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More Tales From the Furniture Store

October 19, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

So last Thursday I had a really excellent dinner at a furniture store.

Long time readers will remember when I blogged about the opening of this store about two years ago. I was a little skeptical about a situation where a high end furniture store had a wine bar, high end restaurant and theatre in it. I have actually been to a couple events at the wine bar and theatre before but this was the first time I had dinner at the restaurant. It was really quite excellent. The highlight for me was an intermezzo of wasabi and apple sorbert. Just when you thought the wasabi was going to be too much, the coolness and sweetness turned things around and left your mouth with a taste of honey.

I was there lending my support for a fundraiser a performance group partner was having in order to raise money for a production we are premiering next October. The meal was preceded by a piece from the show we are putting together. It was my favorite situation. I got to have people tell me how wonderful and inspiring the show appeared to be and congratulate me. Followed by a really good meal. I didn’t have to worry about organizing the experience. I’ll find out how successful the appeal packets were in a few weeks.

But aside from that there was something that caught my eye about the activities at the facility. One of the women at my table mentioned her daughter said the bars and restaurants were a hot place on the weekends and there were lines out the door. I knew they kept the theatre busy with fashion shows and other events. One thing I didn’t realize until that evening was that they have a game night one Tuesday each month. They bill it as a “netplaying” opportunity. As an alternative to normal networking events, you attend and play board games or Wii video games at one of 12 stations set up around the theatre. (I should mention it is something of a black box theatre space with no permanent seating.)

It is free though you need to purchase at least one drink or something to eat. I am guessing the program has been at least marginally successful because they are advertising a new time and new sponsors. I am not sure if the sponsors help provide the games or the prizes (or both).

I saw this netplaying program and started thinking about the networking/attract new audiences type events that arts organizations sponsor. The approach has had mixed results from what I have read and thus has been of dubious value. My suspicion is that those who have had poor results have been doing it solely to increase their audiences rather than provide something that is needed and valued by their community.

I have no doubt that the social side of the building is designed with the intent of having attendees patronize the furniture side. I am not going to attribute high ideals to the business. The bars and restaurants are designed to appeal to young professionals. At the moment, they may be spending all their money on the clothes to wear to the bar and the wine they consume there while their apartment is a dump. It won’t always be that way though and when the young hipsters are ready to furnish an apartment, they are likely to at least look through the store there. In the meantime, they are in the building having fun and bringing their friends.

The arts organization which isn’t quite sure if it will make its budget from year to year may not have the institutional patience to take such a long view. In their heart of hearts, they may be whispering “If you build it, they will come and they will donate money” and hope it will all happen in the course of a season.

If you look at my previous entry and then look at the events they have running each month now, you will see that there is a pretty significant difference in how they are using their space. No jazz or film nights, not really too many family oriented events, few seminars on topics like micro-enterprise.

They started out with an idea of what might be useful to the community and then made adjustments over time. They built their facility with the intent of providing services to a clientele that would purchase their furniture. How much more difficult must it be then for an arts organization to do the same in a facility that wasn’t built to enhance the lifestyle of a demographic that isn’t patronizing events held there?

And since the purpose of the organization probably never included providing ancillary services to woo new audiences, there isn’t likely to be a staff dedicated to that purpose who have been provided the support and resources to adjust programming to find the combination of services which is most appealing. The fact that some organizations experience success at all probably has as much to do with luck as sincerity, devotion, excellent planning and execution.

Probably the best approach would be to contract with external vendors. While it would require staff to monitor contracts and process payment/revenue splitting with the vendors, at least staff isn’t faced with fabricating services whole cloth. You also have the opportunity cancel those services which don’t seem to be valued and replace them with new ones. Staff will still be needed to coordinate experiences that are appropriate to the tenor of the organization preventing them from working on something more directly related to the core purpose. Leadership needs to recognize this when committing to what is likely to be a long term development process.

Audience Relations, Marketing/PR

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Fun on the Fund Drive

October 14, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

I was a guest on my local public radio station’s fund drive today. It was my second year, but as always I had a blast. I am sure it isn’t the same experience for everyone, but the time just flew by. I was ready to go another hour but they already had someone else lined up.

As a leader of a non-profit organization, these fund drives seem like such a win-win for both organizations. I was there offering tickets as premiums for membership and in return, I received the opportunity to raise awareness about my organization. I actually tried to be cognizant of how much I talked about us but the hosts kept feeding me lines opening new avenues of conversation.

I saw the whole experience as a game to see how I could turn something into a plug to become a member. The host commented on how adventurous and daring our programming was. Thanked her and talked a little bit about our philosophy and came back around and mentioned something to the effect of how supporters of the station were likewise adventurous and bold in that they were eager to consume programming that dealt with situations outside their daily experience.

