Marketing/PR

More Impact Of The Economy Conversation

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Yesterday, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters had a follow up to the conference call on the economy I listened in on in December. Given that there weren’t enough phone lines to accommodate all those who wanted to attend, this time they employed a webinar format so people could attend online. You either listen directly or download the web session.

The call is about 90 minutes long and many on the panel mention strategies and opportunities people can take. What caught my ear and interest were the approach to programming described by Marilyn Santarelli, Executive Director of the F. M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts. She talks about how she is re-negotiating payments to artists per Numa Saisselin’s suggestions in “Arts Presenting Is Dead.”

As Saisselin suggests, she goes to the artists and talks about their sales to date, their marketing efforts and are honest about their break even point. They asked that the artist share in the risk and lower their price. They proposed that after reaching the break even point, they would start to restore to the artist “dollar for dollar from the first dollar whatever discount you gave to us.” She found the artists that bought in to this option worked harder to help promote the show with more interviews, b-roll, etc. The alternative, she told them, was canceling the show.

It sounded as if they had only done this starting last December. I am curious to know if this inhibits her planning for her upcoming season as artists and agents worry that what they initially negotiate may not be final. Likewise, would they be more open to booking with someone who has a workable alternative to cancellation if things go poorly.

She also talked about their ticket sales strategy. Her organization is discounting early in the season and offering discounts to a wider variety of people including subscribers and sponsors. I am not sure, but it sounded as if they were expanding the groups of people who are eligible for discounts. As the season goes on, the prices will go up. She hopes if they message this approach correctly, people will buy early realizing they are getting a bargain. No mention of whether they were loosening their exchange policy for people who committed early. The Kirby Center has only implemented this on a few show so far and did so because 60% of their sales were happening in the last few weeks. I suspect that this approach will vary in success from community to community and some will still rather wait and see than to buy now and that the higher price closer to the date may prove a disincentive to those with many options.

These are just some of the strategies and opportunities being employed that are mentioned in the webinar. If you are eager for a little guidance, give it a listen.

Under Pressure To Find Value In Live Performance

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Thanks to YouTube I have been thinking a lot about the experience of live performance. A couple months ago, for reasons I can’t remember, I watched this cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” done by David Bowie and Gail Ann Dorsey.

I thought their rendition was great and a couple weeks later, I wanted to hear it again and ended up with this version.

It was soon clear that it wasn’t the same performance. I liked the first version much better. One of my first thoughts was how interesting it was that the same song, same performers, same tour could have a vastly different quality. It seemed to me a good argument for seeing live performance. Often people say they don’t want to see a play or hear a piece of music again because they have already seen it. People in the arts generally counter that different groups render different interpretations. If that doesn’t work, we break out the old opportunity for disaster option noting that you never know what will happen at a live performance. Even better in this case with almost all things being equal, one performance is so much more exciting than the other which proves another degree of value for live performances. I started checking to see if Bowie was coming to town soon.

Well, come to find out it is not quite all things equal. The second video is from 1997 and the first from 2003. (In my defense, not all of the copies are well dated.) I imagine part of the reason I like the 2003 video is that the sound is much better. I also believe Dorsey got more kickass in that time.

Which brings me to the second revelation about the experience of live performance–the importance of reference points. My sense of where the videos fall on the quality continuum is based on my experience with the original version by Queen and Bowie vs. 2003 Bowie and Dorsey vs. 1997 Bowie and Dorsey. What I have no ability to judge is the relative value of a piece of classical music played by the NY Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, much less the same piece by a single ensemble now and six years ago.

From my perspective, no symphony would allow themselves to take the liberties in interpreting Beethoven Bowie and Dorsey took with Queen’s original music. But I could well be wrong. I have no experience upon which to base that assertion other than my belief that symphonies are too tradition bound to do so. This lack reinforces the importance of regular and repeated exposure to the arts. It also reveals why the belief that people will become enamored of the arts if only they will step through the door is erroneous. People can only judge something is good if they have a basis upon which to make the judgment.

The general implication of making a statement about exposure to the arts is that it has to be in schools. Students are a captive audience and unformed vessels ready to receive. The parents are lost to us. They are too old and too busy at work to pay attention to our lessons. Yes, that is mostly true. But when they take breaks from work they go to things like First Friday’s downtown where they will stop and satisfy their curiosity about Southeast Asian dance if the opportunity presents itself in a easily accessible place.

Cheap dates are important in this economy so First Friday type events may present an opportunity for increased exposure. Expose people often now and maybe they will be prepared to pay for the experience by the time the economy turns around and increases their disposable income.

April is Take A Friend To the Orchestra Month (TAFTO) and provides a good opportunity to position events and opportunities that encourage friends to experience an event together.

(You don’t actually have to be an orchestra to take advantage of April in this manner. Just don’t tell Drew McManus I gave you permission.)

Looking For Shows In All The Close Places

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Last Friday I went to First Friday downtown. My main motivation was that my assistant theatre manager and his wife were performing at an outdoor stage. The theme was Asian performance so there were performances of gamelan, kulintang music, Balinese, Cambodian and Thai dance and a couple of fusion pieces.

While I came to support a friend, I was soon evaluating performances for suitability in upcoming seasons. We have been told to expect that we are all but guaranteed to lose $20,000 from a regular source so I need to identify generally inexpensive quality performances. Ultimately, I didn’t think any I saw that night were quite right and a couple, pretty awful. Before I made this determination I started to ponder how I might structure future seasons.

