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You Couldn’t Tie People To Railroad Tracks Because It Was Copyrighted

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Copyright may seem like a pretty dry subject, but the court cases that lead to the development of the law and theory surrounding copyright law can be pretty interesting. HowlRound posted the transcript of  Michael Lueger’s podcast discussion with Dr. Derek Miller about some of the early copyright cases that applied to theater and music performance.

One of the interesting cases they discuss is competing expressions of the iconic melodrama train track scene where someone escapes just as the train arrives. Apparently playwright Augustin Daly was the first to write such a scene and playwright Dion Boucicault copied the idea. The courts ruled in favor of Daly saying that even though every other element of Boucicault’s play was different, the common action was key to the drama and thus was protected.

(By the way, according to Atlas Obscura, contrary to the trope, Daly’s play, and even many silent films, had a man on the tracks and the leading lady rescuing him.)

Interestingly, when the guy producing Boucicault’s play tried to reach an early settlement by licensing the train effect from Daly’s show, “The court actually says, no, no, no. The effect is not something you can copyright, … You can’t own the effect, but you can own the action.”

This general concept holds to today where you can copyright the expression of the idea, but not the name or the idea itself. You can, of course, trademark names and patent effects, but those are different types of protections than copyright.

Another fascinating situation happened when Thomas Hamblin’s Bowery Theatre was doing poorly but Charles Thorne’s Chatham Theatre around the corner was doing great. Thorne was getting ready to do a play by Joseph S. Jones so Hamblin goes to Jones and makes a deal to open Jones’ play on the same night in an attempt to put Thorne out of business. They were planning to have Jones sue Thorne “for violating your [Jones’] rights to produce the play.”

However, the courts say since Jones was working for a Mr. Pelby when he wrote the play, Pelby had the right to sell the performance rights to Thorne.

But what came next is really interesting:

I’ve got a lot of evidence here from the New York Herald, which goes all in for Thorne, and they argue that by trying to shut down Thorne’s production, Jones and Hamblin of the Bowery Theatre are limiting the audience’s ability to compare the artistic products at the Chatham and the Bowery. It’s sort of a free trade argument that they’re making.

In other words, according to Thorne and to the Herald … Thorne actually writes an editorial that appears in the Herald … if the productions are allowed to compete with each other, both theatres are going to do even better artistic work than they would otherwise. They say Hamblin is trying to shut down artistic competition and to give you a bad product, but we’re in favor of a good product and letting Thorne do the play. Legally, actually, the case is sort of a weird, unimportant footnote, in terms of the legal precedent it establishes, but it helped in studying this case to teach me how theatrical copyright battles get both parties thinking about the relationship between a work’s artistic value and its monetary value.

It is interesting to me that they get into this argument that having competing versions of the same production going on around the corner from each other is providing people with a choice and opportunity to decide which is the better production.

Nowadays, when you try to license performance rights you can run into all sorts of restrictions because a 2000 seat venue 200 miles from you planning to do the same production 12 months after you mount your production in a 200 seat theater.

While that is kind of extreme, I think the basic idea that people are willing to pay a lower price for a discount version of the same product and cannibalize your potential audience is a real concern.

Even in 1841 when Thorne and Hamblin were butting heads, if people wanted to see a show a significant number would probably accept lower production quality for 25 cents at the Bowery versus paying $1 at the Chatham.

The Fine Line Between High Quality Data Collection And Stalking

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The marketing director at my new job was discussing the potential of using geofencing with me today and then lo and behold, the first article on my social media feed when I got home contained a link to an article on that very subject.

Geofencing can be used to track someone’s movement by where they carry their cellphone and send messages to them based on their behavior. As the article on Tao of Sports explains,

Geofencing also follows customers around for up to thirty days, which means beyond the initial purchasing period, it can also showcase whether the fan receiving the message then went to the stadium or not. With addressable geofencing, conversion zones can be setup as well. So if a fan crosses into a conversion zone, say a specific venue which advertised to them within the last thirty days, it will show on the report.

[…]

For secondary brokers, geofencing technology also adds an additional way to catch fans as they are entering the stadium parking lot, by hitting their phone with a last minute advertisement for concert or sports tickets. Image getting them right before they hit the window with a credible advertisement that beats the venue price.

Like any technology tool, geofencing is something of a double edged sword. It can provide you with much more accurate data about the way people are behaving than asking them about their habits or trying to observe it in other ways. But there is also that creepy Big Brother is Watching element.

The tweet by Roger Tomlinson that brought the article to my attention notes that geofencing is not legal in Europe without permission.

Last month when I was suggesting conference session topics for the Non Profit Technology Conference, I alluded to the issues surrounding geofencing in one of my topic ideas:

Ethics of Using Geofencing For Marketing  – i.e. I can geofence a local theater and target people based on the idea that they enjoy attending performances or with the intent of stealing the audience.

I don’t doubt that the use of geofencing or something like it will become increasingly prevalent. I suspect that a number of bad actors will cause people to become very protective of how their movements are tracked to the point that even if a law isn’t passed requiring you to ask for permission, in practice that is what you will have to do in order to gain the data you want.

I Don’t Know What You Need To Know Because I Know So Much

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This summer I have been seeing a lot of California Symphony Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer popping up in places like videos of conference talks she has been giving. It has been over a year and a half since I wrote about her Orchestra X project so I figured it was time to revisit and reacquaint people with the work she has been doing.

Recently she had a blog post following up on the conversations her organization has been having with the communities they serve. She mentions a theme I keep seeing in formal survey results and collected anecdotes — audiences aren’t clamoring for a change in programming as much as they are intimidated and confused by the decision and experience of attending a cultural event.

The bigger issue, she says, is that those of us on the inside forget what it was like being entirely unfamiliar with information or an experience. Even when we are faced with a new-ish experience, our past experiences allow us to make logical leaps that total novices can’t.

What we learned was that a “basic” level of understanding about the symphony or classical music does not exist among newcomers. Some people didn’t even know the names of the instruments in the orchestra, which to me, the person who had played an instrument all growing up and who wanted to manage a symphony since age 16, was pretty much unfathomable (remember hindsight bias?). The good news, we discovered, was that this group of smart people desperately wanted to learn about everything related to classical music though. And through the discussion we learned that the way we layout and present information on our website made it very difficult for them to do that.

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Virtually every person in the room expressed the sentiment of “awe” when describing the art they saw and heard. No one said, “I need a shorter concert,” or “I need to hear more movie music.” They very much wanted to learn about all facets of the repertoire and were emphatic that the art is incomparable.

Bergauer says that now that California Symphony stopped stressing about programming mix and started focusing on retention versus new audience acquisition. Last season, their new attendee retention rate was over 30%.

Take a closer look at the post. She talks a little more about how rich experiences make us unable to anticipate what new attendees really need to know in order to enjoy themselves.

Our Market Is Everybody (Just Some More Than Others)

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Broadway Producer Ken Davenport is singing my song. I know you know this tune, but based on my experience, it bears reiterating.

He talks about how he often gets pitched ideas for new Broadway shows.

One of my stock questions to anyone pitching me anything is, “Who do you think the audience is for your piece?”

This question not only helps me determine whether the Pitcher and I are on the same page, but it also gives me some insight into the business acumen of the person who wants me to get involved in their project.

The red flag answer to this filtering question of mine?

“This show is for everyone!”

While I appreciate the bullish answer, the fact is . . . no show is for everyone. And the more you try to make it for everyone, the more you water it down and make sure that it’s for no one.

[…]

…Your first marketing exercise when you embark on producing a show or building a career is as follows.

  1. Identify exactly who your audience is.
  2. Find that audience and exploit them and only them.

If your audience spreads to “everyone” from there then great, but it’s much easier to market to a niche than it is to the world.

I am sure pretty much everyone has run into a similar pitch or had staff/board members make a statement about a show being for everyone. What is often frustrating is that many people who say this own or work for businesses which are pretty clear on who their customer base is and isn’t.

Even funeral homes which about 98% of us will likely end up patronizing on behalf of deceased loved ones likely each have a demographics to which they appeal more than others.

Davenport’s advice to have a focus that moves from the specific to the general is a pretty good guideline when it comes to marketing decisions.

I suspect people feel that they are conceding a flaw in the product if they admit it isn’t for everyone. Saying a certain group will REALLY like it and everyone else will probably like it to might provide the psychological out needed to identify those it is realistically for.

Where They Use Pom-Poms Rather Than Pens To Fill Out The Audience Survey

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Another month, another helpful webinar from our friends at Arts Midwest where different venues around the country talk about how they are integrating the Creating Connection practice into their operations.  This time around people from San Jose’s Teatro Vision and Red Wing, MN’s Sheldon Theatre.

Teatro Vision talked about an interesting project they conducted in conjunction with Day of the Dead activities. They had audiences respond to a number of prompts and then took the responses and used them to create poems which they posted in the lobby. Then they surveyed audiences about whether the poems helped to enhance the experience of the performance.

I had been looking forward to the Sheldon Theatre’s portion of the program for nearly a year. Anne Romens, the Creating Connection program coordinator, had been referencing their work in webinars and the professional development conference session we worked on last year so I really wanted a deeper dive into what they were doing.

If you have been reading up or hearing about Creating Connection over the last year or so, you know one of the basic, but crucial concepts is a focus on the audience and experience. The Sheldon has gone whole hog on that. Check out their website and you can see that plainly. Tell me you don’t want to be there.

Starting at about the 28 minute mark in the webinar, they talk about how there were no humans in any of the archival pictures of their building. Everything had been focused on the architectural beauty of the building. The 16-17 brochure was the first time an audience member attending a show was depicted in any of their promotional materials. If you watch their before and after pictures, you can see what a difference “populating” the building makes.

Executive Director Bonnie Schock talks about the concern her board and community members had that this shift in focus would undermine the value of the organization. But when they talked to their audience, themes of togetherness and shared experiences emerged as primary measures of value over the quality of performances and artistry.

They started to develop experiences surrounding performances- everything from meet and greets with artists to tea parties for performances of Alice in Wonderland. During a celebratory event at the start of a season, they handed out “emergency confetti” packets as people left for use when they were feeling down.

One technique I have seen nearly every group presenting a Creative Connection use is a white board/post-it note board for audience feedback. Not only did the Sheldon use this, they also “surveyed” audiences by having them drop little pom-poms in jars labeled with different sentiments (~40:45 mark).

A lot of great ideas presented by both groups, don’t let my prior interest in learning about one of them keep you from watching the whole thing.

 

#19NTC Topics-Oh Yeah Do I Got Ideas For You

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Last week Drew McManus did a call out to the non-profit arts community to submit proposals for the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March 2019. (Proposal deadline is August 17)

Last year, I was excited by the topic Drew was presenting – “Everything Tech Providers Wished You Knew About Writing A RFP (plus the stuff they want to keep secret)

So in the spirit of getting more stuff I am interested in learning about proposed, I am gonna give you a list of some of the things I think would make good topics in the hope some of you will submit something.

  • Data Privacy and Security From Perspective of Communities of Color – I have already reached out to one of the people who made a presentation for the Hispanic National Bar Assn in NYC, but anyone with an interest should submit on this topic. Given that non-profits serving communities of color often need to establish a relationship of trust, this seems like an important subject to address.
  • Analyzing The True Cost of Programs – favorite topic of mine. Related idea:
  • Using Evidence/Data to Rebutt the Concept of Overhead Ratio As A Measure Of Effectiveness
  • Shared /Online Procurement Goods/Services
  • Effective RFP Generation – both internal & external processes
  • Using Geofencing To Better Understand Target Communities – can geofencing help you better understand a community based on where they travel around the community?
  • Ethics of Using Geofencing For Marketing  – i.e. I can geofence a local theater and target people based on the idea that they enjoy attending performances or with the intent of stealing the audience.
  • In-Person/Conference Based Professional Development vs. Online/Technology Delivery. Are there some subject areas better suited to one format over the other?
  • Shared services/technology arrangements – in terms of both back office and program delivery
  • Delete the Facebook Account? – Communication strategies when faced with a concerted social media assault
  • Conforming with Google’s new criteria for Adwords Grants – i.e. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/05/07/nonprofits-can-keep-adwords-grants-following-major-changes-restore-lost-accounts/
  • Energy Saving Performance Contracts
  • Use of technology to provide regular cues to keep strategic plan alive and relevant – i.e. using software/apps to periodically to nag/remind you of milestones in time line, provide encouragement, remind you of ideas you had during the planning session
  • Effective Hiring – from job description to orientation/training  this topic is large enough to be multiple sessions can hit on everything from online job boards/job app apps to new state laws requiring salary range and forbidding asking about salary history

There are plenty more ideas where these came from, but I feel like this is a good broad range of subjects. I have already reached out to a few people encouraging to propose based on topics they are well-qualified to address.

If any of this inspires you in any sort of direction, submit a proposal.  If you got questions, let me know. Like Drew, I am on the conference session committee. Honestly, the conference organizers are really good about providing opportunities for people to ask questions at scheduled office hours and open Q&A sessions, and an online proposal prep group in which you can solicit feedback on proposals you are developing. All these resources are listed on the proposal pages.

Boy, You Are Really Enthusiastic About The World’s Largest Ball Of Lint All Of A Sudden

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A couple weeks ago, Holly Mulcahy wrote about eschewing the use of comp tickets in order to create the illusion that a performance was well attended.

As an alternative, she suggests seeking out and recruiting influencers to share their sincere reflections on their experience with the people who follow them on social media or with whom they might associate socially.

One thing I realized was missing from the articles she linked to about leveraging influencers for your brand was clear disclaimers about a quid pro quo relationship with the product or service provider. A lot of those seriously engaged as social media influencers are pretty savvy and disclose that they have received products, etc for free, but still you often hear of some people losing credibility because they failed to disclose this relationship.

I was reminded of a story some years back where a movie studio paid a girl $1,800 to insert a reference to their upcoming movie in her valedictorian speech at graduation. Marketers have gotten a little more sophisticated since then (the movie bombed, by the way.) but the public has likewise started to evince a growing skepticism about the motivations behind why people are promoting things.

If you are trying to recruit people from your community whom you have identified as knowledgeable, enthusiastic and influential, they may not consider the need to event make a passing reference thanking your organization for providing them with free, premium seating, valet parking and drink vouchers to an event. Because you want to make a good impression and facilitate their experience, it is likely that you might offer all this and more.

Not only might there be backlash if people feel the influencer is being plied with benefits in return for a good review, it might damage the influencer’s credibility if their followers aren’t able to access the same experience they assume comes with the published ticket prices.

One of the things you may want to clearly establish with an influencer is the scope and nature of your relationship and what level of disclosure is appropriate.

Can You Sincerely Build Relationships With A Marketing Motivation?

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Our friends at Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection project hosted another webinar recently showcasing the work being done by City Lights Theater Company in San Jose and Portland Playhouse.

Some of the ideas for engaging the audience that caught my attention were City Lights Theater’s practice of providing small presents to attendees. The theme of the presents aligns with each show in some way. They also hold parties on stage after the show allowing people to meet and mingle with the actors.

They have been doing these things for a number of years, but have recently tweaked both offerings to get people more actively involved. For one show, the present was origami paper and instructions to fold it into a heart. For another it was magnetic words you could form into poetry on your refrigerator.

For some post-show parties they have had drawing activities for audience members. For the play at which they handed out the poetry magnets, they set up a white board during the after party so the audience could write poetry.

You may recall from a previous webinar I covered, Eugene Symphony used a white board in their lobby to collect feedback from the audience. City Lights does that as well,  using the prompts “How Do You Create?” and “City Lights Makes Me Feel…”

The artistic director, Lisa Mallette, talks about other events and presents they have used to deepen their relationship with audiences and reinforce their organizational values. So it is worth watching the video to borrow/steal their good ideas.

