Let's end the year on a positive note! If putting yourself first and your audience last leads to arts & cultural marketing sin, then it is to be expected that putting your audience first will steer you to the Seven Heavenly Virtues of Arts & Cultural Marketing: Temperance. This contrasts with the sin of gluttony. Go easy. Don’t expect to sell, sell, sell. Don’t expect anything but to discover and experiment and work hard. The … [Read more...]

The end of a year is a good time to remind ourselves to PURGE ourselves of counter-productive habits and beliefs - an opportune time to revisit the classical Seven Deadly Sins:  Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Gluttony. It's time to expunge the Seven Deadly Sins of Arts & Cultural Marketing: Wrath. Anger at the world for being the way it is makes no sense. Yet arts & cultural marketers who blame the media, the audience, … [Read more...]

Imagine if Albert Einstein, the greatest scientific mind of the 20th century had pursued a career in arts & cultural marketing instead of the arguably less complex field of physics. What would he have concluded? Imagine the young Einstein arriving for his first day of work as the marketing director for a theatre company, museum or symphony: "You need to shave 7 percent from this season’s marketing budget,” says the Finance … [Read more...]

A well-worn copy of Danny Newman’s Subscribe Now! has been a treasured resource throughout my career in arts & cultural marketing.  His influence is evident in the practices of the vast number of performing arts organizations that still orient their marketing strategies to the concepts first published in 1977: “The subscriber is our ideal.  In an act of faith, at the magic moment of writing the check, he commits himself in advance of the … [Read more...]