The Arts: Sell it like a service not a product (AKA: The Arts:We ain't special)

I'm a big fan of taking all the big and little issues that cross my desk back to the fundamental marketing basics. "Do you think this design works?" "Well you tell me? What audience are you after and what is the key selling point of your design and copy?". That sort of thing. But there is one marketing fundamental that arts marketers constantly seem to get wrong, and that's "What are we?".


Time after time I see 'The Arts' being marketed like it's a product - and not just any product like electrical whitegoods! Marketers publish a list of product features (IE: cast details and plot synopsis) and we expect patrons to line up and say "Awesome, I'll take five tickets thanks!". Its not really even Problem>Solution-land its "Hey I've done a play about retired ninjas finding themselves, come and buy tickets!"  which kind if an answer to a question no body thought to ask. (Actually I'd like to see a play about Ninjas, so if anyone writes one count me in)


To this day some marketers will argue that the arts IS a product, you pay your money and we give you a physical item - a ticket. Enjoy! Of course the ticket is merely a voucher for entry to the real paid-for experience. So in the interests of clarity lets break it down.


At a conference many years ago I was told that the definitive (British) legal definition of a ticket, was a short term lease of a piece of real estate (ie you purchase the ability to sit on a seat for a small period of time. Nothing more, nothing less.The show is no different to a harbour view or a flight path in a rental property, an element that affects how desirable that short term lease is.


If you accept that a show is nothing more than effectively leasing out a lot of small pieces of real estate for a small period of time it changes things fundamentally. For a start it makes you realise just how perishable our product is, like aeroplanes once the curtain goes up we can never sell that seat again, so inventory management becomes something we should study, dynamic pricing becomes important, as does efficient and courteous customer service and order fulfilment. 


Reputation becomes really important. Think about hairdressers, how do you build a top drawer hair salon? You create a nice welcoming environment to come, you answer every phone call, convert every lead,  train or recruit great talent, and you do everything you can to make sure that each chair is full most of the time. Branding becomes important, customer service too and every haircut leaves an impression that either makes people come back again and again or loses you for good. Haircuts are not price sensitive either, people will pay good money for a good haircut.


Except the performing arts is even more ethereal, at least hairdressers leave you with a good feeling AND a good haircut, we just have the good feeling.


Also haircuts are generally repeatable, each new play or dance performance is unique.So how do you get around the risk factor? Well you DO do something that the Arts Industry sometimes over-does, you really work on the brand of each individual show, you take your brainstorming seriously, you work the design and title treatment like you are re-branding facebook (on a budget!), even for a six week marketing campaign, and you latch onto to any residual goodwill, leverage the company brand, the name actor and establish credibility via awards and reviews. 


All fairly line and length, but the question is if I'm coming to your theatre for two hours to experience a service that's completely different to the last time I came here why would I do that? What problem will this service solve? If all I am left afterwards is a warm glow, what colour will the glow be?


This then leads you to thinking about intrinsic impact, which I'm sure I'll be spruiking another time.


For now I'll leave you with this, think of your arts product as a service, as incredibly perishable, and watch how that changes your approach.

mARTsketing: Ten Top Tips: Getting the most out of attending a ...

mARTsketing: Ten Top Tips: Getting the most out of attending a ...: Having had the luck of attending PLENTY of conferences in the last few years, I've noticed that some younger (and some older professionals) ...

Ten Top Tips: Getting the most out of attending a conference

Having had the luck of attending PLENTY of conferences in the last few years, I've noticed that some younger (and some older professionals) aren't really making the most out of their conference experience. Also conferences are a great way to promote your own personal brand.

Some people treat conferences like the working version of what I imagine American University 'Spring Break' is like, whilst others pretty much over-earnest the whole thing! Either way you can often not get out of it exactly what you might have hoped for. Here are a few tips
That's pretty much it, try it for your next PD opportunity and I guarantee you'll see the differences when it comes to marketing your personal brand.