Some of the choices they make seem a little counter intuitive because they value relationship building over overt marketing.

It caught my attention when Mallette pointed out their presents aren’t branded with the organizational logo.

“They know where they got it. They are going to remember where they got it. It doesn’t need to say, you know, ‘$5 off your next ticket.’ So we are shifting our thoughts about why we are doing this and making it not about transactional. That has been important for our growth as well.”

She said they avoid surveying people about their willingness to return/tell a friend during the after parties because they see it as compromising the authenticity of the connection they are trying to forge. The party is about sincere relationships so they want to avoid the appearance of plying people with cookies and wine in exchange for goodwill.

While they might ask willingness to recommend in a survey, she said often their surveys ask how the audience is doing rather than how pleased they are with the theater. For example, they will ask audiences if they are feeling creative or working on projects.

It is probably something of a testament to the connection they are forging that since 2011 one of the audience members has been going home after every performance and has been creating sketches based on how he experienced each show. City Lights is currently displaying his work on the back wall of the theater. Some of his sketches appear in the webinar.

Once she introduced the idea, I have really started thinking about whether transaction driven interactions like measuring marketing effectiveness or collecting data in support of grants might be interfering with or run counter to sincere attempts at community  relationship building.

Which, of course, raises questions about the degree of sincerity being invested in relationship building. If you immediately pivot to the need to measure and report effectiveness if you want to survive, you have your answer.

Sure the two goals may not be mutually exclusive. But I figure if a person asked you what you thought of them and how great, hospitable and well dressed they are as frequently as an arts and cultural organization asks those questions about themselves, you would think they were pretty self centered.  So there is probably a lot of room for improvement in asking people about themselves in a way that doesn’t have an underlying transactional motivation. (What they like to read, watch and listen to so that you can focus your marketing efforts there.)

When It Is Absolutely, Positively Best To Disavow Credit For Doing A Responsible Thing

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Years ago I had read an article on Non Profit Quarterly, Six Things Nonprofits Can Teach Small Business. According to the story, non-profit leaders often exhibited stronger leadership qualities than their for-profit business colleagues.

The six qualities generally address treating employees and constituencies with dignity, integrity, attentiveness and honesty.

One of the qualities dealt with being sensitive to the timing of certain decisions.

Timing is important. Leaders must be proactive, but anticipate the need to react. It is necessary to make sure all of the pieces are in place and understand how many situations should be handled before putting out a product or service. Reacting too early can damage relationships with clients, investors, and the public. A nonprofit CFO describes the importance of timing:

“The Red Cross upgraded its emergency help phone system after 9/11 with funds raised for the disaster; this rubbed donors the wrong way when it was reported in the media. So timing isn’t just about doing the right thing at the right time; executives need to be aware of the perceptions of that timing.”

I was reminded of this while listening to a recent episode of This American Life where the reporting team was provided access to the Starbucks racial bias training day when all the company owned stores were closed.

During the interview with him, then Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was emphatic about disassociating the bias training day from previous corporate initiatives which encouraged people to vote or be good stewards of the environment. Those efforts had resulted in positive associations for the company and have been recognized as good marketing.

If you read the transcript of the interview, Schultz basically asks the interviewer to stop citing the halo effects that resulted from previous initiatives. He kept insisting the bias training was an effort to start fixing their corporate culture and not an attempt to generate goodwill among the public.

Kelefa Sanneh: Yeah. When I suggested this to Howard, that this racial bias training thing had something to do with marketing Starbucks, he didn’t go for it.

[…]
Kelefa Sanneh: I want to make sure I understand this. You say this is not a marketing event. And obviously, to some people, anything that a company does kind of looks like marketing. How is this different from a marketing event?

Howard Schultz: This is the antithesis of a marketing event. It’s not something that is– it has nothing to do with trying to sell anything. Marketing is about creating awareness and selling your product. This is not– we’re not trying to sell anything.

Then the reporter, Kelefa Sanneh and host Ira Glass have a conversation about Schultz’ reaction which actually included the Starbucks PR person calling them and saying they might not want This American Life’s presence at the training if it was going to be a gotcha story about how Starbucks was trying to generate positive PR for themselves.

Ira Glass OK. All right, here’s the theory. Is it possible that he is so insistent that there’s no marketing in it because, yeah, he knows that anything his company does publicly affects how the public sees his brand. Like, of course doing anything like this is a kind of marketing.

But he doesn’t want to admit it because actually, underneath it, he actually is trying to do a good thing. He’s trying to actually address racism. He thinks America is too racist. He wants to do something about it. And he just feels like, oh, if we start admitting that there’s some marketing, or we get some brand halo from this, that’s just going to muddy the message.

Kelefa Sanneh Yeah, although what’s weird is, this isn’t the first time Starbucks has tried to do a good thing, right? They’ve had environmental initiatives. They had this voting thing, which he was happy to say the voting thing was good marketing. So in a sense, this isn’t new for Starbucks.

But what is new is that this is a racism initiative. And I think he has a sense that racism is so incendiary, so sensitive, that it can’t have anything to do with marketing. Like, if there’s any sense that this has anything to do with marketing Starbucks, people are going to tune it out or maybe worse, right?

Ira Glass Right, because it would be offensive.

Kelefa Sanneh Yeah, this idea, like, you’re taking America’s national sin of racism and using that to sell coffee. People might consider that offensive.

This exchange in the episode reminded me of the Non Profit Quarterly piece. It made me wonder, was this recognition by Starbucks a sign that the qualities mentioned are starting to permeate society a little more?

Emotional Intelligence is certainly not the sole province of non-profits. (And I am sure no small number of employees of non profits may be wondering where their share of emotional intelligence in the workplace is being stored.)

It is good to see the CEO of a corporation the size of Starbucks exhibiting the level of awareness about the situation that he was. There is obviously a profit motive in not screwing up the way the company responds to the recent instances of racial bias in their stores, but they probably could have glossed it over with less expenditure of effort, concern and money.

I have never really been a Starbucks fan and as much as I am complimenting them here, I am pretty unlikely to increase my visits. But I probably won’t more actively avoid their stores either.

Taken together, both the NPQ article and the This American Life transcript can serve as a reminder to be deliberate and thoughtful in decision making. Perhaps more importantly, that there is value in doing so even if the efforts of non-profits so often get overlooked.

Opt In To Learn How The Show Ends

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In somewhat the same theme as the post I made last week about Tu Me Manques  which uses social media to tell the story of a relationship, I had also come across an article in May about Pirates & Mermaids, a one person show about a long distance romance that “unfolds through texts between the two main characters, shared photographs, and good old-fashioned storytelling by the fire.”

What drew me to the story wasn’t the use of social media in the show. The show doesn’t appear to rely on the availability of live Wifi like Tu Me Manques does. It was the way the production company, Poorboy, was using social media to keep connected with their audiences. In the case of Pirates & Mermaids, it was ending the show with a cliffhanger that created some incentive for providing your email to Poorboy.

After the show finishes, audience members are offered a postcard where they can share a message about the performance and share their email address with the production team. Those who opt in receive two follow-up emails from Cameron that lets them know what happens next.

It is a creative and fun way of engaging audiences beyond the performance by building the story into the marketing. Plus, it’s a smart way to build a mailing list because it encourages people to opt in to email communications by giving them something more than a marketing message that they can really to look forward to. The messages that come back from audiences give an insight into audiences’ emotional investment in the story.

One thing I should note is that they tend to do the show for small groups of people so they already generate a degree of intimacy with audiences. The postcards and emails they get in response are more often addressed to the character, Cameron, encouraging him onward rather than commenting on how well the production team did their job. They have had about 150 performances over the last six year and have an email list of 800 people which they say represents 75% of their audiences opting in to the email list.

Some quick math indicates they are performing for audiences of 7-8 people (the article says they limit site specific shows to a max of 15) so this is hardly a cynical attempt to trick people into helping them fatten their marketing database. They say their email open rates for the show are 75%-80%, which is better than the open rates for their other productions which use different social media techniques to connect with audiences.

According to the article, they do transition people from the show email list to their newsletter. The piece doesn’t really mention whether they specifically ask if people want to be included in the newsletter list or not. My guess is that since the production company is based in the UK, it will need to be very deliberate in how they handle those email addresses now that new regulations went into effect across the European Union at the end of May.

In any case, their process represents an option for engaging audiences that people might like to explore a little more deeply.

Your Phone Tells Me You Were In An Art Museum, Now You Are In Starbucks….

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Last month NPR had a story discussing how lawyers were sending ads for their services to people in hospital emergency rooms thanks to technique known as geofencing which allows one to identify cellphones entering to certain geographic area.

Geofencing is something retailers use to offer you coupons when you approach the area of their shops. The use around hospitals raises some privacy concerns. Everyone in the hospital is bound by law not to reveal information about your visit, but those gathering information from your phone signal are not.

Once someone crosses the digital fence, Kakis says, the ads can show up for more than a month — and on multiple devices.

To Kakis, this is just modern-day target marketing. In his pitch to potential clients, in an email reviewed by WHYY, he calls the technology “totally legit.”

But Massachusetts’ attorney general, Maura Healey, offers a different response.

“Private medical information should not be exploited in this way,” Healey says. “Especially when it’s gathered secretly without a consumer’s knowledge, without knowledge or consent.”

This type of service is widely available and can be used for all sorts of useful purposes. If you can see that people attending your events are also frequenting various restaurants and other businesses in your area you are able to take any number of actions like coordinating promotions with the businesses or providing evidence of economic activity in your community.

You can also geofence other arts organizations in your region as a way to identify people who are inclined to participate in arts and cultural activities and provide them with information about your own activities.

Of course, the technology can assist in some questionable practices as well. You might send general ads about “high quality performances at half the price and free parking” to people who have visited an arts organization in your area that charges higher pricing. Or you could directly disparage other organizations with people who enter or pass near their buildings.

As I understand it, you currently need to provide ad content to a service provider who sets up your ads in the same way a broadcaster might. By which I mean, it has to pass through human hands and they could potentially nix something as blatant as “Why are you walking into that crappy theater when you could be in a modern facility that allows you to eat at your seat and has a fun all around atmosphere. There is still time to come to Acme Theater.”

However, I imagine within a handful of years, you will be able to delineate your own geofencing using an online map and upload an ad from your office as you would to a social media site. It may be difficult to track who is attacking your reputation while people are buying food from your snack bar.

Now personally, I don’t see a lot of arts and cultural organizations getting this cutthroat. They may send out something along the lines of “If You Liked The Dali Retrospective, You Might Like….”

However, it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that an electronics business, video streaming service or cable company might geofence your organization and send something like “After a hard day of work do you really want to get back in the car, try to find parking, get home at 11 pm and pay the babysitter when you could stay at home and enjoy being in control of your experience with your gorgeous entertainment system?”

I anticipate that there will be debates about the ethical use of techniques that allow marketers and others to track people’s movements as these practices become more common and wide spread.

Could You Benefit From Sharing Your Ticket Revenue With Four Other Theaters?

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Kaya Stanley-Money shares a really intriguing story on Arts Professional about how five London theatres presented the same performance and then pooled the ticket revenue.

…the five London venues to present Yvette for two or three nights at each venue over a two and half week period, sharing the box office income equally after the artist guarantee had been paid. This meant that venues at the start of the tour would benefit as much as those at the end, removing all competition and encouraging a genuine collaboration.

The performances were marketed as a London run, which enabled us to establish a comprehensive press strategy and offered the opportunity to build audiences for Urielle’s work in five different London boroughs. This was particularly important to reach a much younger audience who are typically less likely to travel far and have deeper geographical roots than your average London theatregoer.

Above all, this model offered Urielle the invaluable opportunity to build a relationship with all five venues, capitalising on their support for emerging artists.

I was especially drawn by the mention that this arrangement provided an opportunity to reach a younger audience in five London boroughs. This might not normally be possible because the venues typically insist a performance not happen within a certain radius of their venue. Since each venue stood to benefit if a partner was more successful than they were it made some sense to waive that clause.

I was interested to read that some of the venues were already exploring share box office arrangements. I know that theatres partnering on a production will often agree to share production costs, but this was the first I became aware of theatres engaging in box office sharing.

As part of the shared marketing effort, each venue contributed equally to the advertising spend and each provided links to the performances of all five venues on their respective websites.

Apparently the partnering venues were optimistic about the revenue potential because they agreed to a 60/40 artist-venue split rather than the typical 50/50 split.

In the end, this may have benefited the artist most. She established relationships with five venues. She was able to have a denser saturation of exposure across London than she would have had radius exclusion clauses been in place.  Potentially, she may have received more money than she would have with longer runs in fewer venues.

As Stanley-Money notes, this revenue sharing model can be beneficial when presenting new works or emerging artists because it mitigates the risk a single venue might undertake by pooling promotional expense as well as the revenue.

I am hoping that Stanley-Money follows up with a report on how successful they assessed the plan was.

For example, if a performance is in one or two places across 15 days, it may take awhile for the audience to build up as word of mouth builds and then the audiences may trail off. I would be curious to discover if that may have happened as the show appeared at five different venues. If the audience peaked at the second, third, and fourth venue, it isn’t a big problem revenue wise since all the venues are sharing.

However, if people don’t generally travel out of their borough to see a performance, there may be some exposure concerns at the venues with lower attendance. On the other hand, if they find that people who missed a local performance traveled out of their neighborhoods based on good word of mouth, it makes the cooperative partnership model look even better.

I would also be interested to learn just how easy it was to get all the venues to agree on promotional and operational arrangements. I have had experiences with groups with long histories partnering on many arrangements but could never manage to agree on promotional efforts. The fact this production was more of a second space event rather than a main stage event may have minimized the resistance.

Classical Music As A Prescription To Cure Social Ills…And To Sell Perscriptions

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A couple weeks back there was a piece by Theodore Gioia in the Los Angeles Review of Books that started out talking about the history of weaponizing classical music.  You may be familiar with this practice where classical music is loudly played in public places like train stations, shopping malls, parking lots, street corners, etc with the goal of chasing away undesirable elements like teenagers and the homeless.

If ever there was a practice that reinforced the idea that classical music is for people other that yourself, it is people pointing it at you in the hopes you will go away.

As I read on, I realized that Gioia was tackling a frequent theme of my blog posts – placing value on the utility of art rather than valuing art for its own sake. After noting the use of classic music as a social disinfectant, he goes on to note how often classical music is separated from the context of an entire work and used to sell things.

Uproot “O Fortuna” from a Latin cantata, so it can be grafted onto a Domino’s Super Bowl spot. These transplants produce jarring mashups that trigger another insidious side effect: by always quoting works out of the context the public forgets that they have a context. The spectator forgets that “O Fortuna” could be glorious in its original context because it’s absurd hyping Domino’s Pizza.

[…]

A prime example of classical music’s conflicted position in our capitalist culture is Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. Dubbed the “Things Just Got Classy Song” by one columnist, the two-minute composition has been deployed for an astounding array of causes. IMDB lists 73 credits, with a résumé featuring primetime mainstays Smallville and ER, ad campaigns for Healthy Choice frozen broccoli and Pedigree dog food, and big-screen flicks ranging from Elysium and The Hangover Part II to a brief cameo in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

[…]

Where does this leave the prelude — and, by extension, classical music? From awakening Megasharks to selling Cadillacs, Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 has been drafted to support many causes. But one cause it seldom supports is itself. After being pressed into the service of so many outside agendas — advertising, film, and police work — the prelude loses its identity as an independent work of art, demanding to be taken on its own terms. It is difficult for the prelude to provide any modern audience with a genuinely “pure” listening experience.

There are no easy solutions to the quandaries this raises.  Gioia doesn’t make any suggestions for a path forward and I don’t really have any ideas myself.

