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.
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?)
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?
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)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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-
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.
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.
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 interviewKresge 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.
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.)
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…
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.
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.
Inside was a brochure that had special cuts so that it could be assembled into a theater.
He had a little card for each of his shows that you could place into the theater.
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.
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.
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.
“..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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
“…most forms of arts participation are strongly correlated not with class, but rather with education. To his surprise, he found that in a large sample of the English population, those with higher incomes were actually less likely to be active participants in the arts.”
Let’s get it out of the way right at the beginning and acknowledge that arts participation may be more integral to the English education experience than the U.S. so this finding may not be completely applicable to the U.S.
Still, it is a factor to pay attention to when looking at the demographics of the people you are engaging and trying to engage. The findings are pretty captivating.
In other words, a certain percentage of people go to the opera in order to be seen, to impress their bosses (or in-laws), or because it’s what their friends and neighbors expect them to do. But if you are actually a member of the opera chorus, it’s probably because it feeds your soul.
[…]
Reeves found that “arts participation, unlike arts consumption and cultural engagement generally, is not closely associated with either social class or social status.”
Indeed, “those with higher incomes are less likely to be arts participants,” he writes, adding that this finding is unexpected and difficult to interpret. Perhaps, he speculates, those at the top tend to work longer hours, and have less free time to devote to creative pursuits.
However, Reeves found education was “a strong predictor of the likelihood of being an arts participant.” After adjusting for the influence of family background, he found that, compared to people who did not participate in higher education, those who had earned a degree were four to five times more likely to play a musical instrument, or be involved in painting, photography, or dance.
It is intriguing to think, even if just speculation, that the practice of providing art to be consumed may have been heavily influenced by the fact that those with the most money only had time to attend. Those who are highly educated, but not as affluent may have an interest in consuming, yet they have a stronger interest and availability in participation, but may feel convenient opportunities are lacking.
If you are in a community where everyone sings in a choir, but few attend a concert by touring artists, you may be witnessing this dynamic in action.
There has long been a criticism of a one size fits all approach to marketing, programming, development, etc., especially in terms of trying to replicate what another organization is doing. Now one needs to consider if an art for consumption model may be incompatible with their community as well.
Then there is this statement to think about:
In any event, the findings can serve as a rejoinder to those who argue the arts are strictly of interest to the elite—an assertion that implies the rich can fund these organizations themselves rather than asking taxpayers to help do so.
Despite the exciting prospects represented by this statement, what is still going to be a million dollar mystery question for most arts organizations is if you shift to providing a more participatory mode of arts experience, is there enough interest to support the organization?
Even though there is potentially a much wider scope of people to which to appeal, the knowledge really affluent people are most interested in arts consumption may deter change.
As part of our effort to upgrade the look and design of our website we have been checking the accuracy of our area restaurants and bars list, verifying which offer discounts to patrons. In an attempt to strengthen our relationship with them, we have been making them aware of the general audiences we expect to attend each event.
For example, we talk about our season opener being something of a date night type show while others are more family oriented. We suggest if they want to put together any sort of fixed menu of selections that are easy to prepare and get audiences to the theater on time, we will be happy to make a notation on our website listing or social media account.
As might be expected, some people are resistant to the idea while others are onboard whole-heartedly.
Then there are guys like the owner of a local coffee house that I spoke to today who basically scoffed at me repeatedly for not being creative enough with these suggestions. He was open for anything I might want to propose that would be appropriate pre- or post-performance. He got into talking about how great it would be to close off parking spots and roast a pig. Rather than a discount, he said would rather charge full price for something and donate part of the proceeds to a cause or something. He was full of ideas.
It got to the point I started wondering if maybe my approach with some of the other restaurants may have been a little too conventional. Even though some of the places balked nervously at some of the most conventional suggestions, would they have been open to ideas that didn’t seem to threaten their bottom line?
I saw a parallel between this situation and an approach that I espoused in one of my very first entries on this blog 11 years ago. I had suggested trying to find a creative solution to respond to people’s dissatisfaction other than the refund. People don’t go to the trouble of buying tickets, getting a babysitter, getting dinner, finding parking, etc just so they can leave with a refund.
Demanding a refund is the default response because that is the solution we are socialized to seek when we are dissatisfied with something. There are often a good number of other options available that will provide a sense of satisfaction better than a refund.
It was in this context that I was wondering if I was thinking to narrowly by suggesting a discount or a fixed menu.
Except, in my experience over the last 11 or so years, it seems no matter how creative and accommodating you get with alternative solutions, people still want the refund even if other solutions create a better result. (Though from what I have read, making the attempt to address the issue, even if the result isn’t what the customer wanted, still generates a higher level of satisfaction than making no attempt at all.)
I think it is a matter of both continued socialization and a certain degree of distrust engendered by companies who do everything they can to avoid refunding your money (i.e. airlines).
In the same way, making suggestions that deviate from the normal procedure, even if they are pretty clearly low risk propositions, can result in resistance. Arts organizations are no exception (and may even embody the practice more than most.)
It can be really difficult to gauge the degree of a person’s receptiveness in advance so it is easier to suggest something familiar and safe and be surprised when someone proves to be more adventuresome than expected.
It’s just that while I celebrate the coffee house owner’s openness and look forward to finding interesting ideas that will benefit us both, it stings a little to be working in the arts and be called out for lack of creativity.
Back in April Seth Godin talked about how most purchases are either to replenish something you have or are familiar with; or it is exploring something new.
If you sell an exploration, your customer is taking a chance. Sometimes magnifying that chance fits the worldview of the purchaser, and sometimes minimizing the risk is precisely what the purchaser is seeking.
[…]
This is almost never talked about by marketers, but it’s at the core of the strategy choices that follow.
Most of the time in the arts we talk about the need to minimize the risk of new audiences. We need to make our programming, pricing and other elements in our control more accessible so that people are willing to hire a babysitter and make the drive to our event. We don’t want them going home feeling like it isn’t worth it.
I haven’t really heard a lot of conversation about magnifying the risk. I wouldn’t even have thought in those terms except that Godin links “magnifying” to a TED Talk where JJ Abrams talks about how people felt utterly stupefied trying to figure out what the heck was happening on the show Lost.
That is when I realized—people will accept having their risk magnified when they feel like that risk is shared by others. If no one knows what is happening on Lost, everyone bonds over sharing their theories, etc. People are willing to go in to Haunted Houses and ride roller coasters because everyone will be screaming.
On the other hand, when you perceive you will be participating in an activity with group of people already in the know, you are less willing to accept risk. Arts organizations are familiar with the anxiety people have about not knowing how to dress, when to clap, etc. and frequently move to minimize the perceived risk.
Having friends (or a horde of people on social media) provide assurances that you will enjoy yourself, (including helping you understand the experience), can reduce that risk aversity. Arts orgs don’t have too much direct influence in that sphere other than to really promote what others have said about the experience and provide materials that can assist in understanding it.
