Entries by 3 Created

Is Your Organization Fun?

November 17, 2012 /in /by

Last weekend was my annual pilgrimage to the National ArtsMarketing Project Conference hosted by Americans for the Arts. It has become my favorite conference of the year, not only because I get to catch up with friends from all over the country, but because it reminds me that sometimes the most profound marketing decisions are the most basic ones.

I attended a session entitled “The Curated Arts Experience” featuring Ceci Dadisman, Deeksha Gaur and Nella Vera. During this session, Nella started talking about something really fundamental – having fun. She gave several great examples of organizations that went out of their way to create fun and memorable experiences for their audiences. Immediately prior, we were treated to a lunch session featuring cdza, a trio of guys who create musical experiments.  With their experiments, they make classical music fun and accessible, and in doing so have millions of viewers worldwide. I have to wonder how many people have been introduced to classical music via their performances?

Cdza’s success is really pretty simple:

1)      They feature the work of brilliant artists – Michael Thurber is the “chief music guy,” a young man who from age 14 spent his life in a music conservatory and graduated from Juilliard.
2)      They don’t take themselves too seriously
3)      They create memorable and fun experiences

 

Their motto: “first build your audience by offering them dessert before you introduce vegetables.” Simple. Clear. Brilliant. 

 

In previous blog posts, I’ve mentioned that when building audiences, you must program “gateway drugs” – a couple of options that are easily accessible and offer up a fun evening of entertainment in an attempt at proving that the non-profit arts can be a viable entertainment alternative to audiences that currently don’t view them as such. Great art doesn’t have to be devoid of entertainment value. It is possible to have art of the highest quality that is fun.

 

Earlier this week, Adam Thurman of Mission Paradox reminded us that we need new audiences more than they need us. And here’s the painful truth – since art is essential to our lives, we like to believe that they are essential to everyone. That just isn’t the case. A good amount of the population does just fine without the arts. That isn’t to say that I believe the arts couldn’t enrich their lives, it is merely meant to point out that in the hierarchy of needs, we’re closer to the bottom. In today’s economy, merely meeting basic existence needs has become difficult, so convincing someone to spend their remaining disposable income on a discretionary item like the arts is harder than ever. 

 

We have to make our organizations inviting, accessible and fun. And understand that providing a fun experience doesn’t equate to sacrificing artistic credibility. We don’t have to sacrifice the core of who we are to attract new audiences, and those that make that argument, in my opinion, are short-sighted.

 

New audiences need to be cultivated carefully. Create a path for them. Give them an easy entry point. Provide an amazing experience. Steward them so they return soon after their first experience. Build their confidence with multiple experiences, and then provide an opportunity to sample something a little more challenging. Introduce them to new experiences. At some point, if you don’t provide them with a challenge, they will grow bored. We are responsible for cultivating our audiences’ artistic growth. If we lack audiences for classical, challenging or new work, perhaps it is because we try to short circuit the system, and ask that new audiences sample what they would at first perceive as vegetables before getting to the dessert. 

 

In some circles in Washington, DC, the Kennedy Center has been criticized for programming work that isn’t as challenging as some would like. I however, appreciate the role the Kennedy Center plays in our ecosystem. Each year they introduce thousands of people to the performing arts for the first time. This in turn acts as a feeder system to other arts organizations. 

 

A balanced meal is important, but so too is the order of consumption. Start with dessert, and the chances increase that the full meal will be finished. Roll out complex foods to a novice palate, and you may not make it past the first course. 

The Plight of the Newspaper (and Preparing for the Future)

October 21, 2012 /in /by

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a conference and someone from the audience asked me what I believed to be the biggest marketing challenge of the next five years. I answered with the death of the newspaper, which surprised many, who thought I would point to declining subscription bases or overall drops in arts participation.  We had just experienced the death of four major newspapers – the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Tucson Citizen and the Christian Science Monitor – at a time when most non-profit arts organizations had important symbiotic relationships with their hometown newspapers. 