You want people to be exposed to art so it becomes familiar. However, if you start dictating which modes of expression are appropriate and which are not, you end up placing it on the pedestal that reinforces its elite status.

People often cite the use of classical music in Bugs Bunny cartoons like “What’s Opera, Doc” and “Rabbit of Seville” as constructive ways in which the general public was exposed to the music. I am sure there were enough people who were opposed to the concept that the cartoons would have never been had it been left to them.

Any suggestion of not presenting a piece out of the context of the whole can be a non-starter when you factor length of many compositions vs. the public’s attention span.

Of course, there are plenty of organizations who transmit art for its own sake through diverse modes of expression and media. But that brings in the long debated issue of relevance and effectively forging connections with the community.

The only admittedly vague route I can see toward appreciation of art in its own context is connecting with the instinct to want to know more. Since people have had so much exposure to some works via overt and background placement, people might not be driven by a new, novel encounter to seek more information.

For those that are curious enough to do research, a campaign to have ad agencies or advertisers credit the original composition online might help a little.

For example, the ad below uses “O Fortuna” to sell beer and there are credits for all the personnel who helped create the ad included in the YouTube notes. No mention that they were spoofing Carl Orff though.

Apparently the Carlton Draught has a tradition of using classical music in their ads. This one does credit “Nessun Dorma” as the source of their parody.

Are You Really The Storyteller You Think You Are?

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FastCompany had an article about Five Ways Non Profits Struggle last month.

Most of the things mentioned aren’t really news to you if you work in non profits: Restrictions on how grants and donations can be used, employee burn out, ineffective use of data collection and lack of access to capital.

The assertion that,

…most organizations don’t engage in fundraising experimentation because they’re worried about the perception that it might create. There’s a tendency adhere to a set formula–the portion of operations supported by grants, individual contributions, or mission-related revenues–without thinking about how impact can change if you get creative.

was somewhat intriguing. Perhaps I will investigate that idea a little more in the future.

It was the fifth point, however, that I hadn’t expected to see on the list.

53% of nonprofit leaders spend less than two hours preparing for a speech

That’s especially scary considering only 10% of people in the sector consider themselves to be well-trained storytellers, according to Janus’s research. At the same time, there’s a huge payoff for those who learn how to talk engagingly about their mission.

Now arguably, this might not make the top 5 problems facing non-profit leaders, but it could certainly constitute a barrier to success.

While I have encountered a number of people who did a poor job making their case or were deadly boring, I never considered that it might be lack of preparation that contributed to that problem. I think we have all encountered teachers/professors who have a reputation for being boring that spans years. Their problem was more attributable to delivery rather than lack of repetition.

On the other hand, if you do consider yourself a good storyteller and feel that process is an important part of garnering investment and interest in your mission, then it does behoove you to invest time in development and preparation.

This article made me recall how I was recently asked to deliver two talks within a couple days of each other. I was keenly aware that I was much more comfortable discussing content I had spoken on before and felt I did a more effective job delivering it. Even still, I probably practiced and tweaked it for 5-7 hours.

Even though I wasn’t as comfortable delivering the second speech, I invested close to 20 hours developing and rehearsing it.  I suspect when I get some more distance from it, I will be able to go back and cut a lot of extraneous content so I can do a better job on the topic the next time out.

It is admittedly not easy to find the time to do justice to a speech with so many immediate demands on your time. The two talks I recently delivered were definitely a nights and weekends endeavor. It is very much like the situation where the you could do something ten times in the time it takes you to teach a new employee to do the job to a half way acceptable level. In the long term, however, that initial investment can become a long term benefit to the organizational mission.

Data Vs. Your Gut

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When I was thinking about what to write today, I figured a good intersection between yesterday’s post about productive employees not necessarily being good manager material and Drew McManus’ recent post about the “Shit Arts Administrators Say” Twitter account is Colleen Dilenschneider’s post, “Three Phrases That Effective Leaders Do Not Say”

Written last summer, Dilenschneider’s primary goal is to advocate for a proper approach to using all the data arts leaders have available to them. She argues that it can often feel easier, and therefore preferable, to rely on gut instinct rather than think critically about what is best for the organization.

Dilenschneider goes to great effort to explain these ideas so visit her page rather than being satisfied with my synopsis.

That said, in brief, the three phrases and suggested alternatives are:

1) “That doesn’t apply to me”
[…]
Say instead: “Let’s uncover the extent to which this finding applies to our organization, and explore what can be learned from this information.”

2) “I agree/disagree with the data”
[…]
Say instead: “Given these findings, I think our biggest challenge is…

3) “We need more information before we can do anything (on this topic where we already have meaningful information)”
[…]
Say instead, “Let’s consider what needs to change and what items need to be tackled to make the most of this information.”

It is in connection with phrase 2, that she addresses the problem of insiders using their gut feelings by warning against things like weighing the opinion of one person (board chair/executive director) more heavily than the hundreds/thousand whose responses comprise the data. Likewise, she points out that not only aren’t industry insiders the target market for the services and products arts organizations provide, insiders tend to have all sorts of blind spots and skewed perspectives due to their position.

One thing she doesn’t mention here, though I am sure she would acknowledge, is that it takes work to understand and evaluate whether data is valid and relevant to you.   It is often also easier to utter these phrases than to invest the time to look at the methodology behind the data to determine whether the results are dependable.

For example, radio and television stations trying to sell you ad space will cite all sorts of numbers about how much exposure you will get. With a little thought, you will quickly come to realize you won’t be reaching anywhere near those numbers as a result of any number of factors.  Your experience as a consumer helps inform a healthy skepticism.

When faced with data for an area in which you have no frame of reference or expertise, it can definitely require some effort to understand and evaluate. It is much more expedient and comfortable to go with one’s gut.

Dilenschneider does say there are times in which these phrases are useful. Note that final caveat though:

  • For instance, it’s a good idea to say, “That doesn’t apply to me” after you’ve collected the data and understand the true extent to which it applies to your organization, and you’ve found that it doesn’t.
  • It’s okay to say, “I disagree with this data” to discount findings when it is data about you and only you.
  • And it’s wise to say, “We need more information before we can do anything,” when it’s a big or expensive change and the takeaway is unclear. In such a case, you should absolutely gather more information!

This said, these phrases are all too often uttered defensively. If these words are about to escape your lips, think twice.

Your Resolution To Create Connections With Arts And Culture Starts Today! (or maybe tomorrow depending on when you read this)

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For over two years now I have been talking about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative to build public will for arts and culture.

While readers have had an opportunity to review the materials on the website, few have been able to attend the Arts Midwest presentations and ask questions in person.

Well you are in luck! Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 19 @ noon CST Creating Connection program manager Anne Romens will be hosting a webinar to discuss the project and findings. You can register by following that link.

Anne also hosted a webinar on the subject last week. The video of that webinar is available if you don’t have the opportunity to participate on Tuesday. You’ll want to pay attention around the 33 minute mark for the shout out to some work I have been doing.

Even if you don’t think you will become the full throated advocate for the project that I am, at the very least you can come away from the webinar with some tips on how to change your messaging and promotional materials to be more audience and experience focused.

The webinar comes at the right time to allow you to resolve to do a better job in the New Year so check it out.

When You Realize Your Hip “Wear Jeans” Series Audience Is Actually More Conservative Than The Masterworks Audience

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Earlier this year, I wrote about studies funded by the Wallace Foundation that helped Ballet Austin gain some insight about their audiences. Recently I discovered the Wallace Foundation had supported a similar study by the Seattle Symphony.

The piece is a short read, but if you don’t even have time for that, watch the accompanying video. There are some interesting contrasts between what the symphony assumed and the reality.

The study focused on three programs the symphony felt would connect with younger and newer audiences: Untuxed, an informal series where the musicians perform sans-tux (and black dress). Start time is earlier and program duration is no longer than 75 minutes.

Sonic Evolution – a series that draws on the influences and music of Seattle area pop music bands and incorporates video.

The third series is Untitled, a late night (10 pm start) chamber series set in the lobby with alternative seating and special mood lighting featuring “challenging 20th and 21st century compositions.”

What they found was that only the Untuxed series had a significant draw for new audiences. They were also interested to learn that the audience for the edgy Untitled series skewed older than they had anticipated.

Somewhat to the administration’s initial disappointment, the Untuxed audience seemed to prefer the “greatest hits” of classical music, making the tastes of the Masterworks audience look progressive by comparison.

They appreciated works like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Copland’s Symphony No. 3 and Bernstein’s Candide Overture—nothing more adventurous. “Untuxed is actually the most conservative audience that we have,” said Wade; they wanted music that they “know and love.”

…said one audience member. “I love the fact that it is ‘the best of’.” Another, who found the music “relaxing,” agreed and voiced appreciation for Untuxed’s other key draw—its early start and short span. “I am going to be able to make it home for my kids’ bedtime, and that means a lot to me,” she said.

They had also hoped that Untuxed would be an on-ramp to transition audiences to their core Masterworks series. Unfortunately, few have made that transition. In fact, most people who attended Untuxed had attended a Masterworks concert first. The good news, however, was that the cheaper Untuxed series didn’t cannibalize the Masterworks audience as was first feared.

…Untuxed, like Sonic Evolution and Untitled, is a separate program—or brand extension—neither more nor less. But all three are valuable, even without affecting attendance at the core Masterworks concerts, because they draw new audiences to Benaroya Hall. They are providing, as Wade says, “another lens on the orchestra,” taking SSO deeper into the community.

Among the other steps Seattle Symphony Orchestra is taking to grow their audiences is directly approaching businesses, hotels, condominiums and apartment complexes in the downtown area with ticket offers for employees and residents. That effort brought in $177,000 in sales to new or lapsed audiences.

They are really focusing on customer service training at every level and making a special effort to welcome new attendees.

SSO has also created a “Surprise and Delight” program for new subscribers. In it, staff members greet them by name when they arrive at Benaroya Hall and tell them SSO is glad they’ve come. “What we found,” said Wade, “is that, in fact, the people that we greet renew at a significantly higher rate than people that we don’t greet.” In the 2016-17 season, that tally was 41 percent versus 29 percent.

At each concert, about 35 new members also hear a buzz when their ticket is scanned, and are told to go to the information desk. “They are looking curious,” Kunkel said—and about five to seven of the 35 never go to the desk, he added. Those who do, however, are thanked and given free drink tickets. “Their concern falls away,” said Kunkel, who works the desk, “and they get a big smile on their faces.”

Hoping To Not Just Change The Name, But The Smell Of The Rose As Well

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In the last couple weeks two arts service organizations have taken the arguably long overdue step toward establishing greater parity among their members.

Last week at the Arts Midwest Conference, Ohio Arts Presenters Network (OAPN) president Robert Baird announced that the organization would be changing its name to Ohio Arts Professionals Network. While the acronym remains the same, the change was effected to acknowledge that agents, artists and other professionals were members of the organization.

Today, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) made a similar announcement that going forward they would be the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.

This isn’t the first time APAP has changed its name to reflect the composition of its membership. It started in 1957 as Association of College and University Concert Managers (ACUCM). In 1973 it changed to Association of College, University and Community Arts Administrators (ACUCAA) and became Association of Performing Arts Presenters in 1988 to acknowledge the membership wasn’t primarily based in higher education any longer. (Though I think ACUCAA, pronounced ah-koo-kah, was a lot more fun to say than APAP)

More than just superficially changing the name, APAP committed to a new program to help artists become members,

In addition to the updated name, this year the organization has introduced a pilot initiative called Artist Access, a one-year introductory membership program allowing qualified individual professional artists who have never been an organizational member of APAP, and who have never attended APAP as a full registrant, to become an APAP member and attend its annual members conference at reduced rates. More information is found at artistaccess.apap365.org.

Certainly, there is more work to be done to help everyone feel like an equal member of the respective organizations. (As with my cable company’s special pricing, I wonder where are the discount and benefits for long term loyal artists who have felt marginalized.) The format of the artist/agent/presenter interactions at the conferences often leave all involved feeling uncomfortable.

There have been efforts to change this situation. Over a decade ago, the Western Arts Alliance started experimenting with the physical layout of their conference, seeking to change the power dynamic.  Along with the name change, last week OAPN expressed their commitment to making attendance at their conference feel less confrontational by shifting the focus to a block booking format where artists, agents and presenting organizations sit down and try to set up beneficial routing arrangements that save the presenters money and get the artists working.

It will be interesting to see how these efforts develop and what new initiatives emerge to address concerns about the state of this corner of the creative and culture industry.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say, We Don’t Want To Hear It

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A long time complaint about arts coverage in newspapers has been that the writers seldom get it right. They don’t present the full story or employ fair criteria.

Of course, more recently the complaint has been that newspapers have completely eliminated their staff providing arts coverage.

Back in 2009, I wrote about an exchange between the communications director for the Guthrie Theatre and a writer for the Minnesota Star Tribute.

The former accused the newspaper of not engaging in substantive journalism about real stories and the latter accused the Guthrie of only participating in stories they liked and shutting down in the face of potential criticism. The incident was so noteworthy that even though the link to the communication director’s original letter no longer works, Minnesota Playlist reprinted it as part of a retrospective in 2014.

Even though arts organizations may not get arts coverage from local media the way they once did, I think the real value of my original post is in the discussion of transparency that arts organizations exhibit when sharing information about themselves in any forum.

Looking Back At Some Of My Favs

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Back in the day, Drew McManus ran an annual series on Adaptistration during the month of April which he christened,  Take A Friend To The Orchestra month. I found an old post which recounted some of my favorite entries which provide some great insight into the way different people experience attending the orchestra.

One post I linked to but didn’t quote was composer Alex Shapiro’s. As I re-read some of the entries I cited, I wanted to call attention to some of what she said.

If this orchestral thing is so enjoyable, why the heck do we need to fortify, inform, pre-warn, pre-inform and generally pre-experience it for someone? Is it actually that scary? That risky? Will body armor be necessary? Are we supposed to treat a new listener like a piece of food and soak her in a rich marinade of background information in order to ready her for the searing flame of the auditorium seats? Ouch!

As with all live concerts in any genre- chamber, jazz, rock, reggae- symphonic music washes over us as a sensual experience. If we insist on viewing it as difficult and challenging (perhaps because that automatically makes those of us who like it look awfully darn smart), we’re missing the point. And equally sadly, we’re sending a message that it’s an awful lot of work to listen to music. With an implication like that, people just might stay home, or opt to do something with their money that they perceive as a more obviously enjoyable experience. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

Later she talks about the way the L.A. Phil was advertising concerts. While this was in 2006 and the L.A. Phil has probably made changes to their promotional style, I am pretty sure there are still groups that employ the methods about which she complains:

One day last year as I was driving, a radio ad for the L.A. Phil came on. A haughty-sounding middle-aged white woman was cooing an oily, British-inflected voiceover into a high-end microphone, telling listeners just how marvelous the upcoming season was and that we won’t want to miss the “divine splendor and magnificence” (or some such combo of adjectives) of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

I was livid. This was “my” wonderful orchestra that was trying to get backsides into the seats, but this truly obnoxious ad “reached out” to only a very small and specialized segment of our population. How was this elitist presentation supposed to build audiences for the future? I love hearing the Phil at Disney Hall, but that radio spot even made me want to stay away, thinking, “gee, I guess this isn’t for regular folks.” These are the kinds of approaches that must be reconsidered, if the great tradition of the symphony orchestra is to continue. It has to do with the attitude we wear- not the clothes.

I know you have heard these sentiments about promotional efforts made before, but it is always good to be reminded. Especially because we don’t often hear “insiders” empathizing with the negative impression audiences might have of the way arts organizations talk about themselves.

Any way, I hope you will check out some of my suggested posts. They are a good mix of humor and insight about the experience of concert attendance.