Is it possible for an arts group to offer a live experience that magnifies risk? You betcha. The first thing that came to my mind was Sleep No More where attendees wander through a building interacting with actors in an adaptation of MacBeth.
It has been wildly popular, but I think my theory about risk tolerance is apt. When the show first opened, everyone was on a level playing field where no one knew what the heck was going on. As I noted in an earlier post the show has become less enjoyable for new attendees because people in the know have begun to hijack the narrative and intercept experiences. This has started to create a little more wariness among those who consider attending.
All this being said, I think people tend to be more risk averse than they once were. Think about it, could the cult of the Rocky Horror Picture Show started up during the last decade or so?
As a person who has never attended you are faced with going to an event held at midnight in a room full of people in costume who are certainly well versed in rituals and responses of the evening. Attention is drawn to all new attendees who are raucously branded as virgins, some of whom are pulled up to participate in a virgin sacrifice. Given the prospect of all of this being posted on social media, would enough new people have gone to keep it sustained for nearly 40 years?
In that context, attending the symphony for the first time seems like a really comfortable choice. But then again, if a symphony gave the appearance of being as fun as attending Rocky Horror, would you chance being the center of attention for a thousand people for 5 minutes? Does that mean the symphony experience is far too tame for its own good?
I think it would be healthy if everyone started to think about what they could do that would magnify the risk for audiences for audiences that look for those type of experiences. Maybe nothing comes of it for a year or five or so, but I feel like it runs counter to the basic impulse of people in a creative field to be constantly thinking about how they can minimize the risk for audiences.
I am not saying that artists don’t go through this thought process, but managers who deal with financial reports all day may be most apt to fall into the rut of minimization thinking. Maybe thinking in the other direction would be better for their mental health. Maybe what you need to do can’t be done where you are working now and a side collaboration with others is the answer.
I do a lot of talking about how marketing is the business of everyone in the organization, not just the department bearing that name. Everybody needs to be invested in the organization and its goals. I often use the example of telling your organization’s story while you are in line at the supermarket.
A lot of what I and others write about in this vein stresses the importance of relating your story to external audiences. But I have slowly come to recognize the success of those efforts really depends on your success in relating that story to internal audiences first.
Even if the whole organization is supposed to be responsible for telling the story, its likely that the story may only remain fresh and alive for the people in the marketing department who deal with it everyday. They are the ones that have to take the full page press release and compress the information and concepts for consumption on webpages, social media, 30 second PSAs, posters and print ads. They are constantly having to distill information in order to maintain its essence.
Something I have noticed in my own experience is that staff and board members who helped with the programming and writing of brochure descriptions don’t seem to know as much about the performances as I do. Then I realized it was because I am interacting with marketing materials and having conversations about opportunities for interesting education services on a weekly basis.
Despite being deeply involved with the process for a fair amount of time, other board and staff members end up months removed from their efforts.
Arts organizations advertise and send out emails to remind the general public about events we previously announced in an effort to engage them as the time approaches. There probably needs to be a corresponding internal effort as well. You can send staff emails, briefing sheets and talk about events in board and staff meetings, but emails get deleted and people often just want to get out of those meetings.
However, people often have a tendency to avoid work, right? Water cooler type conversations about why upcoming events are going to be interesting can make a deeper, more lasting impression on people and help to make them better advocates. Especially because instead of receiving a general announcement, they are getting the message customized for them.
Even if other employees are insiders to a degree, they can often serve as the initial sounding board/guinea pigs for approaches you will use with the general public. Volunteers may especially be valuable in this regard since they are probably invested enough in the organization to provide feedback, but may be disconnected enough from the inner workings that they are only slightly more aware of the organization’s activities than the average attendee.
In many respects, marketing definitely begins at home. Even if everyone is working together to make every event a success and are clearly invested in seeing everything come off well, it is far too easy to assume everyone is equally as knowledgeable about the value of the event.
Marketing may be the business of everyone in the organization, but there are always going to be people who know more and are more passionate about events than others. Whether they are officially part of the marketing or artistic team or not, it is always going to be incumbent on them to pass on the knowledge and instill the passion in the other employees to enable them to be effective representatives.
Last week I was reading an article on Slate that talked about teachers who were making more money selling their lesson plans online than they were from their teaching jobs.
So before I go on, let me just suggest that if there are any educational activities your organization does that you feel are really effective or if you have any lesson plans that bring the arts to other academic subjects (or vice versa), you may want to make them available on the websites mentioned in that article. There may be a good market for such things.
My purpose in this post is somewhat along the same lines. I wondered if there might not be a need among arts professionals to share materials they developed so that others wouldn’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel.
In a way, it is something of a logical extension of the idea behind Drew McManus’ ArtsHacker website which gives advice and guidance to arts organizations. (If you didn’t know it already, I am a contributor to the site.)
I am not suggesting he monetize the site. There is plenty of need for the freely given and available advice it provides.
I suspect there might be a real need for other types of materials arts groups develop in the course of business.
Just off the top of my head, there is probably a need for good marketing content for different shows. Whenever I do research on artists or shows so that I can write press releases and web/brochure blurbs, I often find that people are using the generic descriptions provided by the artist or agent.
Often the blurb is about how great the artist or performance is, but not why an audience member might enjoy the show. I find this particularly true of Broadway shows which seem to have more content about the creators and producers than the show itself. My audience doesn’t know enough about various choreographers to care about that.
I am sure there are a lot of people out there who try to craft interesting descriptions designed to resonate with their local audiences, but they aren’t easy to find. Having this work collected in one place might be a boon.
Right now the best centralized sources are the table at conferences upon which arts orgs throw their brochures.
Granted, you wouldn’t be able to use someone’s release in its entirety. Every community has its own particular nuances that need to be addressed. I don’t imagine that the teachers mentioned in the Slate article are using lesson plans on the sites without making alterations to suit their students.
After a few years, this resource may actually raise the quality of promotional writing in the arts if press releases were available for download for a few dollars from a database indexed by show/artist and community demographics.
Once people start looking at the potential approaches one might use to promote something, they may be inspired to up their own game– especially if people are paying money for good material.
It may instill confidence in a number of people who start to see a high demand for their writing. Just because an event wasn’t well attended doesn’t mean you are a bad writer. The message may have just been poorly distributed.
(Though the negative potential is that instead of hiring marketing staff, a company might have an intern aggregate content from press release samples.)
Other things people might find valuable are ideas for events surrounding a performance: everything from dinner & show promos; coffee houses; young professional wine and cheese events and after performance talks, to an imaginative use of a speed dating format to meet the cast.
It may sound a little cynical, but I could also see a demand for providing grant report content from which people could crib information. Even though a lot grant reporting feels like it involves mindless reduplication of effort with minor tweaks, against this is an area where the example of effective writing can be valuable.
I would be reluctant to have people post their strategic plans for sale since they really do need to be invested with long, tedious hours of discussion and revision to be effective.