 

So let me pause to ask – if your newspaper were to go out of business today, how would that impact your organization? 

 

And here’s why I am asking. According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA):

·        Total print advertising has dropped from $47.4 billion in 2005 to $20.6 billion in 2011 – the lowest print advertising has been since 1983 (not factoring for inflation).
·        In 2011, the total daily circulation of all the newspapers in the United States was 44.4 million, the lowest on record since 1940.
·        Citing a 2010 Scarborough report for adults 18+, 47% of the U.S. population 35 years and older read an average issue of a daily newspaper in comparison to only 26% of the population under 35.

According to The Pew Research Center, since 2003, the Internet has been on par or more popular than newspapers as a news source, and currently just 21% of young adults report newspapers as their primary source of news. As the Internet has become increasingly popular as a news source, newspapers have invested tremendous amounts of resources in building their online presence, but here’s the problem – for every $1 gained in online advertising, newspapers lost $10 in print advertising in 2011. And the reason? In print advertising, newspapers are dominate, but online, they compete in a very crowded marketplace, where Google and Facebook combined will share just under 30% of total online display advertising revenue in 2012. 

 

Using the statistics provided online by the NAA, in 2005 1,452 daily newspapers shared $47.4 billion in print advertising for an average of $32.6 million in print advertising per daily paper. Six years later, 1,382 daily newspapers shared $20.6 billion in print advertising for an average of $14.9 million in print advertising per daily paper. 

 

In six years, the average daily newspaper lost more than 50% of its print advertising revenue, placing in jeopardy the entire business model of most newspapers and leading to drastic changes. Newspapers around the nation are slashing their newsrooms, laying off veteran reporters and in the best case scenarios, replacing them with freelance reporters with little experience. In worst cases, they aren’t replaced at all. 

 Just recently the theater world received news that veteran Philadelphia Inquirer arts writer and critic Howard Shapiro, after 42 years with the paper, was reassigned to cover South New Jersey in what seemed like an attempt to make him miserable enough to leave. And it looks like it worked.

With fewer reporters and less experience, not only has coverage decreased, but quality has diminished as well.  Many of us shook our heads when a small online magazine named Pasadena Nowhired two writers in India to cover local events but just recently we’ve learned of Journatic,a company that outsources journalism to the Philippines for US newspapers.  Others have transitioned from primary reporting to aggregating content from other news sources and then providing commentary on the aggregated material. When I was at the Smithsonian, one such company drew inaccurate conclusions by providing editorial on aggregated stories. When I called to tell them of the inaccuracies and offer to set up interviews so they could report on the story directly, the freelance writer told me they didn’t pay him enough to do any original reporting. Unfortunately for us, other outlets picked up his story.  I understand cutting as much fat as possible from budgets during tough economic times, but at some point, there isn’t any fat left, and what remains is only muscle. Cutting further sacrifices your ability to deliver an excellent product, which is why I advise arts organizations to avoid cutting investments in the artistic product itself if at all possible when making budget adjustments.  By sacrificing quality, I’m afraid newspapers could be pouring gas on an already blazing fire.  


Every great arts city has a great newspaper. Every great theater town, a well respected critic. If your city is affected by cuts to arts coverage, let your voice be heard. Activate your bases. Support outlets with extensive arts coverage with your advertising dollars. That said

, I advise non-profit arts organizations to prepare themselves for the possibility that their local newspaper could go out of business.  Cultivate relationships with bloggers, social media mavens and other influentials in your community. Develop online communities where your audiences can speak to one another. Produce and distribute original content yourself. Diversify your advertising strategies. Budget resources to grow your database. Hopefully these efforts will be for naught, but if the day comes that your local newspaper declares bankruptcy, you’ll be better prepared.