Revisiting Fuzzy Definitions

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I am off on vacation to the Canadian Rockies for a week or so. If you don’t hear from me again, it may be that the Banff Centre for the Arts is as awesome as I hear and I am hiding out there.

As always when I am traveling, I have looked back at my archives to see what past thoughts may still have relevance today.

I came across a post I did in 2008 where I spoke about Alan Brown’s observation that in the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts conducted by the NEA.

Brown lists an admittedly small excerpt of the verbatim responses to the question: “What was the last “classical music” concert that you attended?” Among the answers listed are Tito Puentes, The Stompers, Showboat with Tom Bosley, Music Man, King and I and Oliver.

For the question, “What was the last “opera” that you attended,” Phantom of the Opera appears five times along with Les Miz, Brigadoon and “It was on Broadway” (remember, these are recorded verbatim).

Not having access to all the raw data, I have no idea what percentage of the answers these represent. As I suggested, it does make you wonder when people answer surveys that they enjoy and want to see more classical music or opera, if your concept of classical music/opera is the same as theirs. These results are from 10 years ago so I wonder how much less significant these categories are to people these days.

Now it is 20 years since that survey was conducted so I think what people consider as falling into those categories may be less defined. In that 2008 post, I wondered if it might be better to de-emphasize labels to a great degree.

Acknowledging that people don’t care how performances are categorized as long as they have an enjoyable experience changes the way you market performances. If the definition of classical music is rather nebulous, the fact that the violinist received a Pomme Rouge when they were 17 is nearly bereft of meaning. (As it should be, my mother was giving me pommes rouge before I was 5 years old.) Marketing has to focus on why someone will enjoy the performance and not overly concern itself with convincing someone they like the organization’s definition of classical music or whether the recipient likes classical music at all.

[…]

Of course, the water flows both ways in regard to this sentiment. When asked if they liked opera, someone might say they liked Phantom but didn’t really care for The Magic Flute. A good experience with what they think is opera, classical music, Shakespeare (but really Oscar Wilde), won’t guarantee liking the “real” thing. Nor may it inspire experimentation even if they equate Phantom with opera due to simple lack of name recognition.

At the core the idea is that defining labels allow people to decide whether they like something before they try it. We have done it since we were kids and asked what was in food so we could decide we didn’t like it if it had an ingredient we don’t like. We have probably all run into people who said something along the lines of “you said that was jazz, but that isn’t REAL jazz because…” They can’t enjoy it because it doesn’t fit a slot neatly.

At the same time, I am not suggesting the approach should be, “trust us sight unseen, you will like it.” Provide people with information, video links, etc so they can make a decision. I am just suggesting not to place that information behind a label that allows them to decide without exploring.

No Tall Tales To Tell

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You wouldn’t think fishermen needed help telling a story, but according to Non-Profit Quarterly, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking for just that.

They are getting help from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod in securing the services of a digital storyteller to serve as part time artist-in-residence for a year. (Deadline to submit is June 30)

According to the Non-Profit Quarterly,

This is a unique opportunity for an enterprising photojournalist/videographer seeking to tell the story of a normally hard-to-reach profession. The Fishermen’s Alliance goal for the artist-in-residence is to give the general public a better understanding of organization’s value to Cape Cod.

Presently, the Fishermen’s Alliance YouTube channel has 25 subscribers. The 20 or so videos have a modest number of views. Their tagline is, “Small Boats. Big Ideas.” That message is not apparent in their existing videos. However, their plan to engage an artist-in-residence is certainly a big idea. One would not expect this kind of initiative to be launched by a relatively small-membership organization of commercial fishermen. Any nonprofit would do well to watch what the Fishermen’s Alliance artist-in-residence begins to produce online and take careful notes.

[…]

…Perhaps the biggest challenge for any nonprofit is strategic: How to create content that people want to consume, and how to create engaging videos that get shared. The Fishermen’s Alliance artist-in-residence will need a solid understanding of metrics and how they point the way for continual improvement. Yes, there is the still photography part of the job, but the cornerstone of any nonprofit’s content marketing efforts today needs to be video. From 360-degree videos (for the ambitious) to Facebook Live, all nonprofits need to respond to their audience’s shorter attention span by making content interactive and visual.

This can be valuable advice for non-profit organizations as something they need to strive for. But for arts organizations, the story may illuminate new opportunities. Can your organization or artists with whom you work offer similar services to non-profits and businesses in your community to help them attain similar goals.

 

Post title a riff on Love and Rockets’ “No New Tale To Tell”

Hero To The World, Ho-hum At Home

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I have mentioned a couple times how Jamie Bennett addressed a belief in a TEDx talk that art is what other people do in other places.  I wonder if there might be a little “familiarity breeds contempt” or “no prophet is accepted in his own country” bias operating there.

A year ago, Colleen Dilenschneider made a post talking about how local audiences seem to appreciate their hometown cultural organizations least.

Local audiences believe that the value of the visitor experience is less worthy of the organization’s admission cost than non-local visitors to the same institution. On average, people living within 25 miles of the organization (or, locals) indicate value for cost perceptions that are 14% lower than those of regional visitors!

But so many organizations offer discounts for locals. Are these folks even paying full admission? No. On average, the locals in this data reported paying 20% less than regional visitors – and they still report that the value wasn’t as worthy of the cost as non-local audiences paying full admission!

Okay. But local audiences are probably more satisfied with their experience, right? After all, the organization is right there strengthening the reputation of their own city, and, again, many are getting in at a reduced cost.

Nope again. Take a look at the data cut for overall satisfaction in regard to distance traveled. Locals report satisfaction levels that are 11% lower than regional visitors who had the same visitor experience.

Believe it or not, she says this bias exists even in places like New York City which means maybe the Metropolitan Museum of Art should rethink their plan to offer free admission only to NYC residents. People in the rest of the state, country and world are going to appreciate the experience much more than they do.

Instead of devaluing yourself by offering price discounts, she suggests promotional strategies and special events or perks that add value to the experience of local audiences.

Dilenschneider suggests that these findings may make the leaders of cultural organizations angry, especially those that pride themselves in serving their local community.  I confess I had that same initial reaction, partially on behalf of many of the other cultural organizations in my area. She says this anger is good because it can impel you to action.

I got that when one receives solicited or unsolicited feedback from participants, they might do well to examine the feedback to get a sense of what sort of value added experiences or perks the organization could offer.

The opportunity may not be directly obvious from the answers people give, but after observing some trends and subtext, could result in something that resonates with the community like barbecue or chili cook-offs. This event may or may not have a specific hook related to the organization. (Re-create a painting using barbecue foods at a museum event?)

Cosette Before and After

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I bookmarked this story years ago and I don’t know why I never wrote about it. Back in 2015, the Toronto Globe and Mail did an 8 part story on the rehearsal and performance process of a high school production of Les Miserables.

And before I continue, lets just acknowledge that a major newspaper doing an 8 part story on a high school production is news worthy enough that I could just stop writing right now and we would all be excited.

The thing I thought was kinda cool was the way they presented the before/after shots of the students in and out of costume.  I figured everyone would be using something similar to that  slider technology everywhere shortly thereafter but I have never seen it again.  (Maybe I just don’t travel the right social media sites)

It doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult to do given some of the common web design elements I have seen lately, but maybe the simplicity is deceiving.

It struck me as an interesting method of presenting performers so that they were more relatable and the production more appealing. Productions using more sophisticated and intricate make up could really showcase the metamorphosis that occurs for the actor as people advanced and reversed the image.

Has anyone seen this sort of thing done elsewhere for performances to good effect?

People Like You Read A Blog Post Like This

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Even though it often feels like promoting arts and culture as a non-profit entity requires inventing entirely new methods wholecloth because our emphasis and motivations are not driven by a profit motive, I am encouraged when I see commonalities in research findings and advice. We are, after all, dealing with the same set of human beings.

Seth Godin recently had a post about getting people to shift to a new product. While his example revolves around getting someone to switch brands of motorcycle, I saw a few familiar lessons peeking out between the Harleys and BMWs.

If you are marketing to people who will have to switch to engage with you, do it with intention. Your pitch of, “this is very very good” is insufficient. Your pitch of, “you need something in this category” makes no sense, because I’m already buying in that category. Instead, you must spend the time, the effort and the money to teach me new information that allows me to make a new decision. Not that I was wrong before, but that I was under-informed.

This caught my attention for two reasons. First, it reinforces that providing a high quality performance is not enough if people already feel they are having quality experiences with their current choices. (Which could be everything from other experiences to entertainment delivery platforms.)

Second, it reiterates the importance of having sufficient information about the unfamiliar that I wrote about on Monday and last month.

And then there is this from Godin:

Ignore the tribal links at your peril. Without a doubt, “people like us do things like this,” is the most powerful marketing mantra available. Make it true, then share the news.

While this idea is most often emphasized in relation to getting millennial involved in what you are doing, (the study I cited on Monday being a prime example), participating in activities and associating with things that reinforce your self image is a fundamental element of our society, regardless of age.

(And I am really curious, how many people didn’t pass over this post because of the title? That would really prove a point despite being so blatantly click-baity)

It’s That They Think Ticket Prices Are Too High

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A little while ago I came across a presentation by the Wallace Foundation that seeks to aggregate a number of studies to provide insight for building millennial audiences.

If you have been following the research about performing arts audiences for any length of time, there probably won’t be much in the presentation that will surprise you. The barriers to participation, for example, are familiar: cost, no one to go with and the variety of available choices.

However, if you are new to the topic or just seeking a review, the presentation is a good tool. The visuals are easy to navigate and provide some useful insights.

Of particular interest was the topic of cost and younger audiences. In response to the objection that the cost is too high, I have often heard colleagues note that young people will easily drop more money at a bar on a week night than a ticket would cost.

As it so often is, cost is just an excuse for something else. In this case, it is the assurance that one will enjoy the experience.

Among the responses quoted in the Wallace presentation are the following:

“It’s not about the cost or whether I have the money, but just about the investment and the risk.”

and

“I can see myself paying $100 for a show I’ve wanted to see for a long time, but not more than $50-60 for a normal show, and really more like $20 to 30 if I can.”

What was most interesting was that millennials tended to overestimate the cost of the ticket by a significant margin. Check out this chart.

One of the suggestions in the presentation is obviously to find a more effective way to communicate the pricing.

As I looked through the findings, I realized there was a lot in common with the recent survey findings communicated by Ballet Austin which noted audiences were open to experimenting with unfamiliar works if they were provided with information that assured an enjoyable experience.

I subsequently realized the Wallace Foundation funded Ballet Austin’s research so the common elements are to be expected. (And explains why I was experiencing deja vu reading some of the survey quotes.) The Ballet Austin results are worth a read for the detail not mentioned in the presentation document.

One other image I wanted to share, especially for those who may not take my advice to view the full presentation, is this handy chart on experiences millenials in general seek from different performance disciplines. (As they say, your mileage may vary.)

Where Have All The Hunters Gone?

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I am pretty open about admitting when I made a wrong call. While I consistently counsel against investing too many resources into the hottest fad, even I have to admit that the Pokemon Go! craze and the associated suggestions about how businesses could tap into it to attract customers faded out a lot faster than I would have predicted.

Back in July, I wrote about the swarms of people running around near our building and anticipated the opportunities that might emerge as the game features were developed. There were tons of articles like this one about how people were strategizing about how to use the game to connect with a new, larger segment of people.

Yes, there are still bunches of people playing the game. Its keeping people more active than they normally would be. And they are wandering into places that others would prefer they not be.

But even places that are paying to partner and attract people to their locations don’t appear to be getting many visits from their participation.

For me this just reinforces my sense that it is prudent to watch a fad and evaluate it as it matures to see if it still appears to be relevant to your goals.

Stuff To Ponder: Familiarity As A Proxy For Certainty

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Two years into a six year research project, Ballet Austin has started learning things about their audiences that run contrary to their assumptions. While the audiences in every community are different, what they have learned provides a lesson that you may not know your audiences as well as you think you do.

One of the biggest assumptions Ballet Austin made was that audiences became more open to new works as they became more familiar with them and thus followed a roughly linear progression of attendance. What they learned was that people were open to a cross-section of genres and the biggest determinant was how confident people were that they would enjoy the experience.

In other words, the market research suggested that encouraging people to attend the ballet more often was less about increasing their familiarity with productions and more about bridging an uncertainty gap. “Familiarity is about information,” notes Martin, “whereas uncertainty about how an experience will feel is much more personal. You can give somebody a lot of information but that’s not necessarily going to reassure them that they’re going to belong in that audience.”

[…]

Audience uncertainty partly grew out of how Ballet Austin was presenting information about its productions. The research showed that images as well as the language used in promotional pieces, ads and even program titles, often created a disconnect. “What we thought we were saying was not what people were hearing,” Martin says.

The problem was especially glaring for abstract productions. Based on the promotional materials in some cases, prospective audience members simply couldn’t fathom what they would be seeing. An ad for a recent program, “To China With Love,” featured an image of two dancers seeming to float among clouds, which many found ambiguous. One person mistook it for a mattress ad. The confusion made Loignon wonder if Ballet Austin should consider cutting back on print ads for abstract ballets and investing more in online videos that show the work itself.

The fact they were considering focusing more of their resources on having video representations and eschewing print was interesting to me. If you have ever read Trevor O’Donnell’s thoughts on the imagery used in print marketing by arts organizations, you know that he is pretty solidly against depictions like that of the two dancers floating in the clouds for the very reason Ballet Austin discovered.

Ultimately though, I was encouraged by the recognition that familiarity was a proxy for certainty. Audiences can be open to adventure if they receive help in feeling confident about their choices.

If you read the whole piece you can learn about the various tactics Ballet Austin has employed in an attempt to close the uncertainty gap for audiences.

Another process I was interested to read about was how they created social interaction experiences. There is often a lot of talk about the need to create social situations to attract millennials. Ballet Austin’s experience doing this really illustrates the importance of constantly tweaking and perhaps defining success by quality of experience rather than quantity.

Though it has taken various forms, an event known as Ballet Bash! is meant to facilitate social gatherings before a performance and during intermission. One time, Bash! included a DJ for a pre-performance party with refreshments. The cost outweighed the benefits, however, so Ballet Austin cut the DJ and instead offered carefully selected music in an area at the Long Center with spectacular views of Austin’s expanding skyline. That iteration was modestly attended. For a later production, Ballet Bash! was replaced by a social lounge in a smaller, more intimate wing of the Long Center’s mezzanine. At recent performances, around 15 people were sitting in small groups during the hour before the performance and intermission, which Ballet Austin considered a promising start.

There are other imaginative social and interactive experiences Ballet Austin created for their audiences that attracted larger numbers. I wanted to include the paragraph above in order to ask the obvious question about whether your organization would consider the participation of 15 people a promising start. From the context of the paragraph, I would assume this approach balanced their goals for cost with desired outcomes.

As a cross-reference to this research, you can also check out California Symphony’s Orchestra X blog and this post in particular about what their research discovered. In short, it was nearly every other element of the experience except the programming that was an impediment to audience enjoyment. Ceci Dadisman provides some perspective on this on ArtHacker today.

Viral Needs A Plan

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I came across an interview Daniel Pink did with Derek Thompson, Senior Editor at The Atlantic where Thompson gives The 5 Rules for Making a Hit.

Now I want to say from the outset that the title is a bunch of baloney and I hope we all know enough to be heavily skeptical of anything the purports to offer a simple set of rules/tricks to success.

That said, there are some valuable points made. I wonder if Thompson actually packaged his answer in terms of five simple rules or if that was an editorial decision on behalf of Heleo which presented them.

The parts of the article I found valuable dealt with the tendency to equate economic success and public recognition with quality/talent/wisdom/authenticity/veracity, etc.