1. Attend with a goal in mind (networking and building up my industry contacts either for this job or the next one, learning more about a specific area, etc). Like any activity it helps to know what you are trying to do going in you can then plan you priorities, choose the right sessions, make sure you attend the networking events etc.
2. BUT attend with with an open mind! Because I just love 'How to' guides that give you one piece of advice and then immediately contradict it. But seriously be aware of Donald Rumsfield's famous unknown unknowns - don't be afraid to hear a talk that isn't on your pre-conceived radar, it might just take you down a completely new path to unexpected opportunities. Make space for random learning, is really what I'm saying here.
3. Get over being SHY Really how old are you? You are an adult professional, and your company believes in you enough to invest in your PD. Don't tell me you can't talk to strangers, if you are really daunted by this prospect try this tip. Practice chatting with the taxi drivers on the way to and from the airport, really bash their ears, "Where are you from?", "How bad were things there before you immigrated?", "Did your family come over with you?" . Trust me by the time you get to the conference you'll be well practised in striking up a conversation and your shyness will feel very much like "a first world problem". (I know this is a stereotype but with any luck you'll get to hear on of these amazing refugee stories like I have, if not that, the great yarn I got with an ex soldier who was hours away from invading Timor under Gough Whitlam, but I digress.)
4. Don't just hang with your home-y OK so the Boss has sent two of you to the conference, make a conscious decision to separate from time to time and report back to each other. You'll see twice as much, meet twice as many people and add twice as much value back to your company.
5. Grab the delegate list By any means, some are provided, some you have to ask for, some you'll need to steal, from here you can identify exactly who you want to speak to, hopefully you can also grab their twitter handles and follow your key targets too and they'll follow you back!
6. Ask a good question early Go to the very first speech and really try to come up with a great question early, by standing up and announcing yourself as a player, others will recognise you and and people will seek you out. Placing great comments and being an actively player in Twitter hash tag land is the digital version of this. You don't have to be mister (or miss) insightful on Twitter either, just research when the speakers give examples and post links, anyone can do that, but by golly you'll get props for it "here's the link to the TVC she was speaking about".
7. Use twitter conversations to identify new people to meet. Not much else to say here, if you follow the hash tag players you can identify people you want to be your friend.
8. Seek out the speakers, usually they are here on their own and are stuck talking to earnest conference organisers all night, as cool as they are, they’ll be thrilled to meet you. Then exchange details, tweet, follow etc you’ve just made a valuable contact!
9. Type up your notes and share them with co-workers. If they are good, start a blog and post them too, you probably have five ready made posts to write straight from your notes.
10. Have fun but not TOO much fun A drink and a bit of a rage is a great immediate way to build connections, but it goes without saying that there is a world of difference between social lubrication and all night benders that could get see you miss half the next day and lead to inappropriate behaviour that could see you fired.

Arts Access - a simple "How To"

Access is becoming an increasingly important issue in society. The Australian Government's National Disability  Insurance Scheme is just the latest example of where it's currently sitting on the public policy radar. For cultural institutions, it is a good idea to not just cover the bases but to really be seen as a leader in access, pressure from government bodies is one reason, but it's also about corporate citizenship, good PR, and adhering to a vision that says the arts is for all. Another plus is done right you can build a small audience of incredibly loyal patrons.

The good news is that for the performing arts, getting a best practice access program is actually pretty easy. Here are the steps.

1. What is your legislative environment and are you up to par?
   All Councils, State Government's and Federal environments are slightly different, there's a good chance that you already cover the minimum bases - ie you have wheel chair spaces in your auditorium, ramps and lifts installed etc, however you may not and there may be a lot issues you've never even considered. The best first step is to commission an Access Audit. http://www.accessauditsaustralia.com.au/aaa_contact.aspx is one but there a few out there. You will get an independent report which you can then take to your board and argue for funding.
2. Review the report and implement what you can!
   This is really it, some things you may learn are; counter height, your wheelchair seats might not be placed in a space that allows them full access to the range of prices on offer and exactly how bad your website is for text readers.

Obviously some issues, such as installing lifts are major capital expenses but there are some cheap and even free programs you can make happen to start improving your venue/organisation's accessibility. Here are some really simple ones:

• Publish a large print version of your season brochure.
  This is just a simple copy, paste, print, bind job that anyone in your office can do. We did 25 Copies for our season launch and after the mention of our access services during the speeches all of them went that night and we had to pre-print. Check with your local vision impaired institution for benchmarks re text size, but the minimum is usually 12 point for enlarged and 16-18 for large-print. Once you've printed these off, tell your local institutions you've done this, give them copies and promote the fact on your website, at box office and via other means.
• Offer Tactile Tours and Audio Described performances
  Vision Australia provide Canberra Theatre Centre with volunteers to offer these services. You may find that your local institution offers these resources free as well. what you do is schedule a session, usually a matinee, for these services, promote the dates (and people MUST book in advance). On the day, the trained volunteers lead a discussion on stage with cast/crew members where key props, costumes and set piece are handled by the vision impaired patrons explaining their significance to the story. Then during the performance the patrons wear a special headset where audio describers give context to the spoken performance (ie "disgusted daughter walks off stage in a huff and slams a door"). The only cost of this service is a once off fee to purchase the headsets and a commitment to administer and promote the service.
• Consider loops, live captioning, FM headsets, signed performances for the Deaf and hearing impaired.All of these services are available and are reasonably affordable to implement and provide (no more than a few thousand for initial hardware and set up and specialist labor costs each performance for signed and/or live captioned performances). What technology to employ really depends on your priorities, I would argue for loop systems throughout both foyers and auditoriums as most hearing aids can tune in without needing special equipment and back up headset units for those without access to a T-switch. I would then employ a live-captioned performances throughout the year and only really consider a signed performance as a maybe once/twice a year special event (the signing Deaf being a sub-set of captioning using deaf). 
  The http://captioningstudio.com/ provide the best practice captioning service, including their world first iPhone app allowing patrons to follow the show on their own devices and there are many places including http://www.wom.com.au/ that can provide best practice advice regarding loops and headsets.

