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Artist, Promote Thy Self!

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Ah summer! When a young theatre manager’s thoughts turn to…collecting promotional information for the upcoming season.

I have been trying to collect information to promote our upcoming season on the web, season brochure, press releases, etc, etc. Much of my motivation is to have most of this into my graphic designer and web person’s hands before I go on vacation so I can come back and review what they have done.

It really astounds me that so many artists are ill prepared to promote their works. I can understand not having images upon my request, especially for works in progress or when an ensemble has had some significant change over. It can be tough getting everyone together and turn around from a photoshoot in a short time.

But there are a couple groups that seem unable to verbalize what is attractive about their work. All I need is 4-5 short sentences at this juncture folks! How hard is it to formulate something to get me excited!

One group I wrote up a blurb of the general sense I would be going for and asked them to fill in some blanks. My blanks even had suggested answers along the lines of – Mitch is a well regarded musician for his virtuosity in (bluegrass, classical, rock). All that they needed to do is clarify what was unclear.

That was over a week ago. I still haven’t heard back from them.

Another group is reviving a masterwork. For two weeks I have asked them for some simple clarification about the program being revised. I saw the principal performer two weeks ago at a theatre and he assured me I would get something (along with the contract) soon. I did receive a blurb this week about the last time he worked together with a guest artist appearing in the revival–but nothing about the revival itself. I finally emailed the organization which secured the grant for the revival asking them for some general information. Their deadline for materials was a few weeks ago so presumably they have something more than I do.

Something I noticed. With one exception, the groups I do have materials for all have agents. I have started to wonder, if not for the agents sending out a standard packet of information, would most of these other groups been in a position to communicate about themselves so clearly? The one exception is a young group without an agent which sent me two fantastic pages dense with great information.

If it comes to pass that agents either sever or reduce their involvement with their less than marquee performers and artists are left to fend for themselves in some manner, it might be a bad situation for many groups.

I don’t have any illusions about my role in things becoming redundant if artists really focused on managing their own business. Yeah managing the business end saps your energy for making art.

Just like anyone associated with an arts organization should be able to passionately extemporize on the value of what they do, every artist should be able to dash off an email or a make a phone call to give a short spiel on why they are worth seeing.

Notice I say extemporize. It is a maneuver that not everyone can do but with enough practice, people can sound unpracticed doing it.

If I have the time to ponder over lunch tomorrow, perhaps my next entry will be on some of the trite phrases being bandied about in promotional messages these days. In this, neither agents nor artists hold the high ground.

Lord knows, some of them do a better job than the publicists for arts organizations. Just take a look at Greg Sandow’s rants from 2005 (read from May 25 through June 15)

Unfulfilled Calls To Action

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You Got My Hopes Up!
I received an email through my blog Friday about an audience study that has recently been completed. I was elated because generally these emails, which are essentially press releases, are on topics I have no real interest in writing about. Many are on show openings and I don’t really cover those sort of things. Unless there is some experimental marketing initiative involved, I am not terribly interested. But finally, here was something I was eager to write on. I followed the link provided and….Nothing. I followed the other link to the research organization that did the study….nothing again. I decided to wait until today and try again thinking the press people may have gotten ahead of things a little. It is now a couple hours after quitting time in both organizations’ time zones and the promised reports are still not up.

Answering A Call To Action
This goes to illustrate one of the basic tenets of advertising and promotion–Don’t issue a call to action without providing your target group an ability to act. If you have an ad for a performance saying tickets on sale now, you better have a way for people to buy tickets available or you risk losing your credibility. This can be difficult if you are doing broadcast advertising and the radio or television station is giving you free air time on an “as available” basis. If you are going to have an ad running at 6 am, you may catch a good number of people during their morning commute–including your ticket office staff who haven’t gotten in to the office yet. If you can’t provide a web address to purchase tickets at, you can at least make sure to append your ticket office number with the office hours. Technology has increased the number of hours people expect to engage in transactions so the least you can do is be specific about the hours they can actually expect to contact your organization.

In any case, I am disappointed the announcement of this report preceded its actual release by so much time. I am motivated to read it so I am likely to return to the page on a couple more occasions. Others for whom the information might be useful, like arts leaders, may move on to other things and never revisit the link. Thus a valuable opportunity is lost in a sector where a large percentage of leaders do not keep abreast of the latest literature.

Cart’s Before The Horse And Speeding Away
I thought about this issue over the weekend. While I realized that as a tool, the press release was poorly used, I also recognized that technology induced expectations are outstripping our ability to provide our constituencies with the ability to act. I have recently decided to use Twitter to support event promotion efforts at our theatre. In keeping with my philosophy of not adopting the newest technological trends as they emerge, I only decided to use Twitter when I felt it was a good tool to accomplish a goal I had and knew the story I wanted it to create for our organization. But that is a subject of another entry.

Because we really don’t have a subscriber base to speak of, a formal season announcement really isn’t important. I started posting on Twitter every time we signed a contract with an artist figuring the little informal announcements of our season had the value of putting our followers in the know early on. The tweets also serve as the first of many reminders about our season that I want entering people’s subconscious. The problem is, due to myriad factors ranging from end of fiscal year wrap up, summer vacations and general logistics, we aren’t able to make the tickets available at the moment.

Only The Freshest Tweets, Please
We don’t have a lot of people following our Twitter feed right now because it is new and I haven’t made its existence widely known while I experiment and evaluate it’s use. I don’t think I am losing a lot of sales, especially given people’s propensity of waiting until the last moment to buy tickets. But what about this time next year? Every ticket sold is important these days. If I can’t figure out an alternative and get people on board, by this time next year I could be announcing performances I am not prepared to sell tickets for. Sure, I could wait and post about them when I am ready to sell tickets, but Twitter is all about immediacy–“What are you doing right now?” Months old news is stale and moldy.

Even if I could make delayed updates work without losing any credibility, the way things are moving, that option may not be viable with the next generation of technology.

Organic Arts, Taste The Difference

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My cousin is a farmer. But he isn’t just any old farmer. About five years ago he started working his farms with two massive Belgian draft horses rather than using gas powered equipment. When fuel prices started climbing last year, I figured I might end up taking lessons from him some day. He hasn’t turned his back on technology by any means and calls upon neighbors to do some of the tasks that are either too much for his horses or can’t be done with his team. But he is really committed to sustainable farming with out chemicals and the like.

I have been trying to discern what lessons his way of life might have for my way of life. My cousin’s farm contributes goods to a community supported agriculture cooperative where people subscribe to receive a share of his produce throughout the year. He would probably farm like this anyway, but his timing is fairly good in that he is doing this at a time where value is being placed on organic and free range farming. His website outlines how his crops and livestock are employed to support each other which adds value to the sides of free range beef, sheep, poultry and eggs you can purchase from him online.

So I am trying to figure out what is the back to basics approach the arts can take? Other than the piano and sheet music in the parlor, I can’t really of an archetypal image in American arts life with which to appeal to people. What ideals would you invoke to remind people of value that has been lost in present times? How are they diminished by cell phones and the Internet?

And really, it is a lot of idealism that people are buying with their free range organic food these days. It can’t diminish what my cousin is doing to say so because he is obviously a true believer. I grew up surrounded by farms, (God help me, but the smell of manure still makes me nostalgic), but most consumers have no direct experience with process by which food is produced. The basics they are trying to get back to isn’t likely something they or even their parents once had and yearn for again.

So the success of a campaign on behalf of the arts wouldn’t necessarily depend on people having experienced the arts. It would just need to evoke some value people feel is missing from their lives. One of the images we want to avoid is that of the elite, white audience. Unfortunately that is a real historical image. Not only do most arts organizations want to avoid that as they strive to be more multicultural and inclusive, but likely would prefer people not imagine audiences comprised of rich bankers.

It may sound manipulative to say success depends on using the right turns of phrase. As we are all aware though, the reality is that we start from zero with vast number of people. If more people had interaction and experience upon which to appeal, it would certainly be more effective to connect with real experience rather than a nebulous ideal. The problem people like my cousins have is that there are a lot of companies out there playing fast and loose with what constitutes what organic and free range means. It is obvious that my cousin’s operation is sustainable but the other guys can undercut his price by employing less rigorous standards and calling it the same thing. If more consumers possessed the discernment which comes from direct experience with the food production process, fewer would be fooled.

In terms of producing a sustainable arts product that has resonance with a community, Scott Walters’ Theatre Tribe appears to be a viable option. (Albeit the only considered plan of which I am aware.)

Having a good product still doesn’t solve the question of messaging. Though certainly real quality lends itself to convincing arguments about value. The simple truth is, evoking the idea that arts attendance fills a gap created by modern life may not be the most effective option. You don’t need me to tell you quality doesn’t equal success. As big a trend organic is these days, there are still far fewer farmers than there were when I was a kid.

Perhaps the only lesson to take from my cousin’s example is one we already know as arts people. First, do what fulfills you and if people are interested in paying you for it great. As I said, his decision to farm with draft animals was not motivated by the credibility he would get with consumers of organic food and hopes of income as a result. He may not even make much selling to that segment of people. (In fact, he teaches agriculture at a local high school.) He just likes working his farm.

You Know, For The Kids (And Everyone Else, Too)

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February was a real busy month for me so I only had the time to bookmark The Nonprofiteer’s epiphany about the value of public funding for the arts.

“Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time. And she realized (0r remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art. Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

I thought she made quite a few good arguments on behalf of funding the arts. They seem of particular value given that she finds them compelling as a person who is not particularly supportive of public funding for the arts. It isn’t often that a non-politician who has not drank deeply of the Kool-Aid takes the time to provide considered commentary on behalf of public support of the arts so it behooves us to take note. As might be expected, I am not entirely in accord with her suggestion that support should only be in presentation rather than creation of new works. Though I certainly do see her point:

“…you have to accept another, equally painful truth, which is that no one can actually determine what’s “art” til at least 25 years after it’s been created. Probably the Nonprofiteer doesn’t need to remind you that people threw things at the stage the first time they saw and heard The Rite of Spring, now part of the musical canon. But what she probably does need to point out is that this doesn’t mean the public should accept and/or fund every objectionable thing it sees in hopes that it will ultimately turn out to be art. Rather, it means that support for creation is a mug’s game, a gamble at which most players lose, and that the public should instead put its money into presentation.”

I hadn’t initially assumed she was saying that public funding of the arts was needed to bring culture to the hinterlands. All the same, I was glad for Scott Walters’ comment to her about the importance of enabling local groups to develop works that emphasize and reinforce the value that can be found in their communities. For me that is the strongest argument for funding the creation of new work. I am not as vocal as Walters is on his blog about how the concept that artistic success originates from NY/LA/Chicago is robbing the rest of the country of talent. But I am certainly in agreement with him that there is no reason those places should be held as a standard of quality and be viewed as the only destinations for achieving artistic success.

Public monies and tax breaks are offered to attract and retain industry, perhaps the same should be done with the arts. The argument can be made that state and municipal support of the arts is doing just that. What the public support is not doing though is generally providing incentive to “buy locally.” In some cases, there has to be an equal investment in encouraging people to create locally as well. I have mentioned in a number of posts lately that while it would be much more economical for me to present local artists, there aren’t enough of quality to sustain the effort very long. There are a fair number of talented people in the community, but most (though certainly not all) are expressing themselves via Broadway plays and musicals or covers/derivatives of other people’s work.

Still, if the criteria for receiving public monies and tax breaks was 100% of the concept and execution by local artists, I could take advantage of the support at least once a year and guarantee my audiences the quality they have come to expect. That sort of confidence constitutes a good starting point in my mind.

One last bit of the NonProfiteer I would quote is her view that we need to get public support for the arts as acceptable a concept as public support for education.

Yes, yes, the Nonprofiteer knows: education isn’t well-funded either; but relatively few people argue that public funding for education is just a plot to spread disgusting lies, or to keep teachers from having to work. Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU. No one cares about you. What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

I think there is a distinction between what she means by “how exposure to what you do will improve us” and the message the arts have been communicating along those lines. While improving test scores, reasoning skills and developing geniuses in the womb are probably part of what she is suggesting we talk about, it can’t be the entirety for the simple reason that it excludes anyone who is not a child. People care about their kids, yes, but everyone will only be persuaded when they perceive they are included in the benefits. I think it is pretty clear that the reasons we give can’t be about what we want people to experience but what they want to experience.

We want people to experience transcendent moments and there is a good chance the first time they sit down to hear a symphony play, they won’t have a transcendent experience. The measure of their satisfaction with the experience that night may simply be that no one caught on to their utter cluelessness. Transcendent experiences should certainly always be a goal and are absolutely attainable on ones first interaction. I just spoke to a woman today who had a group of students who did just that, though they probably couldn’t have identified it as such.

There is a difficulty in asking people what they want out of an experience with which they have had limited interaction. About 18 months ago I linked to a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about how when people were asked what kind of spaghetti sauce they liked, described the sauces they were eating. However, when presented with samples of different options, expressed strong preferences for sauces that no company actually made. When asked, people may say they like car chases and gun battles not realizing what they really may value is dramatic tension and once they get past the arcane language, a lot of Shakespeare really suits them.

If trying to draw responses of value from your audiences sounds like an intimidating process, well sure it is. There are big companies sinking millions of dollars into marketing and research trying to figure it all out too with limited success. The advantage you have is that you only have to figure it out for the community you serve.

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.)

Programming Comfort Food

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I attended the season planning meeting of my block booking consortium today. As I suspected, many projects which would have been quickly picked up by the membership in recent years were deferred to other years because of financial concerns. One partner is going into a major retrenchment mode reducing their events from 10 to three or four. I left the meeting with fewer details solidified than in the past, in part because there were fewer tours available to collaborate on. There are a few dangling possibilities that I can pursue but I will have to work much hard to build a tour working on people individually than I would have in the meeting.