Rule #2: Virality is a myth — pay attention to dark broadcasts instead

People want to believe that their best work can go viral, because great ideas are self-distributing. You make something that’s inherently wonderful, and then you’re done! No more work. Just give it to a few people, they’ll pass it on, and eventually it’ll become the biggest thing in the world.

But the evidence from network science suggests that virality as most people understand it is a myth. Practically nothing goes viral, even the things that we call viral. Genius needs a distribution plan.
[…]
I see this sometimes at The Atlantic. When most readers see a video or an article go crazy online, they might say, “that thing went viral.” But our website has technology that can tell us exactly how all this information spreads. When an article has exploded, we can see that what’s often happened is that there has been one, or a series of, blasts sending traffic to the piece. Perhaps it’s hit the front page of Reddit, or Drudge, or lots of people are clicking on the article on our Facebook page. The article is going “viral” because of a broadcast.

You can get similar insight into what might be driving traffic to your website by using Google Analytics. ArtsHacker has a number of articles about how to set Analytics up to measure and report on various criteria. Social media services like Youtube and Facebook have their own analysis tools to provide insights into why a post or video is particularly popular.

While you can’t necessarily control what becomes popular with great consistency, you can gain a better understanding of what channels and methods can be effective for garnering the attention you want.

His other rule is:

Rule #5: Keep swinging

People want to believe that quality is destiny. They conflate “good” and “popular” in both directions. They think if somebody writes a great song, other people will inevitably find it and love it; or if a song becomes extremely popular, that means it was inherently worthy.

[…]

Understanding that hits are probabilistic argues for a gospel for perseverance. Sometimes people talk about luck as if it’s debilitating, that nothing you do matters — but if cultural products are probabilistic, think of it like batting. Even with the best batters, there’s a 30% chance they get a hit in every one at bat. As a result the key is to give yourself as many at bats as possible. There is an antidote to luck, in terms of personal effort. It’s perseverance. It’s the only answer.

This one is a little tricky because I think we can all cite examples where perseverance just isn’t enough and the benefits of connections, synchronicity and a good support network of family and friends make all the difference. On the other hand, there is a case to be made that you can achieve a high degree of success through perseverance but it may not conform to the degree success you believe you should have.

If anything, this is a better argument for the fact that failure is a more frequent occurrence in any endeavor than people want to admit. It is just that satisfaction of infrequent hits tend to drive out the recollection of the misses for everyone.

This Is What You Said, This Is How We Are Fixing It

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If you haven’t seen the first iteration of ArtsHacker’s Most Creative People In Arts Administration, hop over there now and check it out.

Or actually, wait until you read the rest of my post, then go over there…

If there was one thing I learned as a member of the review panel, it was that there are a lot of unrecognized arts administrators doing great work out there. This year Juan José Escalante, Executive Director of José Limón Dance Festival and Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director of California Symphony both deservedly tied for top honors.

One thing that impressed me about Bergauer’s nomination were support documents that included the symphony’s blog. To be certain, there are only a few entries on the blog, but the one I appreciated the most discussed the results of discussion sessions they conducted with Millennials and Gen Xers.

The post reviews all the issues the discussion participants raised and then lists what the symphony has done to address these issues. This is important because one of the key rules of surveying is don’t ask for a feedback on an situation you don’t intend to take action on. Not only did they take action, but they used the blog to communicate what that action is within the confines of their operating environment. (i.e. They don’t control the ticketing system of the venues at which they perform.)

The blog post is a treasure trove of great feedback for any arts organization since there is very little that is specific to the California Symphony. The things discussion attendees wanted to know but weren’t finding easy to access included things like: why is this music a big deal?, how long will it run?, what will the experience be like?, what are each of the instruments called?

The music selected for the program mattered least.

There were a lot of quotable sections of the blog. Here are some of my most favorite favorites.

Read the Manual:

Then, they get to step 4): make a decision on why they want to attend a specific concert, and our response is essentially “WHY CAN’T YOU FIGURE OUT WHY RACHMANINOFF’S SECOND SYMPHONY IS A BIG DEAL? LOOK IT UP IF YOU WANT TO KNOW!” (marketing failboat — why do we set up our sites this way, and then wonder why the sales funnel is getting choked up at the add-to-cart step?).

Everyone Else Is In The Know:

One participant asked if there is “a separate webpage for younger people we could make?” What was so interesting about that comment is that this person assumed that they were in the minority as far as understanding answers to these types of questions. The assumption was that other, older people are much more familiar with the symphony when in reality, there is no magical age at which one suddenly becomes an aficionado.

Comment from a discussion participant:

“It was so impressive — I didn’t expect it to feel THAT different than Spotify.”

On Pricing:

Even the discussion group brought up (on their own, without any prompting) the idea that they’ll all shell out big bucks for Taylor Swift. So price alone is never an isolated issue; it’s all about the perceived value one is receiving in exchange for that price. What we did find interesting was the comment of, “I’m more likely to go to three $25 performances than I am one $75 or $100 performance.” Many others chimed in with agreement to that statement.

Okay, now you can go over to the Arts Hacker site. Thanks for reading.

Be True To Your Audience Just Like You Would Your Girl Or Guy

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Last week I was initially dismayed to read 85% of audiences in Washington D.C. patronized one theater. I try to promote the concept that all arts organizations in a community need to work together to illuminate all the opportunities for cultural participation, but news like that can cause people to scramble and jealously cling to whatever audiences they can get.

The people quoted in the article admit as much:

That means encouraging audiences to go to any theater, following the “rising tide lifts all boats” philosophy. It can be a bit counterintuitive for chronically embattled nonprofit arts organizations long in the habit of primarily looking out for themselves.

“It’s the fear that if I introduce you to my friends, you’ll like them better than you like me,” Woolly Mammoth managing director Meghan Pressman says.

However, there are a number of people quoted in the piece that feel the study underestimates how broadly people already attend other organizations, in part because the study that was conducted only included seven of the many theater groups in the Washington D.C. area. Some of the groups in the survey do have 20%-30% overlaps between their audiences. In surveys others have conducted for Signature Theatre and Round House Theatre, found even greater overlap:

In the two-year Round House survey, 43 percent of single-ticket buyers had been to four or more theaters within a year, 59 percent went to three or more, 76 percent to two or more, and 91 percent went to at least one theater other than Round House. That does not include attending the big touring houses (the Kennedy Center, the National Theatre, the Warner Theatre), which further raises the figures.

Perhaps more encouraging is that the theaters are already collaborating on projects and not defensively guarding their audiences.

Examples seem to be growing. Signature and Round House cross-promoted the musicals “Jelly’s Last Jam” (recently at Signature) and “Caroline, or Change” (with Signature talent working at the Bethesda stage). Round House just partnered with Olney Theatre Center on a co-production of the two-part, seven-hour “Angels in America,” presented at Round House and geared to moving patrons between the two troupes. Next year, the organizations will team up again — sharing infrastructure, artists and audiences — for a show at Olney.

So obviously by the end of the article I was breathing a little easier and had a more optimistic view of things.  Though admittedly the idea that there were audiences that felt such a high degree of loyalty to a single theater was encouraging. (Assuming it was loyalty and not lack of awareness or other barriers that kept them from attending other places.)

Something from the middle of the article worth of note was an observation made about how theaters cultivate audiences:

For Robinson, the issue is keeping audiences the first time they visit. She describes a “magic math” that happens when patrons can be lured to more than one performance, and to more than one theater, per year. Repeat attendance jumps and attrition dives, yet the art of keeping audiences is often lost, as organizations fret about attracting fresh faces.

“It’s a gong that we clang,” Robinson says, warning against too much “prospecting” for brand-new clientele. “If we date, and you don’t ask me out again in a few weeks, I’ll forget how cute you are.”

Even if your stance is to glare at others and try to retain what audiences you have, you do well to remember not to take those audiences for granted. To extend the dating example, good communication and attentiveness are a necessary part of retaining audiences.

Stuff To Ponder: Expanded Approaches To Pay What You Want Pricing

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A few weeks ago economist Alex Tabarrok wrote about a strange “pay what you want” promotion a shoe company was running. It struck him and many commenters of the Marginal Revolution blog as a psychological experiment with a goal of getting most people to select the set middle range price.

In that same post he linked back to 2012 post where he provided an analysis for why “pay what you want” can make sense for charities and performing arts organizations. The analysis may be difficult to understand, but the bottom line is:

Probably more importantly, pay-what-you-want pricing is going to be advantageous when the seller also sells a complementary good, such as concerts, which benefit from consumption spillovers from the pay-what-you-want good.

Basically, when you offer an option to pay what you want, there should be accompanying options like food, merchandise, other participatory activities that you can earn revenue from. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the movie theatre model where a bag of popcorn is $10. Offering pay what you want simply because you think it is a good idea without any sense of how you can offset the loss of revenue isn’t prudent. If end up with a higher per ticket price than you had before, that is great, but don’t plan on it.

One of the commenters on the 2012 post noted that the site HumbleBundle allows you to pay what you want, but also posts the average price paid in real time.

Currently, if you pay more than the average of $4.14, you can unlock additional content and if you pay more than $14 there is another level of content you can receive.

Having some sort of bonus content or access people will receive for exceeding the average is a smart idea. It rewards those who act early before the average increases as a result of people paying to receive that content (or just being generous). This content or access could be better seating, merchandise, concessions, meet and greet opportunities, invites to other organizational activities, etc.

I got to thinking about how my ticketing system can tell me what the average selling price of my tickets are on demand. I could theoretically manually update that information on the lobby screens simply as a point of information at various intervals just as a bit of psychological social pressure on people to pay close to that or a little more. While I might also choose to update that information on our website, I am not sure the sense of social pressure would be as significant for online sales.

However, if ticketing software providers created a way to export that information to update in real time like HumbleBundle does, it might be possible to create a sense of tension and excitement in lobbies just prior to performances. (Or if handled correctly, even online). Granted, it could be done manually but I know I have better things for my staff to do than constantly run reports and post data to a public screen.

Watching it tick steadily up with every purchase is much more interesting. Especially if you are experience the dual satisfaction of seeing how much money was being raised for the organization while knowing you got access cheaper than a lot of other people – “Whoo hoo!! We collectively moved the price to $15.63 (but I got mine for $4.85!)”

Thoughts? What experiences, if any, have you had? I know a number of places are doing pay what you want/can, but I am not clear if they are supplementing their income with related goods and services or if they have found a way to energize audiences around the practice in a productive manner.

Only $25 For A Ticket?….We Must Be INSANE!!!!

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In a recent post Seth Godin proposed two ways of approaching your business, “Either you dazzle with as much hype as you can get away with, or you invest in delighting people, regardless of how difficult it is.”

It was the example that he used to support the idea of hyping the hell out of something that left me incredulous.

Years ago, I asked fabled direct marketer Joe Sugarman about the money-back guarantee he offered on the stuff he sold through magazine ads. He said 10% of the people who bought asked for their money back… and if any product dipped below 10%, he’d make the claims more outrageous until it got back up. He told me that this was a sweet spot, somewhere between amazing people with promises and disappointing them with reality.

The idea that someone decided they aren’t being outrageous enough if a certain percentage of people aren’t asking for their money back sort of blew my mind. It goes against the whole concept of customer service. As Shakespeare writes in the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing, “…the fashion of the world is to avoid cost [trouble], and you encounter it.”

But this got me to wondering if a super-hype approach might work for the arts. Trevor O’Donnell is constantly saying that arts marketing doesn’t focus on the audience member and instead references concepts and accolades that are only relevant to insiders. Hyping an event like a cheesy used car commercial would break people of that habit.

I am sure there would be a lot of outcry that this approach was demeaning the work, but if it is successful at attracting a larger following, it might be worth considering.

Note–I am not suggesting anything be changed about the event. People often express concern about dumbing down an experience. I am only suggesting the advertising be dumbed down.

Yeah, I know even that would be a hard sell. I can imagine what my board might think if the advertising strayed from portraying a certain image of the organization.

Recent conversation has focused on the need for the arts community to move away from the conceit that all people need is one exposure and they will be hooked on the arts. I think that is the right mindset.

However, if people arrive with the expectation they are going to leave amazed and so ecstatic they will barely be able to walk straight for an hour afterward, they may convince themselves that they are having a better time than they would have without being primed by the hype.

Of course, there are going to be people who are disappointed, but that is part of the calculation. In fact, adopting this philosophy, you are paying close attention to make sure that ratio doesn’t fall below a certain point.

Probably the biggest difference between circa 1979 when Sugarman’s company was operating at its peak and now is that people can more easily share their dissatisfaction with each other.

Also, most arts events are communal experiences vs. the individual experience of purchasing something from direct marketing. If 10% of 1000 people are upset, everyone is going to know it immediately and it will sour the experience of the other 900.

There is nothing to say you need to make utterly ridiculous claims and aim for a 10% dissatisfaction rate. If you stage pictures and write copy giving the impression audiences are enjoying themselves five times more than they actually are, you probably still won’t be flirting with fraud – but you will be focusing more on audiences. (If your audiences already look like they are having an awesome time, just hype it by a factor of 3 😉 )

If you do resort to a used car type ad, talking about how you must be insane to sell tickets to such a great show for so low a price or for letting people into your museum to see art for FREE! ….well if you balance charm and humor it might help you make progress convincing people that you are a true, worthwhile asset in the community.

Yes, I suppose arts organizations might double down on talking about how great they are instead of how great a time the audience will have. I have to believe there is a limit they will reach where the only option to escalate the hype is to start focusing on audience interests.

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When Serving Bad Food To Patrons Can Solidify Their Loyalty

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Over the years I have made many posts riffing on the idea that marketing it is the responsibility of the entire organization, not just a single department. For that reason, I was happy to see a recent case study report TRG Arts posted on that topic.

Working with Performing Arts Fort Worth (PAFW), they emphasized the need for everyone to be involved in the effort by simply including everyone in the conversation.  PAFW started having patron loyalty meetings where they discussed the issues at hand, including the cost of retaining long time supporters versus attracting new individuals.

That’s when it clicked, and the floodgate of ideas opened up! House management said they were going to make patron loyalty a regular topic at their usher meetings. Someone suggested they send patrons a voucher for a free drink in their birthday month. Someone else suggested they turn the process for testing new concession products into a tasting event for loyal patrons. There were many more ideas that came up, and there were a number of people who said they would take responsibility for implementing ideas. “I never was a part of that process” quickly became “I understand our shared goal and I want to help.”

I particularly liked the idea of involving loyal patrons in a tasting of new concession products. Even if the new options weren’t tasty, the idea that your input was valued could go a long way to cementing a patron’s relationship with the organization. I am curious to know if PAFW has implemented that idea.

There was one thing the TRG piece mentioned that caught my attention:

And yet, there were legitimate operational questions that needed to be answered. If a VIP Presenter would like their complimentary drink in a souvenir cup, whose budget gets charged for the cup? How far can I go (and should I go) to make a patron happy?

The sentence evoked a memory of an episode of the West Wing when newly appointed chief of staff CJ Cregg is running into a lot of opposition from the Secretary of Defense over some new initiative (I think it was accepting the nuclear bombs form the Republic of Georgia). She has a realization that his resistance is based in the fear that the funds to implement this will come out of his budget.

As idealistic as you may be, there is always a cost of some sort associated with every good idea. So if you insist that marketing is everyone’s responsibility, you are insisting that everyone bear some degree of additional cost to implement this directive. The cost may be in time, resources or money.

It will be important to communicate that marketing/patron retention/whatever you call it, is a priority for the organization and allowances (and perhaps allocations) will be made to enable the achievement of this goal. Otherwise internal resistance may thwart your efforts from the start.

Wherein Resides The Identity of A Group?

