At the end of a long list about why audiences are shrinking, a burned out, defeated arts manager’s last bit of ire will be directed at the declining arts coverage in the mainstream media. It will be the final gasp of their venting session. Then their voice will trail off, they’ll throw up their hands, and reach for their glass of bourbon.
An anecdote from an artistic director of a “struggling theater in Florida” was the centerpiece of a story by Cara Joy David’s latest piece for Broadway World. The artistic director ran into an audience member that hadn’t been back to his theater since the COVID shutdowns. She would have come back, except she didn’t know the theater was reopened. Why did he think she didn’t know they had restarted performances? He blamed the lack of coverage from the local mainstream and alternative weekly newspapers.
The decline in arts coverage is well documented. The discussion amongst us insiders describes two ways this has made our life more difficult: lack of media coverage contributes to declining audiences because arts organizations rely on media coverage to sell tickets and declining media coverage contributes to audiences not understanding or appreciating complex works of art.
I agree with that these are outcomes of declining arts coverage. But it’s time to stop being defeated and blaming declining coverage for declining attendance. It’s WAY past time. At least 30 years past time.
Here are five reasons why the current problems can’t be blamed on less media coverage:
- The mainstream media has been shrinking since cable television splintered the media landscape in the late 1980s and the internet rose in the 1990s. That’s been plenty of time for arts organizations to have adjusted marketing strategy and tactics. But they haven’t. Other than adding email marketing to their mix and implementing the bare minimum of sophistication about pricing and sales techniques (like learning that it works to actually ask people to buy tickets on marketing messages) that other sectors had been using for nearly a century, arts organizations have continued to rely on advertising and media coverage as their primary marketing tactics.
- Arts organizations missed the social in social media. Instead, arts marketers treated social media like just another advertising outlet and never got on board with the audience engagement and community building possibilities of social media. If arts organizations had built engagement and community online between 2006 and now, it would have helped to bring along people who were on board with their mission and programming and the larger social project of the arts because they would have a two-way relationship with the organization and the arts as a force for good. More to the current need: it would have helped to attract new audience members to replace the ones that were being lost. (See the book New Power by Jeremy Heimans and outgoing Lincoln Center President and CEO Henry Timms and For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be by Dr. Marcus Collins). But that phase of social media is now over and social media is dominated by content marketing. However…see #3.
- Arts organizations are hitting off foul balls on content marketing – and that’s even when they come to bat. Since at least last year, social media platforms are dominated by content and not engagement. Arts organizations could be hitting home runs on content marketing from a marketing and a mission perspective. One of the laments about the decline in arts criticism is that the audiences are now less informed and educated about the art form. Arts organizations could be using these platforms to educate their audience. But – and this really baffles me – arts organizations are letting this pitch go by just like they did with engagement in the first 20 years of social media. Despite having staff in artistic, education, and marketing offices whose life’s mission (and job) is to inspire others to love their art form, social media accounts for arts organizations don’t post with nearly the frequency they need to to make social media work to reach new audiences or engage current audiences. And when they do post, it’s just more advertising, not content that people are actually interested in for entertainment or education, which is why people are going to social media (even for nonprofits). And when an arts organization does try to do something engaging, it’s stilted and mismatched for the style and norms of the platform. The content looks like it should be played on the video screens at a gala, not on TikTok or Instagram. There’s not enough content, and not the right content. But let’s focus on the future by investing in the people doing the work. Hence, #4:
- Staff skills are out of date or staff are being stifled. Given what I know about the anemic investments of arts organizations in staff training and inferring from what I see everyday on social media – I’m assuming that organizations haven’t given their staff time and/or money to train on current marketing techniques. Or they’re just getting trained within the nonprofit arts bubble that are all making these mistakes. Or staff that do want to bring the organization’s marketing up to 2024 are getting blocked – see #5. Marketing staff, this has been an extremely tough time for you, and I see you. You’ve been the focal point of a lot of pressure and criticism, to say the least. But I suspect that you’ve also been left on your own without guidance OR you’ve been trying to drive change but not gotten through to leadership. Am I right? Either way: take your training into your own hands. Turn your personal social media time into professional development time and look outside the arts for what’s working. Get outside the arts bubble. Do all the free trainings available from social media companies and free advice put out by content creators. You need to experiment to hone your own skills and find the style for your organization that you can put out consistently and repeatedly. If you aren’t allowed to do this with your organization’s accounts (and you want to) use your personal social media as a place to experiment making content – about you, about your professional skill set, or about your organization. Maybe a byproduct is that you develop your own side hustle as a creator yourself.
