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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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