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When I was taking a college philosophy class we got into the classic debate about where identity resides in a person or thing. If you have a boat and gradually replace every board over the course of five years, is it still the same boat? When did it become a different boat?

The same with humans, if you replace every limb with prosthesis, when does the person cease to be themselves and become a cyborg? When are they essentially a machine?

Sci-Fi really lends itself to the debate: if Capt. Kirk is completely disassembled into atoms and beamed to a planet in a matter transporter and his atoms reassmbled, is he still the same Capt. Kirk that left the Enterprise?

I got to thinking about this topic when I saw the new version of The Magnificent Seven this weekend. There were some significant plot points shared by both the original version and The Seven Samurai, which inspired the original, that weren’t really featured in the newest version. The boastful young gunslinger was missing, for example, but there was a similar plotline in the Clint Eastwood movie, Unforgiven, which also has a lot of common plot points with both versions of The Magnificent Seven. Westerns in general probably share a lot of the same plot lines with each other if we get right down to it.

I am really only stopping off at The Magnificent Seven to pose a question about the ethics of presenting a group with a famous name which is comprised of few, if any, of the original members.  Just because a group has the legal right to use a name, and the controversies over who gets to do so can fill a few blog posts, when does it become an issue of misrepresentation when it comes to audience expectations?

Yes, everyone probably knows that Glenn Miller and all of the members of the original orchestra are no longer playing together when they go to a concert. (There are, in fact, four different groups around the world licensed to use that name.) On the other hand, the keyboardist for the band War is the only original member still performing with the group.

There are some very public debates that rage about whether a band went downhill after a key member left or if the group was better off without the bum, but for the most part people aren’t terribly aware of the shifting line ups of most groups over the years.

If you are thinking of presenting such a group, you may have the unenviable task of determining if the soul and identity of the group has departed and deciding whether to pursue the engagement.

Then there is the related question of, what are people buying? Are they buying an opportunity to relive memories of what they were doing when they heard this song and the line up doesn’t matter so much?  Or are they buying a return to their past fandom when they originally saw the group in concert and details do matter?

This isn’t just a question that nags at popular music. What if the conductor who is closely identified with an orchestra and creating their distinctive sound moves on?  Or even going back to the original idea, if there are 80 odd musicians who were part of the ensemble that created the signature sound of the orchestra, as each departs over the years, what is the tipping point where a new orchestra exists?

How much do any of these things matter? Well, in terms of popular music, there is potential for issues as members of groups die and the prospect of a reunion of the originals wanes. Not everyone can afford whatever preservation techniques The Rolling Stones are using.

Is it just the case that people need to move on and accept progress?  Is this true in all scenarios? How do you know which scenario is a bridge too far in terms of faithfully and ethically providing what you are advertising?

All Your Trend Are Belong To Us

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Over the years I have frequently cautioned against becoming invested in the current hot thing that everyone is doing because the fad could pass quickly and you will have spent a lot of time and resources on something that is no longer viable.

One important thing I have never really been able to define is how to determine the difference between a long term trend and a passing fad.

Fortunately, Colleen Dilenschneider provides some intelligent guidance on the subject on her Know Your Own Bone blog. (my emphasis in green, rest is her’s)

So how can your organization figure out if something is a fad or a trend? A helpful trick may be to consider that trends inevitably affect some form of the organization’s engagement strategy, but fads usually influence tactics. This isn’t a fool-proof trick, but it can help your organization think strategically about the differences between both fads and trends.

For instance, social media use is a trend and that affects your engagement strategy, but selfies affect how you can carry out that strategy. Screaming “YOLO” and going gluten-free are things that folks may be doing these days – and, in order to remain relevant, your organization may benefit by embracing them for now. But these fads affect your organization’s tactics (and messages and programs), not its strategy. Data-informed management affects your strategy. Embracing transparency affects your strategy. The trend toward personalized interactions and programs thanks to our increasingly individually-tailored world is a trend and also deeply affects our strategies.

So by this definition, fads don’t really become trends in the same way ponies don’t grow up to be horses. (In fact, wanting a pony for your birthday is just a fad for most of us.)   But to confuse things, what social media tells you are trending topics are really just fads. (Whereas “all your base are belong to us” riffs are memes)

My advice in the past has generally been to wait, watch and evaluate whether something is going to endure and whether it is suited to your organizational goals and identity.  Dilenschneider takes a slightly different approach essentially saying it is okay to jump on the latest bandwagon, just don’t mistake it for an interstate shuttle.

Dilenschneider makes a valid point that it can be just as detrimental to be averse to adopting innovation as it is to waste time and energy chasing the latest fad.

If you have the time and resources, jumping into something knowing that it will be a short term project you will eventually discard can be useful in identifying new potential audiences and partners, and gauging your capacity to execute different sorts of activities. Essentially, something akin to rapid prototyping in software.

For example, you may never have considered the possibility of mounting performances or a festival in dance clubs. Yet over the course of playing with a lot of fads, you connected with demographics different from your core audience and had done some minor promotions with local bars. All this gave you the inspiration and confidence to do shows in bars.

Just remember though, this is an ideal outcome. It is very easy to become involved with a fad that becomes a long term detriment to your organization. Remember when Groupon was hot? Everyone was excited by it, but it became a nightmare for a lot of companies who lost money through discounting and never gained return business or loyalty. I know someone who still uses it regularly to find things to do, but never returns to a company unless there is another discount offer.

Let None Of Them Be Missed

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I have returned from the Arts Midwest Conference in Milwaukee which apparently broke attendance records. I can believe it did because I have never had so much difficulty finding a free moment to speak to agents with whom I didn’t have an appointment.

I will have quite a bit to report over the course of the next few weeks after I have had time to reflect.

One thing I wanted to follow up on from last year’s conference is something of a “credit where credit is due” topic.

About a week after last year’s Arts Midwest conference there was a huge outcry over the NY Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP) planned production of The Mikado which was employing yellow face and other Asian stereotypes in the production design.

I thought I had written about this in my blog, but it turns out I only made a comment on HowlRound regarding the issue. As I note in my comment there, they were pretty quick about cancelling the production but social media response made the two-three days in real time seem like the issue had lingered for a month.

Before going to the conference this year, I had gotten a brochure which made it appear that they had revamped the production and were offering it again for touring this year. I made a point to seek out NYGASP Executive Director David Wannen at the Arts Midwest conference to ask what had transpired.

Wannen told me they had indeed made changes to the production. Part of that included bringing a large number of advisors on board to help guide them in the production design planning as well as the casting decisions.

He noted that one of their loudest blogging critics was encouraging her followers to audition and support the productions. (Auditions are for the company performing in the entire season so persons of color are being considered for all their shows.)

From the way Wannen described the show, there will be Japanese inspired/influenced elements combined with 19th century England, but nothing overtly stereotypical. I saw one picture of the Mikado wearing a dragon like helm that could have as easily come from Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones as a fantasy movie set in China or Japan. (It evoked Smaug from The Hobbit more than a Chinese/Japanese dragon for me)

Wannen said the decision to cancel the production last year was made quickly because there was already a conversation among board and staff that the traditional approach to the show wasn’t going to fly for much longer given the social environment. However, there were many on the NYGASP board who insisted on adhering to the traditional production.

The controversy that emerged last year confirmed for the organization that a change was needed. According to Wannen there was something of a shake up in the board. From what I understood in our discussion, there were some resignations.

By some fortuitous happenstance, I was able to gain some additional insight about the sort of continuous effort required for crisis management.  NYGASP appears to have made a lot of constructive decisions, obtained the investment and buy-in of important and influential constituencies and generated some excellent goodwill for themselves.  We may hear/read a news story about redemption like this and assume all is well and the problems have been fixed.

I was seated next to Wannen on the first leg of my flight home. While we sat at the gate waiting to depart, he was on the phone relating the same things to someone that he had talked with me about — mentioning all the steps that were taken and the goodwill they had garnered in the process.

The lesson I took away from this is that no matter how good the situation may appear externally,  there is always more work to be done after a crisis to regain trust and address negative perceptions.

After I had spoken to Wannen, I walked away feeling optimistic about NYGASP and impressed by the difficult choices they had embraced, including admitting there had been a problem. After sitting next to Wannen on the plane, I realized he recognized despite all the positive response they had received thus far, it was too early to declare any sort of victory right yet.

Even though it may be tempting to put bad experienced behind us as soon as possible, it important for organizational leadership to discern when it is too early to do so.

 

The title of this entry is a paraphrase from The Mikado‘s famous “list” song, “As Someday It May Happen.” Traditionally updated with current events, it is evidence that the show survives all sorts of adaptation.

 

Friends Don’t Let Friend’s Orgs Get Clickbaited

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Non-Profit Quarterly had a piece last week about an effort to “help” non-profits that is flawed on so many levels.

An advertising company has created a site, Clickbait For Good which is creating clickbait campaigns for charities, apparently without being asked. Setting aside the fact that clickbait has pretty much peaked and worn out its welcome, the images they are using with their campaigns are pretty inappropriate for the associated charities.

It is unclear if the charities consented to the clickbait headlines being created for them on the Clickbait For Good website. One hopes not.

  • For Love 146 (human trafficking): “She fell for Mr. Perfect. You won’t believe what happened next” (with an accompanying image of a seated young girl in a frilly red dress).
  • For Girls Not Brides (child marriage in places like Bangladesh): “OMG! She is just 16 and she has done things the Kardashians haven’t even thought about” (with an accompanying image of an elite wealthy woman wearing a white dress hiked as high as it will go before being pornographic, exiting the backseat of a luxury car carrying a bag containing her latest expensive purchase).
  • For #Milk4Syria: “The ONE thing you need to know about drinking milk.”
  • For American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: “Exclusive: See what happened only a week after Robin Williams’ suicide.”

I checked the webpage out and indeed the images are as cringe worthy as described-

child bride

Non-Profit Quarterly lays it out pretty clearly why these sort of campaigns do more harm than good when it comes to generating investment and trust.

The problem is that this ill-conceived initiative is likely to aggravate more than inspire. The website should offer charities the option to sign up to decline the offer.

Clickbait is sometimes clever, often misleading, always distracting, and by definition overpromises and under-delivers. Clickbait patronizes the donor and at best trivializes the charity’s mission. Nonprofits seek engagement and relationships, not mere clicks. View “counts” may pay the bills in the marketing world, but tricking people into clicking on charity content kills trust, which is the coin of the realm in the voluntary sector.

[…]

Charities cannot game trust. Lying kills donor retention. The headlines above are morally indefensible. Clickbait is like learning to smile from a manual. Philanthropy is not grown in a petri dish. Charity is the result of honest human interaction and concern. Charity needs to be honored, not disgraced.

There is definitely fun to be had with click-baity ads, especially if you are spoofing the format to get people to attend a fun event. But to draw attention and support to serious crises, if there are appropriate, effective uses of the format, I have to imagine they can be counted on one hand.

There may not be a high likelihood that your arts organization will be targeted by one of these ads and the potential impact may not be as bad as for some of these humanitarian organizations. If these campaigns are indeed being created unsolicited, a neighboring organization might be grateful if you alert them to an ad that casts them in a questionable context.

Slightly Exceeding Expectations As An Ideal Outcome

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A recent post on Ken Davenport’s The Producer’s Perspective caused me to engage in a bit of internal debate.

Ken says a one of the worst things you can do is greatly exceed audience expectations:

“..But it also means that before they step into the theater, they have no clue what they’re about to see . . . and they aren’t expecting it to be anything to write home to Mama about.

Exceeding an audience’s expectations isn’t a creative problem. It’s a marketing problem. It means that however you are promoting your show, from the title to the blurb to the website, it’s not generating enough excitement with your potential buyer. And, unfortunately, when audience’s expectations are low, that means that most of them won’t make a purchase. People buy tickets to things that they expect to be good great. They are buying entertainment, remember? They want to be entertained. And in 2016, with the cost of tickets as high as they are . . . entertaining an audience isn’t enough. They want to be wowed.”

This is all contrary to the outcome I want.

One of the greatest pleasures I get from my job is when people enjoy a performance they didn’t expect to. There isn’t a lot of financial remuneration in non-profit arts, but hearing people say “Wow” when they leave the performance hall…and having them continue to talk about their experience weeks, months and even years later, is pretty gratifying.

The mission of most non-profit arts organizations is to provide an opportunity for exploration and learning versus the profit making goals of Broadway shows, so you might argue that you aren’t going to want to emphasize the entertainment value of the event.  If you aren’t charging Broadway prices to enter the door, then the burden of expectations is relatively lighter as well.

The problem is, most people, even those who attend your events, don’t know you are a non-profit organization. They aren’t discerning between the entertainment or education value your organization is offering versus those of a profit seeking entity. Chances are, it is all the same to them.

Regardless of whether you think people want to come for the entertainment value or to learn new things, Davenport has a point that if people are arriving not knowing what to expect, then you are probably under- or mis- communicating the event to the wider community.

Note, he is just talking about generating enthusiasm for being there. People may have an entirely wrong concept about the event and have their minds blown and that is okay. If they are tentative about being there in the first place and hoping they have a good time, that is another thing altogether.

The reasons why non-profits aren’t doing a better job at this are myriad. In some cases, it is a matter of bad decision making when it comes to allocating money and personnel to marketing efforts.

There is often a desire, and perhaps a sense of obligation, to invest money in the artistic product rather than advertising and personnel, both of which can be regarded as overhead expense.

As has been noted many times before, donors and funders want to know money is going toward results and impact, delighting people and changing their lives.  Even though marketing isn’t explicitly listed as something most foundations doesn’t fund, there is less support and tolerance for the costs to reach those people and generate interest and excitement in them.

It definitely requires a careful balancing act. Some organizations are good at it, some aren’t and some probably aren’t really making an effort.

It really feels strange to read Davenport brag that his team did such a good job marketing Altar Boyz, seeing the show only slightly exceed audience expectations. But if the audiences truly expressed a high level of satisfaction with the experience and seeing the show only slightly added to that, then it a measure of success if their satisfaction extended hours, if not days prior to, and after the performance.

Is that a feeling your arts organization can lay claim to generating?

Even though the discussion inevitably circles back to issues of time, personnel and money, these questions and ideas are worth regularly revisiting, regardless of your situation. Sometimes just thinking about them provides a little inspiration about a resource or opportunity specific to your community that can be tapped into.

Data Is Nice, Stories Are Better

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It is pretty much an accepted truth that if you want to secure funding for the arts from a government entity or foundation, you need to marshal a lot of data to prove you are having an impact, especially an economic impact.

However, in a recent interview Kresge Foundation President & CEO Rip Rapson seems to indicate that story rather than data may be more important in influencing decisions and policy.

Rapson speaks about a conversation he had with former NEA Chair Rocco Landesman about the ArtPlace initiative. (my emphasis)

And I said, well, I agree with that, but how about the data, and how about the quantitative elements of all of this? Isn’t that what will tip the scales?

And he just laughed. He wore these big cowboy boots, and he stood up, and he pounded the floor, and he said, you know what? I walk into every congressional office in the United States House of Representatives, and not one asks me about the data. They all want to know a story about what happened in one of their neighborhoods, one of their communities, one of their cities.

He doesn’t say that data isn’t important. My suspicion is that politicians especially like to have data to corroborate their decisions if anyone questions them. Rapson says one of the goals of ArtPlace is to help discover:

“Is there something between the highly rigorous, systematized generation of data about how many dollars per square inch an arts activity generates and all of these millions of points of light? When are the data important? When are the stories important? How do you aggregate the stories?”

A little later he gives an anecdote that illustrates how people overlook the arts in their lives and just how invested they are in their practice. He speaks of a very conservative wardperson in Minneapolis who thought the arts were a waste of time. (my emphasis)

“He actually hauled me in front of the city council committee to explain why in heaven’s name we would accept a grant like this.

