I have an innate tendency to believe that subdividing or categorizing things leads to more problems than doing so solves. I have throughout my career quietly disbelieved that a liberal arts education is served by breaking it up into separate departments. The structure leads to division, competitiveness, and, most importantly, missed opportunities for larger understanding. There is no such thing as self-contained knowledge. Everything is related.
So when I look at organizational structures in the arts, I have a knee-jerk (negative) reaction to separating marketing from fundraising from programming from advocacy, etc. I know that different forms of expertise are necessary for different functions. It is the nature (or lack) of interaction among them that concerns me.
I have been in this business long enough to have watched the field of the arts move from a belief that marketing is evil (a sense that still permeates much of the larger not-for-profit world) to a view embracing its necessity. Unfortunately, as a relative late-comer to the table, it is often a “last (or next-to-last) among equals.” By that I mean marketing is seen as a tool or a “tricks” department to get (as I said in What Is Arts Marketing?) “butts in seats” or “eyes on walls.” This is as opposed to being a partner in the larger venture of connecting the arts with individuals and communities.
First, on the “everything’s connected” level, fundraising and marketing are nearly two sides of a single coin (if you see a pun there, it really is not intentional). That’s why I’ve started referring to the two together as development. I have seen terribly destructive turf wars develop when budgets for the two are separate and there is competition to meet goals. Ticket buyers and donors should be a single group of people. They are not prey to fight over. There is much motion nationwide to combine fundraising and marketing, which is good except when the combination is undertaken to eliminate a staff position. (Let’s see, how about reducing support for the economic engine that powers the organization. That’s a good idea, right?)
Second, in terms of developing long-term relationships with the community, it is essential that the marketing people be in conversation with the programmers. The old model of programmers handing a fait accompli schedule to the marketers whose job it is to “sell” that schedule is a substantial impediment to engagement. It also diminishes the opportunities for relationship-building upon which sales and fundraising depend. Programming needs to take both mission/artistic vision and community interests/needs into account. (I won’t revisit that rationale here. It’s the cornerstone of this blog.) The marketing staff is well positioned to participate in that discussion. (In the performing arts, they are generally best positioned to do so. In the museum world, of course, it is usually the education department that is most directly connected with the community.) To tell the truth, I really believe that all elements of the arts organization’s management should have a voice in programming decisions; not a final voice, but an important one.
To my mind, the ideal model is one in which the relationship between organization and community is at the center of the organization’s identity and all of its decision-making processes. This is what I mean by “systemic marketing.” (As a reminder, my operating definition of marketing is “communication with external constituencies about the work of the organization.”) When the relationship is central, the message is consistent and each point of contact reinforces every other one.
So what would this look like in your organization or in those you know well?
Engage!
Doug
Whole Pie Picture (Not cut up. Get it?) 
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I’m thrilled that you argue for a more inclusive marketing voice at the end of this post, Doug, but I have to take issue with much of what you say along the way.
In thirty years in the arts I’ve never heard anyone suggest that marketing was evil. It’s hard to imagine any legitimate arts professional harboring such a backward opinion let alone sharing it with colleagues. And I’ve never heard marketing described as a “tricks” department, which would be like calling development a begging department or costumes a laundry department or exhibition design a picture-hanging department. If people really do say these things I hope you tell them that it’s reductive, insulting and counterproductive.
I’m not going to wade into the marketing vs. development discussion, but I will say that depriving marketing of its name is also counterproductive. This industry, which is suffering chronic declines in audiences and earned revenue, is in desperate need of marketing talent, but the best way to alienate that talent is to strip marketing of its appropriate, proportionate, independent role in the organizational hierarchy by calling it development.
And finally, I’d like to encourage you to adopt a more up-to-date definition of marketing. Marketing is an interactive process that involves understanding the needs, wants and desires of potential audiences and then using a broad range of communications channels (branding, advertising, direct marketing, promotions, PR, sales, grass roots, community outreach, education, on-site services, social media, etc.) to motivate them by demonstrating how the product satisfies their yearnings. I don’t know if this is an ideal definition, but it describes a much broader, more persuasive, more inclusive, more engaging professional enterprise.
Trevor, good points,all. To clarify, going back into the late ’60’s and early ’70’s there was abroad in the land discomfort among people in the arts about the word marketing. (Granted, I don’t know that anyone actually said “evil.”) Your point about the last 30 years affirms what I said that things have changed considerably. It *is* true that there continues to be unease about the word marketing in the not-for-profit community.
I also did not intend to remove the word marketing from the vocabulary. I am rather talking about acknowledging that it cannot be (successfully) separated from fundraising. My usage is to consider development as an umbrella term including (and naming) both marketing and fundraising.
And I disagree that we differ, fundamentally, on the definition of marketing. Assuming, as I do, that communication must be two-way, what you give as a definition is to me the techniques and modes of that communication. Yours is more detailed; mine is intended to focus on the root nature as opposed to means or results.
I can’t think of a time when I have heard an artist refer to marketing as” evil” though that is an attitude of some in contemporary rock and pop where techniques employed are often, indeed, less than ethically thrilling.
In fact, in theatre and dance, which are very collaborative in nature, most of those involved in creating a performance are very interested in the outreach and audience. And in fundraising, I have never met a development person who didn’t think that getting someone through the doors was the first step in finding and developing new donors. I have always found the development person, and the box office personnel to be invaluable resources in sharpening the marketing efforts.
The only segments of the arts where I have encountered the sort of myopic thinking you describe is the visual arts and museums, where I have had more than one visual artist stonewall me as to how to describe their work, sluffing that responsibility off by giving me a one paragraph “artist’s statement” and CV of exhibitions.
You hit the nail on the head Doug when you point out how essential it is for all the components of an arts institution work together and communicate. Indeed, the more each individual knows about the other’s tasks and challenges, the more likely they are to collaborate effectively to grow their company or institution.