• Strobe, Haze, Smoke effectsThis needs a to be taken seriously for epileptics and those with breathing difficulties and should always be communicated when known on your website and certainly any complaint refunded. We have now adopted a process where we inform all patrons to consider that all performances may have these effects and to contact us if you have a query until such time as we know for sure.
• Carer Seats
  This is a pseudo legislative issue in Australia and basically any patron with a companion card is entitled to a free seat for their carer. Again this service really costs very little and is a cheap and easy 'win' to implement.
• Dedicated Programming
  Once you have these services in place it is easy to look for a dedicated kids show and use this as a chance to allow deaf, hearing impaired or vision impaired children to experience theatre. You may also schedule other performances such as Rain Man, which allow you to interface to autism associations and carers, it just requires an awareness within your organisations that these relationships are possible and can be used as great opportunities. Rain Man for us generated over 100 ticket sales which were used both as a fund raiser for the autism association and a shared experience for carers.
• Promote it!
  Once you have a small suite of access service generate a brochure, website, media release etc to tell people and make sure the related organisations all have copies and are on board to help promote the services. Then continue to monitor the use of these services and feedback from patrons.
• Nominate a Champion Be it self nominated or made part of a job role – it doesn’t work without a champion pushing it through and sticking up of access-imapired patrons.
• Tricks For Young Players
• Make sure any special headsets used are subject to a process of pre-show checking for battery life and are working. 
• Have a process whereby seats are set aside for people using live captions, carer seats, and the like. 
• Think about wheelchair spaces when exercising prestige pricing strategies, if not you are a law suit waiting to happen. 
• Get whole of organisation buy in especially - front-of-house, ticketing and technical.
• If using a smart phone based captioning device, does 3G work inside your thick auditorium walls?
• Respond to any complaint immediately - these are amongst your most vulnerable patrons, they trusted you when you said they could come back and enjoy the theatre and now you may have let them down.

This is pretty much it for access, take it seriously, make some innovation happen and trust me it will be one of the most satisfying projects you can undertake, especially when a patron writes in thanking you for allowing them to experience theatre once again.

• Website Accessibility Making a genuine five star accessible website is hard, expensive and you can often compromise the experience for everybody else. If your legislative overlord is not especially pushing the issue, it is best to make the issue known to your web developer in order to cover as many bases as possible such as alt tagging images with a description of that image for text readers. BUT technology is constantly improving so it is alway good to have this as a criterion in any future website tender and make the call as you negotiate with vendors.

Government Funding of the arts: Cultural welfare for the rich?

I'm really lucky that I ply my arts marketing trade in a mono-demographic environment like Canberra. Lucky in that I can justify market research showing the dominance of Type A/B demographic people making up the market space. Of course our theatre appeals primarily to A/B rich edu-macated folks, that's ALL the type of folks we got in Canberra!

BUT I dare say we aren't alone amongst Government funded arts organisations, most arts institutions would have a dominance of upper income, higher educated types making up their database, for one the arts can be expensive, you need spare time to savour it and probably some degree of quality education to help understand much of it. This is our reality and well run institutions have childrens' and education programs, populist programs (IE; MSO+Dr Who), audience development initiatives and social inclusion programs all aimed in part as broadening the audience and increasing social inclusion.

Where I get a little disheartened however is when I see Arts organisations with little interest in reaching beyond their tidy subsidised little niche. I've seen this recently with some symphony orchestra programming and it used to be the case with some opera companies and it definitely is still very much in vogue with certain theatre companies.