However, case studies on how an organization manifested their strategic plan could be useful. If you are having to write about it for some grant or foundation report, you might as well make a little additional money off the effort.
The one big issue I haven’t investigated or really thought about is the issue of copyright credit. I am not sure how the teacher lesson plan sites work it. I have seen copyright notices on educational handouts. Since classroom instruction isn’t as public a forum as press release distribution and web content, I don’t imagine there is any need to give credit to another teacher before a lesson on fractions.
Would you have to give byline credit on every press release noting all the people who contributed to it as some news outlets do?
A lot of potential in this idea, but much to think about.
Earlier this week Samantha Teter had a piece on ArtsHacker about writing bios. She does a good job pointing out many important elements that should be part of a bio (including proofreading) and that one should use a different bio for different purposes.
However, recently I have been wondering if bios in a performance playbill are really effective anymore. Performers have been using the same basic format with the same basic content for decades now, but as we all know, audiences have changed during that time.
So among my questions are: Do audiences read bios any more? Is the content relevant to them? Has anyone thought to ask?
What are the purposes of bios? Do they serve the artists by providing recognition to individuals? Do they serve to strengthen a relationship with the audience? Are they effective at doing either?
Over the last decade I have often read suggestions regarding press releases and marketing content for the arts. One of the things most often criticized is the inclusion of long listings of accolades that the public has no way to judge the relevance of.
People know what the Tony Awards are, but nearly anything else is a mystery. While foreign sounding names like the Zhege Dongxi Prize and studying with Pierre Lapin at Le Jardin de M.A. Gregoire sound somewhat impressive, no one who is not an insider has any idea if this is a mark of excellence or something someone made up.
There is also the distinct possibility that even regular audience members may lack the connection to the arts field that past audiences did and do not recognize the prestige of names like Jacob’s Pillow, Tanglewood, and Stratford Festival.
If one actor lists a dozen shows they were in and another just lists a short handful, is the former more experienced than the latter? It could easily be the case that the former is just starting out and listing everything they have been in since high school and the latter is so experienced, it isn’t worth listing more than the last couple shows.
Does it help the audience feel more engaged in the event to know that the performer lives with their husband, kids and two dogs, Misty and Pepper?
I am not suggesting that bios be scrapped so that the organization can save on printing bills and relegate performers to a simple listing. Yes, I know some unions require the inclusion of bios.
I am just asking, outside of tradition, do we know why we still do this? If we do, then could we do it better?
If we want audiences to be excited by our organizations and what we do, would it be better to have a big color picture in the program of the artists conducting a workshop or in rehearsals, instead of pages of text?
Perhaps QR codes with the names of the individual artists could be placed around the margins of the image so that people could scan them and learn much more than 50 words about the artist by visiting their social media page packed with images and videos.
If the purpose of listing bios is to provide artists with recognition that they wouldn’t otherwise receive and it has to be done in the traditional format, then are there any changes of content people might suggest?
Think about it this way. Everybody gets their name in the credits at the end of a movie, but even if people stay and try to pay attention to the list, it is nearly impossible to pick individual names out even if there is someone you are looking for. Someone working on the movie probably has a better chance of being recognized as people scroll down on the IMDB listing than they will in the movie theater.
Teaser trailers at the end of Marvel movies keep people in the theater, but they probably don’t help improve an artist’s exposure and recognition. By making considered changes to program books, arts organizations might actually have the ability to raise the profile of artists, if only by a smidgen and provide a more meaningful experience for audiences.
I am just not quite sure what those changes might be. Something to consider, though.
We often hear that our social media posts shouldn’t be heavy on self promotion, but rather seek to engage people with information that might be useful or interesting to them. But I think it is hard to conceptualize what that really looks like. What should you be offering? What is a good ratio?
Since every business is different, it is impossible to provide a solid answer. What type of informational posts you make should be a reflection of your organizational personality. The ratio of information to self-promotion that people will tolerate is also characteristic to each organization.
Information. What happened?
Analysis. What does it mean?
Assistance. How can I do that?
Entertainment. Posts that amuse and surprise.
The video has examples, but you can probably think of dozens more from recognizing award nominations to sharing how-to tips for art projects.
What was most interesting was his philosophy about self-promotional posts. He used the example of NPR which provides news, information, analysis and entertainment for about 49-50 weeks out of the year and then does fund drives for the other 2-3 weeks out of the year.
By providing content people find valuable for most of the year, in Kawasaki’s estimation, NPR earns the right to sell itself for two or three weeks out of the year.
Now, the one flaw I see in his logic is that NPR’s core product and mission 50 weeks out of the year is news and information. Every so often they ask you to pay for it. Following these guidelines, a museum would be providing news and information which is off-mission, in addition to their own core product. This practice can obscure the museum’s identity a little whereas NPR’s is always on display every moment and only gets slightly diminished during fund drives.
But the general idea that you have to earn the right to ask for money is sound. The earned right to ask extends beyond just offering diverse content on social media. The transaction of time and money happens in a small moment, but the right to ask for that exchange is earned across every other moment through customer service, the delivery of a quality product, the social enjoyment and dozens of other factors, including social media and other online content.
About a month ago I bookmarked a post Seth Godin had made about customer service. Since it is a little longer than usual, I waited until I had the time to come back to read it.
Now I sort of wish I had read it earlier because it pretty much runs counter to every customer service best practices article I have ever read and provides a lot to think about.
Essentially he says there are different types of customer service and a company should own the type they practice rather than pretending they are striving for something they ain’t.
Customer service is difficult, expensive and unpredictable. But it’s a mistake to assume that any particular example is automatically either good or bad. A company might spend almost nothing on customer service but still succeed in reaching its goals.
[…]
Organizations don’t accidentally run ads, don’t mistakenly double (or halve) the amount of cereal they put in the box. They shouldn’t deliver customer service that doesn’t match their goals either.
and at the end of the post [my emphasis]
Every single person who makes budget decisions, staffing decisions and customer service decisions must to be clear about which strategy you picked, needs to be able to state, “we’re doing this because it’s congruent with what we say customer service is for.”
Obviously, you can mix and match among these options, and find new ones. What we must not do, though, is plan to do one thing but then try to save time or money and do something else, hoping for the results that come from the original plan without actually doing it.
Customer service, like everything an effective organization does, changes people. Announce the change you seek, then invest appropriately, in a system that is likely to actually produce the outcomes you just said you wanted.
Between those two passages I quote, he points out ten different uses of customer service. There are some most of us aspire to. There are some that we complain about.
We read a lot of articles about how businesses need to engage with customers. So when we have an unsatisfying interaction with a company, we may complain about how they did not take the opportunity earn our loyalty. But as Godin points out, they may be reaching their goals without interacting with us in the way we want them to.
As customers, we may be like the school kid who says, I am really nice, helpful and loyal to them, why won’t they like me? Liking you may not be important to their goals.
We all probably assume this is part of airlines’ calculation, but reading Godin’s post you realize there are a lot of other companies that have decided they are doing just fine without doing much more.
