Americans for the Arts

Chad Bauman

When I joined Arena Stage in 2007, I came to my new job with a couple of preconceived notions about subscriptions. Perhaps it was in part a reflection that I am on the Generation X/Millennial cusp, but I was certain that the subscription model was outdated and ineffective.

Many mature organizations that had developed their business models on subscriptions were seeing significant declines in subscriber numbers, and were literally caught between a rock and a hard place -- should they dump their subscription model and leap into the unknown, or keep putting band aids on a failing and timeworn strategy? Reports from major performing arts organizations at the time seemed to indicate a trend of declining returns, forcing a feeling that immediate change to a staple in our business model could be warranted.

In early 2008, Arena Stage along with a few other League of Resident Theatres members, began to test subscription alternatives in focus groups. In doing so, I was absolutely certain that the results would show at least one, if not several, attractive alternatives to subscriptions. I was wrong.

Drew McManus

Regardless if you're a client, consultant, or vendor you've been on one side or the other of this perfectly reasonable sounding question:

"Do you have any success stories or case studies on how your service produced a positive result?"

A typical response looks something like this:

"Why yes, after implementing Technology-X, Arts Organization Y experienced a 15 percent increase in single ticket sales in the first year alone. Arts Organization Z experienced a 23 percent increase over two years and a 12 percent jump in the number of annual fund donors."

Naturally, arts organizations want to know how a product or service produced a positive result but in an environment filled with pressures and problems, the decision making process can get cut a bit too short and decisions end up getting influenced by vendor provided statistics more than they should.

Ron Evans

Let's face it. Arts marketing and technology planning can be overwhelming at times. Especially for folks who are new to it.

I recently taught a class about self-marketing online, to a group of individual artists in San Francisco. They were all fired up about technology; it was awesome to see. But a lot of them didn't have a plan, and because of this, they didn't have consistent activities they could measure over time.

The effect was that that they were getting really frustrated chasing the next “silver bullet” and not finding any sort of results or satisfaction.

I can see how that can be really frustrating (especially for an individual artist with no staff to help). So we spent some time talking about creating a simple online marketing plan, and most importantly, establishing various behavior modification techniques to help them stick to a consistent marketing schedule.

I know many of you will have heard of S.M.A.R.T. Goals (hey everyone, did you know that S.M.A.R.T has been expanded to S.M.A.R.T.E.R?). This format is an excellent one for setting priorities so that you can get rid of the stuff that's not SMART(ER) and focus on the stuff that is.

Givenik, a service affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters, connects charities and Broadway theatergoers. When theatergoers buy tickets through Givenik.com, they elect to contribute five percent of the ticket sale to a charity of their choice. Charities benefit through revenue earned on ticket sales. Broadway shows benefit through the attention and goodwill generated when Givenik is promoted to a charity’s supporters.

For Givenik to be successful, it must appeal to all three audiences: charities, shows, and theatergoers. Charities must agree to participate in Givenik and promote it to their supporters. Shows must agree to sacrifice a portion of their ticket revenue. Theatergoers must be aware of the service and what shows and charities are available on it. Social media is particularly well-suited for solving problems like ours by enabling us to connect all three audiences in a cost-effective way.

We primarily use Facebook and Twitter with a Givenik brand user. Our principle strategy is to connect charities, shows and their supporters to us and to each other via service posts.

Show fans become charity fans, charity fans become show fans, and everybody becomes Givenik fans. There is nothing fancy here; this is Social Media 101.

We try to remain engaged in the chatter in both the nonprofit and Broadway worlds and contribute to the conversation wherever we can.

Sam Horn

During a recent Win Buy-In: Get Anyone Intrigued in Anything in 60 Seconds workshop I gave in Europe, a participant raised his hand and asked, “What can we do if we anticipate our decision-maker is going to say no? Do you have a way to turn that into a yes?”

Me: “Certainly. What do you have in mind?”

Participant: “Well, my son is on a traveling soccer team. We just hired a professional player to coach his team and we need to raise money for his salary.”

Me: “So, how are you planning to do that?’

Participant: “Well, we’re going to approach our local bookstore, but we know the owner gets hit up for donations all the time.”

Me: “Good for you. You’re already half way to winning buy-in because you’ve already put yourself in the shoes of your decision-maker and read his mind. Make it easy for him to say yes."

Me: "Ironically, the key to getting a yes is to ask yourself, ‘Why will they say no?'"

Sara Billmann

I’ve been thinking a lot about audience lately, and how we often we fall into the trap of marketing our performances TO certain audiences rather than thinking about what kind of audience experience we can design to attract the ‘right’ audience for the work that we’re presenting.

It’s a very subtle shift in thinking, but one that I’m starting to think can have a big impact on the work we do.

As a presenter, my involvement in the creation of any given work is basically non-existent. While I’m part of the curatorial team that puts together each season for our audiences, I seldom see the work that we present in advance and rely heavily on the press kit, recordings, and YouTube videos to gain a real understanding of the artists we present (ironic, isn’t it, that while we tout the importance of the live performance experience, we rely on digital media to understand it ourselves).

For most performances, that method works just fine – I either have past experience with an artist, or it is a relatively straightforward performance, and I have easy access to understanding the program and the artists.