Good Intentions Can Interfere with Success

September 23, 2012 /in /by

To say that these are challenging times for non-profit arts organizations is probably an understatement. We’re still struggling with the after effects of the global economic crisis. Previously viable business models are imploding. The elimination …

The Myth of the Ubiquitous Solution

August 22, 2012 /in /by

Today I tread lightly into the “new models” discussion which has recently been at the forefront of chatter among arts managers. For a good recap, please read the following:

“Why Arts Managers Short of Cash Are Looking at Detroit,” by Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
“Theaters Look for New Ways to Draw in Subscribers,” by Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post
“The New Model, Part 2,” by Michael Kaiser, The Huffington Post
“Swimming Downstream in the Current of History,” by Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas Blog


As Michael Kaiser states “the world is changing – but it has always been changing.” I agree with Mr. Kaiser to a point, but I’d like to point out that the amount of change organizations have faced in previous decades probably pales in comparison to the change they have confronted in the past ten years. In a one decade, pretty much everything we have been taught is now in question. How many of us were taught that the key to financial stability was saving money in order to purchase a house? For those of us who purchased prior to 2007, becoming a homeowner could be the dumbest financial decision we make in our entire lives. Who knew that we would experience a global economic crisis so severe that it would destroy 40% of the world’s wealth, or that people would actually opt for negative investment returns in order to move monies into safer investment vehicles? For the first time in the history of the United States, Standard & Poors downgraded the credit rating of the federal government to below AAA status, and the youngest Americans will most likely be worse off than their parents. Staples of American life, such as Social Security and Medicare, seem to be imploding, and new college graduates are entering the work force with record high student loans.   And this is to say nothing of the arts. States and municipalities are slashing funding, arts education barely exists in school curriculums and the lack of discretionary income is affecting ticket sales.
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that arts managers are engrossed in discussions about new models. Many organizations had reserves to weather a couple of bad years, but recently we’ve begun to ask – what if this is the “new normal?” And how arts managers describe the “new normal” reminds me of the Hindu tale of the Blind Men and the Elephant. As the story goes, six blind men were asked to touch and describe an elephant. Each man’s description varied widely depending on the part of the elephant the man touched, and as the tale says “each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, each was partly right, and all were in the wrong.”
Our descriptions of the “new normal” are as different as our points of views, and thus our responses to our changing environments should be as unique as each of our institutions.  I fear anyone who offers a panacea to all proclaimed from his or her own mountain top, as the view from my mountain may be different. For example, in his mostly excellent article about the Detroit Institute of Arts, Terry Teachout chides theater companies that “cling to the old-fashioned subscription model.” Similarly, in Nelson Pressley’s article “Theaters Look for New Ways to Draw in Subscribers,” Tony Heaphy, Director of Marketing at Centerstage, describes subscribing as “a chestnut.” I have no doubt from their perspectives these comments are valid, but theaters that have experienced significant growth in their subscription base might view the situation differently. What works for one, rarely works for all.

Therefore a customized approach tailored to your institution is wise. When looking at possible adjustments to your business model, I would suggest:

1)      A test a day. Test a new idea, small in scale, each day. Every day that an organization doesn’t test, is a day that it doesn’t learn.
2)      Test small, miss small. Identify a challenge. Develop a hypothesis. Test a solution. But don’t bet the farm on it. Conduct each test fully expecting a negative result.
3)      Test ideas that are easily scalable. In order to minimize risk, I’ve tested ideas that performed very well on a small scale only to realize that putting them into play in a larger way would be cost prohibitive.
4)      Identify your sacred cows, and test those first. Often times we shy away from testing solutions to a known issue simply because that issue is a sacred cow. If you are looking for meaningful impact, identifying sacred cows is a good first step.
5)      Be informed, but question everything – even “experts.” Read everything you can. Follow experiments at other companies. Conduct research. Analyze data. But don’t accept anything or anyone as infallible. Even the best are human, and they speak only from their experience.
6)      Be careful of “one size fits all” solutions. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard marketing directors wonder why something that worked so well in one city, bombed in the next. There are few universal truths in the marketing world.
7)      Overcome your fear of change. As humans, we are all programmed to fear change. You’ve identified a challenge. Formed a hypothesis. Tested a solution with impressive results. Developed a plan to scale the solution. And now it is decision time. Some people are paralyzed by fear of change. Be comforted by knowing that if you desire different results, you must act differently. Some difficult decisions are easy because they are demanded by circumstance.