Without naming names a few years ago someone plying one of the above genres outlined their show show programming rationale to a small group of marketers, it went something like Blockbuster/Old-favourite-for-hard-core-fans/Obscure-stretch-program-probably-for-the-AD/Conductor's-benefit. So really in a three show season 66% percent of the programming was designed to really only appeal to hard core genre lovers. Now I know you have little flexibility in a three show season but this seemed to me to have a slightly skewed balance.

The problem I'm outlining is a particular one for those that ply what I define as heritage art forms (Boy am I gunna get in trouble for this!), but that means opera, ballet, Shakespearean and classical music, art forms where the biggest markets are for works that are very old and very well known "...and don't you dare to anything 'funny' with it". Quite simply because the repertoire is limited and the desire for the new amongst the core patrons is not just low but in some cases assertively negative.

So I've established that a lot of performing arts appeals to wealthy, educated white folk. OK no rocket science going on here then. Now, couple that with the adherence to the subscription season pricing model that ensures that the wealthiest patrons also are the ones that pay the lowest price for their ticket. I'm sorry what? Our wealthiest, most passionate patrons are paying the least? I thought us artsy types were into social justice?

Ahh so now the heading starts to make sense. To me the aligning of conservative programming, lack of audience development effort, subs season pricing and government support all lead to one summation - cultural welfare for the rich. Pure and simple. And it's not just wrong, its offensive.

And what's more telling is that decision makers are waking up to this; participation, social inclusiveness, diversity, these are all the current buzzwords in arts policy, but we need to take it further, it is now not enough for these to be satellite programs done to tick boxes, these have to move to being the main game. Otherwise what are we here for? How do we justify the public money?

The best thing I've read this year is this, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/why-opera-australia-needs-to-change/story-fn9n9z9n-1226183568035, Lyndon Terracini's 2011 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address, in it he says it is not acceptable for a company taking $20 million in public money to continue to play to a small elitist club, and talks about the efforts of Opera Australia through it's touring arm Oz Opera (not specifically named) to reach as many people as possible up to 500,000.

So there you have it Opera perhaps the most conservative of all art forms is embracing change and recognising that they no longer have a God given right to take government money to appeal to a tiny elitist clique. It's time the rest of us moved to before someone moves for us.

Why Mazda's Zoom Zoom Zoom is the best marketing tagline ever

I love cars. I mean I really love cars. I remember the night that Dad took my brother and I into town for the local launch of the new 1988 EA Ford Falcon. From then on I was hooked, I'd borrow Wheels magazine from the library every month and read every word and state including the spec sheet at the back. And although I now buy my own, I still do!

Anyway I paused to think recently about Mazda's Zoom Zoom Zoom catch cry. They've been using it since 2000 and show no signs of getting tired of it and I think that's because it's not just good, but its great. As far as tag lines go its one of the best ever.

But why? Firstly it taps into an innate human emotion, that feeling of freedom and movement, when children run around a park with gay abandon, the feeling you get when your dad picks you up and spins you through the air, riding a push bike down a hill and of course zooming your toy cars around the room.

But more than that Mazda haven't just tapped into this feeling with their customers, they have tapped into it with their entire company, from the CEO, to product engineers, to marketers and sales staff they all embody the Zoom Zoom philosophy.

I know this because I read what the product engineers and designers say at vehicle launches, it's all about quick steering, styling that conveys movement, engines that are quick to respond to to throttle inputs and lightness. They say things like "We could have done that but then it wouldn't have been Zoom Zoom". They have literally taken the essence of Zoom Zoom and put it on the road.

And now in changing times when other car makers are pursuing small capacity, low boost turbo engines to improve economy and emissions, Mazda are saying NO, lets find another way, low-boost turbos aren't Zoom Zoom, not responsive enough they say, so what do their engineers do? The go away and invent Skyactiv a part by part re-design of the old fashioned non-turbo internal combustion engine and transmission, seeking lightness and efficiency gains with every micrometre. With the last MX5 they even weighed the rear view mirror and made a handful of grams lighter!

You can even see Zoom Zoom at work in the things that Mazda HAVEN'T been good at recently (but are fixing) - road noise, ride refinement and interior quality. Why haven't they been good at these things? Because they aren't Zoom Zoom, soft touch plastics don't make a car any more Zoom Zoom than hard ones!

So that's to me why Zoom Zoom is the best tagline ever, because it truly means something, its inherent in all of us, the thrill of movement, the thrill of freedom and no one feels this more than the people who work at Mazda all the way to the top.

The lesson for other marketers? Search for your organisation's fundamental truth, its fundamental human reason for being, express it well and then make sure that your whole company embraces it so that it shows up in the product.

