The Law of the Few

About a year ago, I began designing a graduate certificate program for American University focused on technology issues in arts management, and this past summer, I taught my first course focused on the intersection of technology and marketing. To open the course, I asked students to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which if you haven't read it, describes how social epidemics evolve, providing a great platform to discuss word-of-mouth marketing and how technology can be used to ignite a movement.

Early in the book, Gladwell discusses "The Law of the Few," which boiled down is a riff on the 80/20 principle - 20% of the people are responsible for 80% of the work. As marketers, we latch onto this principle, as it correctly argues that if we can identify and cultivate relationships with a select group of influential people called "connectors," then our returns can be maximized. One connector can be worth his weight in gold, and easily as valuable as ten non-connectors.

As I was giving my lecture, it struck me that most non-profit arts organizations have designed their business models on the "Law of the Few" principle, not just in their approaches to marketing, but in how we program, fundraise and communicate. A previous supervisor of mine used to say that a grassroots movement begins with the grasstops. But if we are all focused on the few, are we ignoring the many?

I ask this question, because as society shifted away from a one way, web 1.0 world towards an interactive, web 2.0 one, the ways in which we do business and view the world radically changed. Previously companies had much more control of their brands as they could carefully craft messaging, but today, brands have a life of their own in the virtual universe. We used to seek out experts when we needed information, now we rely upon the collective of Wikipedia or Google (when was the last time you consulted an encyclopedia?). At one time knowledge was proprietary, but presently, a growing number of us look to the commons (and companies trying to maintain business models built upon charging for knowledge are struggling). We used to rely on authority figures to inform us, but now in moments of crisis, millions flock to Twitter, where we learned an hour before President Obama confirmed it that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

I believe that many of us used to defer to the knowledge and experience of a small few, placing trust in their expertise to guide the rest of us. But when a handful of very powerful and experienced bankers plunged the world into a global economic crisis resulting in the loss of 40% of the world's wealth, the masses started to wonder if the few could be trusted to lead. In the web 1.0 world, most were passive recipients, willing to receive content as delivered. Today, the least among us now demands a seat at the table, and via web 2.0 technologies, an even playing field has begun to emerge.

So how will this affect the non-profit arts? Here are just a couple of examples:

The Citizen Critic (and the Future of Arts Journalism)
A couple of weeks ago, Barry Hessenius, former director of the California Arts Council, issued his annual list of the most influential people in the arts. On the list were a handful of notable bloggers, including Ian David Moss, Diane Ragsdale, Clay Lord, Doug McLennan and Thomas Cott, however not a single traditional journalist was mentioned as there wasn't a category for journalists. Was this an oversight, or a trend? Nielsen recently reported that 92% of consumers trusted word-of-mouth from friends and family, while only 58% trusted editorial content such as newspaper articles. Harvard University recently published a study that contended that average reader reviews on Amazon.com were just as trustworthy as book reviews from professional critics. Even Maura Judkis, a writer for the Washington Post, in her article for the NEA's blog ArtWorks states "readers of my generation, the Millennials, are more likely to want to see a movie or play because their friends like it than because a critic does." Word of mouth has always been powerful, but advances in technology have allowed connectors to broadcast their thoughts to followers instantaneously, and others, the opportunity to feed into social networking, user review sites like Yelp.com. So where does that leave us? Ask yourself - if you were visiting New York, and thousands of patrons had described a Broadway play positively in online reviews, would it have more of an impact on you than negative reviews by professional critics? [could this explain the mysterious success of Spiderman?]

