnership with Skoll Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Creative Capital to provide $700,000 in funding to 600 BIPOC creators helping them raise $11.7 million.
“In recent research, still unpublished, Kickstarter creators report earning $5.15 in additional revenue from each dollar raised on Kickstarter. That places the total estimated economic impact of the $700,000 fund at close to $70,000,000, a 100x return on that cultural investment.”
That data comes from one of his recommendations about making funding to creatives more accessible, especially for smaller scale projects. Part of that includes making it easier for people to apply with fewer strings and follow up reporting burden attached.
His second recommendation is about strengthening community among art makers by providing some infrastructure for creating networks and sharing work, and encouraging cross-pollination and collaboration.
His third recommendation referenced changing the definition of art making, including who gets to participate in making art. He lists all the projects that have been funded by Kickstarter highlighting the expansive storytelling techniques facilitated by books, tabletop games, roleplaying games receiving support. He points to these games as something of an underdeveloped framework for allowing more people to participate in a creative process.
He warns that AI is in a position to marginalize and supplant many of the burgeoning creatives who have only just begun to realize success through opportunities for funding that platforms like Kickstarter provides. There is something of an implication that as much as Kickstarter has done to help these artists, their capacity is still comparatively too narrow to provide the support and resources the creative community needs to succeed.
…according to its 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 48.5 percent of adults reported having read at least one book in the past year, compared with 52.7 percent five years earlier, and 54.6 percent ten years earlier. Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades.
[…]
….the share of 13-year-olds who reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2023, the figure was 14 percent, down from 17 percent in 2020 and 27 percent in 2012. The share of 13-year-olds who fell into this reading category in 2023 was lower than in any previous test year, …
[…]
For decades, more than half of all nine-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2012, that figure was 53 percent. In 2020, it dropped to 42 percent, and in 2022 (the most recent year for which data are available), 39 percent. Also in 2022, the share of nine-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for fun was at its highest: 16 percent.
Since these trends existed prior to the pandemic, we can’t blame it on Covid. I was harboring some hope that being cooped up at home might have led more people to pick up reading as a habit.
On the other hand, Barnes and Noble is planning on opening 58 stores in 2024, more stores in a year than they have since 2009. In some cases, they are re-occupying buildings they left years ago. From what I have been reading over the last year, some of their success seems to be attributable to the corporate office giving the individual stores more license to customize their spaces to the communities in which they are located and aim for a more independent bookstore vibe. The company recently bought a local bookstore chain in CO with the intent of operating under the local name rather than Barnes and Noble which seems to reinforce their local flavor strategy.
The BN store near me seems to always be hopping despite the dwindling fortunes of the mall surrounding it. It has appeared to be a third place gathering space for a lot of tweens to interact in a way that makes me secretly grateful. I have seen articles claiming there is a resurgence of reading among Gen Z thanks to the BookTok trend on Tiktok.
But I think both the decline of reading and Barnes and Noble’s growing success can be true. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Barnes and Noble is increasingly finding success selling non-book products, services, and programs. It all bears watching and considering.
Seth Godin recently wrote that while many professions are just as important as they were 30-50 years ago, the basic skills required for those professions have changed. Pharmacists no longer have to mix their own medicines, opticians no longer have to grind lens, lawyers have templates from which to generate documents, graphic designers aren’t required to be skilled in drawing by hand.
He concludes with:
In your work, are you fighting the change or leading it?
It’s hard to see us going back.
I attended a webinar Ruth Hartt was delivering today where she made a similar point about audience expectations, noting that while everyone acknowledges audiences for arts and cultural activities are shrinking, programming and marketing still tends to center the tastes of the older, diminishing audience and donor base.
To some extent, while it is important to have programming that reflects a broader segment of the community you wish to serve, Aubrey Bergauer has often spoken about audience feedback that focused more on the language, images, and experiences being focused on the arts organization and their needs vs. externally focused externally on audience expectations and needs. She has mentioned very few comments are about the programming, compared to comments about promotional language “reading like inside baseball.”
These observations are much in-line with Ruth Hartt’s discussion of Clayton Christensen’s research indicating consumers respond best to language and images that tells them how the product fulfills a need they have or aligns with what is important to them.
I have made a number of posts over the years on the practice of contextomy which is the practice of selectively editing quotes, often in connection with movie and show reviews, to make it appear reviewers enjoyed what they saw.