I had been worried I would run out of things to say so I had prepared some notes in advance of my arrival making a connection between the tickets we were offering and the station. (Lead singer of a group voted among the distinctive voices of her country-the station is a distinctive voice in the community with few such alternatives–you can be a distinctive voice by declaring your support of the station.)

It turned out I need not have been so concerned. The program I was guesting on had fewer opportunities for pledge solicitations than the one I was on last year. I left the remaining tickets for the station to in future segments and then fed the host my notes so she could use them in future segments. No need for my ideas to go to waste, after all. (I have had interactions with her before so it the situation wasn’t akin to a waiter pitching his ideas to a film director.)

So I know this entry has mostly been about how cool and clever I am. I am, however, too lazy to make these same suggestions in a third person voice. “One should endeavor to be a gracious guest by preparing remarks that emphasize the desirability of becoming a member.”

Besides, I know that if I say I had fun playing word games, most of you will figure you are cleverer than me, (you aren’t by the way), and can do a much better job promoting your organization and membership to your public radio station and will help your local station in the (futile) attempt to do just that.

But in all seriousness, while I was sitting there waiting to go on air again, I starting thinking how much I wished there were other forums where the general public would direct their attention to hear arts people talk enthusiastically. There was an entirely different energy to our conversation than I have experienced at Q&As and performance talks. It might have just been the setting. Talking to each other without the immediate awareness of an audience likely changes the dynamics. If I could be sure I could translate at least some degree of the experience to our stage, I might consider asking the woman who hosted our segment to act as an interviewer for a show discussion.

Something for me to ponder.

Oh and if the idealism of helping out another non-profit in your community or playing clever word games isn’t motivation to go on a fund drive, how about economics. We saw a surge in ticket sales while I was on the air. One guy apparently drove to the theatre and began banging on my office door because he was afraid we would be sold out.

Marketing/PR

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Hate Hazelnuts, Love Filberts

October 12, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

In an illustration of the power of language in branding and naming, while having coffee this weekend a friend and I started having a discussion where he stated how much he hated hazelnuts and really preferred filberts. I ran with the joke and solemnly agreed that hazelnuts were over exposed. Witness the hazelnut creamer and syrups available here in the coffee house. Another friend was still up at the counter when we started the conversation so when she sat down and heard us seriously discussing how filberts, which tasted amazing, were being marginalized by the hype about hazelnuts, she sort of got pulled in. We did clue her in to the fact we were talking about the same nut, but not until we had a discussion about how the hype about the benefits of acai was selling smoothies of dubious nutritional value at that coffeehouse.

Of course, we all know that language is used to make things sound less negative. Like how there are those who refer to the dangerous chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide as Hydrogen Hydroxide because the latter sound less threatening. But a little research will show that it is widely used as an industrial solvent and coolant, in the production of Styrofoam and poisons. Even in small quantities, accidental inhalation can cause death.

Of course, there are always people who will be smart enough to see through attempts to mislead them. When it comes to promoting our events and our organizations, a careful balance must be struck. I am a big proponent of avoiding trite phrases like those excerpted from movie reviews for the purpose of advertising the film. Yet if your language is too lofty, you run to the risk of creating an appearance of elitism.

I had a situation this season when writing text for our brochure. I described a show where a man must confront an evil force which has subverted the souls of better men than he. I later mention him having to resist the fell forces. A professor suggested I change subvert and fell because the students wouldn’t understand what it meant. Setting aside most of the reasons I thought that statement was wrong, I ultimately decided to keep the language because 1) our students aren’t the target audience for the brochure anyway; it receives much more use by the post-college age general public. 2) I didn’t think that given our educational mission I should be dumbing down a word choice that wasn’t that challenging to start with and could be derived from the context of the sentence.

Just the same, my concern about having language that might alienate people and pose a barrier to attendance made me think about the situation for awhile.

Marketing/PR

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What If They DO End Up Loving The Arts?

October 8, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

Barry Hessenius is conducting a massive six week conversation about the future of the National Endowment over at Barry’s Art Blog. When I say massive, I mean it. This week’s entry is so large (and won’t be complete until tomorrow’s Q&A) that I feel guilty about addressing such a comparatively small section of it.

Truthfully, it may be too large an entry for its own good. Few that could benefit from it may take the time to read it. There were many people whose thoughts I value contributing to the entry, (even with Andrew Taylor’s absence), so I did take the time to digest it.

