What if it ain't what you think it is?

Got a piece of info during a workshop today that really gave me something to think about . . .

There was an opera company trying to figure out why their customers come to the shows.  They hired an outside marketing firm to do some research on the issue.

Before starting their research, the marketing firm asked the opera staff why THEY think people come to the shows.  They gave answers like:

1.  The reputation of the opera

2.  The singers in the piece

3.  The composer

Then the research starts.  Here are the reasons the AUDIENCE gave about why the come to the opera.

1.  Because it is date night and they want to do something romantic

2.  Because they want to appear classy and cultured

Can you see the massive gap between why the artistic organization thought people came to the show and why they actually end up coming?

That's one part of the story . . . here is the second.

I didn't get a chance to ask, but I wonder what the opera did with that info when they got it?

It wouldn't shock me if they took that vital info about the audience and didn't do a damn thing with it.

I love the arts.  And I love artistic organizations. 

But one of the things that drive me crazy about a few of them is their stubborn insistence that all their advertising and promotion be about them as artists (or about the director or whatever) instead of being about why the audience should be a part of the event.

For the opera in the situation above to take full advantage of the audience feedback they would have to be willing to adjust programming, advertising, etc. to reflect the primary audience benefit.

Will they do it if it means losing some of their artistic spotlight?

Would your organization do it?

Comments

[Chris Casquilho]

The New York Philharmonic did a great bit of related research on their website use. They found that they had organized the information departmentally from the inside out. When they polled their audiences, they found that the audience wanted two things from the site: 1. Schedule; 2. Reservations. That was it. Everything else was fluff.

They did rebuild the site with that in mind, but it makes me think how much of our marketing is like that, and how little we do to change it.