Crowdfunding and Microfinancing
In her article "It is Broke, We Should Probably Fix It," Alexis Clements argues that many non-profit organizations chase a few, large foundations, whose money would have been public via taxation but is now controlled privately. She goes on to say that via grants from private foundations, wealthy individuals can "funnel money to organizations that will uphold their personal beliefs." That is a pretty charged statement, but I do wonder how often arts organizations manipulate their missions in order to receive a large grant or donation from a private funding source? How many arts organizations are alive today primarily due to the generosity of one or two major donors, and for those, do the donors in question wield too much influence? In 2008, President Obama demonstrated the power of the collective when he raised unprecedented amounts of money from small donations. As of August, the crowd funding website Kickstarter has raised $275 million in funding for projects, and has grown exponentially since its founding in 2009. And we aren't just talking about tiny amounts of funding either. The top 10 projects funded on Kickstarter all raised more than $1 million. And Microfinance website Kiva has leveraged $346 million in funds from 823,474 lenders to launch projects aimed at combating poverty in 63 different countries.

Crowdsourcing Curation and Programming
When I was at the Smithsonian, an internal debate was occurring about the "Art of Video Games" exhibit at the American Art Museum. The Smithsonian invited the public to help curate which video games would be featured in the exhibit, and in doing so, more than 3.7 million votes were cast by 119,000 people in 175 countries. Pretty impressive. However, questions began to arise about the role of the curator. For the most part, non-profit arts organizations are lead by artists with extensive training and sometimes decades of experience. As the resident experts in their fields, they are regularly called upon to make value judgements on what art to present, and how to present it. In the past, the public has remained a passive receiver of said art, but a growing number of patrons today would like to play a more active role. Technology has changed what used to be a one way conversation into a dialogue, and in turn, many community stakeholders now expect to be able to exercise their voice. I believe this phenomenon prompted Arts Journal editor Doug McLennan to host the "Lead or Follow" debate early this year. If you didn't catch it, here is a good recap.

Understandably, non-profit arts organizations have built models based on the "Law of the Few," and I am not advocating for the abandonment of those models. I am however suggesting that there is wisdom, money and resources to be found in the collective as well. This isn't an either/or proposition between the few and the many; it's a both/and situation. There is a significant role to play for the few and the many. But to tap into the collective, I believe we must become vital and essential to our communities again. I fear that for many non-profit arts organizations, if they were to disappear, we'd barely hear a whimper, when there should be protests in the streets.

The Myth of the Ubiquitous Solution

Today I tread lightly into the “new models” discussion which has recently been at the forefront of chatter among arts managers. For a good recap, please read the following:
“Why Arts Managers Short of Cash Are Looking at Detroit,” by Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
“Theaters Look for New Ways to Draw in Subscribers,” by Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post
“The New Model, Part 2,” by Michael Kaiser, The Huffington Post
“Swimming Downstream in the Current of History,” by Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas Blog

As Michael Kaiser states “the world is changing – but it has always been changing.” I agree with Mr. Kaiser to a point, but I’d like to point out that the amount of change organizations have faced in previous decades probably pales in comparison to the change they have confronted in the past ten years. In a one decade, pretty much everything we have been taught is now in question. How many of us were taught that the key to financial stability was saving money in order to purchase a house? For those of us who purchased prior to 2007, becoming a homeowner could be the dumbest financial decision we make in our entire lives. Who knew that we would experience a global economic crisis so severe that it would destroy 40% of the world’s wealth, or that people would actually opt for negative investment returns in order to move monies into safer investment vehicles? For the first time in the history of the United States, Standard & Poors downgraded the credit rating of the federal government to below AAA status, and the youngest Americans will most likely be worse off than their parents. Staples of American life, such as Social Security and Medicare, seem to be imploding, and new college graduates are entering the work force with record high student loans.   And this is to say nothing of the arts. States and municipalities are slashing funding, arts education barely exists in school curriculums and the lack of discretionary income is affecting ticket sales.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that arts managers are engrossed in discussions about new models. Many organizations had reserves to weather a couple of bad years, but recently we’ve begun to ask – what if this is the “new normal?” And how arts managers describe the “new normal” reminds me of the Hindu tale of the Blind Men and the Elephant. As the story goes, six blind men were asked to touch and describe an elephant. Each man’s description varied widely depending on the part of the elephant the man touched, and as the tale says “each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, each was partly right, and all were in the wrong.”