The situation was expressed best by one of the members. She spoke about her audiences orienting on “comfort food” rather than experimenting with new fare. While she isn’t moving toward more pop culture acts, many of the performers she is looking at have performed at her venue before or are similar enough to previous artists to provide audiences with a familiar reference point. Because of this approach, even though economics are driving so many decisions, she actually turned down the opportunity to present a less expensive, lesser known act that would be more intellectually challenging in favor of a much more expensive, better known one.

There were a couple positive outcomes to the meeting. A board member flew over with the director of his organization in an attempt to understand how the consortium worked. When a board member is motivated by financial uncertainty to involve themselves in some aspect of operations, it can be a iffy proposition. Negative judgments made after a short exposure to an unfamiliar process can be unhealthy for an organization. In this case, it was a positive experience all around because the board member asked a lot of questions and seemed to recognize that the problems they were facing were widespread and not particular to them or due to missteps by the director.

That was the second positive outcome of the meeting. For the first time since I have been a member of the consortium, people actually took the time to talk about a number of subjects. The people who attended the Arts Presenters conference last month spoke about the Marketing Segmentation Study Alan Brown from Wolf Brown spoke on. I was pleased, of course, since I am a believer in arts people taking the time to stay abreast of recent literature and generally stay informed.

There was also discussion of different strategies people are using in pricing, marketing and sponsorship. I took quite a few notes. The one idea I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of was providing show sponsors with the option of either having a full page ad in the program book or donating the space to a non-profit. That is a win all around since the sponsor gets points with both the theatre and another non-profit and gets to write off more of the sponsorship as a donation since they didn’t get the value of the ad space. The theatre gets the financial support and scores a few points with the non-profit and its supporters. The other non-profit gets increased exposure.

Interesting Thoughts From Other Places

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Read some good stuff today on two blogs that really can’t be improved upon by any commentary I can offer so read on—

The Nonprofiteer had some sage advice in a recent entry regarding recruiting people to fill volunteer roles be it a board member or ticket taker — recruit in pairs.

The two-by-two recommendation is most often made about Board members, and specifically about minority Board members: don’t ask someone to be the only African-American or the only woman in the room. But it’s equally true of any Board recruit, or in fact of any volunteer: bring in 1 person, and you’ve got a 50% shot at keeping him/her. Bring in 2, and you’ve got an 80% shot at keeping them both.

Why? Because misery loves company, and being a newcomer/outsider is always misery. And because unless your Board or volunteer program is truly astonishing, anyone observing it from the outside will think it could use a lot of improvement. The prospect of trying to improve something unaided is usually daunting to the point of not bothering.

Seems easier to do with board members who tend to be actively recruited as opposed to volunteers for other areas which are often self-selected. You don’t want to turn someone away simply because no one else offered their services this week. It is possible though to orient people in pairs or small groups to facilitate bonding among them. If the 80% retention stat is correct, it seems prudent to arrange the situation so people’s initial volunteer encounters are in multiples.

Over at Producer’s Perspective, Ken Davenport relates an answer Sandy Block of Sernio Coyne gave to the question about why producers attempt to mount Broadway productions given the enormous challenges. Block stops the class in which the question was asked and queries those attending how many remember the first movie they saw and then how many can name the first Broadway show they saw. Few people raised their hands at the first question but everyone raised their hands at the second.

Says Davenport:

There’s a highly emotional experience connected with Broadway; a passion that can be turned into profit . . . Now the real question is, how can we capitalize on that?

Davenport then asks his readers to take Sandy Block’s survey and record the first movie and first Broadway show they saw in the comments section of the entry. If you remember, go on over and write it in.

Segmenting Mass Appeal

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More and more often these days at work are segmenting our message to audiences and I have to say, it is a pretty labor intensive undertaking.

In the last week I have:

Contacted Newspapers
Sent out press releases and images for our upcoming shows and discovered the newspaper arts editor who was there in November took the buy out package and is no longer there. The features editor who oversees the weekend arts section has stated she is taking things in a new direction. Considering that the last direction was more pop culture oriented and away from the arts, I am reluctant to learn what this new focus might be. In any case, this means shifting the language of my releases yet again to make our performances seem to resonate with this new theme without misrepresenting the shows.

It would be great if the rival papers, seeing the shift in focus figured the main daily was on to something and copied them. The problem is that the alternative weekly defines themselves as an alternative to the main daily. We get a healthy portion of our audience from the alt-weekly. Where the main daily wants to write stories on shows with the widest appeal, the alt-weekly wants to tell people why a select niche go to these shows. Their readership is pretty savvy so a lot of explanation isn’t necessary. However, I did make a note to the editor observing why people might, on the face of things, underestimate a couple events.

The main daily paper has also started to emphasize user generated content which makes me think the days of the editors that remain may be numbered, too. We already lost the editors who did stories for the neighborhood inserts a couple months earlier. For the moment, it gives me another avenue of communication with the public. Although this means essentially writing a press release that appeals directly to the general public rather than one that tries to convince an editor the performance is worth tasking someone to write a story about.

Contacted Schools
Because it is the start of a new semester, we emailed information to many of the area colleges suggesting professors add us to their syllabus as supplementary material or extra credit assignment at the very least. I email the theatre, dance and music people, of course. However, thanks to online course listings, I am able to contact history, education, religion, anthropology, literature and philosophy professors when the subject matter of a performance aligns with course topics. Some shows are more suitable than others. Although it is fairly labor intensive to cross reference course titles with the descriptions on other web pages, we get enough professors giving positive responses to make it worthwhile. At the very least, many of the professors attend even if their students don’t. Since these academics are from other campuses, this helps spread the word about our venue to a desirable demographic.

Contacted Our Email List
Every month I send out emails about the performances for that month. Because this group is so large, we know the least about how to effectively pitch to this group. Our approach can be similar to the material we use on the newspaper’s user generated content. Except these people know us and have a relationship with us and we can’t talk to them as if they are entirely anonymous entities. We also have the benefit of controlling the timing and content of what we release. This is the group I am most anxious about contacting because I don’t want our communications to come across as spam.

Back in November, Adam Thurman at The Mission Paradox touched on this subject. I am indeed the Joe who made the comment on the entry. I am concerned about find a balance between telling a compelling story about our organization and saying so much people consider it spam and don’t read it. Every month we have a few people who unsubscribe from our list. I keep a list to make sure we honor their wishes and don’t resubscribe them at some point. I rarely know why people leave our list. Why did they chose this month to leave and not last month?

Today I actually received one answer to this silent question. A woman emailed us to tell us she was leaving the list because she lived on the other side of the county and no longer drove at night. She urged us to keep up our good work offering people great performances. It is encouraging to get emails like this. I don’t have the capacity to ask people and allow people to explain why they are unsubscribing when they do so. I am looking into a technology which I believe might actually facilitate this.

Adam Thurman’s answer to the questions I had about balancing selling with creating relationships was a suggestion to add a couple interesting tidbits into the email. He noted that if an item needed more than a tidbit in length to explain it, a link to a page expounding on the item should be provided for those interested in more information.

The performance schedule for the next six weeks really lent itself to this practice. One event, the performers encourage people to bring hand held percussion instruments for audience participation. . Another event we are able to offer an opportunity to attend a master class so suggested people mark the date. We will follow up with another reminder next month.

We Also Did Everything Else
We were also working on PSAs and print and radio ads making changes appropriate for each audience as we went. You pretty much have the idea of how we were working so I won’t belabor the point with each of these.

The thing that is intimidating is that as much as we have crafted our message for each of these audiences, we could be doing more. Technology allows us to collect and process information more readily than in the past. We only have a small portion of our total audience’s email addresses and attendance histories because so many people are buying tickets at the door where it is difficult to both capture contact information and serve everyone on line in a timely manner.

Still, I have quite a bit of information with which to work. I can target all people who attended dance performances with a custom message about an upcoming dance performance. I could subdivide them and target people who attended sub-genres of dance similar to that of an upcoming event and further customize my message to make note of that similarity. I can toss in other criteria like frequency over a set period of time if I wanted.

Just as there can be a Tyranny of Choice with consumer goods, so too can the plethora of options paralyze your marketing and promotional plans in an attempt to find the perfect permutation of elements to generate the most effective appeal.

The Emperor’s New Ad

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I emailed an ad to our local weekly for the Spring Arts issue today… only I forgot to attach the ad. The realization appropriately hit me about the same time as the incoming email chime sounded alerting me to the message from the newspaper informing me of my faux pas. Trying to save face, I wrote back that we were experimenting with user generated content and our goal had been to have readers use their imagination to create our ad in the blank space. But, I continued, given that our ad did not appeal to smart, savvy people like themselves, perhaps I needed to re-evaluate our campaign design and the ad I had attached would have to suffice for now.

When I finished that bit of wit, I started to wonder if we would one day reach a point where our audience was creating promotions for us. It would involve a heck of a lot of trust on the part of an organization to give up control of part of its message. In the presenting field, I think it would take even longer to cede control over an entire season given that an artist’s image would be involved along with the organization’s. Many artists reserve the right to review promotional materials utilizing their image before they are submitted for publication. Not that artists working for a producing organization shouldn’t be concerned about how their image is being used. It is easier for the producing organization to communicate and gain agreement about the type and manner in which images will be released for use.

People already use social networking sites to send out information and links about their favorite performances. Often the materials being used are low resolution or low quality and stolen/borrowed from a source that stole or borrowed it themselves. One of the ways I imagine this evolving is that organizations will place images, video and audio in a publicly accessible place and allow people to manipulate the material to promote a performance. Providing descriptions and scripts will allow people to get a better idea about a production. The process might even go so far as to allow people to sit in on rehearsals so they can get an even more accurate sense of the production. If a performer or group isn’t present, then video of past performances might be made available.

Some groups might allow unfettered access to their materials and let people go wild with the philosophy that the only bad publicity is the lack thereof. Others may limit access to individuals who have shown they can produce high quality, respectful products.

My initial thought is that people might mash materials up and send some sort of promotional piece out to their friends or post it on their personal sites. I would think that mainly it would be those who have a personal connection to the show who would put something together. But who knows, maybe the challenge of making highly creative promotional pieces will become something everyone does to express themselves. I rather suspect that it will take the development of some new platform or channel that facilitates this sort of thing that propels it as a widespread activity.

Great Performances, No Ads

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So I went to see Slumdog Millionaire last night. Terrific movie. I am a little puzzled why with all the national ads running for this movie, a county with 115 first run movie screens and 800,000 this movie is only playing on one screen. The movie has been running here for about a month and the theatre was still pretty packed last night. But that is an entry for another time.

What I wanted to gripe about a little is all the freakin’ ads. I know that you all know about them so it isn’t news but I have never seen so many ads before the previews even started. By the time the movie began to run, I realized, I was no longer interested in seeing it. Fortunately, the story started to appeal to me pretty quickly.

My point is, the movies are hobbling themselves from the very start by running all these ads. I wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind when the show started so the film had to start winning me over right from the beginning. If the movie had only been mediocre or designed to start slow and build, it would have been over before it had begun. No chance, no way, no how. Because movies aren’t live events, the producers and performers can’t sense the audience getting restless the way a person giving an overlong curtain speech can. (or should be sensing) So the ads keep going on and on heedless of how the audience feels.

I am thinking my next wave of promotions for our productions should have the words, “Great Performances, No Ads,” using the absence of ads as a selling point.

Tough Times Follow Up

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Arts Presenters posted the audio from the conference call I sat in on two weeks ago.

At the end of my last entry, I referred to cryptic notes I had made to review information. One of the notes was “write about the Boston organization.” This was in reference to Sandra Gibson’s discussion of World Music/CRASHarts in Boston. The organization is sort of shaking up the type of events they offer and how they market them. According to Gibson, they have been cutting a lot of programs over the last 10 years due to increasingly constrained budgets, but they knew they had the ability to expand their reach to younger audiences. They hired a young man who started them on the road to adding back programs. One of the things they have done is began to collaborate with other area organizations and have added 50 concerts in the last year.

This new hire was the impetus for the programming but the fact he has been promoting the events in unconventional ways is really causing conflicts in the organization. The marketing department is anxious about not knowing how to message the events. They feel they should be doing press releases and making other promotional efforts. World Music/CRASHarts lists eight different venues around Boston at which they have events so it is understandable that clear and organized communications would be highly valued. The executive director has started conversations about the situation and the staff has decided to take a chance and market these 50 concerts employing Facebook and other alternative means.

Gibson says they are seeing 60% sell outs (not sure if she means 60% capacity or 60% of the 50 events have sold out. I assume the former.) close to the performance date. As a result they are changing their income projections to reflect an expectation of cash flow later in the process. They are seeing a crossover of audiences who usually respond to subscription campaigns and mailers who are getting their information from these alternative online sources.

In the context of my last entry, this seems like a good example of an organization that has questioned their assumptions about their programming and promotion methods. World Music/CRASHarts hasn’t gotten a huge infusion of cash, yet they have expanded their programming rather than contracting it as they had in the past. Though it was a source of anxiety, they also put some effort into less tested methods of communication to promote their events. At the end of the season, the new direction may turn out to have been unsuccessful. With some luck and discernment, it may provide lessons about how their approach should be refined as they move forward. The former process is unlikely to be sustainable, especially as it apparently involved an increased series of cuts.

More Manufacturing Your Worst Enemy

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As the title of the entry implies, I did a little more digging on the subject I covered in my last entry. The author of the story I originally quoted, Kaihan Krippendorff, mentioned that he would be writing about his interview with ePrize founder, Josh Linkner, over the course of a week so I sought out the other entries. In one of the entries, Krippendorff links to the audio of his interview.