My suggestion as you read his post is to take a different approach than you might normally.
Instead of thinking about all the things you need to change about the way you do business in order to meet customer expectations, be honest and consider whether the way you handle customer service isn’t just the way you want it after all.
If it isn’t the way you want it, consider what approach would fulfill your vision of success rather than what approach the articles you read say you should be using.
Whatever philosophy you adopt needs to be inline with your philosophy on programming, education, pricing and operations. Any misalignment will be apparent.
You can’t change your pricing in an attempt to attract under served audiences but have programming, education and operations oriented to serving a different demographic.
Likewise, you can’t aspire to certain goals without directing training and funding to support it.
Once you have decided what your philosophy is and what resources you can afford to direct toward accomplishing it, then you need to own that reality rather than pretend to be doing something else.
I bookmarked the article because even though most non-profits don’t pitch investors the way a Silicon Valley company might, they still need to convince various constituencies to support them and doing so in a simple and effective manner can be important.
Or in other words–how to do a presentation without using a massive Powerpoint presentation. Kawasaki’s infographic maps out the order in which 10 slides (15 maximum) should be presented.
At first glance, you may not think every slide is applicable, but just think about the grant applications you make. How many of them ask about your business model, strategic planning, problem you are addressing, promotional plans, evaluation method, list of board and staff members and justify why you receive funding based on past successes? All of that is in the infographic by other names.
If you are talking to potential audience members or volunteers, you can eliminate some of these slides. The question still remains, can you go out into the community and talk about the programming and opportunities you offer in a simplified and interesting way, or are you going to have a slide for each of your events?
The slides can be metaphorical by the way. This is more about tight organization of thoughts than the availability and use of a projector and screen at a presentation. Trying to include too much content in your presentation is akin to trying to cram as many images from your upcoming season in one slide in order to limit it to 10 total. It reduces the effectiveness of the whole.
Right at the top of the infographic is says, the low number forces you to focus on the absolute essentials…the more slides you need, the less compelling your idea.
Kawasaki’s chart has one slide for the Value Proposition – “Explain the Value of the Pain You Alleviate or the Value of the Pleasure You Provide,” and one slide for the Underlying Magic – “Describe the technology, secret sauce or magic behind your product…”
These are the bread and butter areas of the arts. Arts organizations are all about the pleasurable experience and magic. But can you make that case in just a couple slides, even if you were allowed a total of four slides between these two areas?
Can you do it a way that is focused on the pleasure the audience/participant will receive? Nobody buys secret sauce that only the cook thinks tastes good. People have to know they will enjoy the secret sauce as well.
Obviously, this practice is transferable to other areas of the organization, especially marketing. Can you communicate the essence of what your event is in a poster, broadcast or print ad, social media post, email blast, etc? Can you make the case for donating in a brief curtain speech or solicitation letter? Can you give a gallery tour/play talk/concert lecture that makes people want to come back and learn more or do their own research?
Even though the articles on Non-Profit Quarterly’s website are relatively short, I found an article last month about fundraising for the homeless gave me a lot to think about.
According to the article, homeless charities are essentially forced to pander to the image of the homeless as old men living on the street in order to raise money even though the truth is 36% of homeless are families and 65% don’t live on the streets.
Research published in the British journal Sociological Research Online noted (my emphasis)
“Given the homogeneity of the images produced in this research, and further studies which show complex, contextual information can lessen the impact of a fundraising campaign, we could argue that charities are acting rationally in continuing to fundraise in such a way, even though in rooflessness they are focusing on a relatively small element of the overall problem of homelessness: ‘the public must be given what they appear to want: images of charitable beneficiaries that fit comfortably with widely held stereotypes about ‘victims’ and which prompt the largest amount of donations.’”
The article talks about how some charities recognize the need to balance educating the public about the truth while also acknowledging that “you also have the way that people perceive that problem and what they perceive the solutions to be…”
Reading this, I saw some parallels with what arts organizations face. There has been a lot of conversations in recent years about the mismatch between what arts organizations need funding for (i.e. operations) and foundation funding priorities.
What really got me was the idea that non-profits are often slaves to the image the public has of the constituencies it serves. The British researchers had people draw what they envisioned when they thought of homeless people and many people drew the whiskered old guy sleeping on the street. (I should note the study sample size isn’t terribly large so the results may not be entirely conclusive.)
I wondered if arts organizations were to ask their patrons or people in the community to draw their concept of an arts event attendee, would the pictures be of people in suits/tuxedos and evening gowns even if the reality was jeans and khakis with barely a necktie in sight?
In light of this research, I started wondering if arts organizations might be better served by embracing the high society stereotype they are trying to escape, at least when it comes to fundraising efforts.
If regular event attendees end up rendering an image that diverges from reality of the experience, it may be that they associate their self image with the one on paper. In that case, you may not want to do anything to disabuse them of that notion.
Though this is a complicated situation. They may have drawn the pictures they did because all your marketing materials feature performers in tuxedos and evening gowns reinforcing that image even though your audiences largely don’t dress in that manner or identify with that image.
In this case, continuing an effort to have marketing and fundraising materials and events attempt to diverge from the high society stereotype and more closely align with the audience reality may ultimately garner better attendance and donations.
While there are a lot of nuances of audience psychology to factor in, the rather obvious element in all this has always been that wealthy people make large donations that help keep everything operational so the image arts organizations have tried to project is one that appeals to them.
Like those who serve the homeless, arts organizations may be trapped into perpetuating an image that attracts the most donations versus presenting an image the best reflects the reality or ambition of their activities.
All that being said, I am still intrigued by the idea of asking people either to draw or describe the type of person who attends an arts performance. I have this feeling that a survey requesting a picture might actually end up with a higher response rate than a typical survey.
And it may provide some insight into the image the organization should be projecting in order to appeal to the community. (I have to confess, I had an amusing vision of a crayon stick figure drawing of a man in a top hat and woman in an evening gown slamming the door of theater in the sad faces of two less finely dressed people.)
If anyone tries this, I would love to hear what the results are. This isn’t out of line with what people are asked to share on social media sites and there are arts organizations who are already engaging people in this manner. Nina Simon could ask of visitors at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History to do this and no one would think it particularly novel.
If you are one of those organizations which find success packaging and promoting their shows as part of seasons, you may be looking toward the design of promotional materials for your upcoming year.
With that in mind, it seems like a good time to point out this article on the Psychology of Color that appeared about a year ago on the Entrepreneur website.
(Though you don’t need to have a subscription campaign to design for this article to be of use to you.)
The article does a good job of addressing all the ideas people have about what color means, what colors best appeal to different genders and which are best used for calls to action.
The author, Gregory Ciotti, essentially says most of the assumptions and theories are complete bunk. People bring too much of their personal and cultural experiences to colors to be able to attribute an consistent, specific emotional reaction to them.
It is better to try to pick colors that will generally align with your brand personality rather than to evoke a specific feeling with a color. Context matters more that just about anything else.
