The Mission Paradox Blog

Universal Problems

If all goes as planned, four weeks from now I'll be flying to Portugal to do two marketing workshops with artists in Lisbon and Porto.  When I first got the invite, I did the natural thing:  

I wondered if it was all a hoax.  

Once it became clear that this legit I did the second natural thing:

I wondered what the hell I was going to say to them.

Obviously this isn't my first rodeo in terms of doing marketing workshops for artists.  You may heard that I'm doing one next week but I was still concerned.

I got caught up the differences.  Different language, different culture.  Would we be able to relate to each other or would this be a week of words flying over heads?

So with the miracle of Skype I spoke with the event coordinators and asked the sort of questions I always ask before I get to work:

What's going on?

What problems do they have?

Then I listened.

You can guess what I heard.  Their problems are exactly like your problems (and mine).  They want to promote the value of art.  They have limited time, money and other resources but they want to effectively connect their art to an audience. The world they (and me, and you) live in is competitive and cluttered and they want to find a way to stand out.

The good news for me is solving those problems is right up my alley.  That makes me less nervous to take the trip.

The good news for you is that we all share the same problems.

Good news?  Yeah.  It is.  It's good news because if we all face the same problems then the solutions can come from anywhere and anyone.  We can study other artists, other organizations and other industries. We can learn from them and speed up our own learning curve.  There is tremendous opportunity in that. We just have to take advantage of it.

Universal problems.  Specific solutions.  Available to anyone.  That's a wonderful world.

 

Ebert's Choice

Roger Ebert looked at the tools almost all of us have, social media and the internet, and had a choice to make.

He could have used it the way many of us do.  He could have numbed himself out with relentless web searching.  He could have turned social media into a clearly self promotional tool.

Instead he used these tools to improve his craft, writing.  He not only talked about movies but he shared his passion for movies.  Sure he was a critic and thus was critical when he needed to be, but you could tell he loved the industry.

Plus, he was willing to move forward.  He was, at his heart, a newspaper man but as the industry he loved crumbled he didn't just whine.  He embraced what was coming.  He defied the idea that age is a barrier to embracing change.

In doing these things Robert made the leap from replaceable cog to artist.  He took his craft and used it to make the world a better place while still doing his "job" as a movie critic.

Roger went to his grave believing that the primary job we all have is to make the people around us a little bit happier.  He used the things that many of us see as simply "marketing tools" and elevated them in a way that delivered joy to people.

You didn't need to see the movies he reviewed to appreciate his art.  You didn't even need to like movies to connect with his worldview.  That was the point I was trying to make in my TedxBroadway talk.  Ebert offered gifts.  He knew that a word of encouragement to an aspiring writer could change everything.  He also knew that a well crafted bit of criticism could change an artist for the better.

But he didn't need to do any of that.  He chose to do that.  He chose to be an artist.

That's a choice we all have.

 

Every day is April Fools

Yesterday, everyone clearly had their guard up.  The more incredible the story was, the less likely they were to believe it.

Here's what you have to remember:

People are like that EVERY DAY, they just aren't as vocal about it.

That's whyt the most important marketing asset is trust.  

You can barely know how social media works.  If people believe what you say, then everything will work out.

You can leave typos in all of your marketing copy.  If people believe you are speaking with an authentic voice, then it can still get the job done.

It's fun, and easy, to talk about marketing tactics but if you don't have trust then the tactics are of little value.

You gain trust by learning how to promise and deliver.  You gain trust by creating marketing that respects the audience's time and intelligence.  You gain trust by being consistent over a real length of time.

Otherwise you're marketing will get treated like an April Fools joke, and that's not good for anyone.

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Reminder:  If you plan on being a part of the Gift Session this is the week to sign up.  We need to determine interest and order lunch.

 

The good old days . . .

 . . . never existed.

The days when people had fewer options for their time and attention were not better days for the arts. Easier days, maybe, but not better.

The days when you could market your work through a steady stream of paid advertising certainly made life simple, but not better.

In our world, a sense of longing for the past can be dangerous.  It implies both that the past was better and that the future is unbearable.

Neither of these things are true.

There is great opportunity ahead of us in the arts.

But if we keep clinging to what was we will never discover it.

 

 

Research, Observation and Arts Marketing

Here's my #1 rule when it comes to market research:

Never ask a question if you aren't willing to accept AND act upon the answer. This is a particularly relevant set of criteria for those of us in the arts.  Let me explain why through a recent conversation.  A few details have been changed:

Organization:  We want to know what our audience thinks about our work.

Me:  What if they come back and say they loved that big, splashy, expensive performance of Swan Lake you did?  What if they want to see more of that?