The Perfectionist and the Jack of All Trades

July 22, 2012 /in /by

I’ve been called a perfectionist, and until recently, I’ve always accepted that description as a compliment. However as a leader, one of my primary responsibilities is to help prioritize the work of the departments that report to me, and in doing so, i…

The Assembly Line and Failure

June 30, 2012 /in /by

I’ve recently returned from Theatre Communications Group’s Annual Conference, where the theme was “model the movement,” focusing on new models and transformative ideas from the field. I was particularly excited to attend this year, as the speakers…

The First Key to Success — Defining It

June 2, 2012 /in /by

Without clear direction, success can never be achieved. We’ve all experienced situations where we run toward a goal as fast and furious as we can only to have the goal posts moved on us in route. When this happens over and over again, an organization is guilty of foolishly wasting precious resources at a moment when most are under resourced as it is.

Success begins with leadership. As Michael Kaiser discussed in his Huffington Post blog, there must be a leader. All too often, arts managers try to lead by consensus. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want people to be upset with them. In complex situations, many times the answer isn’t clear, and trying to get a wide variety of stakeholders moving in the same direction can be tough. But this isn’t a time to postpone critical decisions in an effort to get senior staff, board members and other various stakeholders to agree on a course of action. The executive has been hired to lead, and lead they must. Part of leadership is gathering all the data necessary from various perspectives, and then making a timely decision. Waiting for full consensus is folly because more often than not, time does not bring consensus.
When a problem reaches the desk of an executive director, usually it means that an easy solution isn’t available, because if there was a simple answer, senior managers would have resolved the situation. The life of an executive director involves making imperfect decisions daily. It isn’t a job for the lighthearted. Failure is often public and wide reaching. But make no mistake about it – inaction or a delay in decision making is a decision in itself. Taking no action in an attempt to build consensus around an issue that will never result in a consensus decision is even more costly than setting a clear course toward a defined goal.  As an outside adviser, I was once asked to participate in a meeting where senior managers from an organization were divided on a particularly divisive issue. Each argued their position passionately and articulately. At the conclusion of hours of conversation, the room looked to the executive director for a decision, at which time he asked for a vote of hands. I about fell out of my chair. Unfortunately for them, there were an even number of people in the room, and it was hopelessly deadlocked with a leader who would not make a decision because he desperately wanted consensus.
Someone has to lead, and one of the most important decisions a leader makes is defining success for the organization. Senior managers can and should be relied upon to develop strategies for success, but the leader must define the destination before a map can be created.
When defining success for arts organizations, here are just a few things to consider:
Growth vs. Sustainability. In a previous post, I asked if “right-sizing could be as sexy as expansion?” We live in the country of manifest destiny, super-sized meals and McMansions. Bigger is always better. But this mentality has led to obesity being an out of control epidemic, people purchasing homes they could not afford, and boom or bust economic trends. I see the same success metrics in play at non-profit arts organizations. Chief marketing and development officers are measured solely by growth, and if an organization tries to right size, top talent will leave because their numbers will shrink, not because of sub-par work, but merely because of a decrease in tickets to sell or programs to fundraise for. Why do we constantly equate success with growth, when it is entirely possible to demonstrate significant growth to the detriment of sustainability? If it costs you $2 for every additional $1 in growth, and that equation doesn’t equalize over time, then you will demonstrate growth until such time as your lines of credit are maxed out, your board becomes unwilling to conduct emergency fundraising campaigns, and the community becomes tired of your pleas for help. This is how once stable and reputable organizations get into trouble. Success should be defined, at least in terms of business models, by sustainability, not growth, which is not to say they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but all too often, we succumb to pride and make growth the more highly prized success metric.
Quantity vs. Quality. Similar to growth, I’ve found that some arts organizations in part define themselves by the quantity of work they produce. I’ve never understood this. Most artists are motivated by creating the highest caliber of work, but then arts organizations feel pressured to produce a certain arbitrary amount of plays, concerts or performances each year, with an increase in offerings usually regarded as a sign of success by board members, funders and the press. The highest quality products in the world are not produced in mass as mass production doesn’t usually dovetail with world class quality. Case in point, if asked, I’m sure Steve Jobs would have been happy to have the best computers on the market, even if his market share was significantly less than competing products. And today, TedX is experiencing brand erosion because of quick expansion resulting in it losing in part its competitive advantages. Long ago, I used to work for a company that only produced one or two plays a season because the average gestation time on a project was several years. Although some objected to the avant-garde nature of the work, the company was almost universally lauded for artistic excellence. However, if quantity of productions were the litmus test for success, it wouldn’t be considered a successful theater.
Impact vs. Financials. Alan Brown, Clay Lord and Theatre Bay Area have spent the last two years working on measuring the intrinsic impact of live theater. I won’t go into the specifics now as this study deserves its own blog post, but I must say that I am excited that the study is changing how people, especially funders, are defining success. This study has developed a new system to quantifiably measure the intrinsic impacts theaters are having on audiences, and funders are starting to understand that previous metrics, such as audience members served, might not deliver the full picture. Along with financial and attendance data, what if theaters started to define their success by the impact they are having on their communities, which for the first time can be benchmarked, measured and tracked year over year.
The first step on any journey is to clearly define the destination and to establish success metrics.