Certain colors DO broadly align with specific traits (e.g., brown with ruggedness, purple with sophistication, and red with excitement). But nearly every academic study on colors and branding will tell you that it’s far more important for your brand’s colors to support the personality you want to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical color associations.
Consider the inaccuracy of making broad statements such as “green means calm.” The context is missing; sometimes green is used to brand environmental issues such as Timberland’s G.R.E.E.N standard, but other times it’s meant to brand financial spaces such as Mint.com.
And while brown may be useful for a rugged appeal (think Saddleback Leather), when positioned in another context brown can be used to create a warm, inviting feeling (Thanksgiving) or to stir your appetite (every chocolate commercial you’ve ever seen).
Bottom line: I can’t offer you an easy, clear-cut set of guidelines for choosing your brand’s colors, but I can assure you that the context you’re working within is an absolutely essential consideration.
One thing that may or may not enter your consideration of color is gender. There is a difference in color prefer between males and females. Given that women often drive the attendance experience, it may be useful to cater to women’s color biases.
(Though you should probably avoid anything that runs strongly counter to male biases lest the sight of a brochure or webpage entrench their resistance to attendance.)
Additional research in studies on color perception and color preferences show that when it comes to shades, tints and hues men seem to prefer bold colors while women prefer softer colors. Also, men were more likely to select shades of colors as their favorites (colors with black added), whereas women were more receptive to tints of colors (colors with white added)
The last thing that Ciotti works on debunking is the idea that a specific colored button on a website increases the number of purchases. He says rather it is the isolation effect making that button highly noticeable on a webpage, even if you have poor eyesight, that helps create a call to action.
So a red button on a page with a lot of green is more successful than a green button on that same page. The same is true with a mix of color and font size.
The article has a lot of infographics and images which illustrate his point so if any of this sounds interesting, it is worth a visit to the article.
Seth Godin had a great post about word of mouth last week that really bears reading and thinking about. We all know that word of mouth referrals are often more powerful than any piece of advertising you can create.
In fact, back in 2003 a Harvard Business Review piece suggested that if you only had an opportunity to ask customers one question, “would you recommend this to a friend,” was the most effective measure of satisfaction.
Given that people are abandoning traditional forms of media, arts organizations are increasingly dependent on word of mouth, especially in the form of social media.
Godin lists six reasons why people may be reluctant to give a business a referral, but the three that seem to most closely apply to art organizations deal with the basic concern of “what does this referral say about me?”
Do I want to be responsible if my friend has a bad experience? Will I get credit if it works, blame if it doesn’t?
[…]
How does it make me look? Do people like me recommend something like this? When I look in the mirror after recommending this, do I stand taller?
Is this difficult to explain, complex to understand, filled with pitfalls?..
These seem to be issues an arts organization needs to address most given that the arts are often viewed as an elitist pursuit that is not easy to understand.
Even if you are passionate and excited about what you saw, if your friends don’t seem to have the same level of interest and curiosity in the arts that you do, you may be reluctant to encourage the experience in case they don’t enjoy it as you have; think you are an elitist snob for enjoying the arts; or think you don’t share the same values because you enjoy and understand such dense, complicated material.
The one benefit I see to social media is that it allows you to commit to different levels of referral. If you are really anxious about what people will think about you, you can simply Like something. If a friend is incredulous about your apparent interest in modern dance, you can save face by saying a couple of the moments in the video were interesting or you thought one of the dancers was particularly attractive.
But really, since everyone will like anything with little prompting, a Like can help you test the waters and perhaps even introduce your friends to the concept of liking the arts without being too detrimental.
If you are feeling a little more confident that your friends will enjoy something as much as you do, you can share without much comment. Again, if your choices are challenged, you have some room for deniability.
If you are really confident, you can post or share with comment about how much you like something.
In this respect, social media provides insulation from the negative results of an in person recommendation.
Of course, we know that insulation goes both ways. If people are going to react negatively to something you are passionate about, they may say worse things about you online than they would in person and their scorn can linger for all to see.
Godin’s last line pretty much confirms what we already know about making arts more accessible to people. Having a high quality product isn’t enough, the whole experience has to be great as well.
“Being really good is merely the first step. In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make it safe, fun and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.”
There is a lot that can contribute to “safe, fun and worthwhile.” It can the social experience and the crowd you attract. Ease of parking and finding your building can be a factor. Educational programs and materials can contribute. Every community and situation is different so you need to figure out what that means for you.
The article title says “IBM Study Finds Consumers Are Disappointed By Marketers.” But as I read the article, what really appeared to be the problem was that the companies weren’t delivering the product or experience the marketers were promising. Either the marketers were promoting something that didn’t exist or the company as a whole wasn’t maintaining the standards it set for itself.
The Forbes author, Kimberly Whitler writes, “I wonder if this is a soft warning bell to marketers—and those that hire them.”
It seemed to me that real issue in this case isn’t hiring the wrong people in marketing, it is that these days everyone in the company needs to embrace the idea that marketing is everyone’s responsibility. If you have been reading the blog for any length of time, you know I frequentlyreturn to this theme.
Most of the time, the failure of marketing is that it doesn’t resonate with you in the first place. If marketing leads you become a customer of a company, it generally isn’t the marketing that loses you, it is the disconnect between what the marketing causes you to expect and the the experience you have.
I believe this quote at the end of the first page sums it up best.
I think we’re at a point where the challenge isn’t perfecting the technology or unifying our data. The real challenge now is human,” said Stefan Tornquist, VP, research at Econsultancy. “We want to build long term relationships with people but our thinking is short-term and selfish. Most companies want to differentiate through customer experience, but most will only take half measures because really devoting themselves to what consumers need means rebuilding from the inside out.”
This seems much more an issue of execution and practice rather a failure of marketing.
About the only case I can think of where marketing might lose you as a customer is if they decide to shift the demographic focus of a product. If marketing has brought you to a product or service by positioning it as something that is hip and edgy and then they decide to go after your parents (or if the product starts to appeal to your parents despite the marketers efforts to the contrary), then the marketing can be blamed for losing you.
One thing Whitler wrote that I fascinating was the following (my emphasis)
“The research reminded me of a visit I made to a sophisticated, CRM-based entertainment firm a decade ago. They had state-of-the-art systems and tools to understand behavior. It was quite impressive at the time. They could predict when a customer would defect. The problem was, they couldn’t figure out how to stop the consumer from defecting. Their marketing team was comprised of “quant jocks” who could describe but not sell. Perhaps this research is a reminder that marketing is not just about insight, but the ability to use that insight to create change.”
I take some solace from the fact that a company with the resources to do a lot of data analysis couldn’t figure out how to stave off customer defection. If massive CRM data crunching isn’t the sole answer, then there is hope for non-profit arts organizations that don’t have those resources at their disposal.