Our descriptions of the “new normal” are as different as our points of views, and thus our responses to our changing environments should be as unique as each of our institutions.  I fear anyone who offers a panacea to all proclaimed from his or her own mountain top, as the view from my mountain may be different. For example, in his mostly excellent article about the Detroit Institute of Arts, Terry Teachout chides theater companies that “cling to the old-fashioned subscription model.” Similarly, in Nelson Pressley’s article “Theaters Look for New Ways to Draw in Subscribers,” Tony Heaphy, Director of Marketing at Centerstage, describes subscribing as “a chestnut.” I have no doubt from their perspectives these comments are valid, but theaters that have experienced significant growth in their subscription base might view the situation differently. What works for one, rarely works for all.

Therefore a customized approach tailored to your institution is wise. W hen looking at possible adjustments to your business model, I would suggest:

1)      A test a day. Test a new idea, small in scale, each day. Every day that an organization doesn’t test, is a day that it doesn’t learn.

2)      Test small, miss small. Identify a challenge. Develop a hypothesis. Test a solution. But don’t bet the farm on it. Conduct each test fully expecting a negative result.

3)      Test ideas that are easily scalable. In order to minimize risk, I’ve tested ideas that performed very well on a small scale only to realize that putting them into play in a larger way would be cost prohibitive.

4)      Identify your sacred cows, and test those first. Often times we shy away from testing solutions to a known issue simply because that issue is a sacred cow. If you are looking for meaningful impact, identifying sacred cows is a good first step.

5)      Be informed, but question everything – even “experts.” Read everything you can. Follow experiments at other companies. Conduct research. Analyze data. But don’t accept anything or anyone as infallible. Even the best are human, and they speak only from their experience.

6)      Be careful of “one size fits all” solutions. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard marketing directors wonder why something that worked so well in one city, bombed in the next. There are few universal truths in the marketing world.

7)      Overcome your fear of change. As humans, we are all programmed to fear change. You’ve identified a challenge. Formed a hypothesis. Tested a solution with impressive results. Developed a plan to scale the solution. And now it is decision time. Some people are paralyzed by fear of change. Be comforted by knowing that if you desire different results, you must act differently. Some difficult decisions are easy because they are demanded by circumstance.

The Perfectionist and the Jack of All Trades

I've been called a perfectionist, and until recently, I've always accepted that description as a compliment. However as a leader, one of my primary responsibilities is to help prioritize the work of the departments that report to me, and in doing so, it is very important to understand that most nonprofits are under resourced. In a world where there is never enough, either in terms of money or human time, where and how nonprofits commit their limited resources becomes very important. Perfectionists struggle in these environments because by nature, when we start something, it's hard to walk away with even the slightest flaw remaining. On the other hand, marketers routinely leave projects behind when a greater return on one's resources can be found in other places, bowing to the law of diminishing returns. To be both a marketer and a perfectionist has caused a few schizophrenic debates for me over the years, but I've come to learn to focus on core competencies, and to strive for excellence, rather than perfection, in those areas.

I've chosen to write about this today because I've recently worked with two very well respected marketers that I observed struggling with the same issue. The first was a technology specialist who was known for making even the most complicated systems work. He was part of a team that over time found their marketing costs rising while their returns fell (not a good place for anyone). I was brought in to conduct a marketing audit. In my first week with them, I observed this marketer spending 25 hours working on a fix for a technology enhancement that this organization was hoping to roll out to their members. After inquiring, I learned that he had been working on this fix for over a month, and had put in well over 100 hours on it. When I asked him if this particular technology enhancement was worth so much effort, he replied that it was to him because he had never failed to deliver before. From an outsider's perspective, it was easy for me to see that he was chasing perfection to the detriment of the organization. After looking at the demographics of their members, and the usage statistics from the previous technology enhancements the organization had launched, it was easy to project that less than one half of one percent of their membership base would likely use this new feature. So why focus so many resources on it?