There were a couple things of note. First was a promotional service (starting around 23:00) he designed to be affordable and accessible to the owner of “Jimmy’s Pizza Shop.” ePrize’s clients essentially pool their money in order to syndicate participation in the pool drawing of promotional prizes. Presumably, you can’t promise a Ford truck if you aren’t investing as much money as Coke does (or maybe you can, I won’t make any claim of being an expert on the business model.) The small business owner can log on and guided by a web based program, design their own promotion in about 15 minutes and have it immediately go live. The drawing is legal in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

If it is as easy as Linkner says, this could be a great resource for arts organizations. You could offer subscriber and employee rewards and perhaps even show related promotions.

Back on the topic of their invented rival, Slither, Linkner verifies that my suspicion of Krippendorff taking poetic license was completely unfounded. Slither did indeed “invade” the company to commit sabotage and espionage (starts around 33:00).

There were some things said in the interview which expound on the concept of how useful an invented enemy can be to a business. One benefit to corporate culture Linkner cites is that it allows open conversation that can circumvent office politics. Normally, he says, one might be hesitant to suggest that a policy is flawed for fear they will insult the person who created it. In a meeting Linkner says he may ask how Slither approaches a problem or to talk about the one thing a Slither counterpart does better than him/her. This allows conversations about weak spots in the organization’s processes and policies and how to improve rather than criticizing something specifically and marking it for elimination.

The Lipinski Stradivarius Is Coming To Town

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…Oh and it is bringing Frank Almond with it.

I have been hearing ads and stories about a performance in which Frank Almond will participate shortly. However, they all lead in by talking about the violin. The story goes on to talk about the sponsoring organization and then Frank’s interview is at the latter third.

It is always important to work with high quality tools but usually it is the musician that lends cachet to the instrument, not the other way around. You want the guitar Jimi Hendrix played or one that Pete Townshend smashed. But with classical stringed instruments, especially the violins, it is the other way around.

The presence of the violin eclipses the musician. Because a superlative instrument needs an excellent player, Frank Almond is elevated to the plane of the lone cowboy who can tame the wild stallion or the only pilot with the skills to keep the experimental airplane under control. In this context I begin to imagine the grisly deaths of second chair violinists when the first chair’s concentration flags for a moment and the bow is torn from their hands. Or violinists decapitated by a snapping string when the instrument decides the musician is not worthy of it. With such power imbued in it, it is any wonder the devil has chosen a fiddle as his instrument?

Okay, so maybe my imagination is more vivid than most. But in the interview with Frank I heard today, he as much admits he is servant to the music and the instrument. “When it is working, it is great fun. Practice makes perfect,” he replies to the observation that it must be fun to play all the double stops in the Bruch Violin Concerto.

From a butts in the seats perspective, it is amazing to me that a well crafted piece of wood can command the attendance of so many. I will be the first to admit that the storied past of the instrument of which Frank is merely one of a series of custodians is quite exciting and engaging

Getting The Dead To Blog For You

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Thanks to an interview with librarian on my local public radio station, I became aware of a fascinating blog written from beyond the grave. The grandson of William Henry Bonser Lamin is publishing his grandfather’s letters home from the trenches of WW I exactly 90 years after they were written. The first letter, written on February 7, 1917 was published on February 7, 2007. His grandson had to make some allowances in his publishing schedule since 2008 was a leap year and 1918 wasn’t. But he remains true to all gaps in letters whether due to loss or his grandfather being home on leave. Only the Lamin family knows whether the senior Lamin returned home or perished in the trenches. All misspellings, grammatical errors are preserved.

While the same element of a suspense over an unknown fate may not exist for some of the more famous artists in history but the basic idea might be one arts organizations could use either over the course of a season or in the weeks or months leading up to an event. If the letters are accessible, the organization could post them in some manner appropriate to their plan. What was Tennessee Williams writing in his correspondence while he was writing A Streetcar Named Desire? Or Van Gogh when he painted Starry Night? He had committed himself to a mental hospital at the time so it is sure to pique some interest based on that fact alone even if there is nothing untoward in his letters.

A release plan that was paced slow enough not to overwhelm people or make them feel it was a burden to follow but frequent enough to give people an excuse to return to the website regularly could be welcomed by patrons of all experience levels. This could be a good alternative to attempting to have performers and creative teams contribute to a blog during rehearsal and performance periods. A reproduced letter with notations that the untimely death of a sister referenced by a composer were the primary motivation for a symphony will probably motivate a respectable readership.

The biggest negative I could see if this became a common practice is that those organizations with money and prestige will be able to do more research and gain exclusive access to estate letters. But the less affluent arts organization can still flourish by employing more publicly available materials in a manner that resonates with their community.

View From The Other Side

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Where Are These People Coming From (And Why Aren’t They Attending My Shows?)

Being around theatres for so long, it is easy to become jaded and forget just how wondrous the on stage perspective of the audience seating area can be for people. Over the last few weeks we have had an inordinate number of tour requests. I have easily given more pleasure tours (vs. perspective rental tours) in that period than I have in the previous three years.

Don’t get me wrong, as I have noted in previous entries, I relish any chance to show the facility and brag about it. I certainly welcome the opportunity to increase awareness of our activities. It has been a great time to have tours due to all the activity surrounding our upcoming production. Actors, props people and carpenters have talked to tours about their backgrounds and what they were doing for the show. Even when no one else was around and I had to go turn the lights on in preparation for the tour, there has still been so much hanging or laying around to point to and ignite imaginations.

So Strange and Exotic

But what has never failed to impress people is stepping out on to the stage. As we move from the scene shop on to the stage people catch sight of the hemp fly system which seems strange and exotic to them. If the wings are filled with props and equipment, they catch sight of this as well and get a chance to see through the illusion of what appears otherwise from the audience.

At some point, they end up seeing the audience seating from the stage and for many, this reversed perspective is the most exciting part of the tour. I usually make sure to take people out into the audience area so they can see how much of what was apparent while standing onstage suddenly disappears from their view. Again the realization of how much of the illusion is preserved by distance and limitation of sight lines is often intriguing to people.

A View From The Bridge

Then there are a few choice groups who get to clamber up above the stage to the loading rail of the fly system, across the catwalks over the audience seating area and up above the lighting gird to look down 70 feet to the stage below. That introduces a whole different set of sensations for many people.

Two years ago our technical director took people up on to the roof of our stagehouse and showed them the expansive vista available from that vantage point. Ever since then one of the tour participants as been looking for an excuse to get up there again. A recent conference he organized gave him that excuse. While most chose not to climb out on to the roof, just about everyone was intrepid enough to climb above the grid. The conference organizer pulled me aside yesterday and told me how everyone appreciated the opportunity and how excitedly they spoke about their experience.

I guess it says something about how interesting the experience is that someone would schedule a break in a meeting include a tour of your facility. With that sort of investment in my theatre, I am going to make sure I keep lines of communication open with this guy so that he is always able to advocate and talk about us whenever he is so moved.

It’s Also Greener Over the Septic Tank I Hear

Certainly it is partially a matter of the grass being greener in your neighbor’s yard or one person’s garbage being another’s treasure. For those of us working in these buildings, the space represent challenges. There isn’t enough room in the wings or on the fly system battens to accommodate everything we need to for the show. On the other hand, we would love if the building were smaller so we didn’t have to go so far to change the lamps and gels in the lighting instruments.

For visitors, ours is a mystical land. I know from conversations with the groups, for many it is their first time setting foot in a theatre much less on or backstage. They hardly have any context by which to process the experience much less recognize the limitations we deal with everyday.

Fuzzy Definitions

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During his talk prior to the design charette for Performing Arts Center Eastside, Alan Brown cited the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown apparently has access to the raw data which is not listed in the NEA report. The answers Brown lists from the survey may cause you to question the results of the surveys you conduct.

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

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

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

I also wonder if there isn’t a constructive way to make use of this situation. By and large people attending a performance have absolutely no idea if the hosting organization is for profit or non-profit (and a foggier notion of what that may mean). They aren’t there to support their favorite non-profit, they are there because they enjoy the product. They may feel a loyalty and trust in the organization but it might not have any relation to the tax status.

With this in mind, would it be a benefit to arts organizations to de-emphasize classical and opera and focus on the idea that they produce great performances? You wouldn’t want to abandon the label altogether or misrepresent what you were offering because you would alienate people who did know the difference between opera, classical music and musical theatre (or ballet, modern, jazz; Shakespeare, Miller, Godot, etc) The Philadelphia Orchestra isn’t going to get away with advertising a concert as their latest remix of that rockin’ composer of the 20th century, Rachmaninoff. Unless, of course, they do treat his music to a remixing, the nuances of their interpretation vs. another orchestra’s will hardly constitute a remix.

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

This probably sounds strange because the performance is of the organization’s definition of classical music. But what I am getting at is that the focus shouldn’t be on telling everyone what a great and important guy Beethoven was. Certainly, mentioning Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 is a waste of column inches in a newspaper for all the influence it is likely to have. Telling people they will enjoy it because the opening motif is one of the most recognizable phrases in the world and has been appropriated and integrated in numerous compositions since can be convincing. The idea that it is Death knocking at Beethoven’s door is certainly compelling.

I know that this is pretty much discredited but that is the story Pat Conroy tells students in The Water Is Wide. I first read the book 20 years ago and that fact has stuck in my mind since. If the piece can inspire excitement in poorly educated students who were entirely unaware of classical music, what impact will it have on people who are marginally or generally aware of it? Even more importantly, the kids didn’t know classical music to know if they liked it or not. I’d bet they would have categorized Beethoven alongside any other piece of well played music they came across.

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

So what I am saying is, just put the information out there telling people why they will enjoy a performance and let them decide if they will or not. In some respects, if people are defining what might traditionally fall in a Pops concert (Marvin Hamlisch, Burt Bacharach) as classical music, it could help, however marginally, to gently dissolve the barriers of definition and include familiar pieces like Beethoven’s 5th. The 1812 Overture certainly hops back and forth across this fence. Bugs Bunny helped turn classical music into pop music. Perhaps there is something to be gained by tossing the Blue Danube Waltz into the pops. I still associate that piece with the cartoon of swans swimming behind their mother (starting around 4:15 in this video) And who can forget “Kill da Wabbit” and “Spehwur and Magic Helmut” from “What’s Opera Doc?”

Opera Has Sex Fiends? Sign Me Up!

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This week the readers of England’s Sun tabloid got the opportunity to attend the opera for between $13 and $52 where the tickets generally run around $175. The Sun announced the opportunity back in July. People had to buy the paper one Sunday to get details so they could enter a lottery for tickets. At the time, there was a bit of negative reaction (note this one is on rival paper, The Guardian) with people decrying it as an ineffectual move since those who normally read the sensationalistic Sun were not the type to return to the opera at regular prices. Some opined that those who liked the regular misogyny exhibited on Page 3 would hardly appreciate high culture.

But the opera in question, Don Giovanni, seems ready made for those who read of the peccadilloes of young lotharios on a daily basis.

In something of an inversion, the unrefined masses got a night in Covent Garden while afficiandos had to satisfy themselves with a simulcast at a movie theatre chain…or wait until another night. (Actually, this characterization makes it sound like a reversal of the usual. In fact, unlike the Metropolitan Opera, this was the Royal Opera House’s first simulcast.)

If you watch the video accompanying the BBC article , you will see the reactions were mixed. Some had a wonderful time and will come again. One woman said it was a nice evening but she wouldn’t hurry back. Another woman listed her concerns over the high cost of attendance (transportation, food) even with the reduced prices. Then there is the guy at the end who proudly proclaims he read the The Guardian.

This illustrates that even when offering reduced tickets, you have to be prepared to answer concerns and motivate people to attend again above and beyond the quality of your product. There was one man quoted in the article as he left at intermission because the seats were uncomfortable.

“We left because it was rather cramped,” said Mrs Tweedy.

“It’s not a reflection on the opera – it was amazing. The voices were great and the lighting was fabulous, but there was a gentleman who decided to share half my seat with me.”

Mr Tweedy said: “It was my first time at the opera – it was ok but after an hour and a half sitting in a cramped seat it was getting a little bit too long for me, but I’d go again.”

This put me in mind of the Urban Institute study on arts attendance I cited a couple years back which found that the two elements that people said would cause them to decide not to attend a performance at a venue again were not having a good social experience and not liking the venue.

It is impossible to say now whether the man will indeed attend again or not despite his experience. Covent Garden has a certain cachet which can’t be overlooked. If this had happened at a less famous facility, perhaps the judgment would have gone against the opera.

Core Narratives

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I try to avoid any mention of politics if it isn’t directly related to the arts but I have to say that the Republican National Convention going on right now is a great illustration of how marketing is the function of everyone in an organization. Members of political parties do this sort of thing almost as second nature but that seems even more reason why a smaller group working at an arts organization can’t mobilize themselves in the same way. It should be easier for the latter group to get themselves on message.

I think the convention activities also reveal the importance of knowing what elements comprise their core identity. Let’s face it, Gov. Palin’s daughter being pregnant out of wedlock diverges from the party’s usual narrative. Let’s not kids ourselves about how it would be exploited by proxies were the shoe on the other foot. However, the party has employed other elements of their traditional narrative to fend off criticism and show how it aligns with other things the party values. How effective it is depends on the listener I suppose.

I have talked about the value of consistently and perhaps somewhat subliminally disseminating a narrative about the arts and ones organization. It is probably no mistake that the last time I discussed this, it was also in connection with a presidential candidate. In cases of obscenity, you probably can’t deflect anger no matter how well you have developed the myriad elements of your identity. Performing artists have been identified with depravity and immorality since before the United States was born (at least from the European perspective). You may be able to blunt the strength of the ire by referencing your core narrative, however.