Whitler indirectly confirms the idea that marketing is a function for the whole company by noting this company’s team could “describe but not sell.” It shows the importance of having better integration between those doing the analysis of customers and those interacting with customers.
Getting that integration right is incredibly hard. Those interacting with the customers may have a skewed view of what the problem is based on the feedback they are getting and need a dispassionate analysis to show that the real problem lies elsewhere and the complaints received are just the easiest way to express that dissatisfaction.
But if the data is not being collected in the correct way, it may be impossible to arrive at the correct analysis. Given their limited resources, gaining that understanding of a customer base can be a problem for arts organizations.
On the other side, a good analysis can identify the problem, but it requires an effective practical execution to bring about satisfaction and that can be difficult to pull off. Just think how many times you have thought that an intention behind an effort was good but the execution was flawed.
Again, lack of resources can hamper arts organizations.
But putting data analysis aside and getting back to the original idea of this post, an important question to consider is whether the organizational practice is fulfilling the promise of the marketing.
I will leave questioning whether your marketing is resonating with the audience you want to reach to Trevor O’Donnell who address that better than I can. One of his frequent basic themes is that advertising should show the audience having fun rather than focusing on how awesome your organization is.
All art administrators know that if they show people having fun, then people should have fun at your events.
But does the rest of the organization know that? Is that value reinforced? Are they encouraged to point out opportunities to increase fun and decrease disappointment?
Thomas Cott recently drew attention to a post on Capacity Interactive encouraging people to eliminate a print ad in favor of creating a video. Erik Gensler makes many points worth considering about the value of a video to the promotion of a performance.
Something I learned was that Facebook provides far more organic reach to videos uploaded to their site over posts with links from YouTube. Still, given that I can’t post a Facebook video on my website, Twitter feed or in my email blasts, Facebook has some work to do if they really want to be YouTube’s competitor.
A couple things to remember about video advertising is that
1- People receive video and print through very different delivery channels and process the information in different ways. Gensler seems to acknowledge this when he encourages people to cut a print ad, singular, rather than ditching the format altogether. With some populations, print may still be effective.
2- While organic reach on Facebook may be free, the cost to make the video is not. If you already have some footage on hand or available from another source, the cost in time and labor to edit it into something usable may be the same as what a graphic designer might spend. Creating something from scratch is a more involved undertaking.
The piece is somewhat geared toward video made for fund raising and reporting purposes, but the warnings and suggestions are equally valid for promotional videos as well. Among the points that made me nod in agreement were those about the CEO possibly not being the best spokesperson and a reminder that your board of directors is not the audience for the video. I am sure we have all seen videos where it was obvious these parties had far too much influence.
In terms of the practical aspects of video making, the Non-Profit Quarterly article reinforces the need to be clear about the story you are going to tell and the goals of the video you are making because it is going to demand a lot of time and resources from your organization. But much of that is about the editing side. They also encourage people to think about all the possible applications of the information and keep the raw footage around for other purposes.
8. Thinking your video is a one-time gig
Video costs are primarily driven up by the number of days shooting, so it’s OK to double-dip and repurpose raw footage for other videos and projects. Use interviews, visuals and even finished videos on more than one occasion and maximize your return on what often becomes a significant investment. Showing a video at your annual dinner? Post it on your website, too. Making an informational video? Show it at recruitment events, and link to it online afterward. Nonprofits should always think about how to strategically leverage video content.
9. Reacting instead of pro-acting
Creating a video is an intensive process that requires full attention from you, your staff, and your beneficiaries. If you choose to make a video, make sure it’s the right time for the organization. A classic mistake is entering the production process for political reasons. If you do, you may find yourself struggling to find the right story and wasting a lot of time and money.
In discussing the familiar practice of performance marketing, Jewell goes to some length to distinguish the video they did for their production of Cinderella as a trailer rather than a commercial. What might be confusing is that in the next sentence he states the commercial won Gold at the Oklahoma City ADDY Awards.
After re-reading the post, I assume he wants to emphasize that they didn’t view it as a commercial because it diverged from the expected pattern of
“…live-performance footage with voiceover and text. This is possibly a company’s biggest waste of time and money. The only people who would enjoy this type of commercial are those who are already fans of ballet, and more than likely they do not need a commercial to alert them of upcoming performances… The goal of performance marketing is to attract new audiences.”
My initial concern was whether the trailer might set up unrealistic expectation in people who were not familiar with ballet. (Though on the other hand, we pretty much expect trailers won’t be completely accurate representations of movies so it probably isn’t a big problem.)
What I really want to focus on though is the ballet’s handling of less frequently used institutional marketing–essentially the effort of demonstrating that your organization is a part of the community rather than apart from the community.
Noting that their community is very athletically oriented, the ballet created a print ad using their dancers to depict the fierce cross state rivalry between Oklahoma State University and University of Oklahoma. (You can see the ad in Jewell’s post.)
They also created a video emphasizing the athleticism of their dancers which they ran during the portion of the year they weren’t performing.
Oklahoma is a sports state so we played to the athleticism of our dancers and you don’t even realize you are watching a ballet commercial when it begins.
Here is the ad. Whether it was intended or not, I felt like the “Oklahoma City” graphic at the end with “Ballet” only popping in for the last second, communicated a sense of “we are you.”
After seeing these ads, it probably won’t surprise you that Jewell’s last bit of advice is- “know your audience. And have your men take their shirts off.”
You may be looking at this videos and thinking it must be nice to have the production budget to be able to make these videos. Jewell said the ballet trailer increased ticket sales enough that they covered the expense of making it.
While it is true that you often have to spend money to make money, I can personally attest it can be very easy to direct funds toward ineffective efforts. It can be extremely difficult to justify spending money on marketing that is not connected to a revenue generating activity. That is money you could use for that very purpose three months down the road.
There are opportunities for institutional marketing that don’t necessarily involve producing ads. I am reminded of the activities the Trey McIntyre Project engaged in around Boise, ID. In addition to their concerts, they generated flash mobs, danced at the local NBA farm team basketball games and participated in an art installation in a local hotel (starting around 3:30).
Certainly these type of things demand resources of their own. Time spent on them is not being spent on rehearing or creating, but the option is there.
And there is always having your men take their shirts off.
I saw a tweet today that immediately struck me as using a great approach for getting people to see a connection between their interests and the role of an arts organization in their community.
Do you see lots of great projects on Pinterest, but are a little nervous to try them yourself? Learn how with us! http://t.co/On6BD2u0Wg
Full Disclosure: I worked for Appel Farm for a few years.
It is just a simple identification of an area that people in the community would have a strong interest in and positioning a program to meet that interest.
If you are familiar with Trevor O’Donnell’s repeated refrain that arts marketing needs to be focused on the audience and not be about how great the arts organization is, this is a good example of how to do it.
These classes are the type of instruction they already offer, but they couched it in terms that appeal to a passion people have. I don’t visit Pinterest and it excited me even before I thought about it as something I could mention on this blog.