At almost the same time, I was advising an organization who had hired a strategic planning and market research firm to audit marketing and membership operations. The organization had selected one of the best firms in the business, but was experiencing cost overruns on projected labor expenses in the early stages of the project. The organization in question was large and complex, and one of the first things the firm did was request financial information in a variety of formats. Once delivered, a new junior member of the firm started analyzing the data sent, but in doing so, she couldn't get the financials to match perfectly between the various formats. She continued to work on the financials in an effort to get them to match to the penny, and in doing so, soared past the projected work hours set aside for the initial phase of the project. When I discovered the issue, I asked her how far off the financials were, and the gap was less than $1,000 on a $40 million operating budget. Even if she had found a way to reconcile the remaining funds, the conclusions from her analysis wouldn't have changed in the slightest. Her fear was that if this data was shown to the board of the directors, she would be held at fault because they didn't balance perfectly.

Perfectionists sometimes lose their way in an attempt to achieve something that might not be achievable, or if achievable, probably isn't worth the cost of the achievement. Perfectionists struggle with concentrating too much on one task, while others (I'll call them Jack of All Trades) struggle with just the opposite - not being able to decide where to focus their attention. During times of strife, marketers can find themselves getting friendly advice from a wide-range of well meaning others - board members, executive directors, senior staff members, artists and even spouses. People love to brainstorm, and send all their ideas to the marketing department. This isn't to say that ideas should be ignored. Great ideas can come from anyone, but the same can be said of poor ideas.

A couple of years ago, I spent some time with a new managing director of a mid-size regional theater. It was his first time leading a company, and he wanted to get it right. The company was known to have serious challenges, and when he started, everyone started sending him helpful hints on how to solve the issues. When I visited, he confided he didn't know where to start, and most important to him was pleasing the board that just recently hired him. So he vigorously pursued each idea that was sent to him from board members, and hadn't achieved much except exhausting himself. Over lunch one day, I asked him what the theater's most important challenge was; the one that if left unaddressed, would result in catastrophy. His answer was quick and clear - the theater's debt. I asked him what would happen if he focused all his energies on eliminating the theater's debt. He was afraid the general operations of the company would falter. He feared that the board would be upset because he wouldn't have time to focus on each issue they brought to his attention. And he was afraid of failure, so he tried to be a jack of all trades in an attempt to be everything to everyone. In the end, he decided to concentrate on dealing with the debt issue, and six months later, had identified a foundation that was willing not only to eliminate the theater's debt, but also wanted to establish a working capital fund for future operations.

Deciding what to focus on and more importantly what not to focus on takes courage of conviction. Perfectionists get lost in single projects, and Jacks of All Trades try to address everything at the same time. I've been both in my career, and over time, have become better at prioritizing. Below is a basic matrix that may help:

In priority, concentrate on solutions that provide the following:
High Impact on Critical Issues/High Revenue Line Items - these should be few in number but receive the most amount of your attention.
Low Impact on Critical Issues/High Revenue Line Items - even a small improvement on a critical issue can result in an excellent return on investment.
High Impact on Minor Issues/Low Revenue Line Items - only spend time on these projects if all critical issues and high revenue areas are performing well.

If you are in a nonprofit, and have the time to concentrate on solutions that will provide a low impact on a minor issue/low revenue line item, then perhaps you are overstaffed (or have reached the holy grail of the nonprofit sector).

The Assembly Line and Failure

I've recently returned from Theatre Communications Group's Annual Conference, where the theme was "model the movement," focusing on new models and transformative ideas from the field. I was particularly excited to attend this year, as the speakers included Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz and author/marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin.

Howard kicked off the conference with his speech "Theatrical Innovation: Who's Job Is It?," in which he compared the systems of our regional theaters to that of an assembly line, a theme that would resurface multiple times over the course of the conference. As regional theaters grew and became more complex, often times non-profit managers were encouraged to borrow best practices from corporate entities, designed to improve efficiency, streamline processes and increase return on investment. And it worked...until it didn't. You see, the process of creating art cannot be controlled by an assembly line system. We don't create widgets. And as one artist said to me, "if I was exclusively concerned with return on investment from a monetary perspective, I wouldn't create art, and I certainly wouldn't have had children."