People being a diverse bunch, members of any group are not going to be able to conform to every ideal the whole espouses. There is always going to be one person who is less committed to recycling than everyone else. There are going to be people who are just a little too rabid about Led Zeppelin for the comfort of the rest of the fan club. And lets not even get into which Star Trek series/movie was the best. But as a whole, the group reinforces all they have accomplished on behalf of the environment and wildlife as outweighing the fact one of their members doesn’t redeem the five cent deposit on their Coke cans.

Never doubt the potency of a single/handful defining image for cementing your entity in people’s minds. When I was in 4th grade a kid who was generally a bully and gadfly was harassing me. I had enough and tossed him 5-6 feet across recess yard aided somewhat by muddy ground. Now it just so happened that my mother was substitute teaching that day and saw what happened on the playground and came running out saying, “Don’t pick on Joey.”

Somehow everyone forgot that my mother came out to defend me and focused on my “victory.” I never got in another fight or did anything to reinforce the idea of my being a brawler except that I was particularly tough to take down when we played Kill The Keeper. Yet in my first week in high school a guy who didn’t start at my elementary school until 6th grade warned people not to mess with me because I threw a guy 100 feet once.

While entertaining, perhaps the heroic tales of a 10 year old aren’t entirely applicable. I don’t really sit around wondering how much my reputation would have grown had I punched a few more people out in elementary school. We all have moments in our lives, where a pivotal moment defines our childhood, high school, college, volunteer, job experiences in our minds. The same can happen for organizations. You can get a lot of mileage out of the reputation garnered as the place Bruce Springsteen did a surprise show 20 years ago leaving dozens of people convinced they can die happy having been there.

You can’t always been lucky enough to have superstars secretly appear at your theatre but you can string lesser events together into a narrative you consistently repeat and reinforce at every opportunity through various media.

Media Using The Masses

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It appears as if the mainstream media has gone from glaring at bloggers to embracing some user generated content, perhaps at the expense of their employees. I am beginning to suspect some outlets have realized they could tap in to people’s desire for 15 minutes of fame as long as things ran through an editor for quality control. About a year ago, I started seeing the press releases I sent to the arts editor appearing verbatim in the neighbor specific inserts of the newspaper. I would still get a calendar or photo listing in the paper proper and maybe even a feature story if I was lucky. I have had my releases appear verbatim in smaller weekly papers, but this was the first time it was happening in a major daily.

A little later a mechanism appeared on the newspaper website encouraging people to submit stories of their own. Then a heck of a lot of people were laid off at the paper. I don’t know if there was a casual relationship or not, but I began to wonder if my attempts at promoting my events was contributing to pink slips being issued.

Last night I saw a promo on television announcing a new program the station news department was starting involving citizen contributions. There was nothing on the website despite their encouragement to check it out for more information. I think it had something to do with weather. I wouldn’t be surprised if some point in the next five years they started soliciting people to submit video reports.

Last month Salon.com started Open Salon where they will actually pay people for creating content.

What does this mean for you?

Well first, people may expect more opportunities to interact and contribute in your events.

Second, you may never know when the newspaper critic is coming because it could be anyone in the audience and a totally different person from last time. On the other hand, if you have a popular show you may hear from 10 people who intend to review your show for the newspaper and want free tickets (and still have an unknown 11th person’s critique printed).

I also imagine that some artists will anticipate expectations and you may find the type of shows they create/offer for performance at your venue beginning to evolve. I have spoken about how people may not be content with the passive experience sitting quietly in a dark room watching a show any longer. As much as I expect audiences to demand more, I also expect artists to start to provide more. As always, some will do it better than others.

In the short term though the implications of media outlets using exactly what you send them are that you better be making a compelling case for attendance. No longer are you trying to convince a writer your event is worthy of a feature story or review and depending on them to conduct interviews and recast your event in an interesting manner. Now what you write has to do both these things. You may not have the alternative of writing two releases, one for the editor and one for publication as is. I have had an editor take a single press release, assign a reporter to follow up to generate a story and forward it to be printed verbatim by the newspaper. It happened at least three times last year.

If you don’t know how to start writing compelling entries, you may want to check out my entry here. Because Artsjournal.com has changed the way they address their archives, those links to Greg Sandow’s blog don’t work any more. However, if you go to the May 25 -June 15, 2005 entries on his blog, you can probably find them without too much effort.

All The Kids Know It Is More Fun To Sit In the Back

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There is a great illustration (in my mind as least) for why arts people need to value learning and be cognizant of what is happening elsewhere in a story out of Orlando. It seems the Orlando Opera Company and Orlando Ballet have decided to try to bump their subscribers out of the balcony and into the more expensive floor seats in an attempt to make that area look fuller and increase revenue.

The subscribers are none to happy and are resisting. Just like the subscribers at the Honolulu Symphony did when the balcony seating prices were both raised and that section closed until the floor section was filled. Just like the subscribers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra did when that organization increased balcony seating prices by 80% in one year. Both Honolulu and Boston backpedaled and admitted the increases were ill advised. I suspect the opera and ballet in Orlando may end up doing the same.

Fortunately, the Orlando Philharmonic hadn’t received the advice the opera and ballet did about changing the pricing structure or this entry would make it seem like orchestras were the only ones making this poor decision. Or at the very least, weren’t doing a good job presenting this new policy to their audiences. I am not sure there is a good way of making such a large change in one year’s time palatable without investing a whole lot of time and money in the campaign.

The Orlando Sentinel article mentions that the opera and ballet had received the results of a study. I wonder who did the study and how they came to the conclusion that subscribers would tolerate this in acceptable numbers. I could believe a study that found people would tolerate a price increase of X amount over what they are paying now. Likewise, I could foresee people grumbling but generally acceding to moving their seats to the floor for the same price if they were told it was a cost saving measure. (Don’t have to pay the ushers for the balconies, perhaps.) It would be a sneaky way to get people out of the seats and raise the prices the following season when you reopen the balcony due to demand. People would probably be rather angered at such a move when it emerged a couple years hence.

I would be rather incredulous at a study that found it would be productive to both displace subscribers and place them in a situation where they were paying more than the previous year. (If anyone knows of a case of the decision succeeding, I would love to know!) I would ask to see the research that back that up and if it didn’t include a fair sampling of my ticket purchasing base, I would be rather skeptical. In other words, I am wondering if they even talked to anyone in those seats. (Or researched how similar decisions played out.) I don’t expect any of them would have answered yes to a question that flat out asked if they would be willing to give up their seats so some extensive communication of the rationale would need to transpire. Which would be a pretty good opportunity to gauge the most effective way to communicate the rationale.

There are obviously too many factors of which I am unaware to make a real judgment about why the decision was made. I feel secure though in stating that their case doesn’t appear to have been communicated well.

Wherein I Send You Reading Elsewhere

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I am working tonight (and tomorrow night for that matter) so I don’t have much time to write. I do want to take this brief opportunity to direct you to Ken Davenport’s blog, The Producer’s Perspective. As a producer of off-Broadway shows he has some great insights into the business in NYC like how to get your show produced, how much a risk it is to produce on Broadway, what does a press agent do, and the importance of having those who sell your product believe in it (and why that is tough to accomplish on Broadway).

Since he also takes a look at the implications of policy issues like today’s entry on what the universal health care program being touted by the presidential candidates may mean for Broadway.

I had actually gotten an email from one of his assistants a year or so ago inviting me to see Altar Boyz in New York, but I didn’t know he had a blog (maybe he didn’t at the time.) I have to give credit to TheatreForte for turning me on to his blog with their tireless efforts at indexing arts related blogs.

Stilted Smiles

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The impetus for the original entry I followed up on yesterday was writing effective press releases. It got me thinking so when I came home this evening I started looking around for tips for putting together a successful publicity photo shoot. There are plenty of guides on composing a shot but I haven’t been able to find anything on how to get performers to look natural. There are plenty of groups that do a good job with their publicity shots but I have seen enough awful pictures in newspapers and on websites that I essentially consider it a moral imperative to list some sort of resource on my blog.

I have worked with any number of directors who were pretty vigilant about keeping bad acting out of their shows who seem to throw those rules out the window for the photo shoot. You get heavily posed shots where the actors are blatantly indicating their emotions-“Here I am terrified. Boy am I terrified.”

The only advice I can offer is from two different places I worked. Both essentially followed the same scheme. One had the actors run through a scene and the photographer either snapped away or yelled freeze. The other had much more advanced performers and let them essentially improv with each other in character and the photographer snapped away. In the latter case, the photographer was more likely to tell the actors to keep going than to stop so he could catch something. The photographs in got cases tended to have a more organic dynamic to them.

I wonder if someone out there with more photo shoots under their belt might have a more formal list of tips for effective publicity shots. (Or knows of a source that has them.) I would think a list of cliches to avoid would be valuable as well. (Mollified person in foreground with person glaring disapprovingly behind and to the side, for example.) I did find one website talking about photo cliches but it was pretty snarky so I thought it best not to link.

If you have tips or know where to find them, let me know.

Le Bon Strategem

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A recent conversation I had that included the state of Wisconsin reminded me about an entry I did almost 3 years ago on American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI. Their brochure had fallen into my hands and really impressed me because the language made me just want to visit. I didn’t care if I saw a show or not, they just sounded like a great bunch of people in a great location and I wanted to be there. Reading the entry over again, I still do.

I visited their website again curious if they were able to maintain their cool factor or if the brochure was just the result of some momentary made genius. The performance descriptions still seem pretty enticing. I think the more extensive descriptions are obviously better than the abbreviated versions found here. I was particularly intrigued by the subtitling of Henry IV as “The Making of A King.” As far as I can tell Shakespeare never included that as part of the title. Since they are combining the two Henry IV plays into one, I assume they are emphasizing the parts that show Prince Hal’s coming of age.

But really, that bit of information along with details of most of the other shows are elements that could engage me based on my status as an theatre insider. As a test of whether the descriptions would be truly enticing to a person who was not familiar with a show, I specifically looked at the language of The Belle’s Stratagem by Hannah Cowley, both a work and playwright I had no idea existed. While I have to acknowledge that the details about the show fading into obscurity after being wildly popular for about a century appealed to my academic and insider side, you have to admit the following makes the show sound like a lot of fun:

Slip into the midst of a gathering of the rich and richer, old money and new. Nobody parties like the British upper crust. With names like Silvertongue, Flutter, Courtall, Villers and Miss Ogle, it’s clear this is a cheerful meat market on display. Plays like a well-choreographed dance, pirouettes into a seethingly seductive soiree of a masquerade ball, where identities are mistaken, libidos tweaked and liaisons secretly undertaken.

Mistaken identities and secret liaisons I am familiar with but I love the “cheerful meat market on display” phrase.

I will admit that writing about period pieces allows for over the top language that would sound out of place describing a modern realistic piece or even contemporary performer. What you always want to aim for when promoting a performance is not to so much describe the reality of the piece as describe the essence of the experience (preferably without using meaningless stock phrases like “what it means to be human”). That is something that can be accomplished with just about every period and genre. Not everything the American Players people have written is replete with inspiration but it is still pretty good. (And it gives me hope that improving my own writing a little more is possible.)

Technology Tip- I Am Dumb

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No, no, no wait. The tip isn’t that I am dumb, it is actually that I am occasionally reminded that I shouldn’t assume a tip I am considering writing on is so self-evident and elementary that I am insulting people by posting it.

I was checking up on Chad Bauman to see how he was faring in his effort to get people to cross the Potomac River to see Arena Stage productions in Virginia. I had posted on his use of Personalize URLS to direct people from their driveway to his driveway. It appears the effort was well worth it as they “have had less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our subscribers ask for a refund.”

In the same entry he talks about a practice he adopted from Repertory Theatre of St. Louis that made me thwak my head for not perceiving the logical extension of things we already do. Essentially Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and now Arena Stage have pages (click on the preceding theatre names in this sentence) containing links so you can tell your friends about a show on the different social networking sites and via email as well as bookmark the page for future reference.

This was the part that convinced me that I shouldn’t think something is too simple to mention. What made me say “Duh” is the fact that while my theatre does offer people the opportunity to send email messages with a performance description automatically inserted into the message body and have a Myspace page allowing people to send event information to Myspace friends, we haven’t it possible to send Myspace alerts from our organizational web page and vice versa. I figure if I missed something this logical, other people may have has well.

There is certainly no wisdom in assuming the Myspace people only get their event information through that site. As with all things technological, I do think there is a limit to the number of modes of communication an arts organization should offer website visitors. The clutter and the surfeit of choices can be alienating.

Like the aforementioned theatres, our stated policy is that we don’t store the email information. At least insomuch as we don’t record any of the information in our databases. A copy of what is sent does get forwarded to my email address alone. Given the tensions I have witnessed arise from students who felt they were miscast, I wanted to make sure no one was using our system to send out messages disparaging cast members by creatively rewriting my show descriptions.

Lately, I have considered making a small alteration to our policy. Since there is usually one person who organized most of the details of any couple/group outing, I was thinking that perhaps we should institute some reward system for those who are recommending our shows to their friends. It wouldn’t be a publicized program. I don’t want people spamming their friends with our show information in order to get prizes. What we would do is simply contact the person and offer them free tickets or something for being so supportive of us.

The change to our policy might be something along the lines of “We will not store the recipient’s email address or the content of the email in any form. We may keep a simple tally of how many times a sender as recommended a show and contact them no more than once a year to inquire on the quality of their experience.”

I am sure I am missing some other logical way that will facilitate attending a performance. If you see it, speak up and submit a comment!

Social Hubs, The Next Thing Comin’ Round?

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Scott Walters says I feel it. Since that is about all I saw of his entry on Technorati, I was wondering what it was that I feel. Turns out that I, among others feel that change in the theatre/arts is nigh.