The recent NEA report on why people don’t attend arts and cultural event mentioned not having someone to attend with was a barrier to entry. Daniel Pink recently tweeted a story that gave me an idea for alleviating that issue.
Seats on buses in Brazil are being reserved for “making new friends.” You sit in the seat if you are open to having a conversation with strangers. There are Post-It notes attached to the Reserved Seating signs with conversation starters provided.
Even though the content of this video is in Portuguese, I am pretty sure no translation is necessary-
The application for arts organizations is probably pretty evident. Reserve some really great seats at an attractive price for people who are open to having conversations with strangers.
You would want to sell them individually so friends couldn’t grab them themselves or at least sell them in odd numbers if you think you can trust two people who are acquainted to include the individual sitting next to them in a conversation.
The museum version might be having stickers people can wear or a bench at which people can wait in order to pair/group with like minded strangers and wander the galleries together.
Like the bus program, you can provide conversational prompts that are both generic ice breakers as well as specific to the event people were attending.
But don’t hand the ice breakers out to participants at the box office. Having little signs and Post It prompts attached to the backs of the seats in front of the participants is a good way of promoting the program and it gives other passersby an opportunity to grab some questions for themselves.
If you can provide an after event socialization opportunity in the lobby, local restaurant or bar, so much the better.
And if you can provide discounted tickets for a year to anyone who participated in your “Make New Friends” program, even if they only come back alone, that would be really great!
Having to increase the number of seats available to your “Make New Friends” program because former participants kept returning in order to extend their year of discounts wouldn’t be the worst problem to have.
Having them return with their newly made friends is no problem at all.
About a year ago, this video was making the round essentially pointing out how we are often being unconsciously manipulated by imagery in television and video ads.
[vimeo 89527215 w=500 h=281]
I have been kept it bookmarked intending to use it in a post at some point. It is fun to watch because you realize how often you have probably fallen prey to the feelings the imagery is trying to evoke. In the context of the video, the images are basically tropes.
I had a vague sense that I would probably use the video to make fun of common generic arts marketing phrases like “takes you on a musical journey” and “exploration of the human spirit.”
It has been awhile since I last watched it so I saw it in an entirely different context when I rewatched it this weekend.
The ratio of content featuring customers vs. content featuring the product
The fresh, down-to-earth, colloquial, customer-centric language
The emotional impact of customers engaging with the product
The emphasis on YOU (meaning the customer)
The diversity of the customers shown enjoying the product
The fresh, professional, contemporary production values
Then he suggested people apply the same criteria to their last season brochure and see how it fared.
As I was watching the “This Is A Generic Brand” video again this weekend, I realized the reason these general images were so successful at influencing people no matter how many times they appeared in ads was because so many of them focus on the consumer and subjects with which they identify, value or aspire (even if it has no basis in the reality of their lives).
Watch the video again with Trevor O’Donnell’s criteria in hand and see how many of them it hits. It shouldn’t be difficult since in some cases, the voice over almost states each outright.
So while the video has a cynical tone, it also provides an illustration that a good deal of arts marketing is behind the curve when it comes to appealing to audiences in the manner in which they respond.
Yes, I hate to admit it, but it appears even in the use of generic advertising techniques, arts organizations aren’t using the highest quality product.
While it was relatively quiet in the office over the holidays, I made an attempt to catch up on reading reports that I had downloaded and bookmarked over the last few months.
Instead of telling you about what I read and evaluating it, I actually wanted to ask- Does anyone know anything about Propensity Score Matching?
Well, obviously I guess I probably should do a little explanation for people.
It is a statistical method that has been around for about 30 years, but this is the first I have heard of it. It’s application to the arts is discussed on page 18 and sounds pretty interesting, but I am not quite sure if it is something an individual arts organization could engage in themselves.
According to Measuring Cultural Engagement (MCE):
“The Norman Lear Center adapted PSM to evaluate the impact of media and arts programming. The idea is to isolate a piece of media or arts programming to assess whether audience members who were exposed to it were more likely to demonstrate a shift in knowledge, attitude, or behavior compared to very similar people who did not encounter the programming”
The reason this technique can be valuable to the arts is because it is often difficult and expensive to identify a representative sample group of people who have participated in a niche event. Yet arts groups often need to gather data from people in support of grants and it is often difficult to get the data you really need: (my emphasis)
“One key problem in measuring cultural engagement is confusing outputs with outcomes. It is easier to tell funders how many seats or tickets were sold or the number of “likes” on Facebook than whether a particular arts or cultural event had a substantial impact on an individual or a community. Since many cultural agencies and organizations, including the NEA, talk about the benefit or value of arts and culture to individuals and communities, it is essential that the research community develop pragmatic tools to help these groups demonstrate that their mission is being accomplished. Using PSM in this way, arts organizations can focus on outcomes instead of outputs, measuring the impact of their work on individuals and communities.”
The example used in MCE is evaluating whether people who saw the movie Food, Inc had a experienced a change in knowledge and attitude. The Normal Lear Center used surveys distributed through social media groups and email lists affiliated with the film and production company. They received about 20,000 responses.
MCE acknowledges that one of the weakness of Propensity Score Matching is that it requires a pretty large sample size, but that the Lear Center has been able to get good results from as few as 1,000 surveys. This is one of the reasons I was wondering if it is at all viable for an individual arts organization.
Being able to get results focused on outcomes rather than outputs sounds great–if it is something that can reasonably be done. Has anyone out there had any experience with Propensity Score Matching?
Something MCE mentioned that intrigued me but wasn’t expounded upon enough was (my emphasis):
“Seventeen statistically significant variables were identified that predicted the likelihood of seeing a film like Food, Inc. Of these, only three were demographic. This surprised the film’s marketing team as demographics usually form the basis of film marketing. The three variables focused on whether a survey participant was employed in certain industries or had children. Individuals were more likely to see the film if they did not have children. This was contrary to what the marketers expected.”
I really wanted to know what the nature of the other 14 significant variables were if they weren’t demographic. Arts marketing focuses pretty heavily on demographics as well so it would be really interesting to know what types of factors made up the majority of the significant variables if they weren’t demographic.
This week we made our first foray into the Classical Revolution movement with the help of CutTime Simfonica. Mr. Cuttime, or Rick Robinson, as his friends call him, helped us coordinate this in conjunction with the formal concert by CutTime Simfonica we presented last night.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Classical Revolution (CR), it is an effort to remove the intimidation factor from classical music by taking it out of the formal concert hall setting and bringing it to bars, clubs, houses, etc. The idea being if you find classical music doesn’t make you uncomfortable in your local watering hole, it might be something you will enjoy in a more formal setting.
Formerly a bassist with Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Rick helped to found a CR chapter in that city. (And got a Knight Foundation grant to expand it.) He encouraged us to invite local musicians to essentially “jam” with CutTime Simfonica so I started reaching out to the local wind symphony last summer and followed up with flyers and contacts throughout the last month (as did Rick).
