Category Archives: performing arts

“How can I sell tickets using Twitter?”

Have you ever heard someone ask: “How can I sell tickets using Twitter?” or “I have a lot of Facebook fans but very few seem to buy tickets to my events. I don’t think Facebook works for me.”

I have puzzled over such statements; I couldn’t understand why anyone would measure these social media platforms by their capacity to achieve direct sales  — whether of tickets or widgets or gadgets.

In my mind, social media were, well, social.

Social means relationships. Social means conversation – mostly consumer to consumer, but also consumer to brand. Social means mutual respect. Social might mean recommendation. Social can mean someone buys something based – at least in part – on a social network interaction. But it all starts with authentic relationships, it’s like being friends in the so-called real world.

Off I went looking for organizations using social media in exemplary ways, especially in the performing arts presenting field. This experiment is part of the Value of Presenting Study we have been working on.

The experiment: Interview by Twitter 
The topic: The use of social media and online technology in your performing arts organization.
The interviewees: Two arts presenters (read the transcripts here: Shell Theatre and the National Arts Centre) who use social media in exemplary ways and an agent who does, too.

Key findings:

  1. Social media are about building relationships
  2. There are other ways to sell tickets
  3. Audiences engaged: mostly the 30 to 55 year-old crowd rather than “young people”, even though one interviewees said they find Facebook and txt works with a Students Rush tickets program;
  4. Hone your authentic voice
  5. Experiment to see what works for your organization

It’s fun to experiment with trying to help more people see what the strategic potential of social media in the performing arts presenting sector could be, by doing. In this case, it’s not in direct sales measured by revenue, but in building relationships measured by quality of relationships, engagement and championship of the brand. It is not an old-style transactional relationship, but one that is mutually enriching, extends beyond attendance, and requires new, timely interactions. And they are a lot more public.

The importance of voice is a fascinating topic in the concise world of social networks. (As these interviews show, short texts can be extremely good at making clear points and sharing salient information.) Voice is a key brand attribute that requires honing and calibration.

I think the adoption of social media shifts an organization’s brand into a new realm. As such, an evaluation  of  what an organization stands for and how it is and behaves in its world (in short an evaluation of market relevance), may well be an essential step toward embracing such contemporary marketing methods.

Strategic move lies at heart of value innovation

In Blue Ocean Strategy W. ChanKim and Renee Mauborgne posit that, “the strategic move, and not the company or the industry, is the right unit of analysis for explaining the creation of blue oceans and sustained high performance.” They then define a strategic move as “a set of managerial actions and decisions involved in making a major market-creating business offering.”

I have started an exploration in the performing arts on this blog this month. I have begun to contemplate the landscape, or as they say the “strategy canvas”,  to learn about the skills, expertise, assets of the performing arts that can be leveraged to create new wide-open spaces for high performance. And to explore what elements might need to be added or increased in order to create a new kind of success.

NAC musicians ‘gave up their clothes for their instruments’

Awesome!

That was the Ottawa Citizen headline on the story about a NAC Orchestra Atlantic tour concert in Charlottetown, PEI. CBC radio covered the story repeatedly through the day, even giving top of the news billing.

I wonder, if the Newfoundland ferry had not broken down, stranding instruments and performance clothes, how many Canadians would have been exposed to the NAC Orchestra even being on tour?

This concert sounded like an awesome experience for an appreciative audience. Looking at the performance images on Facebook of energized, passionate musicians in normal clothes, I can’t help but think what a great brand builder this could be: The people’s orchestra.

In any case, congratulations to the musicians, administrators and managers who handled this logistics adventure with such aplomb and got the media story of the tour in the process.

Competitive factors: Live Performing Arts

The approach to competition and how we understand competitive factors is key to creating uncontested new market spaces. Conventionally, competition is understood to be within a sector: an airline competes against other airlines, a circus competes against other circuses, a hotel chain against other hotels. Each organization tries to differentiate itself in its market space, to build a recognized brand, to establish a value position that avoids lowest price competition. Competitive benchmarking is done against similar organizations, from tracking market share to share of wallet to brand mapping and intent-to-purchase studies.

Importantly, blue oceans – uncontested market spaces – are not found by benchmarking inside that competitive set.

Rather, they are about a leap in value for the customer and the organization. Value innovation. It’s not merely about creating value, often incremental, or about pioneering innovation, often on the bleeding edge where others may well reap the greatest rewards. It is a differently grounded strategic mindset that aligns innovation and value.

Competitive factors for the performing arts

Imagine: You are a not-for-profit venue with a 250-seat theatre in Toronto that presents new work and existing work in new ways. How about if you are a commercial 1,200-seat theatre with long runs of well-known shows? Does one compete against the other in a meaningful way?

Imagine: You rent a community hall in rural Saskatchewan and present music acts a few times a year. Or you are an independent (no label behind you) musician with your tracks for sale online, an active YouTube and/or Vimeo channel and you are working the house concert and club circuit to build your fan base? Where does your competition come from?

I’ve heard references to there being a  “market glut” in the performing arts in Canada. No doubt, there are a lot more theatres, companies and artists making a living – or some of their living – by creating, producing and presenting performing arts. Yet, as long as attendance at performing arts events remains the top indicator for future attendance, I propose that this sector is not a zero sum industry where the ticket purchase is simply shifted from one theatre or one performer to another.