In looking at what the other bloggers cited were saying, I came across some interesting thoughts worthy of consideration and debate in the arts world on The Mission Paradox blog both in the proposition author Adam Thurman makes in his entry and a comment that Chris Casquilho makes.

Thurman proposes that the arts position themselves as a social hub placing the audience first and artists second.

“We keep talking about finding ways for people to connect with our particular art form.

But people don’t want to connect to art . . . they want to connect to other people.

So instead of a theatre company seeing their performance on stage that night as the point of the evening, perhaps they should just see themselves as the hub . . . as the thing that connects all the people in the audience to each other…

…I think what people are willing to pay for is to be connected to other people.

And maybe one of the reasons that the arts is struggling is because we insist on being the focal point of the whole process….

…Think of what could happen if, for example, instead of just having ushers leading people to their seats, your dance company had people in the aisle introducing patrons to other patrons?”

What Chris Casquilho argues is something akin to the Gifts of the Muse premise that the arts are not well served by arguing their value in economic terms rather than their intrinsic value. Casquilho notes that being a social hub is hardly a function that only the arts can fulfill.

“…while “art for arts’ sake” is a pretty goofy concept – syntactically and otherwise – if the mission of arts organizations is not to create art, then it begs the question: isn’t there some better way to “connect people in a renewing environment?”

Couldn’t you easily succeed at that mission by offering classes on boat building, or starting a folf (sic) league? When push comes to shove, with no artists, there is no art. If your arts organization puts the needs of the community above the needs of the artist, you will turn your product into lukewarm porridge, lightly salted to taste.”

Now it seems to me that these two concepts aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Having your ushers introduce audience members to each other before a show is hardly going to detract from the quality of a performance. (Unless your ushers and performers are one in the same, in which case you got bigger problems to worry about.) It is an intriguing idea. Providing more sophisticated and labor intensive opportunities for people to connect, on the web for example, as Thurman mentions elsewhere in his entry, could certainly mean other programs may suffer for want of resources. This could be a good thing if print advertising decreased in a community where online presence was becoming increasingly more effective.

The thing that worries me is that arts organizations have a tendency to subscribe to the newest trends without considering how to most appropriately implement them or even if it makes sense to do so. The best way to get funding is talk about economic benefits and outreach to under served communities? Find studies that prove the first and create programs that provide to the second.

Certainly, part of the blame resides with funders who decide these are the priorities they are going to primarily reward. When a staffer at my state arts foundation told me last Fall not to bother with a section of a grant application because I wasn’t eligible, I have to admit a sense of relief at not having to arrange for a way to comply to the requirements. (I wasn’t so relieved to find our grant award significantly reduced as a result of not being eligible.)

My concern then is that there will be this sudden rush to make one’s organization into a community hub or rationalize how what the organization is already doing is making it a hub. It will become all about butts in the seats again, only for slightly different reasons. While some will do a great job at it, I suspect that the real winners will be coffee and wine shops whose wares become props for the social programs.

So since I have this soapbox from which to speak, let me just encourage everyone to think before they act this time around. Maybe the new big thing isn’t Social Hubs. Whatever it is, think about your effort rather than duplicating another’s even if it takes longer to create your own plan.

PURLs of Wisdom

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I have been aware of the emergence of new technologies that are allowing companies to offer an experience that is tailored specifically to an individual for awhile now. For the most part though, it has been on the edge of my awareness until this week when I got smacked square in the face with it.

I received an email with a link to a survey for the conference I recently attended and I was warned not to forward the link to anyone else because it was keyed specifically to my email address. I don’t think it was associated directly with me since I had to fill name fields. If it was associated with my identity, that was pretty annoying to have to fill out my name and organization info.

Today I received an email from an artist agent that contained a Personalized URL that took me to a webpage listing all the artists the agent had suggested might be appropriate for my venue. The page contained little modules with photos and information about the artist and links to additional materials. The information was specific to me and didn’t include any extraneous information about other performers that might overload me with too much information and cause me to close the page.

I have heard of some arts organizations using personal URLs to provide ticket buyers with directions to the theatre from their homes and other helpful information. It is clear though that the potential hasn’t been plumbed yet.

As exciting as it might be to think about adopting these technologies as tools for your organization, in keeping with my philosophy that not all new stuff is appropriate for everyone, I want to point out why. First of all is the need to have someone creating and monitoring the basic content that is offered with these links. Even with the help afforded you by the companies who offer Personal URL service, doing something like this is going to consume time, personnel and resources.

Another problem with these services is that knowing your activity is being tracked can be a little off putting. I can’t answer the survey anonymously because it is linked to me. While it might take some digging to find out who I am, the survey could have been easily set up so that it was directly associated with my identity rather than my email.

The personal URL offers even less anonymity. It would take the agent almost no effort at all to see how many times I visited the page he set up for me and which artists I clicked through to the most times. Even if I shared the link with other people, it is most likely going to be those associated with my organization in the course of soliciting opinions about artists. When making a follow up call the agent will have a good idea which performers to steer the conversation toward based on the number of visits made to each page.

The other problem with personal URLs is that they can provide too narrow a selection of information. With my special link to a listing of 10 performers, I don’t have a lot of motivation to look at the other people the agent represents. Of course, I would have probably given the full website a cursory glance anyway given the number of people the company represents. If the agent has gauged my organization correctly with the questions he asked, he has probably improved my chances of contracting one of his performers by isolating these 10 from the masses.

Of course, not all uses of personal URLs will yield secret information about the user. Visits to the directions link may merely tell you that your patron loses directions a lot. Or it could indicate that they are not sure of where they are going which may inspire a phone call to check if they need any additional information. One of those cases where having insight into your audience’s need can be helpful or a little creepily intrusive.

So, as I have advocated before– When implementing the newest trends, procedures, technologies, etc., think about whether it really is appropriate for your organization and audience and how it might be received/perceived. This includes thinking carefully about how you integrate the use of these trends and tools in your operations. As I noted, it is one thing to call someone up asking if they need any additional information and another to mention that you noticed they were clicking on the directions section of their personal URL a lot this past week.

Send Me Your Press Releases…Now!

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I don’t know how wide spread this experience is, but there is one area where I assumed that technology was making a window of interest smaller that I think it is actually expanding it– Press Releases.

One of the cardinal rules of writing press releases has always been to keep the subject matter timely. This often means releasing your information within a certain window where it is not so early that news people have more immediate events to cover and not so late that you miss the deadline.

As Internet connections got better and sending images and releases by email rather than hard copies through regular mail became more prevalent, there was a brief period where sending out information closer to a performance night seemed wiser and preferred.

Now I am getting calls from newspapers 4-6 weeks before a performance asking me for a release and images. It is a minority that seems to prefer the information two weeks or so out from the performance. My theory is that technology has made it easier for news outlets to organized stories. I am guessing I get the calls because they have inputted the calendar listings I send out in the Fall into some sort of software that reminds them to call me for information. I also guess technology is helping them put their story together and lay out part of the issue it will run in weeks ahead of time.

In a certain respect, my job has actually gotten harder because I need to be thinking about these shows weeks early than I used to so I have a release ready for the asking. I also need to be bugging the performance groups for information to support what I write and images to send to the press. With some artists and agents who are not well organized, this can create a problem.

There is a standard line in most every contract I get that says press materials will be provided to me a month before a performance. I have begun toying with the idea of researching the amount of information available about an artist online and changing that to 60 days for those with a dearth of materials.

Has anyone else had this experience or am I just surrounded by a well organized, zealous media?

Father of the Subscription Dies

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Via Arts Addict blog comes the news that champion of the subscription ticket, Danny Newman has died.

Newman was essentially the force that promoted the idea of getting people to commit to an entire season of shows, becoming a “the saintly season subscriber” as opposed to “the slothful, fickle single-ticket buyer.” Embracing that idea helped many art organizations succeed.

Unfortunately, the day of the subscriber has waned and many arts organizations are now subject to the whims of the fickle single ticket buyer.

Back in the early 90s when I was in grad school, we were seeing the writing on the wall. In one of my classes, we were assigned to compare and contrast Newman’s Subscribe Now! with another text promoting a different theory of audience development. We essentially derided many of Newman’s suggestions as dated and having no value in the last years of the 20th century.

One of the ideas we scoffed at was his suggestion of holding subscription parties, an event similiar to Tupperware and candle parties where individuals invited friends over and encouraged them to subscribe. Damned if not two years later a theatre I was working at that had lost the confidence of the community didn’t use this very tactic to regain support. Even though subscribing was a much more deeply ingrained practice in that community than in most, the experience taught me to be a little more humble and cautious about dismissing ideas.

Even though the subscription has had diminishing value over the course of my career, I have to admire the drive and audacity of Newman in championing the concept and helping so many organizations find success through it.

But Do You Get A Gold Star?

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Terry Teachout had a piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about Goldstar Events, a ticket discounting service which is apparently helping to fill lots of empty theatre seats with a young, diverse crowd.

The downside for those who might be slavering for anything to get butts in the old seats is that Goldstar only serves a handful of major metro areas. However, convention and visitor bureaus in cooperation with chambers of commerce in midsize and smaller cities might have the resources to replicate the service. (Those in the aforementioned larger cities who use the service, let me know what you think about it!)

As a marketing tool, Goldstar looks to be doing all the right things in terms of timing of information distribution, ease of purchase and follow up surveys that are used to improve the service.

I am a little dubious about the long term value for performing arts organizations. Teachout notes that the people who use the service “Feel little or no ‘sense of obligation to support important arts and cultural institutions with ticket dollars.'” This makes me suspect that the decision to attend is price sensitive and may be absent any aversion about trying something new at the regular price. If the Goldstar members view it as a bargain night out rather than an introductory price that reduces risk, there may never be a conversion of these people to regular ticket buyers.

Certainly, 200 seats sold at $10 is more sustainable over the long term than 200 empty seats. Over time it is still going to mean a greater dependence on fundraising if $10 becomes the new norm.

I use $10 because Goldstar advertises tickets at the price of a movie. In a study Next Generation Consulting conducted for the Arts Council of Indianapolis, they found that people in the under-40 group is willing to pay an average of $22.19. (which may be different in your locality based on cost of living differences). There is certainly an opportunity to charge more than $10. But if people are getting emails listing movies and live performances for $10 side by side with yours listed at $22, you may feel some pressure to reduce your pricing.

Ultimately, I think it is a mistake to get into a pricing war with competitors because I have never seen any evidence that loyalty was connected with price. You can’t build a relationship with pricing.

If you are considering getting involved with a service like Goldstar but aren’t willing to invest the time in creating an atmosphere that builds a relationship with the people showing up at your door, you might as well not even get started with the service. These folks have different expectations than do your long time supporters. If anything is going to change the absence of feeling obligated to support an arts organization, it is going to be the development of a relationship.

In an earlier entry I cited some findings from Next Generation Consulting that provide a good place to start when trying to figure out how to effect these changes.

Thanks to Theatreforte for featuring the link. I knew Terry was writing the piece, but didn’t know it was available online.

Humbling Email Experience

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I was over at Arts Marketing blog last week catching up on Chad Bauman’s posts. One of his January posts contained some rules for administering bulk email lists. I looked over what he suggested and felt proud of myself for coming to many of those some conclusions on my own.

The next day I went in to work and reviewed the report for an email I had sent to my Listserv list the evening before. There was a long list of email address with the error message “Excessive Spam Content Detected” I had blatantly broken the rule about not using keywords common to spam in the subject line.

Now in my defense, I always do a test email to my work and two personal email address and the email passed those spam filters. It also passed through Yahoo and Hotmail filters so following Chad’s tip about using them as tests wouldn’t have helped. My email didn’t meet with the approval of the local Time Warner RoadRunner filter and that represents a pretty large chunk of folks.

What were the offending words you ask? One of the groups of musicians we are presenting boasted in an interview that they aimed to make people lose 20 lbs. by the end of the night through dancing. Thinking this was a good hook, my email subject line blared “Lose Weight with Band X at MyTheatre.”

In the message body I explained the boast, talked about the group a little and gave the ticket information which is probably why it got through most other filters. The timing was a little humbling given that I had been so smug about having already divined the guidelines.

Knowing the guidelines and following them are two different thing though, eh? Just goes to prove you should always approach what appears to be information with which you are overly familiar with an open mind.

Marketing Doesn’t Celebrate Christmas

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Ah, Christmas Break! When no one is around and you can work on all those things you couldn’t when the phones were ringing and people were asking you questions. Though I have to admit the absence of others left many unanswered questions like “where do we keep the x?”

One of the suggestions that consistently pops up on our surveys is that we should advertise our events on Myspace.com. For the last few days I have been creating a presence on Myspace for my theatre. I am usually a little reserved about joining in on the newest thing.

First, if the trend is just a flash in the pan you waste time and resources getting involved only to have it wane. Second, I like to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a new trend to see if it really holds any value for me and if so, how to best employ it. I remember the 90s when everyone had to have a webpage but didn’t know how best to use it. People were adding every new special effects feature they could. Unfortunately, it all outstripped the capacity of a modem connection and ended up hurting relationships with businesses rather than enhancing them.

In the case of a Myspace presence, signing up is free and I already have images and text developed for my website. There isn’t a terribly large investment of time or new resources to make it happen. Also, Myspace has tools that allow you to tell all your friends about an upcoming events with a click of a button. Now all my theatre needs is friends…

One thing I do know I will have to spend time on is making some small changes to how I present the theatre and its events on Myspace vs. our website. Even though there are zillions of people on Myspace they actually comprise a niche market that will react better to a different approach than the one on our public website.

Speaking of fine tuning ones approach, I broke one of my cardinal rules of press release writing today. I quoted a reviewer. My general feeling is that quoting a reviewer is a crutch for the lazy and/or unimaginative.