Creators who engage with these promoters or otherwise participate in the purchase of fake reviews are now squarely in the FTC’s crosshairs. The FTC has made it clear that ignorance is no defense; if you’re benefiting from fake reviews, even if you didn’t personally buy them, you could be held liable. This could result in hefty fines, legal action, and irreparable damage to your brand’s reputation.
He lists a number of practices podcasters can employ– mostly avoiding the temptation to buy reviews, vetting promoters, focusing on creating good content, and encouraging sincere reviews.
ArtNews had a piece last month examining the world of Immersive Art shows. You may have seen ads for these events which animate the works of Van Gogh or Monet and project them on the walls of a large space. To my surprise, those shows represent a small and decreasing share of the market compared to shows that animate the works of living artists or long term installation such experiences like those offered by companies such as Meow Wolf.
Immersive shows for Van Gogh and Monet are somewhat controversial based on the manipulation of artists’ work and the perception that the shows are lightweight and sort of dumb down the art viewing experience.
Museums that are interested in providing these sort of programs run up against capacity issues, both in terms of personnel and physical space:
Adapting or acquiring, and then equipping large amounts of space is one clear constraint. Size matters here. Small spaces simply do not have the same experiential impact. To compete with the big players, a museum will need to build out or otherwise secure several thousand square meters of floor space. Quality projection-based art often requires a 10-meter or even higher ceiling. These are halls that many existing institutions don’t have or can’t justify surrendering for extended periods.
Up next, new skills are needed. Creating an immersive art experience is akin to developing a branded consumer product. It relies on a multidisciplinary team to develop a single large-scale work…
On the other hand, Felix Barber, who authored the ArtNews piece suggests that the immersive art show can be taken out of the museum space to reach new audiences where they live. He cites collaborations in France where ” Grand Palais Immersif, in turn, joined forces with the Opera National de Paris to create an immersive space inside the Opera Bastille.” But also points out that other spaces like warehouses, empty spaces in shopping malls, and churches can provide the requisite physical space for these shows:
To find the space, a museum may not have to build at its existing high-cost, city-center location. Instead, it can look for a more affordable solution, while potentially engaging a new audience where they live. Many immersive studios work with real estate partners that are seeking to invigorate shopping centers and struggling urban areas. Others take over disused industrial premises. Culturespaces in Baux de Provence operates in an old quarry. Eonarium uses churches.
Ultimately those Barber interviews suggest that while museums in the current form will likely always be attractive, more options are becoming available to consumers who may prefer an experiential interaction versus standing in front of a work and reading a plaque.
In the end, it all comes back to the quality of the art. What will unlock museums’ interest in immersive experience is work that embodies beauty and meaning, presented at scale with a powerful sensory flourish.
[…]
Even so, and no matter what, art museums now face new competitors. Sitting back and watching them capture audiences is not a promising option. Museums have to respond. One size will not fit all.
The Conversation recently had an article by Will Shüler examining the strict enforcement of a no cameras policy at a theater production he attended. When he arrived, ushers put a sticker over the camera on his phone. The presence of the sticker was checked multiple times before he was seated and ushers patrolled the aisles to make sure no one removed the sticker and used their cameras during the performance.
This may sound particularly extreme until you learn the measures were taken due to the nudity of actor Kit Harrington in the London production of Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play.
Shuler suggests that if these measures were deemed necessary, perhaps the nudity should have been cut.
If policing the audience is necessary, perhaps the casting or the nudity needs reconsidering, otherwise both read as gimmicks. Additionally, the efforts made to protect the penis in the performance arguably point to an increasingly prudish attitude of nudity and sensuality in theatre.
It is understandable that a celebrity would want control over any images of their naked body, and in an age of social media sharing, theatre companies may feel compelled to overprotect actors appearing nude on stage. These leaked images are in contrast to the production of Ink at Sadler’s Wells, which printed images of (non-celebrity) performer Šuka Horn’s male nudity in the programme.
Shuler makes some points worth considering in arguing about nudity’s place in performances.
What occurred to me was that in the context of the increased use of intimacy coordinators in theater, film, and television, there is a need/desire for trust between the performers and audiences. Nude performances have been around for decades now, but information about the experience was generally shared verbally and mentioning the context in which the nudity occurred. Whether you thought it was appropriate or not was discussed in relation to the performance. Actors may be willing to perform nude as long as that understanding of where and why the nudity exists is shared between themselves and the audience.
However, the use of phones to record that aspect of a performance allows video and still images to be distributed without any sort of reference to the context in which it appeared. It becomes a picture of someone naked for sake of displaying a naked image of them. There is already an issue of AI generated images of celebrities, colleagues, and classmates creating distress for the subjects of those images.