Rather, I propose that many significant competitive factors come from outside the performing arts sector where people can reap similar benefits through a wide variety of activities. Here is a thought piece that considers some of these competitors:

Outside COMPETITORS
Benefits for customer
Performing arts corresponding offer to customers
Movie theatres
Great stories, star-powered, escape to the movies, big sound, big screen, pop culture, celebrity culture
Great stories, live action, connections with live stars, star power, be an insider, behind the scenes, participate in creating the experience
Home entertainment
High quality in comfort of your own home and sound system. Anytime entertainment and discovery.
Live action, social connection, common experience, participation, discover new worlds and ideas
Museums
Hands-on discovery and exploration. We bring the world to you. Learn about who you are and where you come from.
“Times and Life”: Discover your world anew through music; soundscapes of our history, tell stories about who we are and what makes us so
Professional sports
Action, tribal connection, heroes, victory, competition
Get the inside track on peak performance. Access to artists. Backstage tours. Process of creating winning performances. Community connection.
Spas
Pamper yourself. Wellness, stress reduction, spiritual connection, body connection
Come home to the Symphony.
Escape to the Symphony. Refresh your mind, body and spirit at your Symphony.
Cosmetic treatment
Improve self-image, de-stress, personal fulfillment, anti-aging
Come as you are – and be changed forever by the music, the show, the experience.
Restaurants
Friends. Food. Social. In crowd.
Socialize. Social capital. See and be seen. Entertain your friends at the symphony. Community making. Mix food, drink and entertainment
Video games, Xbox, PS, Wii
Participate. Action. Play. Social. Relax.
Feel it live. Real-world magic. Participatory arts experiences. Community building.

By no means is this table complete or even “correct”. It simply hopes to spark different ways to consider competition.

Today, we also have to content with the fact that a common answer to “if you had a free evening tonight what would you do” has become “sleep.”

A bold, new arts brand: Ottawa Storytellers

We recently did some research and strategy work with Ottawa Storytellers (OST). Their goal was to further build on their existing audience with a focus on cultivating a younger, more culturally diverse audience.

With storytelling the challenge is two-fold: 1) many people do not think of storytelling as a professional, adult performing art; and 2) event promotion has not built broad-based trust and credibility in organizations producing or presenting storytelling events.

The challenge we faced was that OST needed to build much greater recognition for itself as a credible and trustworthy source of quality performing arts/ storytelling events and for storytelling as a bona fide professional art form with every communication touch point. At the same time, it needed to “sell” storytelling series or individual performances, without being encumbered by organization-level messaging.

Often in event-based marketing – and when marketing budgets are relatively small – there is little leverage or recognition accruing back to the arts presenter, except among the most committed audiences. That in turn creates long-term liabilities like needing to continually invest in one-off marketing of events, rather than being able to benefit over time from a mother brand approach where recognition, trust and credibility reside with the presenter, not only a specific artist/event. Such an approach creates all kinds of benefits such as more easily presenting new artists through reducing box office risk and more effective marketing. It was also important to understand that when growing an audience is the central goal then the strategy cannot rely on largely list-based marketing efforts alone.

Central Strategy: Mother Brand

That is why a central part of our strategy called for a new branding approach that would be cohesive, bold, contemporary, intelligent, easily structured and flexible in application, welcoming and inviting to audiences, and give weight to OST (this is where the relationship with the audience gets built) while also giving strong presence to show-specific information (which is where OST fulfills its artistic mission).

In short, OST needed to take its place at the heart of its marketing. It would be the mother brand from which all series and events would flow.

In our analysis, we had found the OST logo and tagline were already strong and we recommended keeping both. We found that many of their marketing and communications tactics including much of their online efforts were well conceived and executed. The visual branding, on the other hand, was less effective, too complex and hard to adapt. Similarly, there was, at times, no clear hierarchy of messages evident in marketing materials and the oft-observed “too much text, which ends up saying very little to anyone” was also sometimes an issue.

Creative Brief: Define Audience Using Psychographics

By defining the audience, we were able to create a target that felt real. We used a psychographic composite (values, beliefs, generation-based experiences), rather than just relying on demographic elements (age, income, etc) which are less meaningful, and certainly much less so in terms of creative direction.

OST has just launched its new web site which features its new branding approach. I think they did an excellent job translating the strategic direction into an effective brand architecture.

What do you think?

Thank you to OST for agreeing to share the back story on its new strategy initiatives.

The Value of History

The Value of Presenting Study is  aimed at helping to shape the future for performing arts presentation. We could just look forward to establish that vision. It seems human nature to go from today to tomorrow; maybe that’s because we are best suited to use ourselves as the reference point from which to understand the world. However, in my view, a full understanding requires knowing something about the evolution that got us to today. It serves to avoid myopia and to build on where we have come from rather than inadvertently move backwards. (It’s possible!)

It’s good to understand the genesis of Canada’s very own cultural life to help it move forward in the next decade or so. Nation-building, international relations, identity-formation and export are all underlying Canadian cultural policy. Public funding of creative expression also holds all sorts of tension points, from discussions about “what is art” to establishing funding priorities.

One aspect of our team’s work has been to collect a historic overview, starting from the earliest times in Canada as we know it today. The document is a work in progress (if you have things to add, please add  comments on the project site); we will update this file over the next few weeks with some of the more recent evolution we have gained in interviews and contributions from people who have been part of the sector for many years.

Literature review for review

We have posted a concise review of literature on the value and impact of performing arts presentation created to help see the landscape for the Value of Presenting Study.

What we find, to the most part, is that the research is focussed on performing arts in general terms and does not specifically address the function of the performing arts presenter. Still, there is some excellent work in existence that shows the role of the arts in our lives. As this project offers opportunity for public dialogue, anyone interested is invited to participate.

In the document section of that site we have started to collect links to the relevant literature. The value of the arts and their contribution to Canadian economy and society is beyond doubt, even though attacks on the creative, cultural sector persist in some corners.