However, I do think I used the quote in an imaginative way. The performing company had included quotes and newspaper editorials from audience members that were just dynamite. For my press release I essentially said that one might think the group was excellent from what X reviewer said, but when you read that audience members said this, this and this, not only does it sound like the reviewer is being miserly with his praise in comparison, but you can see the group really engages and excites audience members unfamiliar with the discipline.

Yeah, I know written here it sounds like I have essentially replicated those movie ads where they have “candid” interviews with people who saw the show. I think my execution is clever and original enough to expiate my sin of quoting a reviewer.

About a month ago I got a call from a reviewer who had some questions. At the end of the call she commented that she really liked my writing style and that my press releases were interesting to read. If nothing else, I know I am on the right path with my efforts to write better releases.

E-Newsletters–Looks Easy Enough, Right?

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I have had some of those “easy for you to say” moments the last few months and I thought I would relate my experience in the interest of the “Practical Solutions…” subheading of this blog. (And in the hope that someone out there has a better, practical solution!)

Over the summer I worked on putting together a way to send out an email newsletter to interested patrons on a monthly basis. Thus far we have sent out a sneak peek at the season email and three focused on the month ahead. I have been pleased at the response we have gotten reflected by the number of people who cite that as their source of information when buying tickets and by how much earlier we are selling tickets for upcoming events.

I have encouraged people to do this sort of thing in past entries and I do so again.

But, as I noted, it was easier to say than accomplish.

To make up my newsletter, I used Microsoft Word placing a photo in one cell of a table and the text in another. Word has an option to send to a mail recipient as HTML which moves everything to my email client ready to go. With the correct settings the text flows around the pictures nicely as the window of your email is re-sized and the font size will automatically be enlarged by anyone who has sight problems and has set their email program to do so.

The problem is, it looked good when I emailed to myself at work (where I use Microsoft Entourage), but what was sent to my home address looked strange. The font size would change from line to line and strange spaces appeared. People with Yahoo email accounts got entirely blank emails.

In an attempt to remedy this problem, I have tried to use Dreamweaver web publishing software and InDesign desktop publishing software to find a solution, but they don’t export information directly in the body of an email. (At least that I have discovered.)

One option is creating a PDF of the document with Adobe Acrobat. You can place the a PDF directly in the body of an email. The problem is while it looks great, it is static. Resizing the email window cuts off the text and the text doesn’t automatically enlarge in accordance with your settings. Also, the inserted PDF doesn’t always appear well or at all in some email clients.

What I settled on this past month was sending out the newsletter as an Acrobat attachment. Using the free Acrobat Reader, people could look at it more dependably and enlarge it as they needed. The problem with this approach is that there is no impact upon opening the email because of the lack of pictures. All they see is a note saying the newsletter is attached. I am counting on people to be interested enough to open the attachment and to download Acrobat Reader if they don’t have it already.

If anyone knows of a fairly cheap, quality solution, I would love to know about it. I did explore options with the university alumni association about how they send out their monthly e-newsletter. It turns out, they send out an email with story synopses and hyperlinks to a web page with the full story with big lovely pictures on it.

For me this has the same problem as the PDF attachment. Without persuasive visuals you are totally dependent on curiosity to get people to take action to explore further.

One last element of the “easier said” kind. Constantly updating an email list with additions and subtractions is a pain in the butt and offers many opportunities for mistakes. You can go the route of creating an address group in your email client which is honestly a pain to maintain, but there are other options.

One option that I blessedly have available to me is a Listserv. I send my newsletter to one listserv address and all the people subscribed to the list receive the email. You can set it up so people can join or leave by themselves and you can add or subtract them yourself either individually or en masse.

The software is readily available and pretty easy to install if you are a semi-tech geek and have an in-house mail server. If someone else hosts your mail server, they can probably set a listserv up for you. Even though they have a web interface for altering the settings it can take a little trial and error getting things set the way you like it. (Actually, the interface is easy enough to use, it is the manual/help files and the commands you have to enter that are about 10 years behind the times.) The license for the limited or standard software runs between $450 and $9000. If you figure out how much you would spend mailing out postcards every month, you will probably find it is worth it. (I am betting running a handful of lists will cost toward the lower end of the spectrum.)

Another option is to use an email marketing service like Constant Contact (I have never used them, but someone who has suggested them as a possible solution to my e-newsletter problem.) Essentially with services like this one you open an account and enter all your email addresses on their servers. They provide tools to categorize your addresses (subscribers, experimental series, donors who subscribe, etc) and even offer templates with which to create snazzy emails. Among the features they offer (and I haven’t read them all) is the ability to see how many emails were opened and how many people clicked on the links contained in them. Pricing seems pretty reasonable–$30 a month for 500-2500 addresses with unlimited emails a month.

One last thing to be aware of if you decide to explore the e-newsletter route is the CAN-SPAM law governing commercial emailing. Essentially it says you have to accurately identify who you are, why you are sending the email and offer an opportunity to opt-out in the future. For most arts organizations, an angry response and wholesale boycott of your programs will indicate you are not in compliance with the law long before you show up on the FTC’s radar.

Themed Seasons

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I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago to learn how the tourism authority was going to promote the arts over the next year. Someone suggested that the arts organization program along a unified theme and use that as something of a hook. The same thing had been suggested at the same meeting last year. Remembering some of the problems with that idea, I was going to speak up but someone effectively removed the idea from the table.

One of the travel writers in attendance told us that the publications that commissioned stories weren’t really interested in stories about themed seasons. She mentioned a number of other ways to pique interest, but said that wasn’t one of them.

If that is true for travel journals, I wonder if it is true for local publications as well. Early on in the planning of our current season, we noticed that a theme of revolving around storytelling ran through it. We started promoting the season with a “What’s Your Story” theme and invited people to submit anecdotes on the website. We got plenty of orders but nothing submitted. (Not terribly surprising or worrisome) But we also got no acknowledgment from any media.

Granted there isn’t a real big compelling hook in the theme. I was wondering if anyone had any recent success with getting recognition for themed seasons. I wouldn’t mind terribly if the media doesn’t care for them. It’s less effort and brainpower on my part if I don’t have to come up with a common thread to bind my season to get attention.

That said, about seven years ago when I was working in Orlando, FL, my theatre was part of a cooperative effort on the part of many arts organizations to present works based around Oscar Wilde. If you put any effort in to it, you can easily arrive at our slogan- Go Wilde! The local papers did cover the effort with a feature story and mentioned the theme whenever a show that was part of the theme was being performed.

I don’t know if it is a matter of different time, different place that is dictating the lack of interest in mentioning the theme. The papers in Orlando might not have been as interested in writing something up if it weren’t for the fact people could get a discount by grabbing a free punchcard and going around to visit the different events.

A theme is one thing, but a theme that motivates people to buy the paper to find out where and when the next discounted performance in the series might be provides a newspaper with a good reason to report on it.

Anyone else out there have any successes or failures at promoting a themed season or series of events in cooperation with others?
Email me or comment below..

Effective Advertising

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From Slate today is a review of a book about how to advertise effectively. Now there seem to be scads of books about advertising out there already, so what makes this one particularly effective you ask?

For starters, the authors, Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart, who have written What Sticks promise logical analysis rather than relying on “illogical” and “faith-based” approaches. Indeed, they criticize author Seth Godin’s wildly popular anecdote filled Big Moo as smoke and mirrors, convincing you that you can be successful by reading about other people’s successes.

In contrast, What Sticks’ authors “examined the marketing techniques of 30 major corporations, analyzed more than $1 billion in ad spending, and studied the effect of those ads on more than 1 million consumers…the book strives to find those parts of marketing that can be measured, and then to measure them.”

I haven’t read the book but it does seem worth a peek or two. One of the interesting things the review reveal is an analysis of the “three times” rule. Apparently, seeing the same message three times in the same medium is less effective than getting the message once from three different media.

Now the authors studied major corporations with millions to spend. One wonders if the results between the two approaches will be statistically insignificant when campaigns supported by a few thousand dollars are studied. If there is any validity to the observations on smaller scales, a good database would seem to be in order so that you can identify and track the newspapers, radio, television stations and web presences tgat will be most effective to reach your target audience rather than just relying on the weekend entertainment section of the Friday paper. (Though I assume by now people have recognized the diminishing influence of newspapers in people’s lives and started exploring other avenues.)

What the reviewer, Seth Stevenson, says the book can’t do is tell you how to make your ads good. Judging from the shotgun approach GEICO is taking these days trying to appeal to everyone with some angle at some point, it doesn’t seem easy. (Though granted, their target market is larger than arts organizations’–everyone who drives.)

Scrutinize statistics and listen to anecdotes all you want, talent and ability will tell.

VA Stage Has Presence

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I received an email over Labor Day Weekend from Chad Bauman, Marketing Director for Virgina Stage Company asking me if I would add his Arts Marketing Blog to my blog. At the time there weren’t too many entries and I wasn’t about to link to a site that only had two entries. After a week I visited again and saw it was coming along so I added it to my list of links on the right.

As I delved further, I discovered that not only does the theatre have their regular website and Chad’s blog (though his is general topics as well as about VA Stage), but they also have a MySpace site. (VA Stage is apparently a Capricorn) According to Chad, MySpace drives twice as much traffic to the organization website as Google does. I have actually had people suggest we advertise on MySpace and am now really beging to ponder it.

Even more compelling is an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website today detailing why Allegheny College went to a lot of trouble to create a rather detailed page on MySpace.

The site has become an integral part of Allegheny

What Lies Beneath

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Via an entry at Neill Archer Roan’s blog on PR, I came across a great entry on a blog called Bad Language regarding writing press releases well. In past entries I have written on the subject urging people not to use the trite phrases everyone uses in press releases and brochure copy. (spectacular, tour de force, illustrating what it means to be human, etc.)

Matthew Stibbe, who writes Bad Language, makes many of the same points and his simple list of how to make releases better is worth reading.

I almost left his blog without following a link to an even more interesting topic, however. Stibbe points out that unless you take the proper steps, every press release you send out electronically contains a record of all the changes you made to that document.

What might really be interesting to media outlets might not be what you wrote, but what you took out. So if you happen to not like a performer and to air your frustrations, you write “his pedantic lyrics and bombastic stage presence only serve as a facade for his inadequacies in other areas,” before writing something more appropriate, your true feelings will be available for any who are interested to see.

Certainly that might be a little embarassing at most. What happens though if you are copying and pasting information from a newspaper article and accidently drop a sentence about the new president of your organization being cleared of fiscal malfeasance at his previous job after a two year investigation? A record of that information being deleted has a good chance of being included and will be of much greater interest to the local paper than how happy you are that he has accepted the position.

“Yeah,” you say, “but who uses those settings and is anyone going to really turn them on to see what secrets my museum might be hiding?” Well actually, probably not. But then they don’t have to intentionally turn them on. Editors and reporters are the most likely group to have those settings active on their word processors by default. They send stories with changes and comments included in the document back and forth to each other all day long. They are probably turning all those things off while reading your press release so they don’t have to bear witness to your agonizing search for the right wording.

But if they just happen to see something interesting before they deactivate that view….

So how do you avoid broadcasting your dirty laundry? Fortunately, Mr. Stibbe has found a solution provided by those who get paid to poke through our dirty laundry…the NSA.

As amusing as it is to think of yourself adopting NSA anti-espionage techniques, it is a pretty through guide and worth employing to avoid a faux pas or two.

Potency of Hair Clippers

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On a recent vacation I was driving around with my brother in law and we were passing through a new development that looked to be influenced by the New Urbanist movement which tries to locate shopping and social needs within walking distance of residences. The place appeared to be designed with a Victorian feel from the building and street lamp design I saw emerging. There were signs in the windows announcing the imminent arrival of Starbucks and some soup company.

I was thinking about how nice it would be for these folks to have so much of what they need within walking distance since there was a shopping center with a supermarket right across the two lane road from this new development.

But then I remember why I was there and I realized there was no guarantee that people would necessarily patronize the stores closest to them. In fact, my situation made me realize why you can drive yourself crazy trying to predict trends in customer behavior. And if you are like me, you do indeed go crazy trying to discern why, all things appearing generally equal, one performance sold so much better or faster than another performance.

You see, my brother in law and I were going to get our haircut. I was 4,500 miles away from home and was going to get my haircut at the same salon chain I frequent at home because I wasn’t happy with the cuts I was getting at the many locations I tried at home. The fact I am frequenting a chain should be evidence enough that I am not terribly vain about my looks and so should also attest to how dissatisfied I was with my hair that I was getting it cut on vacation.

My brother in law on the other hand drove me past two other branches of this hair salon chain located much closer to his house to get to this one. After we passed the second one, I asked where the heck we were going. He told me the woman at this branch used to work in the one closest to his house and he hadn’t been happy with the job those who replaced her did so we were going to this place.

The thing is, because this salon is located in a largely undeveloped area there is only this one woman working at the branch. When we arrived she was out getting lunch for her son and herself. So we waited outside the door until she came back and then waited while she ate lunch and then waited while she cut the hair of the guy who had signed in before she took her lunch break.

I have to say we are both happy with our hair these days.

Obviously I am not going to be flying that far to get my hair cut nor am I going to wait until I return to visit my sister to get my next cut. What my little story is meant to illustrate is that even in areas a customer rates as unimportant to them there is a point that quality can fall below that suddenly makes it important enough to base a decision upon. The problem for anyone trying to sell a good or service is that the point is completely subjective and difficult to predict without some complex mathematical formulae. A situation where all things appear generally equal to you probably doesn’t to someone else.

In fact, sometimes the customer doesn’t quite know why they are making a decision. I can identify why I do my grocery shopping at a store miles from my house but on the way home from work and not the location the same chain two blocks from my house. (younger, cleaner building with own bakery vs. driving past my house and potentially hitting 4 traffic lights).