- Leadership is leading from fear of change. I’m looking at you Executive Directors, Managing Directors, Producing Artistic Directors, Marketing Directors, Board members. What your marketing departments are doing right now is not working and it’s harming the image of your organization with the audiences you want to attract. It’s time to admit it and allow your staff to make some drastic changes in strategy and tactics. I know you know the marketing is not effective because you’re looking at the numbers every day. You’re either holding your marketing folks back from bringing your organization up to current marketing practices, or you need to regroup with them, inspire them to get excited about trying new things, and get real about getting current.
Action needs to be taken on this now. Content marketing and branding strategies take time – months and years – to pay off in the solid foundation of trust and awareness with a new constituency that can translate into sales, visits, and donations. Don’t make a committee. Don’t start a strategic process. Take a few days, do some research, get some ideas, and get going putting out content. You have plenty of content right in your building with your artists, technicians, educators, staff, interns, audience, community partners. Pick up an iPhone, fire up Canva and post. Other sectors would LOVE to have the raw material that the arts has to make content – use it. It’s gonna take experimentation.
Mainstream media is not coming back. Arts organizations are their own press agent, reporters, and publisher. You’re your own arts and entertainment section, local news and interest section, magazine, evening television news, scrappy blogger, and public radio talk show. Get your own story out yourself. Work those algorithms and reach those new folks you swear will love your work if the only knew about it.
See this as an opportunity. You can finally do what you relied on others for: telling your story with the depth, nuance, and whimsy. You get to set the tone and the terms. Have fun with it and the audience will have fun too.
Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash
Bless your heart, Hannah. Welcome to my soap box.
You’re a bit late, but it’s yours if you want it.
I’ve been saying all this for nearly twenty years. Trust me. Nobody’s listening, and the changes you’d like to see will never happen.
Good marketing – professional marketing – can only happen under professional leadership, and when it comes to marketing, most cultural sector leaders are incompetent. Arts leaders learn what they know about marketing on their way up through the arts, which is just about the worst place anyone could go to learn about marketing.
Serious marketing is about research, data, and the judicious application of rational strategies. Arts marketing is about tradition, habit, and the highest-paid executives’ personal opinions. The only way to professionalize arts marketing will be to convince the highest-paid executives that their amateur opinions are no longer useful, and that’s just not going to happen.
I applaud your efforts to make these points, but all this should have been dealt with when audiences started declining several decades ago. If the arts have been unable to embrace professional marketing for the last half century, is there any reason to expect them to do it now?
Thanks as always for your comments, Trevor. I have been shocked at the lack of change in strategy during and after the pandemic, so I’m trying to tackle it in two ways in my work. First by acknowledging what the real problems are as I mentioned in this post: fear of change, lack of boldness in leadership, out of date skills. Second by pointing people to what I think are solutions that are probably outside of their comfort zone now, so I also lay a path for how to get there. Based on the feedback I’m getting, I’m saying things that people are thinking about but not able to say in their workplaces. Public writing like this blog can give them some confidence, new ideas, or even supporting material to try to get buy in, so I’m hopeful that it’s helping.
Dear Hannah, I appreciate this post very much. Fear is producing stagnation, and the world is moving fast around it. Thank you for your clear and succinct suggestions- I hope more people will listen and follow through.
Thank you so much, Courtenay. I am heartened that it resonated with you and good luck!
“Don’t make a committee. Don’t start a strategic process. Take a few days, do some research, get some ideas, and get going putting out content.”
Ahh, how many read up to this point and were thinking “I should start a committee!”
The molasses-speed at which many organizations (and individual artists!) have moved on marketing is stunning. I think it is not only institutional resistance to change, but in some types of arts organizations that are focused on perpetuating art forms that are bound in long-held traditions (I’m looking at you, Shakespearean touring companies and ballets!) there may even be some personality disconnects between the types who are drawn to those specific arts and the very idea of trying new things and being experimental I work (mostly) with individual artists and the difference in approach between, say, experimental glass blowers and classically-inclined oil painters is exactly what you would expect. One of them happily started a TikTok on day two of the pandemic and just POSTED when the other is still, today, trying to get someone to help them decide if they should, perhaps, try to consider possibly experimenting with a few Facebook posts.
Glad to see this article!
Thank you so much, Cynthia, I’m glad you think I’m on the right track. YES – the slow pace and layers of approval at arts organizations is a major roadblock to their ability to be successful on social media. I think that if an organization has some good conversations about branding and strategy internally, then they should trust their staff to just GO.
You make such an excellent point about the staff that can be drawn to work at arts organizations – I never thought of it that way. Thanks for your comment and for reading the blog!