OH and results? Mazda since 2000 has developed one of the most critically acclaimed car model ranges on sale today and the Mazda 3 has just become the first imported car to top Australian sales charts since the 1920's. Seems lots of other people relate to Zoom Zoom too.

Arts Marketers and the glass ceiling

Sorry for the delay in posts but its Christmas and Summer and real life has a way of intruding into one's blogging activities.

This is an article that has troubled me for a little while, mainly because it's difficult to write about without sounding like a whinger, but it is an idea that I believe is worth exploring and it certainly isn't confined to the Arts. Many industries exhibit the same behaviour, the practice whereby accountants, lawyers and product engineers and even sales execs seem to have better luck than marketers when it comes to landing themselves in the big chair - CEO and (in the arts) Artistic Director, ie the Boss Boss or the Product Boss.

Heck! In many arts organisations the Marketing Manager doesn't even get a say in programming decisions at all, it's simply handed down and we are told "Sell monkey-boy sell!". Luckily this is not the case at my current place of employment!

In my decade in the arts business, I have worked for and with Director's, CEO's, AD's and Programming Managers that come from acting, directing, stage designing, back stage, venue hire and general arts administration but only once have I reported to or worked with a manager who's main claim to fame prior to assuming the top job was as a Marketing Manager, although he's done heaps of other stuff too. (Simon Hinton, Merrigong - this is you!)

Now luckily for my argument he's a successful CEO but perhaps surprisingly for some, but not to me, his main strength in my eyes is as a programmer. Pretty much everything I learnt about good arts programming I learnt from him. One year he programmed the MacBeth meets The Simpsons show,  MacHomer, this is classic marketing strategy, give people who might never want to see Shakespeare an irresistible lure into the art form, once you have them you then have a list to mine to encourage more artistic purchases and engagement. It's like Neil Perry and Stefano di Pieri opening bistros as an entrée to their fine dining restaurant experience's. You end up having such a good time that you promise yourself to try the posh one next time. Its also a programming decision that many classically trained AD's would run a mile from.

Now its obvious to me that an arts organisation would benefit from a marketing trained CEO or General Manager - they know how to project manage, lead teams, stick to tight budgets with looming deadlines, deal with pressure, work directly with artists and communicate. Yet still the attitude seems to exist that you need to  come from either serious arts admin or backstage in order to do this job. (I might also ad that talented Box Office Managers and Front of House Managers rarely get the chance to rise beyond their ranks either). For me it beggars belief.

Now where it gets really controversial is when you say "Can an experienced arts marketer be an effective Artistic Director?"

Once upon a time I myself would have said no, that was when theatre companies all ran ensembles of actors and made pretty much all their shows in-house, with the AD directing most of the plays. Recently the trend however has seen companies of actors dissolve and theatre companies filling their season with co-productions and bought in works, an AD these days is much more of a curator than a direct theatre maker. And of course venues rarely if ever make an work from scratch it's all about selecting ready made work. Melbourne Theatre Company has taken the step of employing some most well known as a Festival Director in Brett Sheehy, pretty much heralding the fact that they too agree that the role of AD is much more curatorial than it is hands-on artistic.

Now to my mind what an AD really needs to know is A. Their Audience and B. Their Brand, who better within  the arts but a talented and trained marketer to do this? Some of the best AD's have been theatre makers who know these things intuitively. Sheehy follows Simon Phillips, a theatre maker of international renown and one who really knew his audience and programmed accordingly. Now proponents against my hypothesis might argue that all a marketer would do is program safe sell-able product, not true, they might if your brand was safe and sellable, but if your brand was defined as risk taking, they would program accordingly. Also marketers by their very nature as risk takers so you would see this reflected in their programming.

Now as far as I know you can't go to NIDA and study programming, you kind of become one by pursuing other professions and hope do them well enough for someone to give you the chance to program. Because of this people like to promote it as kind of a black art, it's not, its really simple, look at what has sold well in the past and give people more of that sort of thing, look at your brand values and company vision and insert some product that reflects that, then with one show present your own personal favourite.

Now you could say that one needs training of some sort in the dramatic arts in order to be able to assess quality and artistic merit, possibly true, but then just as a good AD or CEO should listen to the expert advice of his marketer, as good marketing trained AD or CEO should listen to the advice of there trained internal experts.

Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Am I right is there a ceiling beyond which certain types of arts industry professional are a\rarely able to break through? Can you think of examples where marketers have made the top level of management in the arts? Does the AD always have to be a trained theatre-maker of some sort? Why is it that marketers seem unable to rise to the top jobs in the arts biz?

Anyhow would love to hear your thoughts.

Regards

Ricky