So, I said, well, Walter, could we have the very first conversation in your ward, and he kind of grumbled and said all right, all right. So, we had it. It was at his Ukrainian church where he went every Sunday. We were able to identify the woman who sewed the vestments, the man who had done the mural painting on the altar, the three women, who every year created the Ukrainian Easter eggs. We got the choir director. You get the drift.

And Dziedzic walked in and saw these13 people in his congregation, and I said something to the effect of “I want to introduce you to your arts and cultural community, Walter.” And they all talked about how art became central to the way this Ukrainian church practiced, and of course he was toast; he became the biggest single advocate of how arts and culture sort of shaped community life. Now, I could have brought him all sorts of data, I suppose, but, having him sit with 13 or 14 of his congregation members talking about Ukrainian eggs and choral concerts, was really quite wonderful.

So in trying to convince people of the value of the arts in their lives, it may take focusing on impacts on a very granular level. Not just things that happen in the district or town that they identify with, but how it manifests directly in places they are deeply invested and care about.

A program that served 1000 school kids may not be as important as the joy it brought a single kid.

While the implications of that single sentence could lead to a whole debate about influence, wealth disparities, urban vs rural funding, etc., remember that not all the hearts and minds you need to influence are politicians, funding organizations and individual donors. Just shifting the general perception for a greater number of people in a community can be a victory.

Are You A Cultural Omnivore If You Take Very Careful Bites?

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Here is an interesting insight from Stanford University Graduate School of Business (h/t Marginal Revolution blog). According to some latest research, cultural omnivores may be as rigid in their thinking as those they disdain as monoculturalists. (Though I guess they don’t use that term.)

That is, those dubbed “cultural omnivores” — because they eat Thai for lunch, play bocce ball after work, and stream a French film that night — are the very ones opposed to mixing it up. No hummus on their hot dogs, forget about spaghetti Westerns, and do not mention Switched-On Bach. Those offerings are not considered culturally authentic. They are a hodgepodge to which these folks would likely wrinkle their collective noses — as they did in 1968 when Wendy (nee’ Walter) Carlos electrified J.S. Bach. Today’s cultural elites approve only if the experience is authentic, which means eating pigs’ feet at a Texas barbecue passes the test and slathering a taco with tahini does not.

[…]

Today, a higher status accrues to those who are perceived as open to new experiences, and those who oppose experimentation are dismissed as narrow-minded monoculturists, or worse, rednecks, Goldberg notes. Therefore, the elites resist anything that undermines their identities as social and cultural leaders, and that means they are more likely to maintain boundaries.

So I guess the way to read that is that today’s snobs are just snobby about a wider range of things?

While there are probably boundaries that cultural omnivores maintain, I suspect it isn’t as simple an example of hummus on hot dogs. My guess is that Korean Taco food trucks are acceptable to a wide range of cultural omnivores even though on paper the concept is as strange as hummus on hot dogs.

The article does suggest that there is a small segment of people who are open to change so perhaps they normalize things like food trucks for the wide range of omnivores.

If this research is accurate, the larger question this raises for me is what constitutes an “authentic experience” for cultural omnivores? Recent research cites finding that people want to have an authentic creative/artistic experience.

In the context of the Stanford piece, I become a little more concerned that perception of what an authentic experience is may not match the reality of an authentic experience. (And not only in respect to silly manifestations of preconceived notions of authenticity.)

When a performing arts group presents a chamber music concert in an edgy, new, boundary breaking format, do the musicians need to be conservatory trained or will the music ensemble from the local community college be acceptable?

If you say the former, why does an unorthodox approach require such a high level of training in order to be deemed acceptable? If the effort fails (succeeds), will you be more satisfied with the experience knowing the performers were highly trained?

I do think it is important that people who invest time and study to render an authentic experience of a certain genre or culture be in a position to delineate themselves from people providing a superficial representation of those things and labeling it authentic. Though the discussion of who gets to call themselves authentic practitioners is an entirely different can of worms, especially in regard to cultural and ethnic practice.

But as I am reading the Stanford article, it almost sounds as if it could be just as problematic trying to provide an acceptable authentic experience to people who describe themselves as cultural omnivores as it is to those who consider themselves to be purists of a certain genre of artistic expression.

New audiences may feel the experience is just as elitist when they overhear others expressing disdain for a show they liked as they would when people glared at them for clapping between movements of a musical work.

The Stanford article says Big Data will provide needed guidance, but I am not sure how many arts organizations will have the resources to access and interpret the data effectively. (I would happily be wrong if in 5 years there was an app for that.)

Do People Support Tax Status Or Results?

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Whew! Memorial Day is past which means we are officially in summer. Finally some time to relax a little and gather our strength for the next season. (Unless you run a summer festival in which case you’re just getting busy.)

This may also be the time for a little introspection to examine how you are operating and presenting yourself to your community.

Something I have often mentioned is that by and large most people aren’t aware of a cultural organization’s non-profit status. However, I didn’t have any hard data to show exactly what those numbers were.

Back in January, Colleen Dilenschneider at Know Your Own Bone addressed this issue with some hard data and a helpful summary video. (Should I be worried that every time I visit the site there seem to be more bones in the picture? Could she be related to Alferd Packer?)

In a survey of 98,000 people barely 40% of non-attendees knew a particular organization was non-profit. Of attendees, not even 50% knew the organization was non-profit. The highest percentages in both cases were in relation to history museums. Other museums, zoos, orchestras and botanic gardens had lower recognition rates.

Regardless of the reason for the misperceptions, more than half of visitors to ALL cultural organizations do not believe that they play any role in keeping these organizations healthy or alive after walking in the door. Beyond paying admission (to what they consider a business) or paying their taxes (to an organization with free admission because their taxes fund a government-operated entity), the majority of visitors risk believing that there is no further need for their support.

In the accompany video, Dilenschneider notes that with corporate social responsibility becoming a new norm, the differences between tax statuses becomes even more blurred. The defining factor is effective execution of mission to make a difference vs. tax status.

In her post Dilenschneider argues for focusing on difference making vs. a “come visit us” appeal. (my emphasis in green)

..There are countless articles on the importance of for-profit companies “doing good.” It is a key tactic for gaining more customers. And that’s interesting because there are still some cultural organizations that do this weird, outdated thing where they try to overlook their social advantage and exclusively promulgate “visit us today!” messages (and even offer discounts that devalue their brand and cause even more sector confusion for cultural organizations). It’s like some of them are trying to be like Disney World…

Being good at your mission is good business. Data demonstrate that organizations highlighting their missions outperform organizations marketing primarily as attractions. Perhaps, in all of our “But we are a nonprofit” excuse making, we missed the true differentiator that has provided us that tax status in the first place: Our bottom line of making a difference.

Our key differentiator is not our tax status, but that our dedication to making a difference is embedded in the very structure of how we operate. There’s a thought that we need to run “more like for-profit companies” (and in some ways we do, but the blanket directive is an ignorant miss). But look around. For-profit companies are actually trying to be more like us in the sense that they want audiences to know that they stand for something that makes the world a better place.

As the summer unfolds, think about how you can make little changes in your regular messaging that includes how you are making a difference. Difference-making can’t dominate the message because that can obscure the details of how people can participate in your activities. If difference-making is effective at attracting more participation, it is going to be more constructive for the organization than focusing on discounting to attract audiences.

So Many Emails That Snail Mail Starts To Distinguish You From The Crowd

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A bit of harsh truth here that I think is pretty much widely recognized, but also generally remains unspoken.

A lot of the correspondence I get from artists and agents goes directly into the trash. It isn’t just me. There is a fair bit of conversation among colleagues I meet at conferences and meetings about the sheer volume of promotional material we receive.

I hate to make such a summary judgment on people’s pitches. I would like to give each due consideration and respect. But the amount of material I get each day is close to overwhelming. The first thing I do in the morning and upon returning from lunch is delete blocks of email that have come in. When I think about the fact that we are not a major presenting organization, I can’t imagine what it must be like for the people in corresponding jobs at other venues.

The solution isn’t as simple as just unsubscribing from email lists or blocking senders because there have been some interesting performances that have come to my attention via email. It is just that the percentage of productive emails received in a year out of the hundreds I get a day is pretty minuscule. There are definitely people out there ruining it for everyone else because the volume they send out eats up the attention I might spend checking out the person who makes a single disciplined, focused bid for my attention.

Drew McManus suggested I set up a dedicated email address just for pitches and politely direct people to it so that I can set aside time each week to evaluate them.

But believe it or not, I am not writing this post to complain or as a bid for sympathy but to acknowledge the effort and expense some performers have to go through to get themselves in front of programming decision makers. I am not ignoring the travel and other expenses artists have to bear to attend conferences and showcases, but I am going to focus mostly on correspondence today.

The reality is, since it is so easy and cheap to send email these days, there is actually some benefit to sending physical mail nowadays. It may also end up in the trash, but there is less of a crowd that a mailed piece needs to stand out from.

That was the case with a piece I got in the mail last week from Greg Kennedy who bills himself as an innovative juggler. For various reasons I decided it wasn’t something we were interested in and I was thinking about whether I wanted to throw the mail away or pass it on to another arts organization that shares our building when the quality of the envelop paper and the presentation gave me pause.

As you can see below, it has a pretty interesting mailing label. You might also notice it cost $1.64 to mail. The contents were pretty substantial.

envelop

Inside was a brochure that had special cuts so that it could be assembled into a theater.

brochure theater

He had a little card for each of his shows that you could place into the theater.

theater with card

This is a pretty damn expensive piece to put together and mail out. If you notice, the line of the curtain and the grain of the floor on the card insert corresponds to the theater you place it in. There is some attention to detail there. I wondered what the return on investment was. Couldn’t he have made a piece that was less expensive and time consuming that would have garnered the same return?

(I should note that since he talks about his engineering background and his show heavily uses boxes, a constructed brochure definitely ties in and illustrates his thought process.)

He may have gotten more exposure for having sparked enough of my interest that I posted about him on my blog, but he couldn’t have counted on that. (By the way, I have been writing this blog 14 years as of tomorrow and this is the first time I have posted about an artist’s brochure. Don’t go sending me your brochures in the hopes I will feature them.)

It didn’t escape me that arts organizations face many of the same challenges getting ticket buyers to pause and read their printed and mailed materials as artists and agents do with performance buyers. Everyone complains about being as deluged by emails as I did at the beginning of this post.

It is just that my particular deluge comes from a particular category of email lists I didn’t sign up to be on. While I do feel a twinge of regret for discarding mail and email so quickly, I am being paid to do more than just evaluate emails.

One of the big challenges for any promotional effort is to determine where the cost-benefit ratio has transitioned into unfavorable territory. Spending too little effort and money yields a result of such poor quality that it doesn’t effectively communicate the value of your product. If you have spent money and effort in great excess of any possible return, you have wasted resources.

In terms of Greg Kennedy’s piece, regardless of how nice it is, his show probably still isn’t a good fit for us. However, I will pass the materials on to someone else (and I have posted it here) so there is still potential for a return on his effort.

The Need For More Marketing To Older Audiences

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Last week there was an article on Salon with the click bait-y title, “Stop buying old Bob Dylan albums: “Every time somebody buys a reissue, they’re just taking money away from new musicians.” I started to get a little worked up thinking that money not spent on reissues wasn’t automatically going to be redirected to newer releases.

As you might have inferred, the argument being made was a bit more complex than that. The article was an interview with Wall Street Journal pop music critic Jim Fusilli who suggested one of the reasons why you think the music of your youth was better than the crap they are playing today is that:

I don’t think the industry knows how to market music to grown-ups. When you reach a certain plateau in life and you have family and a career, when you’re involved in your community, you measure things in a different way and your affiliation with pop culture doesn’t matter as much anymore. So music ceases to be a part of your identity. It’s just music. You’re not looking for heroes at a certain stage in life. You’re just looking to hear something that excites and stimulates you. And I don’t know that the industry knows how to talk to those people. I don’t think the industry knows how to hand a grown-up a piece of music and say, This is really good for the following reasons, and none of those reasons has anything to do with clothes or hair or who they’re dating or whatever.

[…]

Maybe this is an unfair example. I don’t know the guy, so I’m not picking on him. But Don Henley put out that album last year, and it got a lot of buzz. Why did it get a lot of buzz? Because he used to be in the Eagles. Anybody who follows Americana and traditional country can tell you that there are 50 better albums than “Cass County.” Totally accessible work, with traditional storytelling, great vocals, great arrangements, absolutely proving that the art of songwriting is still alive. But then there’s Don Henley everywhere. Maybe this is harsh, but maybe the industry thinks it should throw a bone to grown-ups. Rather than saying this is an excellent album by a new artist, they just say, Here’s the new Don Henley.

If nothing else, Fusilli’s arguments deserve some consideration and reflection to determine how valid they are.

When I was thinking about this interview over the weekend, I wondered, with all the complaints about how arts marketing and programming are so focused on the older generation, did I really want to write a post saying the music industry needed to do more to connect with the older generation?

In some respects, it makes good sense and might be beneficial for arts organizations. If you can raise interest for recent music in your current, older audience demographic, it is easier to make a case for those groups to boards of directors/programming committees. Maybe this results in programming that is attractive to the wider age demographic everyone says non-profit arts orgs should be serving.

Frequently the conversation about marketing the arts is about attracting a younger audience to works enjoyed by an older audience. Or the focus is on providing programming that the younger generation can connect with.

What I think may be the unspoken thought behind these idea is wanting to have programming that our current audience likes that also has an appeal to younger audiences. How often is the converse employed as a programming philosophy– what the younger audience likes is what we try to make appealing to older audiences?

Being realistic, it is safer economically to try to supplement your core audience with those that may have related interests than the reverse. You can also find success by deciding to focus an event entirely on a non-core audience without any attempt to involve your core audience.

But deciding you are going to start to do a little programming for a non-core audience and try to generate buy-in from your core audience? That can be risky and scary. Not to mention it might force an examination of the double standard behind expecting young people should be open to experiencing ballet but not expecting older audiences to be open to experiencing b-boying/b-girling.

How the shift in music marketing implied in the interview might be accomplished, I am not entirely sure. I feel like it could be more easily accomplished nowadays when distribution channels and gatekeeping are more decentralized than in the past. However, those same conditions also provide the opportunity for a greater focus on appealing to a specific niche to the detriment of uniting the larger community behind an artist.

Arts organizations would still need to change aspects of their marketing in order to correspond to the larger effort to attract a wider audience. My guess is different aspects of an artist would be magnified for different audiences. As Fusilli points out, grown-ups identity isn’t as tied to music as it is for young adults.

I wonder if there were any lessons for music companies to be learned from the attempts arts organizations have made to attract wider audiences. I suspect there are a lot of excellent ideas out there that have suffered from lack of both resources and ability/will to commit long term.

No, Everyone Is NOT Giving It Up For Free Stuff

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Last Wednesday I made a post about non-profit arts organizations deserving to expect a little more of their customer relationship management (CRM) software. I briefly referenced the fact that collecting a lot of data on people could potentially become creepy and intrusive.

This drew the attention of Drew McManus who expounded upon the idea in a post of his own, saying:

I can’t remember the last time ethics were part of a discussion about CRM capabilities but it is never a bad idea to ask “just because we can use technology to do a thing, does it mean we should?” Consequently, it’s good to see these questions work their way into larger discussions about features and functionality.

This idea dovetailed well with a recent study that suggested marketers are misrepresenting the American’s public willingness to trade privacy for discounts.

“..a majority of Americans are resigned to giving up their data—and that is why many appear to be engaging in tradeoffs…Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them. Our study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened.

By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable.

Among their findings are that:

• 91% disagree (77% of them strongly) that “If companies give me a discount, it is a fair exchange for them to collect information about me without my knowing.”