Unfortunately, a major Christmas concert got scheduled for the same night as our Classical Revolution session so we didn’t get many outside musicians participating. (Though that concert rescheduled in order not to conflict with our formal concert Tuesday night, so we can’t complain.)
However, we did have a 15 year old flutist show up to join in so he got a lot attention that night.
Click to view full album
(The poor guy was so nervous he couldn’t eat his hamburger during the three hours of the Classical Revolution. Thankfully, the pub brought out a fresh one.)
Being Christmas time, there was a little bit of audience participation required in order to create a “stereo surround sound” jingle bells experience for the audience.
I am not sure that the CR event generated any additional ticket sales for the concert hall performance the next night, but it did seem to change some perceptions. The morning after the CR concert, we went on the radio to promote the show. The radio show host said her boyfriend was a little reluctant about attending, but 2.5 hours later she was ready to leave and he wasn’t.
She admitted, she never really understood classic music but her boyfriend’s insight was that it is like reading a novel, there are different plots and stories being interwoven.
What crystallized the experience for me was at the end of a Brahms piece, Rick Robinson commented “man, that is one sexy piece of music.” I could see there was something about it he was discovering as he played. When I mentioned this to him, he said he often didn’t get to play the cello part. So to a degree there was a discovery element for him. I loved both the verbal and non-verbal expression of delight experienced in that moment.
The formal concert the next night had the same sort of light hearted element to it that the Classical Revolution performance did the night before. As I watched, I realized there was a lot of potential for resentment in linking Classical Revolution events to more formal concert hall experiences.
People attending a CR event where they have a great time interacting with the musicians might feel like they experienced a bait and switch if they were actively encouraged to show up to a full symphony orchestra concert where the musicians barely acknowledged their presence.
While the CR and formal concert were both essentially chamber music experiences, Rick Robinson took it a step further by polling the audience about their past interactions with classical music. He had extra seats set up on stage and invited a rotating group of audience members to come up and sit close enough to “see the musicians sweat.”
As each group left the stage, he asked them what they felt. One woman said she felt like she needed to get back to playing the violin. One man commented it was interesting watching the facial expressions and interactions, especially the percussionist anticipating where he would need to come in.
The diversity of the programming also helped, running from familiar pieces by Mozart and Beethoven to the Martin Luther King movement of Duke Ellington’s “Three Black Kings.” Rick also included three of his own compositions and explained the stories behind them.
His association of music with food generated vivid imagery for the audience. He spoke of his “Pork N’ Beans,” as; taking a bite of spicy pulled pork, then a mouthful of hot beans, the heat rising in our hero’s mouth until a forkful of cole slaw cools it down. At both the concert and the Classical Revolution event, people said they could tell when each mouthful came, especially the cole slaw.
Today, as I reflected back, I realized that there is a lot of attention and conversation on doing programming that will attract younger audiences. There isn’t much discussion about transitioning existing audiences toward acceptance of that programming.
When the subject comes up, it is usually to discuss the dichotomy between what new and existing audiences like. The perception is that existing audiences are alienated by the content that appeals to new audiences. Seldom is there discussion of a long term vision to gradually segue existing audiences toward the programmatic point that may appeal to new audiences.
I am thinking about this because I am wondering what the conversation will be at the next board meeting. What feedback have they received about an event in which the transitions between high quality music performances by Columbus and West Virginia Symphony musicians were filled with some unconventional audience interactions?
The responses I received last night and today from members of the audience have been very positive. But many of those were the people who went to sit on stage.
It started to occur to me that despite a few rough edges here and there, Rick Robinson might be developing a format that bridges that gap – palatable to existing audiences and intriguing to those looking to experiment with a classical music experience.
I just finished teaching a public speaking course this semester. One of the pieces of advice I tried to emphasize for my students was not to fill your Powerpoint slides with tons of text.
It was difficult to accomplish this goal. I must confess part of me was secretly pleased that members of the visually oriented Millennial generation were having the same struggles with simplifying their presentations as those who pioneered the use of Powerpoint.
This being said, the minimal look is definitely in.
Drew McManus has been advocating for flat and responsive web design for awhile. You can also see the increased use of a page spanning dominant image on sites like TED.com
and the Weather Channel
The SlideShare blog recently featured slide decks that Guy Kawasaki promotes for aspiring entrepreneurs that translates this minimalist approach to slide decks. The first has a lot of great examples of text heavy slides that were heavily trimmed down and had a single central concept set against a single dominant image. (requires Flash)
Slide number 5 provides a good example of how to transition from what might be your current practice to a more minimalist approach, taking an image of President Kennedy from the corner and making the slide all about the image and his “Ask not…” quote. Many of the other slides are an example of an entirely revamped approach to a topic.
The other slide deck that caught my eye was the third. It provides a template to help a marketer create a presentation about different customer personas. It is created as something your organization or company can use immediately to present what you know about the different demographics that comprise your customer.
When I immediately, I mean it is pretty much designed so you can download it right now, delete the instructional and example slides, plug in the relevant data and images and use what remains as a basis for a presentation if you want. (requires Flash)
In the last day or so, Howard Sherman tweeted a story on CNN about the number of websites choosing to shut down the comments section on their websites in favor of social media interactions due to the number of abusive and spammy comments that appear in the comment boxes.
I momentarily panicked wondering what the implications might mean for my efforts to collect audience feedback as grant support if people got out of the habit of leaving comments on webpages.
The I realized–nobody is posting comments on my organizational website, just on my blog. All the feedback about the performances at my arts center already comes through social media.
But that actually brought another issue to mind for which I hope, dear readers, you might have some suggestions. (And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will certainly thank you.)
While we do get some nice comments on our Facebook and Twitter pages, I find that most of the really good comments are being made on my staff and board members’ personal Facebook pages. I have encouraged them to take screenshot, send me links, etc, but everyone doesn’t always remember.
The problem I have is that these comments made by people who attended a performance to board and staff members are pretty high quality, with a much more sincere and detailed feel than responses on surveys.
And I don’t know they are being made.
I have keyword searches on Google and Hootsuite for my organization related terms and all the shows we are doing each season, but these comments don’t appear in the results.
With Facebook saying they will throttle Facebook Pages content starting in January, I am concerned that even “What did you think of the show” posts might get filtered out of our followers’ newsfeeds making it more difficult to gather feedback and making me more dependent on the goodwill and memories of staff and board members.
In fact, I wonder if the throttling has already begun because we didn’t half the reach or responses to the follow up post for a sold out show two weeks ago that we have gotten for shows with half the attendance.
Any one have any ideas and thoughts on how to gather the good comments and prepare for less social media exposure?
I should note that board members receiving better comments than the organizational social media site presents an opportunity rather than a problem. It provides something of an obligation to provide them with sufficient information and support to be good brand ambassadors for the programs. I won’t have as much control of the message as I would through our organizational social media accounts, but I can enhance the value of what the board members are already doing naturally and willingly on and offline.
"Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart..." Who is "they"? The kids? The author? Something else?…