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These Are Not The Fans You Are Looking For

by:

Joe Patti

Seth Godin recently made a post about fans which can sort of hit close to home for arts organizations. His observations also serve to illustrate that the relationship dynamics experienced by arts and cultural organizations are not exclusive to that sector.

He states not every fan of an entity, product, or franchise necessarily contributes to their continued success. He says the cranky fans:

And the cranky fans, who know that they have found a place where they will be heard, and who use that opportunity to split hairs and find something to be disappointed with. They are cranky because they care, but they’re also cranky because it gives them power.

They’ll happily pirate the software, argue about a launch strategy, demand comp tickets to the event and reserve their conversations for other insiders, instead of spreading the word.

[…]

“I’m your best customer” is what they might say, when they’re not at all.

Source

One of the reasons I used the term franchise before is because Godin seemed to be pretty much describing the fans of so many superhero and sci-fi movie/tv series..

But when he mentioned these fans reserving conversations for insiders rather than spreading the word, I realized that there can be a lot of overlap with insiders at arts and cultural organizations.

The bigger realization I had was that while these groups may be speaking passionately and at great length about arts and cultural organizations they may not be spreading the word. And that is probably running counter to our best interests.

Godin says as much in the penultimate paragraph when he emphasizes the importance of choosing your fans. What he describes is cultivating a relationship with and for fans rather than taking a transactional approach:

…some creators and small businesses respond to early fan response by doing things to the audience (cashing out) as opposed to working to do things with and for them (leading). It puts some fans on the defensive, even if this particular creator has made the difficult decision to stick with the mission.

[…]

At the same time, I see small businesses and creators that I care about struggling, simply because their fans are not only taking them for granted, they’re becoming entitled and insular as well. When fans commit to a movement and help it grow, they benefit.

Source

Audience Relations, Leadership, Marketing/PR

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Understanding The Importance Of The Conductor

by:

Joe Patti

This weekend someone posted a video of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the LA Philharmonic in a rehearsal of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony 13 years ago in the nextfuckinglevel sub-reddit with the title “The importance of a conductor.”

It brought me great joy to read some of the comments from people who could see the difference in the performance Dudamel was getting from the musicians. The top comment on the post was to that effect.

A guy with the username DanTheDrywall wrote:

Wow what the hell it totally makes sense now. I actually sometimes go to a classical concert but am a complete noob enjoyer. I have always wondered about the role of the conductor. That was a great example!!

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As part of that discussion thread WorryNew3661 wrote and delo357 responded:

Not knowing that is why most people, myself included until this post, either don’t see the point or openly mock the position. Really happy to have learned something new today

I’m not afraid to say im jumping on the learned something new today train

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Someone else posted a video from about 14 years ago of Simon Rattle conducting students from six Berlin school orchestras making a similar observation about the difference in the performance between 1:37 mark compared to the 19:25 mark.

While a lot of the conversation on social media sites can be pretty abrasive, pretty much every comment on this post was praise for the performance, cheering from Dudamel fans, and folks saying they have a much better understanding and appreciation of the process than they had before.

The posting also illustrated the value of letting people discuss their experience through their personal lens and amplifying that rather than depending on the organization’s marketing messaging. Obviously that approach has its hazards because it can come back to bite you.

Not to mention people may not operate on the schedule you want. Both the videos cited in this discussion are over a decade old. I didn’t see any provide a more recent example of a conductor getting a more compelling performances across hundreds of comments on the topic.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

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Contemplating Your Role In The Community

by:

Joe Patti

Kyle Bowen at Museum as Progress presented an interesting perspective on the way arts organizations can approach supporting the outcomes their visitors and participants seek. He tackles the perception that people seem to come to arts organizations with so many different problems they need solutions for, it can seem impossible to effectively be all things to all people.

We have all heard the saying that if you try to do a little of everything, you end up doing nothing well.

Kyle uses the example of the different lenses through which people view money. One person may have experienced a market crash and seeks to invest in things with which he can directly interact and control. Another seeks stable investment returns over time vs. risker bets. Another may have seen their parents fighting about money and wants to be in a position where money never harms their personal relationships. While each comes to a financial adviser with different emotional relationships with money, they all have the same desired outcome of financial stability even though they have different ideas and comfort levels associated with how to achieve that.

