Marketing/PR

Arts & Culture Orgs Still Important, The Basic Requisite Skills Have Changed

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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.

FTC Enforcing Penalties Against Misleading Reviews

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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.

Or I should probably say that is the usual practice. Recently, the movie trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis created fake negative quotes to suggest the director has been underestimated in the past.

Entertainment lawyer Gordon Firemark recently called attention to new Federal Trade Commission rules (FTC) regarding the buying and selling of fake reviews and testimonials. While the rule has a relatively wide application, (unsurprisingly inaccurately excerpting movie critic reviews in ads is the first example listed as a violation), Firemark addresses it in regard to reviews for podcasts and similar content.

Firemark writes:

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.

Gorgeous Mountain Vista Costs A Couple Hours Of Heavy Climbing

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Seth Godin recently made a post in which he stated the following:

The end of the trail is usually difficult, but without the long and winding approach, there isn’t much of a mountain.

The greatest hits reel and the stunning photographs leave out most of the hard work.

This aligns with a theme of many posts I have made over the years that creative expression is part of a lengthy development process rather than a lightning bolt moment–something that even artists themselves forget.

About a week ago, Haydn Corrodus posted this fun video from the Beamish Museum on LinkedIn

I appreciated Haydn making the following comment which acknowledges it takes time to achieve a level of virality, especially when employing modern slang with a deadpan delivery:

From looking at their page briefly, it seems like it was only a matter of time before one of their videos went viral.

They consistently post and get decent views.

@beamishmuseum

This is slay #genz #slay #demure #fyp #viral #genzlife #sweet

♬ original sound – Beamish Museum

Prioritizing Hospitality And Accessibility In The Face Of Fear

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You may have heard that museums in Vienna, Austria offered free admission to Taylor Swift fans who were faced with the cancellation of the concerts due to terroristic threats.

My one quibble with this is their claim that admission is so expensive for young people —who paid the equivalent of $750 plus travel to see the concert (though apparently ticket prices dropped to about $250 in the weeks before the concerts).  There is an element to this situation where people saying things are too expensive really mean they prioritize spending much more on some experiences versus others. (There is also the fact that it says something about concert ticket prices in the US that even at $750 a ticket it was cheaper for US residents to fly to Vienna than to see a show in their own country where ticket prices are in the thousands. But that is another post.)

Otherwise, I appreciated that many of the museums took steps that reflected the interests of their audience like adding more English language tours and switching out the classical music tracks played in the galleries.

The museum also switched the soundtracks playing its in 20 historical staterooms from classical music to Taylor Swift albums, prompting several large singalongs that went viral on TikTok.

“I love classical music, I love Mozart, I love Beethoven, I love all these classical artists, but it was really nice to have a Taylor Swift singalong more or less in the state rooms that normally stand for something else,” Eisterer said, noting she had worked for The Albertina for eight years.

While I would personally prefer a different music choice, I have noted for years that not everything an arts organization does is meant for everyone. One museum went from having 2000 visitors on weekend days to an average of 5000 people a day from Thursday-Sunday. Another saw a 100% increase over regular attendance.

While theses institutions gave up admission revenue, they did see a surge in sales in their stores and cafes which helped to make up for the loss.

Revenue considerations aside, the museums saw the cancelled concerts as an opportunity to advance the perception of accessibility, relevance, and welcoming among a younger demographic. Not only for themselves, but the city as well.  This is the sort of approach that helps engender trust and engagement in arts and cultural organizations that I have discussed in some recent posts.  (I am still holding to my general philosophy about free admission though)

While the initiative may have been a temporary hit to museum revenues from entry fees, museum staff told ARTnews there were far more benefits, including merchandise sales, publicity, and greater accessibility to younger visitors.

“We didn’t think about the money or the losing the money at all,” Eisterer said, noting that its entry fees can be very expensive for young people. “It was, for us, important to set like a sign for this concert that had been canceled because of this horrible reason, and to give somehow a bit of hope and say to people, ‘Hey, we know it’s devastating. You can’t go to the concert, but hey, you can enjoy a bit of of art in Vienna, that’s what we can offer you’.”

“It’s helpful for our reputation,” Posch said. “it pays into the reputation of the city of Vienna, being friendly, being generous, being hospitable. And that is worth more, in the end, than not generating these few euros in ticket sales.”