Category Archives: performing arts

Value of Presenting

The Value of Presenting site launched today

With this project, performing arts presenters are embarking on a reflective journey to define their role as part of the creative chain, in communities and in society. Today’s launch extends our work  into the digital realm. I hope the site turns into an active dialogue and collaboration space for people who present live performing arts in Canada, everyone they work with and anyone who is interested in the performing arts.

 

The Value of Presenting Site

This public dialogue has the great potential to advance a vibrant and active performing arts landscape for years to come.

The site wants to be shared: using a highly customized WordPress set up, we have added Twitter and Facebook integration, in particular for account creation but also sharing back to those platforms, a bilingual interface to enhance dialogue across languages, a blog post RSS feed, of course, a Twitter roll – we are using #ArtsPresenting and #DiffusionArts as study specific hash tags. There are a pair of initial discussion topics ready for discussion – come check out the project.

A big thanks to Mike of  Little m Design for his superb and awesomely timely technical implementation of the site.

Encourage or stifling Audience participation

I stumbled upon this worthwhile blog post musing by a mid-western orchestra musician – via Orchestra Canada’s Facebook presence. The discussion in the symphonic world continues unresolved.

For some time I have wondered about the desire for audience participation, audience loyalty, audience engagement that does not go beyond what an orchestra/ music director/ musician might want from that audience. That is that it appears as though the concepts of participation, engagement, loyalty are great as long as they are delivered on the orchestra’s terms rather than on a give a take between audience and orchestra.

I suspect that the habits, the deference, the stifling of the audience’s participation that classical music performance has earned a reputation for are difficult to sell to a savvy, media-enriched and fully empowered, performing arts attending audience of Gen Xers (the oldest Gen Xers are about 45 now). This is an independent generation; they create and engage but not in one-way sort of set up. They are sophisticated consumers as consumers; whether they know much about the classics is not what it’s about.

A line from a piece I wrote 5 years ago while assembling generational profiles to inform marketing decisions jumped out at me again: “Gen Xers tend to look to be entertained in a friendly atmosphere rather than simply accepting others authority and doing as they are told without understanding why.”

They know they can spend their 24 hours every day in ways they find highly rewarding and appealing without being told when to clap, when to be quiet, when to be in awe, when to engage. What will it take for classical music to break through its well-earned reputation that somehow places the service to the music above the service to the audience?

Enriqueta Ulloa – Bolivian superstar delivers awesome performance

While in La Paz, Bolivia last November, we were invited to a concert by Enriqueta Ulloa. We had never heard of her, as her fame hasn’t traveled north. We quickly learned, that she is a superstar: whenever we mentioned having been to this concert, Bolivians were so excited and started talking about her music, inspired by the traditional sounds and songs of the regions of Bolivia, as truly important and an important ambassador for Bolivian culture – and they were amazed that we even knew to go.

Two posters in contrast. She’s so famous her image is all the
advertising needed.

That night she was celebrating 35 years on stage with back-to-back concerts! I’ve never seen a crowd so into every moment of a performance. Handkerchiefs twirling, clapping in the right rhythms and singing every song. The energy was incredibly joyous, the connection between artist and audience immediate, the love mutual. We were quickly swept up in this awesome vibe. This evening left me with one of the most powerful performing arts experiences I’ve had.

The performance included several numbers featuring traditional dance, some highlighting the band and others featuring the singer and of course costume changes and a selection of photos and videos from her long career (with the most awkward production set up but it just didn’t matter – these were iconic images to many in the audience). As for the crowd: there were old people and children, there were powerful people and regular folks, there were men and women, there were city people and country people, those descended from Spanish blood and indigenous people – and there was one shared, joyous, Bolivian experience. An amazing moment in a country that feels so much in transition.

We were almost shocked at the cost of tickets: 30 Bolivianos each ($4.50) for 2nd row seats! By North American standards that’s incredible – less so by Bolivian standards but still a relatively easy ticket to buy.

Scene before the doors opened.
The house was sold out and the
excitement obvious.
The Municipal Theatre in La Paz dates to 1845; old,
beautiful, great vibe.