Leaders—set the course and the direction. Don’t fear lack of consensus. Be bold. Be ambitious. And be decisive.

Senior managers—establish clear success metrics, and track them relentlessly over time.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” – President John F. Kennedy, in an address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

Lost in the Crowd

May 19, 2012 /in /by

Direct marketing practitioners know that success is primarily a numbers game. That’s not to discount the work that goes into tweaking a control package, testing messages, building list models and analyzing data. However, the foundation o…

Planning a Turnaround

May 6, 2012 /in /by

Deficit budgets have started to accumulate. Core audiences have began to slip away as smaller and smaller houses become the norm. And there is a palpable sense that a once formidable company has lost its way as a growing group of stakeholders from donors to press start asking what happened?

Almost certainly, the marketing department is pointing its finger at the artistic staff laying the blame for the downturn solely at their doorstep, while the artistic staff believes that if they only had better marketing, the issue would disappear. Reality is that if a company is experiencing a significant decline, usually there are issues in both areas that need to be resolved.

At some point, the financial position of the company becomes untenable, and a turnaround team is brought in, usually in the form of a new artistic director, but sometimes a new executive director and marketing director as well. If executed well, strategic shifts in programming along with a well thought out rebranding and promotional campaign can lead to exceptional results. But a turnaround is only as good as its implementation.

Some things to consider when planning a turnaround… 

Identify Toxic Assets. The new guy hired to design and implement the turnaround knows one thing–what the company has been doing isn’t working, and that the board desperately wants a change and they want it quickly. It can become overwhelmingly tempting to cut old programs immediately, and start from a completely fresh slate. However often times even the most struggling company has positives in which to start building from. Cutting everything quickly in an effort to rebuild from a new baseline can eliminate valuable assets. In for-profit turnarounds, the idea is to separate toxic assets from the others in an effort to give a new leader at least some base to work from. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater may be quick and it might provide an immediate signal that there is a new sheriff in town, but it usually isn’t the most efficacious strategy. Instead of a hatchet, bring out the scalpel. Make precision cuts in an effort to save what can be used to help regenerate a new future.