Bowen says financial advisors define their role as supporting clients financial security.

He goes through a similar process with examples of different perspectives people bring to their fitness goals. He defines, “Fitness professionals supporting clients who want to get healthier.”

Bowen claims that museum professional actually have a large range in which they can operate to support the goals of visitors and participants:

I’ll point out that museums are in a rather unique position — unlike financial advisors or doctors or trainers or so many other professions, museums can support a plethora of outcomes. They have the privilege of choosing from among many outcomes — whether social, personal, physical, or intellectual — where so many others have their work cut out for them by comparison. And even so, the same rules apply to other sectors — the more a financial advisor or trainer or airline or landscaping company understands what makes their customers tick, the greater advantage they’ll have.

Source

So in this context, perhaps mission statements need to be changed from something along the lines of “Providing world class experiences and artistic excellence of the highest caliber to our community” to something like “Providing opportunities for our community to stimulate their curiosity, cultivate their creativity, strengthen relationships with family and friends in a relaxing, rejuvenating environment.”

While that may be a little heavy handed, it does represent a conceptual shift from providing a product to defining the organization’s role in the community.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Working In The Arts

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Art That Will Stop Your Heart

by:

Joe Patti

I am generally opposed to promoting arts and cultural experiences as events that will make you swoon or enter some sort of ecstatic state. These aren’t common outcomes and there can be an implication of sorts that you are doing it wrong if it doesn’t happen to you. Obviously, you can have a really great time without swooning and there are many elements that can contribute to that experience that aren’t necessarily the work of art.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Aeon recently had a lengthy article on Stendhal syndrome. The syndrome is named for Stendhal, the nom de plume of Marie-Henri Beyle, who experienced

“…a fierce palpitation of the heart …; the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.’

after visiting a chapel in Florence, Italy in 1817.

While I had heard of Paris Syndrome and Jerusalem Syndrome where people experience great distress/disappointment and psychotic episodes, respective upon visiting those cities, somehow I had missed Stendhal syndrome. While it is also called Florence syndrome, it is more closely associated with experiencing great works of art than with being in Florence.

Though since it is something of an understatement to say Florence has a plethora of great art works, the hospitals of that city certainly see a number of visitors experience all types of physical distress.

Every year, a few dozen tourists to Florence are rushed to the local hospitals, literally overcome by the city’s array of paintings, sculptures, frescoes and architecture. Some lose their bearings, others lose their consciousness, yet others still, on rare occasions, nearly lose their lives. In 2018, a heart attack befell an Italian tourist, Carlo Olmastroni, as he gazed at Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi. (His life was saved by four other tourists, all doctors, who had also been standing and staring, slack-jawed, at the Botticelli.)

According to Graziella Magherini, the psychologist who in 1989 coined the term ‘the Stendhal syndrome’, dehydration and dense crowds certainly played a role in these tourists having heart palpitations and hallucinations. Yet in an interview in 2019, she insisted on another factor: ‘The psychological impact of a great masterpiece.’ Even scientists who dismiss the syndrome as psychosomatic confess that art can have this impact, though they refuse to diagnose it as a psychiatric disorder.

Source

Robert D Zaretsky, author of the Aeon piece, says that while he visits many famous art institutions a year, he has not had the occasion to swoon. He mentions that the way people consume art these days tends to insulate them from having these feelings. Not only do most people only spend a few seconds viewing art in galleries, they often mediate the experience through cameras and social media postings rather than allowing themselves the time to experience and consider the works.

But as with so many perceived problems with arts audiences today, the complaint isn’t new. Stendhal/Beyle felt the Louvre was far too crowded with visitors squeezing through the galleries back in the 19th Century.

“Their eyes are red, their faces tired, their lips tightened. Happily, there are couches to sit on. ‘How superb!’ they declare between yawns wide enough to dislocate their jaws. What human eye can remain unaffected under the assault of 1,500 paintings?”

[…]

Not surprisingly, Beyle rebelled against the crushing abundance of paintings at the Louvre, and instead believed its holdings would be better distributed among dozens of smaller museums where people might stop and engage deeply with these great works of art rather than glance at them over their shoulders as they passed at a slow walking pace.

Source

Arts Facilities, Audience Relations

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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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