• 71% disagree (53% of them strongly) that “It’s fair for an online or physical store to monitor what I’m doing online when I’m there, in exchange for letting me use the store’s wireless internet, or Wi-Fi, without charge.”

• 55% disagree (38% of them strongly) that “It’s okay if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me.”

The authors of the study note there is an inconsistency between these responses and actual behavior. Contrary to the third finding, when it comes to supermarket discount cards, 40% of those who don’t agree with the third statement participate in grocery store discount programs. The authors say this inconsistency arises from both the sense of resignation and a lack of understanding about what merchants and websites are legally allowed to do.

Among the examples they give are that 49% of people think a supermarket and 69% think a pharmacy needs your permission to sell your data. 65% think that if a website has a privacy policy, it means they won’t sell your data. All these are untrue.

“55% do not know it is legal for an online store to charge different people different prices at the same time of day.” (The same erroneous belief is held by 62% of people regarding off-line/physical stores.)

The study is interesting to read because it discusses how the research conducted by marketing and consulting firms finds people express a strong discomfort with the way personal data is handled. Observing the inconsistency between the expression of discomfort and action, the firms have chosen to interpret this as consciously choosing to trade privacy for benefits. While the study authors suggest that the irrational choices are due to resignation and ignorance, it is difficult to clearly discern the truth.

If nothing else, like teen promiscuity statistics, this trade off study helps to provide a sense that no, everyone else isn’t necessarily doing it.

I almost wish I had held off writing my post on CRM last week because a day later, I had a real life illustration of what the study was suggesting. I was presenting our board of directors some examples of the CRM capabilities available through the ticketing software services we had been considering. The examples contained a list of tickets and donations made by a hypothetical customer along with standard address information and notes about relationships with some people and employers.

Because the example was meant to illustrate the history of an avid attendee over the course of a number of years as they purchased tickets, merchandise and made donations, the bulk of the information was rather repetitive and mundane. For example, there were a lot of $2 donations for what was either a tacked on restoration fee or the guy rounding up his bill by donating to that fund.

The issue was, this made record of activity rather long and cover a few pages. People were concerned about amount of data that appeared was being collected on a person (all be much of it in $2 increments). It didn’t take long for someone to point out that far more data was being collected by Amazon, other retailers and websites than actually appeared on the sample profile I had provided. By then other people had already begun expressing resignation that this sort of thing was inescapable.

This reaction left me a little anxious that my hopes of making fundraising and marketing efforts more effective with better data collection and evaluation might get impeded right from the start. Later, thinking about it in the context of the trade-off study, I could see some benefit in providing some transparency and actually encouraging some oversight of the data usage by the board. That way they could better understand the process and provide assurances to the greater community that we were handling the information responsibly. Hopefully such assurances would result in increased confidence and support of the organization.

It’s Not About Our Great Dark Ale

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About a week ago I was at a conference that was addressing creative placemaking and revitalizing communities. Mary Cusick from TourismOhio made a presentation on the new tourism campaign that is being worked on.

As she talked about marketing the state, I was interested to see how similar the attitudes research participants expressed about Ohio were to attitudes people express about the arts.

While people were generally neutral about Ohio, having no positive or negative associations about the state in general, they did feel there was a degree of tribalism. If you aren’t plugged in to the Ohio State University culture, erm I’m sorry, THE Ohio State University culture, you feel left out. In addition to the stress on THE, there is also the O-H—I-O cheer, among other identifiers that one can invoke at any occasion over a fairly large geographic area and receive a response.

We know that people have similar feelings about the arts with language, behavior and particular dress code which feel exclusive.

Another thing that Mary Cusick noted is that nearly every travel destination ad features the beauty and majesty of their outdoor attractions with people doing outdoorsy stuff.

However, research shows that people are aspirational in their responses about what they want to do on vacation. When you ask people about their plans, they talk about outdoors activities, but when you sit them down and ask what they actually have done and what the most important goal of a vacation is, the answers are a bit different.

And by sit them down, I mean literally. The tourism office research involved talking to people from Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania in their living rooms. They showed us video excerpts of the interviews.

I had a sense that the responses on arts participation surveys may also be on the aspirational side and was a little depressed that there wasn’t funding to do deep research like TourismOhio did. (I will say that part of me suspects arts participation surveys have included that degree of deep surveying. It’s just that seeing even brief video of the process during a presentation made a deeper impression than being told 100 people were surveyed in their homes)

What was important to people when they traveled on vacation was that it was an opportunity to de-stress and connect with family and friends. These are exactly the reasons given by people surveyed about what they valued from participation in an arts or creative activity. (graphics on pages 10 & 13).

Cusick reinforced Trevor O’Donnell’s constant message about advertising focusing on the patron/participant/consumer experience when she talked about the philosophy behind the ad campaigns being developed. She said it wasn’t about the great roller coasters, microbreweries and awesome ice cream shops in the state. It is about getting scared out of your wits, sharing your darkest secrets with your best friend over a pint of dark ale, and ice cream mustaches on your kids’ faces.

The print and broadcast pieces she showed us were all right in line with that approach.

Interesting and valuable insights to think about moving forward.

Best Effort Yet And I Missed It

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I didn’t know about NBC’s recent live broadcast of The Wiz until it was over, and that worries me.

It isn’t because I necessarily really wanted to see it. It’s the idea that if a company with the resources of NBC couldn’t make a person in the arts like myself aware that the show was going on, what hope do I, with my comparatively minuscule advertising budget and resources, have of reaching members of my community?

I haven’t had a television for about 5 years now and I don’t watch or rent video through Netflix or Hulu. If I did, maybe I would have seen something if NBC promoted it there.

As it was, I had no inkling NBC had even chosen to do The Wiz as their next project, much less when it would air. In all the blogs I read, all the webpages I visit, all the Twitter posts I read in the course of the day, I saw no mention of it until a bunch of people started gushing about how great it was during and after the performance. If there were banner ads on webpages I visited, I missed them.

I should mention, I did notice ads for a performance of Phantom of the Opera at some place in South Carolina. I wondered why I was getting what appeared to be retargeted ads since I am so far away geographically and never visited their webpage. There is a good chance I would have noticed something similar for The Wiz.

This challenge of reaching audiences as so many disparate channels of communication proliferate isn’t a new one. It has been the subject of discussion for a long time and many blogs and articles offer tips for using social media and other strategies to reach audiences.

While my experience (or inattention) isn’t necessarily indicative of a nation trend, as I say the fact that The Wiz broadcast went entirely under my radar caused me great concern. I guess for as engaged in the conversations of the arts field as I am, I am still joining the legions of the disengaged.

Can You Care In An Unreasonable Way?

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Seth Godin says he figures Apple computers reached their peak about three years ago.

Since then, we’ve seen:

Operating systems that aren’t faster or more reliable at running key apps, merely more like the iPhone…

Geniuses at the Genius Bar who are trained to use a manual and to triage, not to actually make things work better…

Software like Keynote, iMovie and iTunes that doesn’t get consistently better, but instead, serves other corporate goals. We don’t know the names of the people behind these products, because there isn’t a public, connected leader behind each of them, they’re anonymous bits of a corporate whole.

Compare this approach to the one taken by Nisus, the makers of my favorite word processor. An organization with a single-minded focus on making something that works, keeping a promise to users, not investors.

Mostly, a brand’s products begin to peak when no one seems to care. Sure, the organization ostensibly cares, but great tools and products and work require a person to care in an apparently unreasonable way.

If you are nodding your head in agreement upon recognizing that Apple’s achievements have sort of leveled out, stop a second and think about whether you are running things to make them better or just to triage and serve organizational goals.

When I read the sentence about the software not getting better but serving other corporate goals, Trevor O’Donnell’s posts about marketing reinforcing the arts organization’s image of themselves, rather than reinforcing the customer’s image of themselves having a good time, came to mind.

Obviously there is more involved with offering consistently better experiences to those who participate in the events and services you provide than good marketing. Good service, good marketing, good environment are all interdependent.

It is difficult to recognize issues that exist when you are close and involved with them which is why the Apple example is so useful. When we realize that some elements of a highly successful company have leveled off, it becomes a little easier to perceive parallels in our own operations.

The real challenge comes in the last sentence of Godin’s I quoted. What are the areas in which you and your staff can care in unreasonable ways?

What does that mean? What does it look like for your organization? Your customers can probably give you a hint if you ask (they may be already telling you, emphatically and unsolicited).

There may be people in your organization already invested in something with an unreasonable degree of care who are assets to your organization. It may not be necessary for everyone in your organization to all care about the same thing in order for you to be successful.

Given the number of hats worn by people in non-profit arts organizations, it would be a blessing if you had even a few employees that exhibited unreasonable care in different areas in a manner that was balanced within the organization and within themselves. (Trying to channel unreasonable care into all your areas of responsibility is likely to drive you crazy).

Making Ticket Refundability The Customer’s Choice

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When conversations about demand based pricing for the performing arts comes up, there is often a comparison made to the airlines and the way they factor in dozens of variables when they price their seats. One airline practice that doesn’t get mentioned is the refundable fare where you pay more in return for the right to cancel the ticket.

The right to exchange, and sometimes even get a refund for tickets, has long been a benefit extended to performance subscribers. Now that subscription sales are fading, perhaps it is time to think about applying it to single tickets?

The thought came to me when I was reading an story on a Microsoft blog about Jet.com The company is heavy into dynamic pricing to the point where the price of an item changes while it is in your shopping cart as variables are factored.

One of the ways people can lower the price of an item is to agree not to return it.

At checkout, customers can waive the right to return certain items, driving the cost down further; choosing one credit card over another — or paying directly from a checking account — takes dollars off, too. The system also suggests purchasing combinations that can save customers money.

With greater control over these variables, shoppers can strike their own personal balance between cost and convenience, something Lore’s team saw as missing in the industry. “The whole concept of Jet is to make transparent all of the costs that go into an e-commerce transaction, and then empower consumers to pull out costs as they see fit.

So what if you offer the opportunity to return tickets for an extra $5-$10 per ticket charge?

Generally the motivation for not allowing returns is fear of not being able to resell a ticket. There are also the labor costs and credit card transaction fees associated with processing a refund. Having different pricing makes the economics of all this more transparent and shifts some control to the purchaser.

If you do decide to allow a refund on a ticket sold as non-refundable, the rationale for a fee is clear. I know some performing arts organization charge an exchange fee which can seem punitive. In the context of this type of discount program, it can seem less so since the customer was offered the choice and the price difference has already been discussed.

I am not advocating this as a new source of income. There are social and emotional transactions that occur during the refund process, the results of which may not be directly correlated to whether a full refund was granted or not. It is better when the subject never comes up, regardless of whether you are generating any income from the exchange.

Still, it is something to think about. Especially if the choice of a discount in exchange for waiving the ability to make a return becomes more widespread and familiar.

If such an approach is implemented, it would definitely need to be handled at the time of sale from the positive perspective of “All our tickets are refundable, but you can get an additional discount if you don’t think you will want to exchange/refund,” rather than a more negative, “it will be an additional $10 if you want to be allowed to get a refund.”

Airlines handle it in the latter manner. Just think how much happier you would be if the $500 ticket were only $300 if you waived the right to a refund.

Airlines can’t really it that way because people initially hunt for the lowest price. They gain advantage from advertising the lowest price and adding costs as you choose options.

Price hunting doesn’t factor as much into the decision about which production to see so arts organizations have a little more flexibility in that respect.

I would be curious to see if a higher level of satisfaction might result from implementing this type of pricing. Would people feel more satisfaction secure in the knowledge they can either get a refund at any time or having gotten a great discount to something they fully intended to see anyway?

I imagine it would depend on the demographics of the community. Younger people and families might appreciate the low risk flexibility. More established audiences might view the unorthodox approach and additional level of pricing as confusing.

Ah! The Problem Is Your Show Is Like A Chicken Sandwich With Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

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The first segment of this week’s This American Life episode offers proof that marketing departments everywhere run up against the same challenges, regardless of whether they are in the for or not-for profit world, whether they are selling art and culture experiences or hamburgers.

How many times have you said, this is a really great product/experience, but I don’t think there is a market for it?

That is what the marketing team for Hardee’s says about a mashed potato, gravy and chicken sandwich they are sampling from the company’s test kitchen. The taste and texture are really great, they think anyone who bought it would really like it, but they don’t think there are enough people who will make that initial decision to buy a sandwich with mash potatoes on it.

This is exact conversation that occurs when many arts events and performances are first conceived or proposed. It’s great. Anyone who experienced it would like it. Is there enough to it to impel people to that choice?

Really folks confess, how many of you have made a sandwich that included mashed potatoes at some point during the holidays? It was good wasn’t it? You might not want to order it in public though.

Here is a picture by the way.

Source
Source

 

My guess is the arts run into the same issue to some degree. People are curious or have experimented creating something similar themselves, but are reluctant to  be seen publicly participating.

What correspondent Zoe Chace says the Hardee’s team has to do is figure out the story they are going to tell that makes all the weirdness make sense.

They offer some interesting insight into customer psyche, at least in terms of food. The Hardee’s marketing team says that a macaroni and cheese burger is an easier sell than the chicken sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy because it only adds one unfamiliar element-macaroni. People are used to cheese on their burgers.  Their gut tells them that Mashed Potatoes AND Gravy on a chicken sandwich may be too far a leap.  (That said, from what I can find it appears they market tested the mashed potato sandwich but not the macaroni and cheese burger.)

I am not sure if that offers anything that can be applied to the arts, but it might bear paying attention to how many variations from an expected norm an event that sells well has versus one that that doesn’t sell well.

Another thing the Hardee’s team talks about is the importance of naming to the image you are trying to project. They discuss how they tried selling a burger with pulled pork on it three times. It wasn’t until they included the term “Memphis Barbeque” that it started selling well, they assume it’s thanks to the cachet Memphis has as a source of good barbeque.

I can completely relate to that. Once I presented a performance that was extremely high quality. The challenge was that it was a collaboration of artists from different disciplines, in a format that was unfamiliar to audiences. This made the show difficult to quickly explain and the title of the event didn’t help matters.

About a year later, I saw the show advertised elsewhere with a title that was much more representative of the content. I contacted the manager and asked if it was the same show with the same principal artists. I assumed one of them had left and so the show couldn’t be advertised in the same way.

It turned out it was the same exact show and they hadn’t been particularly invested in the title they had been using. They were happy to call it whatever helped sell it best.

Ninety-five percent of productions, the title is an immutable part of the brand identity.  At least once a year since learning a performer was flexible about the event name, I have been able to negotiate some minor alterations on the name or description of a show to make it sound more appealing and accessible specifically to my local audience.  It never hurts to ask.

In the third segment of the podcast, This American Life asks advertising agencies how Volkswagen can extract themselves from their current difficulties. While many say VW is in trouble because it broke faith with its customers, everyone they asked had sentimental feelings for VW based on the company’s past ad campaigns.

There is something to be said for generating good will.

One company suggested a documentary style self-examination. Another suggested VW appeal directly to the consumer, saying their focus was on what they thought over any governmental or industry investigation–essentially throwing themselves at the mercy of the Internet.

A third suggested building a plant in Detroit to bolster jobs there and have Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton do a TV ad in the style of their Broadway show (mixing hip hop and Constitutional themes). It is a little strange to listen to the audio of their sample ad as they transition from lyrics drawn from the Constitution to mentioning the importance of environmental stewardship.

The thought that annoyed me though, and this has nothing directly to do with the podcast, is that the arts are dismissed as a viable career path—until it comes time to rally goodwill around a billion dollar international company or some other tragedy.

This isn’t a direct criticism of VW or ad agencies, both of which know the value of creative artists. I just feel like I need to call attention to these situations as a bit of counter messaging.

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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