Develop a Bridge for Audiences. When considering radical programming changes, make sure to design and implement a bridge for your current audiences. In a turnaround, the new is always given priority over the well established, but loyalty is something that takes years to cultivate, and I’d rather reinvent from a partial base than none at all. This is not to say that one should shy away from making needed programming changes, it is only to say that as much thought needs to go into how to introduce them into the market as went into designing the programs themselves. I’ve seen companies attempt to reinvent themselves overnight with little thought to patron migration, and as a result, they lost a majority of the base they had cultivated over prior decades. Major donors can provide venture capital to introduce new programming if engaged well, and audiences can be successfully transitioned into new programming if done so in a gradual and considerate manner. I know because I’ve done it on multiple occasions.

Market Research Doesn’t Have to Influence Programming to be Helpful. When asked about market research, Steve Jobs famously told Business Week that he doesn’t conduct market research because “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  Similarly, Julie Taymor in an interview with The New York Times said she didn’t believe in focus groups stating that “if focus groups had been used on The Lion King there would be no death of Mufasa because groups would have reacted negatively.” Given that The Lion King is Broadway’s top earner of all time, and at the time of Mr. Jobs’ death Apple was the most valuable company in the world, there is wisdom in these remarks. However, I bet the marketing people working with Ms. Taymor and Mr. Jobs would have loved market research, not because they wanted it to influence product development, but it would have informed them on how to message the introduction of the product into the market. Even though in many cases “the new” is absolutely necessary and people may desire it without knowing, marketers have to break through an initial resistance barrier. 

Artistic Planning is Where it all Starts. I attempted to rebrand a company once without a clearly articulated artistic strategy. We were told that exciting new programs were going to be introduced to replace well worn ones, but when pressed, there were very few details. Feeling that we couldn’t wait any longer, I started the first phase of the rebranding process thinking that the details could come later. Boy was I wrong. Two months later, everything came to a screeching halt when we were trying to develop a communications matrix around an amorphous programming change. We couldn’t message what didn’t exist. Luckily for everyone, the artistic team came to the same realization, and within a short amount of time, a brilliant new artistic strategy was developed, and we were back on the fast track. I learned an important lesson that day–for a complete turnaround to be successful, it all starts with a detailed new artistic strategy.

Cultivating New Audiences is an Expensive Proposition (at first). Marketers know that retention is cheap, and acquisition is expensive. We also know that both are absolutely critical. When introducing new programming, it is important to know that acquiring audiences for newly developed programs will require a dedicated effort over an extended amount of time as well as considerable resources. The “build it and they will come” assumption is flawed. Audience development is a process, and in the short term, often times it will result in a negative impact to the bottom line. New programming and audience development are investments in the future of the organization. That said, depending on the severity of an organization’s finances, the necessary resources for such an investment may not be readily available, which can lead to the premature cancellation of new programs. If that occurs, it is a waste of time and resources.

In his book The Art of the Turnaround, Michael Kaiser discusses his classic mantra “good art, marketed well” as a centerpiece for a successful turnaround. I agree with Mr. Kaiser that often times turnarounds require adjustments to programming or marketing, and in some cases, both. But over time, it has become an alarming trend to see an increase in the number of failing organizations that do both relatively well. I’ve started to wonder, as many others have, if mature organizations are failing because their business models haven’t fundamentally adjusted to the rapidly changing external environment in the past fifty years.  In moments like these, I’m reminded of a quote from Buckminster Fuller, who said “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I’m fearful that training institutions are teaching models that are dying a slow death, and that major institutions continue to look to senior managers entrenched in failing systems for the cure. I believe that co-management hybrids pairing the wisdom and experience of more senior leaders with the inventiveness and curiosity of Gen X’ers and Millenials could be the best bet. But one thing is for sure–rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic won’t save the ship. For that, you have to find the fundamental cause of the problem. It could be programming. It could be marketing. It could be both. Or, it just might be that we are clinging on to a business model that is rapidly failing us.