Organization:  We can't afford to do more of that, plus it would go against our mission.

Me:  So don't ask.

A good artist or arts organization can not and should not always give an audience what they want. That is what puts tension into the research process.

Research implies that you should just find out what people want and give it to them. In some cases that is true.  In others, it isn't.  It makes a lot of sense, for example, for you to ask your audience how they hear about your work and then consider adjusting your marketing plan.

It may make less sense to ask what people think about a particular artist.  What if they hate him or her?  Are you going to fire them?

If you aren't willing to accept and act, don't ask.

Here's another way of gathering information that can be particularly efficient and effective:

Observation.

Even the most savvy researcher or pollster understands that what people tell you can be inaccurate.  Think about how much money and time went into a getting an exact answer to a binary question like:  Who are you voting for to be President?

People can tell you anything, but what they do is the truth.

Some of the best information can be gathered by learning to watch people.  This is not a natural skill.  It can be very easy to go through life in your own head and not pay attention to what others do.  It takes some practice to really start noticing things.

Example:  I know an organization that actually managed to pull some sponsorship money out of a luxury car dealership.  This dealership had no formal giving program and had never given money to an arts nonprofit.

How did it happened?

A staff member was taking a smoke break in the parking lot and noticed a high number of luxury cars in the lot.  This pattern kept up over a few nights.  One day they took a photo of the lot and walked over to a friend who worked at a dealership.

They showed the photos and basically said "you want to promote your cars to luxury car buyers, here are a bunch of them, sponsor us and you'll get access to them"

Sold.

They noticed something.  They didn't make it happened.  They just noticed what was happening and tried to take advantage of it.

That's so much of what marketing is.  It's noticing the 100 interesting things that are happening around you and then trying to figure out how to tap into those things. This is also why box office staff, ushers and volunteers are so important.  They can be key observation points as long as they know that is a HUGE part of their job and that their observations will be taken seriously.

You want to be a more effective marketer?  Pay attention.  Observe.  It can lead to magical things.

Reminder:  The Gift Sessions, a live arts marketing workshop, is coming to Chicago on April 20.  Details here.  Early Bird deadline is midnight on Monday.  Use the promo code Paradox to save $5.

Very special things happen when a group of committed people come together to consider how to marketing can be used to connect art and audience.  I don't do this often.  Don't miss it.

 

Engagement Party

This week I'll be down in Philly at the Audience (R)Evolution Convening which is presented by The Theatre Communication Group (TCG).  The focus of the convening is audience engagement.  

One definition of engagement is emotional involvement or commitment.  It's a good definition because it raises two questions:

1.  To whom are the arts (particularly the nonprofit arts) committed?

2.  Is that level of commitment appropriate?

When I look at industries like theatre, classical music, dance or museums I see an industry that has overcommitted to one slice of the American demographic.  We all know how this slice, wealthy, well educated, older, white, etc.  But I think we also need to remember that there is nothing wrong with being any of those things.  

The issue is that we have take this group and over engaged them.  We expect the same demographic that allowed for the rise of the nonprofit, "professional", arts sector to be the group that sustains it.

We do this because it feels easier and safer to continue with this one relationship instead of building new ones.

Why go through the hard work of wrapping our institutions around new audiences? Let's just work this group until they die.

As with most things, however, the thing that feels safe is actually the most risky move of all.  There is a reason why smart industries bring in new blood.  Yes, the new blood brings in fresh ideas and energy.  Equally as important, they give a chance for the "old" blood to walk away and try new things.

I've always maintained that the nonprofit arts does to our existing audience (and our institutional funders) is simply unfair.  We basically tell them because of our inability, or unwillingness, to expand our base they are solely responsible for keeping the field alive.

To make matters worse, we scapegoat this audience.  How easy is for an artistic or executive leader to basically say "oh we would love to bring in audiences of color/younger audiences/whatever but you know this audience just will not let us."

I do wonder if we use our audience to mask our own institutional cowardice.  Easier to blame them versus blaming ourselves right?

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On the other side of the ledger we have a lack of commitment which often manifest itself in a lack of artistic programming that is designed to bring in new audiences.

When people ask my how my day job was able to come from a place that really wasn't welcoming to audiences of color to one that received awards for diversity I always start with the titles:

Since 2006 they include Fences, Flyin' West, Raisin, First Breeze of Summer, Wait Until Dark, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Caroline or Change, Spunk, Porgy and Bess, Jitney and Invisible Man.  Put it this way, between Jan. 2006 and today the theatre I work at has done about 30 productons.  Ten of them have featured artists of color in significant roles.  

That's commitment.