On the topic of arts education, Ian David Moss who blogs at Createquity.com fleshed out the recently oft repeated question about the long term value of an arts education in a way that seemed very compelling to me. (my emphasis)

Before you call me out as the Grinch who stole music classes, let me explain. I think that the conversation about arts education is inseparable from the conversation about the professional arts infrastructure in America. The reason is simple: the kids who fall in love with learning to play the tuba or do a pirouette today are the adults who are going to be competing with each other for gigs and grant money tomorrow. If we are successful in our efforts and ensure that every child has the opportunity to experience all the arts they want to during their formative years, what happens to them once they get to college? The arts are a powerful drug, as addictive as nicotine for some. The arts encourage people to dream big, and we’ve developed a post-Baby Boomer culture in America that tells children to follow their dreams no matter what obstacles they encounter. That’s fine so far as it goes, but there needs to be a pot of gold on the other side of that rainbow. When music conservatories, playwriting programs, schools of art—institutions whose ranks and capital budgets have been swelling apace in recent years—blithely charge marginal students tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and fail to offer them even the pretense of “real life” entrepreneurship skills, that’s as close to third-sector malpractice as it gets in my opinion.

[…]

Much of the literature that advocates arts education as a strategy for cultivating demand for the arts assumes that students who have invested thousands of hours of their lives in perfecting a craft during their formative years will happily set all of that aside as soon as they turn 18 and 21, become productive members of society with skills that they somehow picked up while practicing piano for four hours a day, and donate all of their expendable income to their local arts organizations. Really? Don’t you think that some of them might be a little bitter about having to leave their dream behind? Don’t you think some of them might continue on and spend their parents’ life savings on three graduate degrees in a quixotic quest for fame and glory that never materializes? Is this the best use of our collective human capital?

[…]

N.B. Upon visiting Ian’s blog, I happily found that he posted the above material with supporting links not available on Barry’s Blog.

I have discussed the idea of arts training programs graduating students into a glut market before. I certainly have to acknowledge Scott Walters and Tom Loughlin, theatre professors who often question their part contributing to this state. Scott Walters was part of the conversation on Barry’s Blog and alluded to Tony Kushner’s 1998 “Modest Proposal” to eliminate undergraduate arts degrees which he included at some length in a 2006 entry on his blog.

What I never really thought about was what the arts world would do if they realized their ambitions to engender an appreciation of the arts in a large number of young people. I don’t think his suggestion that the push for arts education is motivated by a desire to have more consumers rather than artists is completely fair.

Or rather, I don’t think operating on the assumption that not everyone will become an arts practitioner completely nefarious. No one expects every kid who participates in Little League, Pop Warner Football and various soccer leagues will go on to become a professional athlete after all the time they have invested in practicing. Though certainly a situation where a college athlete isn’t expected to devote themselves to their studies is not something to be emulated. And in fact, as Ian points out, lacking large scholarships to keep their debt down, artists have it worse if they leave college without any “real” skills to fall back upon. The purpose of all these youth athletic activities is to cultivate an appreciation of the various sports which translates into audiences for athletic teams throughout life. (Not to mention a lot of athletic apparel purchases if the national sponsorships by sneaker companies are any indication.)

Still, if we have trouble employing artists now with really crappy arts education, what will happen when we ignite kids’ imaginations and convince them the arts have value in their lives. Yes, there may be an increase in arts consumers if more people grow up valuing the arts, but young artists will be graduating and trying to practice their craft long before their fellow graduates acquire enough disposable income to support them. The one saving grace might be if the economy is moving toward creativity. In that case, the graduates would likely need much different training than they are receiving right now.

Not that it is okay, but the arts are not alone in misrepresenting opportunities. In the last year, I read an article that cautioned people about believing ads that say things like there are plenty of jobs in nursing*, computer programming, tractor trailer driving, etc. The piece evoked the Grapes of Wrath in noting that it was in the best interest of many industries to flood the market with many qualified applicants so they can keep wages low due to competition.

I am not suggesting that this is a situation the arts attempt to cultivate. Other than Hollywood or some of the old Broadway syndicates, I can’t think of any entities who would have both the perspective to recognize this and the influence to bring the situation about. If lower costs were a goal, regional theatres would try to attract more people to their areas instead of casting out of NYC and having to pay to house people locally. Though I suppose high concentrations of actors in NYC does keep prices down in its own way. In any case, given that Baumol’s Cost Disease makes producing art increasingly more expensive, the arts do benefit from having a surplus of talented people.

*Don’t mean to imply nursing doesn’t have the need given all the aging baby boomers. It is just one of those areas for which you hear there will be a lot of demand.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts

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