While there are probably some who will be bold and self-confident enough to say, “Might as well give them some accurate content to work off of,” I wonder how many who might otherwise be willing to appear in some state of undress are reluctant to do so due to the opportunity cell phones provide.
Reminds me of our first JTBD work with Bob Moesta when we simply showed a digital ad for virtual care with a person enjoying an event with their friends. We didn’t have to show them obtaining health care – we showed the result of it. 40% increase!
On the second page of the first chapter, Drucker essentially says that nonprofit mission statements need to be focused on outcomes. He relates the story of helping an emergency room of a hospital create a mission statement for itself. He says it took them a long time to arrive at a mission statement and when they did, people felt it was ridiculously obvious – “to give assurance to the afflicted.”
And, much to the surprise of the physicians and nurses, it turned out that in a good emergency room, the function is to tell eight out of ten people there is nothing wrong that a good night’s sleep won’t take care of. You’ve been shaken up. Or the baby has the flu. All right, it’s got convulsions, but there is nothing seriously wrong with the child.’ The doctors and nurses give assurances.
…Yet translating that mission statement into action meant that everybody who comes in is now seen…in less than a minute….Some people are immediately rushed to intensive care, others get a lot of tests, and yet others are told ‘Go back home, go to sleep, take an aspirin, and don’t worry…But the first objective is to see everybody almost immediately–because that is the only way to give assurance.”
Framing an audience’s desired goals for an experience in terms of medical outcomes helped further develop my understanding of the concept Hartt has been espousing. Given the choice, very few people would prefer to undergo a medical procedure vs. just going about daily life. While knowing you will enjoy competent care is important, what people really want to know as Jay Gerhart suggests, is that they will come out the other side with as minimal an impact on their daily enjoyment as possible.
Obviously the stakes aren’t as high when attending an arts and cultural experience (one hopes), but there can still be a related anxiety regarding whether the experience will be an enjoyable one. Focusing on how the experience will solve a problem like providing an escape from stress of the work week or providing an opportunity to spend time with family and friends.
I often cite this Lexus commercial as a good example. The parents continue to drive until the kids say they no longer have a cell signal and then the parents stop driving. The voice over says “…and feel what it is like to truly connect.” You aren’t buying a luxury vehicle, you are buying a method to reconnect with your family.
But it isn’t just enough to communicate that message. As Drucker says, it has to be operationalized in some way. But translating it into action isn’t necessarily complicated just as providing assurance in Drucker’s example meant a commitment to making an assessment in a short period of time.
One of the things they found is that people expect to pay less for exhibit based and performing arts experiences in 2024 than they did in 2019, There is a lot nuance to this result according the Dilenschneider on her colleagues. First of all, this response is based on what people remember paying for their experience in pre-pandemic 2019. As you might imagine, they note that memory is imprecise and so comparing what they expect to pay this year compared to what they remember paying five years ago isn’t going to provide the most accurate results. In fact, data about what was spent in the first two quarters of 2024 tends to be higher than what they said they planned to spend.
The other thing to know is that people aren’t planning to cut back on admission tickets, but rather the other activities surrounding the central event. What IMPACTS terms off-site spending:
As of Q2 2024, the top area where folks recall spending money in relation to their visit is admission. Still, we do not see that admission costs are a top barrier to attendance to cultural organizations. So, to continue our work as data detectives, we’ll want to observe where other changes have taken place.
[…]
Folks are spending more on parking, admission, and onsite retail, and they are spending less on the other aspects surrounding the cultural experience.
Nowadays, despite rising food costs and restaurant prices, cultural participants plan to spend less (and actually do) on food and beverage. In 2019, performing arts patrons were more likely to grab a dinner before the show and perhaps drinks afterwards. Now, however, the data suggest that patrons may be more likely to only do pre-theater drinks, or perhaps skip the fancy bottle of wine for a single glass or choose a more affordable fast casual option than a Michelin-starred meal. These choices reflect consumers’ decisions to “trade off” or “trade down” when it comes to making their cultural-related spending choices. Fortunately for many cultural organizations, these “trades” thus far seem to primarily affect offsite spending (and indicate less sensitivity to onsite consumer behaviors).
Of course, these results are associated with people who actually made the choice to participate in an experience. A fair part of the article is devoted to a conversation about the general pessimism people in the US especially feel about the economy. Ticket prices are fairly low on the list of cost related barriers to visitation compared to concerns about the economy, prices, inflation, investment, personal finances, etc.
"Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart..." Who is "they"? The kids? The author? Something else?…