What I don’t know is why I have never had a problem with my haircuts until the last two years. I am sure in the time since my mother stopped cutting my hair I have had some pretty bad cuts. I couldn’t tell you why it bothers me now.

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if surveying audiences is of any value at all. We already know people often say they are interested in attending certain types of events and then never translate their stated interest into practice. Add motivations patrons aren’t consciously aware of influencing them and you start getting ready to tear your hair out.

Unless you are concerned about your coif, of course.

Does Bono Like Ballet?

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Earlier this year U2 scheduled a concert on the same day as we had scheduled a ballet company. I had two concerns about this 1- The publicity and stories in the media were going to totally eclipse anything I managed to get written/broadcast about my performance. 2- I really wanted to go to the U2 concert and failing that, wanted it to sell out so they would add a show.

Last week brought an announcement that the U2 show had to be postpone bringing welcome relief to both my concerns. (Except now I have to join the competition for tickets!)

Back when the two shows were postioned on the same night, every time I mentioned the fact, people told me not to worry because U2 and ballet don’t share audiences.

Really?

U2 started getting airplay in the US around 1983. I figure conservatively that the ages of people who became interested in them ranged from 13 to 30. Today that 13 year old is 36 and the 30 year old is 56. True, a lot of those 56 year old probably retired from the whole concert scene and weren’t planning on going to see U2. A lot of them probably weren’t planning to come to the ballet that night either.

I can’t believe that there aren’t U2 fans who don’t go to the ballet though. I don’t know if Bono is one of those guys who won’t go to the ballet if his wife doesn’t push him or not. But I think I am on pretty firm ground claiming that he would appreciate the mastery and artistry he saw on stage.

I am seriously considering adopting this approach as a way to promote the performance. At this point, I don’t expect much more than our usual dance crowd to turn out.

I was thinking of something along the lines of:

“U2 is Postponed so come to the ballet!
What? U2 fans don’t go to ballet? How do you know?

The founders are former NY City Ballet dancers and their aim is to make ballet about the fun instead of the perfection of technique. If there is one thing U2 fans know, it is artistry and that is what this company offers.”

I wrote this in my head on the drive home so it is still rough, but you get the thrust. This is the stated aim of the ballet company so I am not misrepresenting difficult material as accessible to sell tickets. I will have to ponder it some more, but I don’t think this approach will alienate my usual audience, (such as it is), either.

In addition, I am pondering taking some inspiration from Drew McManus’ “Take A Friend To the Orchestra,” and offering a special rate if people mention they are taking a friend to the ballet–“So You Can Talk About What You Saw Afterward.”

The whole idea of ticket pricing and discounting is always a hot topic rife for debate. I am in a particularly tough spot since Neill Archer Roan just responded to a comment I made on his blog that he applauded my decision to avoid rush discounting. Now here I am saying I might do that. (Though the discount will be available prior, I predict most people will wait until performance night to invoke it.)

However, last week I also invoked Neill’s entry, “How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.”

I think proposing you bring a friend along so you can talk about the experience can cause a mental shift from “who the heck do I know would want to go with me?” to “hey, X is a smart person, maybe (s)he would be interested in trying something new.” Even though the situation hasn’t changed, suggesting that you will be inviting a friend to share a new experience rather than trying to convince someone to come along so you don’t enter an alien experience alone is less intimidating.

It’s also easier to convince said other person that you are inviting them along to enjoyable experience if you aren’t giving off a vibe that you desperately feel the need to have a familiar presence to anchor you in an alien environment.

Anyway. Some things to still ponder before I start writing press releases and ad copy. If nothing else, the idea is a good jumping off point since it is more interesting than my typical campaigns. Not much to lose. And while the potential gain might not ultimately be all that much either, if I do get a positive response, maybe I learn how to reach the community a little better next time.

I’ll let you know what happens.

SWF Blogs for Her Romeo

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Just when I thought I would have nothing of interest to blog on, (I am working on stuff, but nothing I can write about), I somehow come across Completely Pointless Movie Reviews which included a review about Utah Opera’s Romeo and Juliet.
Apparently, in an attempt to reach a younger audience, they asked Juliet to blog about how much she loves Romeo, how much she doesn’t want to marry Paris. The attempt to write like a teenager isn’t authentic enough to fool anyone I think. And the top 5 reasons to see the show that they emailed the Completely Pointless reviewer are pretty weak.

But I gotta think that it was probably the best attempt anyone had made to make a younger audience aware of the opera than had been made in the recent past. Though I suspect that plenty of young people would just see it as another example of adults trying to be cool and completely failing. Don’t know if they will make any converts out of good intentions.

Just today I saw a blog entry about an upcoming conference that is going to teach businesses to exploit blogging. The author is pretty upset that businesses are trying to co-opt blogging for their own purposes and cites a McDonald’s attempt that backfired.

Elisa at Worker Bee’s Blog touched upon a similar situationabout six months ago in relation to the arts. (Granted, it was in relation to one of my entries, but she deals with some segments of the issue better than I had.)

You gotta be careful about trying to harvest blogging for your own purposes because there are a lot of eyes watching and anything that smacks of insincerity, once detected, is loathed.

Okay, So You Got a Gimmick…What Next

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Since Drew McManus is the orchestra guy, I have waited a couple days to see if he would comment. It isn’t so much out of respect for him, this arts blogging business is so cutthroat after all, but simply because he is better equipt to comment than I.

But he ain’t sayin nothin so here I go.

In the Sunday, August 21 New York Times, (I am not directly linking to the article because in two weeks you will have to pay for it.), Daniel Wakin wrote a story about how different orchestras are dealing with slumping attendance.

He goes through the typical reasons people cite for declining attendance -lack of music education, short attention spans, modern media and Joseph Horowitz’s argument that there are too many concerts, among them.

He goes on to list what organizations are doing to attract people.

“The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a leader in what might be called the fun-factor area, has a Thursday night series that provides free dinners…”College Nite” concerts feature postperformance parties twice a year, in which students nibble appetizers and listen to a local band (not the symphonic kind)…The orchestra’s CSO Encore! group, for young professionals, is sponsoring a “Dressed to the Nines” party at the hall for opening night, when a Beethoven symphony – no need to say which – is on the program. At the beginning of last season, the symphony even sold “Paavo’s Baack” T-shirts, a surprising accessory to Mr. Jarvi’s intelligent music-making and serious demeanor.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is shaking things up too – shaking, but not stirring – with Symphony With a Twist, a series of four concerts preceded by martini bars and jazz in the lobby. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s version is called Bravo.

IN Houston the focus is less on the party in the lobby than the visuals on the stage. The Houston Symphony projects images of the musicians, arms sawing and fingers flying, and the conductor, baton a-waving, on large screens in the hall. (The Omaha Symphony, the San Diego Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra have all tried similar experiments, as did the New York Philharmonic.) “We have to recognize that this is a visual generation,” Evans Mirageas, an orchestra marketing consultant, said. “They are used to seeing things more than they are used to hearing things.”

Many who are hearing classical music are doing so as a secondary effect of seeing things – like movies and video games. Some orchestras are trying to build on that, enticing people into concert halls by playing a symphonic version of the score to “The Lord of the Rings” and the music from the “Final Fantasy” video game, among others.”

There are some organizations who are dubious about the benefit of such programs. Many programs place symphonies in a role subservient to the other material or misrepresent what the organization is all about.

It isn’t clear if these programs will actually increase attendance to to organizations over all. Cincinatti has seen some success, but results are muddied for other locations.

I was most depressed by the news that a Knight Foundation study found that “education – like more Web material, preconcert lectures and expanded program notes – did not appear to increase ticket sales at all.”

The question that came to my mind after reading the article was whether the organizations were making any attempts to cultivate an actual appreciation for their product. It just sounds like they are employing strategies that bring in a quick buck today but aren’t focussing on deepening attendees investment in the music.

In addition to all the other factors that may contribute to a decline in attendance is the fact that we live in a transitory society. If the orchestra is all bread and circuses in one city but the city a person moves to doesn’t offer flashy programs, then symphonies as a whole may lose an audience member.

It works both ways too. A symphony may not care about the next city down the line because it doesn’t benefit them. But if the only attraction for a person is social opportunities for singles in one city and your flashy social opportunities are more geared for families, you can lose that person as a patron as easily as if you had no program at all.

I am thinking that using Drew McManus’ proposed docent program (found here, here and here oh, and here) used to complement these programs would be very valuable.

In addition to reading his reasons why, you can also read my reasoning here and here. (The Artsjournal blogs recently under went a reformatting and I just discovered the links in my entries to Drew’s blog entries no longer work. I linked to the new locations in the previous paragraph.)

In Between Blockbusters

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Courtesy of Artsjournal.com is an article on a topic I have covered before. (And yes, I know I started that entry the same way.)

The Chicago Sun-Times did a story on the benefits and pitfalls for museums presenting blockbuster art shows. While the temporary traveling shows bring in large crowds, more money and help fill out the museum membership, it also creates expectations from the public.

The question became, ‘What’s on at the museum right now?’ Well, what’s on at the museum is the extraordinary works of the permanent collection, which in their totality are better than any that can ever be brought here from someplace else.”

Blockbusters, in Cuno’s view, prepare people to visit the Art Institute in a specific time frame and then vanish until the next big show — which doesn’t allow for the sustained visits over time that are necessary to engage with art in more than a touristic way.

In another part of the article, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art likens the touring shows to the quick fix one gets from drugs like cocaine or heroine. You feel good immediately after the show, he says, because your attendance numbers are up and you are flush with money. But then the next year, you don’t approach those attendance numbers with your regular exhibit and you go looking for another blockbuster.

Yet the more special shows you do, the more you dilute the value of what you offer every day in the eyes of the community.

Others like Field Museum CEO John Carter feel that the competition for discretionary income and time necessitate making mission subservient to market forces. “You’ve got to build an argument as to why they should come and participate in this experience, and if you’re only offering your permanent collection, there’s no call to action,” McCarter says.

Since my background has been in performing arts where every season offers different shows from the last, I am probably not in a position to speak with any expertise. However, it seems like the mere existence of your facility should be a call to action. Every museum I have been to and returned to has been because it is there. I have never been to a blockbuster show. (But then again, I hate crowds.)

I suspect though that the real impetus behind programming blockbuster shows is the cost of staying open. Just depending on members of the community to return every handful of years probably doesn’t bring in enough money. Museums need blockbuster shows to bring the same people back on a consistent basis every year or every other year.

Another worrisome development for museums is that big corporations like Clear Channel Communications are getting into the business of handling these blockbusters for a cut of the gate. While it reduces the museum’s financial risk, it also means the museums have to hand over control of their building to the corporations.

However, in recognition of the fact that the whole process may not be healthy for the museums in the longrun, some are taking steps to gain control over their ravenous addictions. The director of the Art Institute is

“…going to be a weaning of the museum off of exhibitions of a narrow range of subject matter with all the attendant hype around them,” he says. “Instead, we’re going to have exhibitions of a different kind, attracting fewer people in number, where the emphasis is on the benefits of scholarship and the patron experience over that of financial return.”

Now That’s The Way!

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I am approaching the end of the process of writing text for my next season brochure and I am trying to keep my descriptions interesting as per my earlier entries (here and here) in response to Greg Sandow’s post back in March 04 about keeping press releases interesting. He has actually since posted some examples of how to write interesting releases and I bookmarked that entry for further reference. (He is really passionate about the subject and he really expounds on the theme in his entries ranging from May 25 to June 15)

I found a place that does an excellent job of bringing a sense of joy and fun to Shakespeare, Moliere and Shaw. I have to admit to being jealous of their writing skills. About 3-4 months ago, someone handed me a brochure for American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI. I really only had a little time to read it then. But I took a look at it today for layout ideas and I was really impressed by the writing.

You can get a sense of what they infuse into their work from the play descriptions on the website, but ironically they have much more in this brochure where the space is more expensive.

For example, the website and brochure more or less have this to say about Moliere’s Tartuffe:

Here’s classic comedy with a French twist. Welcome to the drawing rooms of Gay Paree. To the household of Orgon, a rich bourgeois who’s become a bigot and prude in middle age. One ridiculously laughable dude.

His family’s up in arms over Tartuffe, a flimflam man of criminal bent whose current facade of religious fervor has Orgon totally bamboozled. All in the family, including the maid, get in on the act, trying to warn their master. He’s being taken for all he’s worth by this shifty devil. What an hilarious disaster.

Wait’ll you catch the scene where Orgon’s own wife is used as bait to entrap this lascivious rat, who’s blinded by his own irrepressible lust for her. Delight in the bite of the spoken word. Ogle at the sight of breathtaking costumes. Your kids will definitely dig it. The villainy at play.

But the brochure includes irreverent notes on Moliere like “The church was so POed at Moliere’s lampooning of social and religious hypocrisy that for years his bones were denied sanctified ground.” There are about 250 words writing in this way about the play and the director’s approach to it. It is notes like this that help audiences understand the background of the show and what they are going to see.

But what I really loved about the brochure was the way they presented their ticket policies, subscription plans and just plain invited people to attend.

Keep in mind this brochure was sent out in the cold of winter.

“Pop thy sunroof mama. and take golden rays along for the ride.
You are hereby invited to utilize this brochure as ice scraper, snow shovel, defrost and deluxe heater combined. Clear the windshield of your wintry mind, Feel fiery breath upon shivering bones. Leave behind the frigid Hiber Nation zone. Uncoil. Unwind. Time to don less clothes. The looser, lighter, softly silken supple kind. Pack the car with family, friends and food….Stroll up the hill to your comfu cushioned seat. The stars emblazoned overhead and afire with intensity on the stage at your very feet. You laugh. You cry. You embrace the joys of being alive. Into the arms of summer you’ve definitely arrived.”