Here are a couple of Youtube videos for diversion and enjoyment.

Do you pay someone so you can buy from them?

Click to enlarge view.

I just bought some tickets to a Melissa Etheridge concert. It should be great – we are excited about seeing here live again.

Because the online ticket seller adds fees like a “convenience fee” – basically a charge for the privilege of buying the tickets – I went to the box office in person.

For me all the “convenience” of buying online disappears when it adds $20 to the ticket price. And that’s not all. If I were to buy them online I’d have to choose the delivery method: If I want to be sure to get them delivered, it’s another $14.

Sure, I can pick them up at the venue or I can get them by regular mail (i.e. no guaranteed delivery) without additional  charge.  But here the “convenience” of buying online falls apart: I still need to leave my house and walk into a physical venue. Today, there should be a free option to download and print the e-ticket, just like with airlines, and some other ticket sellers.

My actual purchase cost me $197.00. Buying it online would have cost $231.00
(Well, arguably only $217 if I pick them up in person; so I went to buy them and pick them up in person at the same time and leave $20 – or $34 depending how you look at it – in my pocket for another performance.)

Nonetheless, this made me ponder other industries where the customer has to first pay for the pleasure of buying something.  I’ve come up with:

  • Credit cards – even though everyone has a “no fees” option these days, cards with fees are also still very common.
  • CostCo membership – the annual membership fee gives customers access to amazingly low prices on all kinds of goods.
  • Investing in mutual funds. The transaction fees are usually well hidden – OK, there’s a total lack of transparency. And there is a thing called MERs and they do cost you, also quite hidden from view.

Consumers pushed the credit card industry to include no-fee-cards in their portfolios. Given that many credit cards continue to charge around 20% interest on any balance, you’d think that’s plenty to profit from.

CostCo on the other hand appears to have found a working formula where the value proposition works really well. The fee represents a fair exchange, and might well keep CostCo in business. The whole business model is fascinating and it has made CostCo one of the largest retailers in the world.

As for mutual fund transaction fees, front-loads, no-loads and MERs – my feeling is transparency should be a given in all financial transactions – and I am amazed this has not been assured as yet.

Where else do you pay in order to make a purchase? And what’s the experience like? Does it alienate or bring you closer to the company?

An Insight Sets the Stage

Here are a couple of quick updates on work I’ve been doing: The Audience Development Strategy’s implementation by the NAC Orchestra continues to deliver excellent business results: In 2007 (year 1 of the strategy), we delivered the best campaign results in 19 years and exceeded several key targets. The 2008 campaign delivered the best results in 20 years.

The true test of a strategy cannot be merely success in its first year, when everyone is engaged, learning and changing. Keeping the momentum up to deliver to the increasingly ambitious targets in year 2 and looking toward the ever higher goals in each of the next 3 years is where the strategy and its implementation are tested. Especially important – as much of the media promotes a foreboding sense of apprehension about the unfolding global and Canadian recession – this strategy is built on the kind of deep audience insights that will help the Orchestra meet the challenges ahead.

On a similar note, I have been working with the NAC team on building a marketing strategy for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards gala. Again, the rigorous, multi-faceted analysis phase which leveraged what we have learned about local audiences and expanded on that knowledge through additional research, is yielding the building blocks for an effective, multi-year, audience-centred strategy.

This latest project has been leading me to deepen the work on an insight about the tension between familiarity and discovery in buying decisions. It says that in order to buy performing arts experiences, the audience looks for things they are familiar with, but these are not necessarily the elements that will make the event memorable -which looks to be important to the repeat purchase decision. To be memorable, it has to deliver enough surprise and discovery. That means, if the marketing (or possibly the art) neglects the need for familiar touchpoints for a local audience, it can become exceedingly difficult to succeed in terms of marketing and sales.

The recent literature on neuroscience research has been interesting and may turn out to be enlightening – possibly helping to resolve this tension. In future posts I intent to explore these concepts further as I believe they are at the core of the marketing challenges faced in a world where the means of production and distribution are not only readily available but also cheap and global for all to use. Competition has to be thought of far more broadly now.