I started to wonder if it might be possible to follow Numa Saisselin’s example and announce a shorter season in my brochure next Fall with the intent of adding two or three performances as the opportunity presents itself. There are always a few shows that do well and a few shows that attract a third of what the best shows do. My expenses are generally the same for all of them so if I can reduce my costs a little, I will be doing better. What contributes either directly or indirectly to my costs is distance people have to travel so I can realize some significant savings if I can control those expenses. Since people are making their attendance decisions extremely close to the performance dates, I don’t think I would lose anything by having some events absent from the season brochure.

I often have a general idea of which shows will have a lower appeal but pay the price knowing that the work is worth seeing and if I don’t bring them, then no one else will. The smaller audience appreciates the opportunity no less than the larger one. Unfortunately, that idealism may have to be indulged slightly less often in favor of discerning whether there are local/regional performers who have the quality but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen.

Outside of my uncertainty about such groups existing, one concern I have is that if I don’t set my schedule early, I will have to really control what dates I rent out. We have a fairly strong facility rental program and can have most of the year rented out almost immediately after releasing the dates we don’t intend to use.

I would most certainly make more money renting instead of presenting on those same dates but I don’t want to reduce our offerings even in these financially tenuous times. I believe we would lose momentum with our community. While precious few seem to have any loyalty to us, I suspect their numbers are greater than we imagine. There is also the issue of slipping out of the collective consciousness if there are fewer mentions of us in the media.

So for the next few months I am going to be doing a lot of pondering, talking and consulting with people on our direction. There is no option before me that I want to fully commit to –fully a rental house, fully produce local performers–but the fiscal realities before me are likely to mean exploring these options to some degree.

Living The Fantasy..Sort Of

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One of the reasons I enjoy my job is because I get to live my fantasies. One of my favorite involves standing in front of the ticket office having ticket holder praise my acumen in contracting high quality performers while those who did not purchase in advance wail in lament at seeing the sold out sign in the ticket office window.

Of course, being a fantasy, it doesn’t live up to reality. In my fantasy, the show has been sold out for weeks or showing clear signs of doing so for some time. The most recent reality is that ticket sales were steady, but few for months. At week out we we barely had 150 tickets sold. Then things started picking up 3 days before and exploded the last two days before the performance.

The people who showed up having not bought tickets had spent 6 months telling me how excited they were this performer was coming. They worked two buildings over, had a poster for the event right next to their office doors and received two emails exhorting them to purchase tickets.

It is hard to be savor being pleased with oneself when you are stifling the instinct to smack people upside their heads.

Granted, it is inevitable that a popular show will require dealing with a few disappointed souls who did not act quickly enough. My real reaction was more to roll my eyes in exasperation than to enact the V-8 forehead smack.

My real concern is that with people making decisions so close performance dates it is becoming harder to discern between a show destined to sell out and a flop before the actual performance date. In the context of the proposal of my last entry to allow presenters to cancel when ticket sales look dismal, I might have canceled had I been engaging in that practice. The article I wrote on came into my hands in a timely manner. It not only got me thinking, but it connected with a situation I was experiencing.

Numa Saisselin’s proposal to allow presenters to cancel includes proving diligence in promoting the show. In this case, I can pretty clearly trace the surge in sales to media coverage for which I did not pay. I probably need not have bought any advertising space at all. One story on the local NPR station I knew would probably happen because the interviewer asked for a contact name. The second, a feature story in the newspaper, was totally a surprise to me. The writer, who usually asks me for contact information didn’t in this case so I had no idea the story would run.

I feel confident in saying I wouldn’t have needed to advertise in this instance because I believe a lot of people knew and valued the performer. The stories were merely a kick in the butt to get them to start buying. For the rest of my performances, it can be difficult to make effective decisions. I am fairly certain advertising and electronic reminders during the week of the performance is effective for one portion of my demographic and that periodic exposure of the information over a longer period of time is effective for another segment even though both groups are buying their tickets at the last moment.

Other than the brochure and email, we aren’t quite sure what is most effective. When we ask people where they heard about the performance, many times people can’t decide through what form of media they heard it much less what station or newspaper. (It can be quite interesting to learn we are advertising on radio or television when we haven’t.)

In any case, I could have shown an investment in promoting the show through various media and promotional campaigns and asked for a cancellation based on awful ticket sales–and geez I would have been wrong. Yet there have been a few times when I would have been oh so right to cancel based on identical circumstances. Hopefully most people don’t operate in a market in which such nebulous conditions exist, but I suspect a great many do or will in the course of a few years.

And I begin to think the agents already know this and have been monitoring the situation for years. The last couple places I have worked, agents periodically call to get ticket sales counts even though the artist is guaranteed a set amount rather than a percentage of the gate. I can’t recall any agent or management company directing promotional resources to our market if tickets weren’t selling well. Yet at times the agents could be pretty relentless about getting the attendance numbers.

Saisselin’s mention of the unofficial procedure for cancellations made me think that perhaps agents may have assembled quite an in-house database of artists’ average sales X days out in cities with Y demographics. They may have a fairly accurate idea of when a cancellation request might be in the offing or perhaps when it might be prudent to either drop an artist from their roster or work with the artist to improve elements of their performance.

In spite of my sold out performance fantasies, the trend seems to be toward committing to attendance later and later in the process. If agents are in fact compiling information for decision making purposes, they may find the predictive power of their stats to be increasingly less dependable any distance out from a performance as reality confounds their expectations. (Or maybe they have really good statistical models.)