“…The bottom is falling out of the way performing arts organizations do business.… People’s short-term buying habits have made revenue unpredictable and precarious. This has forced performing arts companies to rethink how they allocate marketing dollars, plan their seasons and approach customer service…”
New York Times, October 16, 2002
“You see,” I excitedly exclaimed to my CEO at our regular weekly meeting on the morning of Monday, October 17, “it’s not just us!” While the prior day’s New York Times article wasn’t going to directly solve any of the marketing challenges I faced as the marketing director of one of Arizona’s largest performing arts presenters, it validated the idea that a profound massive change was underway in our world and which would demand a fundamental reorientation of our beliefs and expectations.
I imagined that similar conversations were excitingly taking place that day between marketing directors and the CEO’s of all the nation’s arts & cultural organizations.
It was supposed to be a moment of empowerment for those of us charged to “rethink” the connection between audience and arts & cultural experience. After that revelation, everything was supposed to be different.
It should have been the point of acclamation in which it became universally obvious that the purpose of every arts & cultural organization, without exception, is AS MUCH about engaging audiences as it is about advancing its particular artistic or cultural mission.
Fast forward 9 years. Have we learned our lessons? Have arts & cultural organizations dramatically transformed their behaviors? Are we working smarter? What has been accomplished?
Albert Einstein famously observed that, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
For many arts & cultural organizations, that “same” thinking is bound up in an internal structure that continues to position the function of “marketing” as subservient to so-called “artistic” leadership.
The role of the artistic director and curator is vital – I mean them no disrespect. Their experience, education and aesthetic are undoubtedly core to advancing a non-profit organization’s purpose.
But their thinking provides only HALF of the leadership that today’s arts & cultural organizations require. The “rethink” called for in 2002 demands a strong analytical capacity coupled with a deep, nuanced and equally visionary understanding of the populations to be served. Those skills are not (usually) the province of an organization’s artistic leadership. They should very much be the substance of the capabilities of a professional marketing team.
If your organization still follows the pattern in which artistic leadership books the shows or exhibits – and only afterward turns that season over to the marketing department with the job to “Sell this” – then I’m here to argue that you are stuck in an old, outmoded and self-defeating structure.
For such organizations, it’s time someone (like you) stands up says, “For our audiences – and for the viability of our organization – we are not doing nearly enough.”
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