Is it perfect?  Nope.  Nothing is.  But it something that people can see and feel.  That matters.

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The other thing to consider is the urgency of the commitment.

Often, when I hear conversations about engaging new audiences, I sense a lack of urgency.  I see organizations talking as if they have plenty of time to figure this out. They see their existing audience as the levee that is going to hold back the tide of societal change.

But levees break.  Sometimes without warning.  And when they do, bad things can happen.

Even the most serious desire to bring in new audience will take time, so you don't really have any to waste.  It takes years to make people who were, for good reason, not comfortable with you feel at home.

Start now.

Start shifting your level of commitment.

You'll provide much needed relief to those who were overcommited and opportunity to the rest.

The difficulty of the task

What you are trying to do is damn near impossible.

You are trying to get people to leave their warm, comfortable, connected home and come to see a piece of art they have to experience, not control.

You are trying to get people to choose YOU in the midst of endless options.

The task is ridiculous.  It's stressful.  It would be easier not to bother.  It would be easier to just create and keep the work under a bushel.

It would be easier to close the theatre, shut the doors of the museum and put the orchestra out of business.  It's old.  It's outdated.  We leave in a tech world now.  We should just roll into the tar pits and let our bones be the memory.

So why fight?  Why try to move your industry forward?  

There are a few reasons why.  One big reason is that every industry is hard.  There is no stress free industry that has a clear path to the top.  You can close your gallery and open a coffee shop.  You still got problems.

So if every industry has challenges, why not embrace a world you are actually interested in?

It doesn't make your task any less difficult.

It just makes it worth doing.

The trap of the big idea

You can convince yourself that no idea is big enough, or ambitious enough to satisfy you.

You can convince yourself that you must get published by that big NYC publishing house to have "made it".

You can convince yourself that you must be on Broadway or in that big regional theatre to be considered a real actor.

It seems like a logical line of thinking.

But it can also be a trap.  A huge trap.  It can stop you from putting your most meaningful art into the world because you are busy seeking permission and a platform from others.  It can lead to a life where you put the power in the hands of everyone else instead of where the power belongs . . . in your hands.

Don't get me wrong, I love big ideas.  I also understand that big ideas often require help from a lot of other people.

But you shouldn't only have big art ideas.  You should also have small ideas.  You should have ideas and projects you can execute on your own or with a small team. No permission required.

Ideally those small projects will give you the leverage and credibility you need to pull off the big ideas.

But only if you start now.

Constant Rejection

Most of the time it doesn't work out.

The first book doesn't sell very well.  Neither does the second.

The people don't come to the show.

The music doesn't get a lot of downloads.

When people have a lot of options it means that each individual option will get picked less.

The solution is more art.

The question is how you can redesign your creative process to make the costs of interacting with the market cheaper?  

Instead of self publishing a novel, can you write a series of short stories to build a base?  Sure, most of the stories will be ignored but over time you can develop momentum?

Can you put a lot of "unfinished" songs online just to get a sense of how people are reacting to the work?

Can you workshop two or three plays at time?

Only the big, well established tv/film/theatre/publish institutions will have the luxury of rolling out a few things at a time and trying to "make them work".

And even they will not have that luxury for long.

The rest of us must become much more comfortable with producing more, getting it into the world quicker and then placing big financial bets when we have a sense that the marketing (also known as your audience) really wants it.

That's the new world.  Embrace it quickly.

 

What to do next

Figuring out what to do next is your real job.

It doesn't matter what your job title is.  It doesn't matter whether you work solo or with a team. Your real value is determined by your ability to look out into a murky, uncertain, future and make a decision about what to do next.

Are you considering all your options?

Are you sure?

Have your goals changed?  Do people know that your goals have changed?  Here's an example of what I mean by that.  About two years ago, I made the personal decision that I would no longer be motivated by simply selling art.  Deciding that was the easy part.  Explaining that decision to others and reassuring them that I hadn't gone insane was much more challenging.

But I knew that in order to deliver real long term value to my day job I had to stop being focused on the short term bottom line.  Instead I had to move my focus toward building the tools and infrastructure necessary to market the next 100 plays . . . not just the one happening this month.

That was my "what to do next".  Yours may be totally different.

Maybe you need to focus on short term revenue generation.

Maybe you need to step back and reattach with your artistic purpose.

Maybe you need to close your organization down.

Maybe you need to build one.

You have options.  You have tons of options.  

But you need to choose.  Of course making real decisions is tough.  You make yourself vulnerable.  You could be wrong.  Maybe people will shun you.  Maybe you'll lose your career over it.

But probably not.

In this chaotic, complicated, dynamic environment the most dangerous decision is no decision.  

Choose what to do next.