This isn't to say that theaters shouldn't have systems. Systems have helped us reduce waste, maximize time and better utilize our resources. But an over reliance on particularly inflexible systems can also guarantee failure, at least from an artistic perspective. Theater is a particularly risky business, even when producing so called "cash cows," as I have previously written about here. To quote one artistic director, "theaters eat risk for breakfast." But as the economy has contracted, have we become too reliant on our systems? and if Woolly Mammoth is wrestling with this issue, a company that is known to be nimble and innovative, then it must be a significant challenge for others. How often do we as marketing directors get handed a project that we can't wait to work on, knowing that we will need to call upon all of our creativity to develop innovative audience development strategies, only to think - shit, if I give the time and attention this project requires, the next three shows will suffer? Which then results in trying to pound a square peg into the round hole that is our assembly line, which is a disservice to both the artist and the marketer. Great work will push boundaries across all departments within an organization, and senior managers need to create systems and budgets that not only allow space for custom approaches, but that encourage them.

As managers, we like to mitigate risk, thinking that if we could just control our variables just a little more, that we would reach a utopia of risk free theater producing. It's a fool's errand. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008, the stakes have risen so high that it can feel like we don't have room to fail. But in failure, we find success. It sounds counter intuitive, but making today as failure free as possible will ensure a less successful tomorrow. Even Mr. Godin, a titan in the business world, in his bio proudly proclaims "as an entrepreneur, he has founded dozens of companies, most of which failed." So the question we should all be asking, particularly in the budget process, is - are we building enough room for experimentation and failure?

Recently, I had the opportunity as a consultant to work with a few senior managers who were tasked with reinventing a business model for a program that was part of a much larger institution. Due to funding cuts, the program needed to become revenue neutral over time, and pro formas were developed to guide that process. Along the way, the program hit some unforeseen challenges, but as the pro formas were the only measurement of success, decisions were made that allowed the organization to "stay on target" by hitting financial benchmarks as scheduled at the expense of future operations. When I began my work, I was asked if I thought the program could reach revenue neutral status on the timeline outlined in the pro formas. I said that I believed it was possible, but then followed up by saying the question asked really should be whether the program can remain a going concern after hitting revenue neutral status given the short-sighted decisions that would be necessary to get there. In other words, does it really matter if we got the patient to the hospital in record time if the patient dies in route? How many decisions do we make each year that only considers the financial position of the company during the fiscal year in question? and would we make different decisions if we considered the pros and cons over multiple years? The financial strain on many arts organizations is tremendous, but if we continue to sprint to obtain single year targets while we ignore the conditions that wait for us at the finish line, over time we can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Unless an organization is under dire financial constraints, and death is literally knocking at the door, all major decisions must be viewed in a multi-year context.

Studies have shown that people are motivated more by avoiding failure than by achieving success. As this article states, some professional athletes like winning, but they really hate to lose. This would explain why limiting risk is so appealing, even if it jeopardizes our ability to succeed. But I would argue that mindset breeds mediocrity, and that artists and arts administrators are different. We know that our best work comes from taking risks, and this is something we need to remember as we head back into work tomorrow.

The First Key to Success

Without clear direction, success can never be achieved. We’ve all experienced situations where we run toward a goal as fast and furious as we can only to have the goal posts moved on us in route. When this happens over and over again, an organization is guilty of foolishly wasting precious resources at a moment when most are under resourced as it is.

Success begins with leadership. As Michael Kaiser discussed in his Huffington Post blog, there must be a leader. All too often, arts managers try to lead by consensus. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want people to be upset with them. In complex situations, many times the answer isn’t clear, and trying to get a wide variety of stakeholders moving in the same direction can be tough. But this isn’t a time to postpone critical decisions in an effort to get senior staff, board members and other various stakeholders to agree on a course of action. The executive has been hired to lead, and lead they must. Part of leadership is gathering all the data necessary from various perspectives, and then making a timely decision. Waiting for full consensus is folly because more often than not, time does not bring consensus.

