Here's an experiment for you.
Break out a sheet of paper and rank the top 10 arts events/exhibitions/plays/whatever that you saw this year.
Rank them in terms of "quality", however you define the term.
I'll wait.
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I'm betting you had a pretty easy time listing the worst thing you saw this year and the best thing.
You probably could even figure out the second best and worst thing.
But when it came down to figuring out slots 3-8 I'm guessing things got a lot harder.
I'll even wager that there wasn't much difference in quality between those six events. I'm betting I could swap the 4th slot for the 7th slot and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
So what we have is two extremes and then a lot of grey in the middle.
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You now understand the world a consumer sees when she is exposed to most arts marketing.
Most arts marketing uses "artistic quality" as a key part of why that person should see the work.
But to the average consumer, artistic quality is a meaningless phrase.
She knows the stuff her friends (or the local arts critic) said she absolutely must see. She knows the stuff she should avoid at all cost. She knows the extremes.
Everything else is grey.
That's why things like community building, strong customer service, providing useful content (and context) to people, are so important.
Those are things that can be leveraged in your marketing.
Those are the sorts of things that can cut through the grey and actually get your marketing (and ultimately your work) noticed.
The good news is that these sort of distinctions can be created. Tomorrow I'll give you an example of a company who created a distinction, marketed it strong and benefited from it.
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