Man, if I got a brochure like that evoking dreams of the summer ahead, I would be on the mailing list and looking forward to its arrival in the winter.

Now check out these–

Scandalous Savings and How They Relate To Your Inalienable Rights as a Chosen One.

You are a very important person to us. Among only a privileged few chosen for this critical role. With summer in the wings and stakes so great, your purchase of tickets now is intensely catalytic. Propels us forward, quickens the pace. Electrifys the place….(Explaination of discount on tickets)…Seize the moment from time’s incessant march! Ignite the Box Office phones, Crash our website. Burn out the fax. It is your right. Your might. Launch us into glorious summer. Beat the deadline of April 8, 2005.

Really great stuff in my mind. I wanna go to Wisconsin this summer!

My submission deadline is too close right now to change my season brochure but I am going to make it my purpose over the next year to integrate Greg’s tips into my press releases and take a lesson from the American Players and fire the imagination and infuse my writing with a sense of fun.

I know I can do it. I have the sense of humor to write that sorta stuff. I just have to get over the idea that my writing has to be poised and professional–sensually exciting without resorting to sensationalism, ala my Demon Horses Unleashed! entry, to try to catch newspaper editors’attention.

You Must Be This Smart to See This Show

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I don’t know if you have been reading about this new book that is out, Everything Bad Is Good for You in which author Steven Johnson proposes that pop culture, TV and video games are actually making us smarter.

I had an idea that either might be an empty marketing ploy or a subversive, yet effective way to get people to attend shows depending on the degree of subtlety in the execution.

One of the barriers to attendance often cited by people is that they don’t know how to act and don’t know if they will comprehend what is going on. However, these people are getting an unstated, perhaps implied message from an arts organization that this might be the case. This is based on being unfamiliar with the method of delivery and the inscrutable traditions surrounding the viewing of the work. All the attempts at outreach and advertising lower ticket prices fail because of an unspoken, perhaps implicit message that people aren’t up to handling the experience.

It may be counterintuitive, but I was wondering if explicitly delivering that message might be the answer. (Bear with me.) I wonder if it might be effective to program a show that is intellectually challenging, but readily accessible to most audiences and then promote it in this unorthodox manner.

The arts organization, perhaps in collusion with the media might put out the word that the work is somewhat intellectually challenging and that only people who are smarter than average might enjoy it. Underscore the fact that one definitely need not know anything about the arts or how to act to enjoy it, in fact it is being held in an less formal alternate space, but an attendee should be fairly intelligent.

In recognition that intelligent people come in all shapes, sizes and economic backgrounds, you are keeping the price low so that these folks can enjoy this performance.

If not presented in a condescending a manner or laid on too thick (you don’t want to be too obvious about employing reverse psychology nor do you want to imply your regular audience is stupid), people might rise to the challenge. People tend to think of themselves as at least slightly smarter than the next guy and might feel motivated to test out this theory by attending. It is one thing to have someone use body language to imply you are unworthy–it is difficult to figure out how to combat a non-verbal statement. However if someone states you might be unworthy if you can’t meet a specific measure, there is a clear course of action to prove otherwise.

Creating a series of such events for smart people can serve as an entree (and a channel for empowerment) for new patrons to the more sophisticated world of your “mainstream” programming. I have already suggested a “garage band” approach in a posting in an Artsjournal.com discussion (mirror on my site here because I couldn’t include the links in my commentary.) I think this might be the way to promote that type of program.

Voodoo Advertising

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Have you ever, especially recently, been to a conference/retreat/seminar on marketing or advertising and thought you just hadn’t learned any new techniques or strategies in a long time?

You ain’t alone. The New Yorker had a story this week about the troubles Madison Avenue (though few ad agencies are located there any more) are having persuading people to show interest in the products they are touting. Successful advertising seems to be more and more a function of having no idea why something works but doing exactly the same thing that worked the last time and being happily surprised if it works again.

Why is no big secret. It used to be that you would go to an agency and they would put together a campaign that would be televised on the three networks and you would reach 80% of the US population in a week. Today not are there hundreds of television channels, but a great portion of the public are ignore them for the internet and other pursuits. (As I pointed out in an earlier entry, today’s top ranked shows draw the same percentage of the total audience watching television as the #40 ranked shows in the 1970s.

People quoted in the New Yorker article talk about the need to differentiate yourself in a sea of sameness. However the article also acknowledges that people are becoming savvy (or gaining the tools) to allow them to avoid being exposed to said flurry of promotional efforts. Says one, “It’s easier for Toyota to figure out a new way of producing cars than it is for McCann-Erickson to figure out a new way of persuasion.”

Of course, ad agencies still are fairly successful at creating a need people don’t know they have.

“It encourages people to buy all sorts of products, from shampoo to automobiles, for reasons that do not always make sense. (Why do city-dwellers drive Hummers?) Keith Reinhard, who … wrote the “You deserve a break today” campaign for McDonald’s in 1971, a classic of manipulation which Advertising Age named the No. 1 jingle of the twentieth century. “The consumer was not looking for a better hamburger,” Reinhard explains. “They were looking for a break.”

This may be where the arts are lagging in marketing themselves. They are being too straightforward. They are saying they are all about entertainment, intellectual stimulation, economic benefits to the community. Bah! I can get my entertainment online (erm, let me rephrase that, I can order DVDs and play games online), I don’t need to be intellectual! Dumb is in!

Perhaps an ad campaign needs to borrow from McDonalds and show people escaping the hectic pressure of city life and finding solace and sanctuary in a museum.

Another point of the article underscores what I have said in numerous entries–you gotta track and assess the data about your consumers.

Jim Stengel, the global-marketing officer for Proctor & Gamble, … said, “I believe today’s marketing model is broken. We’re applying antiquated thinking and work systems to a new world of possibilities.” Agencies, he said, needed to produce advertising that consumers ‘want to stop and watch,’ but also to collect better information about consumer behavior. (My bolds)

While there is much about the article that is interesting, it is also heavily about the owner of a particular ad agency. If you are looking for information on trends, a quick scan past the biographical stuff will help you cut through the length of the article. (Though if you ever wondered how the AFLAC duck commercials came to be, it is an interesting and entertaining read.)

One note to undermine my impression yesterday that the popularity of shows like 24 is a good sign that some people have good attention spans-

Network dramas and situation comedies have more sex, more action, more urban appeal. Susan Lyne, the former president of ABC Entertainment, says, “Anything that is complex narrative storytelling – one-hour dramas, narrative miniseries, character-driven movies for television – advertisers don’t believe there is an audience under fifty for these kinds of shows.”

Drat!

More Blogging for Tickets

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Slight Sidebar before I start-Check out the Discussion over at Artsjournal.com on making a better case for the arts. An interesting collection of folks you don’t normally see writing there.

—————-
So my entries about Impact Theatre’s offer of free tickets to people who would blog on their shows has gotten some notice.

Elisa over at Worker Bees Blog tried to add a comment to my blog only to find she was denied. Then I found out I too was prevented from commenting despite having the option left open. It was only after removing the banned IP addresses from my blog that I could post. My apologies to those who have tried to comment. (Of course, now I will get a lot of Texas Hold Em poker ads in my comments I am sure.)

Anyhow, Elisa posted her thoughts on the matter on her blog. I can pretty much see her point on most of her comments. The only thing I don’t entirely agree with is her first one — partially because if I understand it correctly, she is paid to blog for other theatres. Granted, she is in the minority of bloggers since most are not paid and most of what she writes is promotional rather than critical reviews/critiques.

The other thing is that I would imagine there are plenty of bloggers out there who are willing to become unpaid shills for something they believed in. Just read a handful of political blogs. Very few of them practice thoughtful reflection about issues and happily repeat what they heard someone else say. (Though there are a great number of those I don’t agree with who do string together very intelligent thoughts) Just as there are patrons who will love your organization no matter what ill-conceived thing you toss together, there are going to be bloggers who will rose color everything you do.

Of course where Elisa is right is that you want someone who doesn’t subscribe to your agenda because their good opinions of you will only count if they are seen as credible and discerning. Then again, just as people gravitate toward critics with whom they agree, bloggers would certainly gain the same following so there is a place for the you-can-do-no-wrongers.

I think the rules the theatre is setting up regarding number of words and readership is simply a good indication of who new technologies are always envisioned in the context of what we know. Like the houses of tomorrow or projections of the future that simply add a futuristic patina to our present lives.

Since we are used to getting press packs from print and broadcast media that celebrate the reach, exposure, market penetration, etc that we will get for our buck, that is how we look to measure success. It is easy to forget that with this new medium, the rules, expectations and measures of success may be changing. It is well known that word of mouth is much more powerful than paid advertising. Therefore, it probably isn’t a matter of how many people read a blog as how many of those who do read a blog link to/cite the entry themselves and are read/cited in turn thereby increase your exposure.

And yeah, good luck trying to quantify that (though I am sure Google will come up with a way.) Of course, if you are doing live performances, the ultimate measure of success is pretty much the same–how many butts are in the seats.

Emarketing Effectiveness

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I was taking a gander over at Artsmarketing.org and found a link to an arts e-marketing study that was done in England. While buying and attending habits of people in the US may differ from our European cousins, I found the suggestions about how to employ email and websites to good effect and the findings of the study to be quite thought provoking. Also, one of the really valuable pieces of information they provided was how to interpret the data logs from your website to determine how many hits, return visits, etc you are getting (pg 59-60) if you don’t have access to report software like Awstats. (And even if you do, it is tough to recognize what the heck you are looking at.)

Among their key findings were:

E-marketing can be seen to be cost-effective and valuable. However, there are many areas of potential development for participants and for the industry as a whole.

The ‘typical’ arts organisation (i.e. benchmarks for an arts organisation) will:
– spend less than 3% of their direct marketing budget on e-marketing activity
– spend less than 1p (marketing costs only) to attract each visit and each unique (different)
visitor to their site
– spend less than 3p (total online spend e.g. including maintenance) to attract each visit and
each unique visitor to their site
– spend less than 40p (marketing costs only) to achieve one ticket sale
– spend less than 10 seconds of staff time working on e-marketing to attract each visit
– spend 30 seconds – 1 minute to attract each unique visitor to their site
– attract between 2,000 and 8,000 unique visitors each month to the web site
– attract 30 – 45% of the visits to their site from unique visitors – different people
– receive 2 – 3% of all bookings online
– receive �2 – �4 more per ticket bought online than per ticket bought offline
Of those who visit the ‘typical’ arts organisations website (benchmarks for visitor statistics):
– 15 – 25% will return within the month, making 55 – 77% of the total visits to the site (the
Pareto effect works online!)
– they will visit 3 – 6 pages on the site each visit and will stay for 2 – 6 minutes
– each unique visitor will view just under 20 pages over any one month
– less than 2% will ‘convert’ to live visitors i.e. make a booking online (this is just slightly lower
than results found by other industries)
– less than 2% of them will sign up for further communication

The Arts Marketing Association felt that their research was somewhat incomplete simply because a number of organizations declined to participate because they had no idea how to access the web data needed or felt uncomfortable doing so. (They survey actually did provide instructions about which numbers to refer to.)

This lead to a fairly easily made conclusion that arts organizations were under utilizing their websites as a marketing resource and that the number of conversions to ticket sales or involvement with an organization could be increased if more attention was paid to designing and maintaining an effective site.

As much as I have been harping on the power of blogs and the internet for spreading the word about issues and ideas, I am ashamed to admit that I am hardly any better than the respondents in the survey and haven’t really taken a look at who is visiting my organization’s webpage or ticketing site. (And even worse, I know how to do it. I check the report on the people visit my blog regularly.)

Ladder Against the Wrong Wall?

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So if you have read my recent entries (and lets face it, there haven’t been many) you will know that my theatre is currently working on a production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses.

The director has been trying to assuage my concerns about the money we are spending to keep the water separate from the wood floor and the electrical lines by confidently telling me that if we can’t sell a show with a 30’x25′ pool of water, we can’t sell anything.

Problem is, I fear he is right.

We certainly have “a gimmick” that the musical Gypsy informs you that you must have. Two separate news stations have come out to film the show and the entertainment writer from the largest newspaper on the islands wrote a feature story. When one of the news anchors was editing the story, women were looking over his shoulder with interest because the clips featured very good looking bare chested men engaging in a spectacular water battle. The anchor of the most watched 6 o’clock news commented on air at the end of the segment that ticket sales would probably skyrocket after that clip.

Unfortunately, they didn’t. First performance we didn’t even fill half the house, the second performance we filled fewer seats and the third performance we slightly out sold the second. The next three performances have less than 40 seats sold between them. I expect sales will pick up as we approach the dates, but I don’t foresee any problem getting tickets.

It is difficult to blame the small audiences on lack of exposure. I did quite a bit of paid advertising along with the free coverage we got. My thoughts turn to three tough questions Ben Cameron (Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group) posed that the Artful Manager reprinted
“-What is the value of having my organization in my community?

-Harder: What is the value my group alone offers, or that my group offers better than anyone else? Duplicative or second-rate value will not stand in this economy.

-Hardest: How will my community be damaged if we close our doors and move away tomorrow? ”

I am in a position to do a lot of good in the community and a new window of opportunity opened just today. However, there seems to be a bit of mounting evidence that paying a lot of money to fly and house people from the Mainland and other countries is not providing value for the community.

By the same token, for the last three years, there hasn’t been anyone really concentrating on educating people about the value of the theatre in the community. I am not talking about convincing people they ought to love us because we are illuminating them in their ignorance. Rather, I mean giving us the same value in the community as the corner store, the firehouse and the Little League field. Become a place were people gather and look back at it as a cornerstone of their lives.

I am already seeing the possibilities as members of niche communities are coming forward offering their assistance to spread the word about upcoming performances.

Like everything else I write about in this blog that is a work in progress…we shall see.

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