When a problem reaches the desk of an executive director, usually it means that an easy solution isn’t available, because if there was a simple answer, senior managers would have resolved the situation. The life of an executive director involves making imperfect decisions daily. It isn’t a job for the lighthearted. Failure is often public and wide reaching. But make no mistake about it – inaction or a delay in decision making is a decision in itself. Taking no action in an attempt to build consensus around an issue that will never result in a consensus decision is even more costly than setting a clear course toward a defined goal.  As an outside adviser, I was once asked to participate in a meeting where senior managers from an organization were divided on a particularly divisive issue. Each argued their position passionately and articulately. At the conclusion of hours of conversation, the room looked to the executive director for a decision, at which time he asked for a vote of hands. I about fell out of my chair. Unfortunately for them, there were an even number of people in the room, and it was hopelessly deadlocked with a leader who would not make a decision because he desperately wanted consensus.

Someone has to lead, and one of the most important decisions a leader makes is defining success for the organization. Senior managers can and should be relied upon to develop strategies for success, but the leader must define the destination before a map can be created.

When defining success for arts organizations, here are just a few things to consider:

Growth vs. Sustainability. In a previous post, I asked if “right-sizing could be as sexy as expansion?” We live in the country of manifest destiny, super-sized meals and McMansions. Bigger is always better. But this mentality has led to obesity being an out of control epidemic, people purchasing homes they could not afford, and boom or bust economic trends. I see the same success metrics in play at non-profit arts organizations. Chief marketing and development officers are measured solely by growth, and if an organization tries to right size, top talent will leave because their numbers will shrink, not because of sub-par work, but merely because of a decrease in tickets to sell or programs to fundraise for. Why do we constantly equate success with growth, when it is entirely possible to demonstrate significant growth to the detriment of sustainability? If it costs you $2 for every additional $1 in growth, and that equation doesn’t equalize over time, then you will demonstrate growth until such time as your lines of credit are maxed out, your board becomes unwilling to conduct emergency fundraising campaigns, and the community becomes tired of your pleas for help. This is how once stable and reputable organizations get into trouble. Success should be defined, at least in terms of business models, by sustainability, not growth, which is not to say they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but all too often, we succumb to pride and make growth the more highly prized success metric.

Quantity vs. Quality. Similar to growth, I’ve found that some arts organizations in part define themselves by the quantity of work they produce. I’ve never understood this. Most artists are motivated by creating the highest caliber of work, but then arts organizations feel pressured to produce a certain arbitrary amount of plays, concerts or performances each year, with an increase in offerings usually regarded as a sign of success by board members, funders and the press. The highest quality products in the world are not produced in mass as mass production doesn’t usually dovetail with world class quality. Case in point, if asked, I’m sure Steve Jobs would have been happy to have the best computers on the market, even if his market share was significantly less than competing products. And today, TedX is experiencing brand erosion because of quick expansion resulting in it losing in part its competitive advantages. Long ago, I used to work for a company that only produced one or two plays a season because the average gestation time on a project was several years. Although some objected to the avant-garde nature of the work, the company was almost universally lauded for artistic excellence. However, if quantity of productions were the litmus test for success, it wouldn’t be considered a successful theater.

Impact vs. Financials. Alan Brown, Clay Lord and Theatre Bay Area have spent the last two years working on measuring the intrinsic impact of live theater. I won’t go into the specifics now as this study deserves its own blog post, but I must say that I am excited that the study is changing how people, especially funders, are defining success. This study has developed a new system to quantifiably measure the intrinsic impacts theaters are having on audiences, and funders are starting to understand that previous metrics, such as audience members served, might not deliver the full picture. Along with financial and attendance data, what if theaters started to define their success by the impact they are having on their communities, which for the first time can be benchmarked, measured and tracked year over year.

The first step on any journey is to clearly define the destination and to establish success metrics.

Leaders —set the course and the direction. Don’t fear lack of consensus. Be bold. Be ambitious. And be decisive.

Senior managers—establish clear success metrics, and track them relentlessly over time.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” – President John F. Kennedy, in an address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

Lost in the Crowd

Direct marketing practitioners know that success is primarily a numbers game. That's not to discount the work that goes into tweaking a control package, testing messages, building list models and analyzing data. However, the foundation of any direct marketing campaign, be it for ticket sales, subscriptions, memberships or donations, is the number of qualified leads in your database.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how many of us didn't know who are best customers were. Since that time, I have come to realize that many of us don't know who many of our regular customers are.

Performing arts organizations have a distinct advantage over a majority of museums as gathering leads usually stems from capturing information during the ticket buying process, although challenges do exist. Organizations that have a robust group sales business know that it's all about personal relationships as one group contact can bring in hundreds of patrons, and although that's good for revenue, it is a challenge for lead development. For the most part, performing arts organizations have no clue as to who attends as part of a group as they don't gather information for each attendee. And in some cases, private group sales agents don't want to release information as it would require handing over lucrative contacts. And aside from groups, performing arts organizations are becoming more reliant on third party vendors to move unsold inventory, but in doing so, in most cases, they sacrifice the ability to collect contact information. And how many of us track individual people attached to multi-subscription packages? If the leader of the subscription group decides not to renew, we don't have the ability to contact the others.

We estimated a couple of years ago at Arena Stage that at any given time, on average we only had the contact information for roughly 60% of the people in the house. I always wondered what the value of the other 40% was.

Over time, we put into place various mechanisms to assist in collecting more leads. Group leaders were given financial incentives to provide contact information for each individual in their group. We reached out to subscription purchasers and asked them to identify the other people on their account. And we instituted a policy that required complete contact information for all comp tickets, and started ticketing almost every free event.

Now that I've been in the museum world for all of two months now, I've noticed that their challenges are much more significant than those that face performing arts organizations. Some museums have millions of visitors each year, and they only capture contact information for a very small percentage of their visitors. Highly popular free admission museums don't want to institute time consuming procedures to capture information for fear that it would impede timely access to the museum (can you imagine the lines that would form?). On the other hand, most free museums have membership and fundraising circles that rely upon qualified leads. How do you fundraise in a cost effective manner if you don't know who your visitors are? It seems that I am by far not the first to stumble upon the holy grail of marketing challenges that museums face, but given my newness to the field, I was surprised how daunting capturing information could be.

Here are some possible ideas to collect information from those lost in the crowd:

1) Collect information at multiple contact points. Prior to getting to a museum, most people visit a website. Take public transportation. Park their vehicle. Why not identify new visitors to your website and feed them a small roadblock ad asking them to sign-up for information from your museum, including future discount offers and exclusive content. Could you station "visitor concierges" outside subway stations who offer tips on exhibits and museums, and collect information during the process? Could you partner with your parking lot to develop a way to capture visitor data?

2) Offer exclusive content. Exhibits are becoming more and more interactive every day. With more than 100 million smart phone users in the United States, could exhibits feature exclusive interactive content using QR codes that also captures data in the process? As museums build out content online, what if you placed some exclusive content behind a free "pay wall" that requires registration to access? or what if an exhibit offered to send you a free memento of your experience via email?

3) Ticket events. Many museums offer a large variety of free and popular educational programming and docent lead tours. Even though they are free, why not require a ticket or an RSVP? Visitors can register well in advance, or they can do so quickly on site at ticket kiosks.

I am sure these suggestions only offer a way to make a small dent in the overall problem, but the challenge is clear -- finding easy, affordable and efficient ways for visitors to self identify themselves as wanting more information from musuems is of utmost importance to our direct marketing strategies.

Planning a Turnaround

Deficit budgets have started to accumulate. Core audiences have began to slip away as smaller and smaller houses become the norm. And there is a palpable sense that a once formidable company has lost its way as a growing group of stakeholders from donors to press start asking what happened?

Almost certainly, the marketing department is pointing its finger at the artistic staff laying the blame for the downturn solely at their doorstep, while the artistic staff believes that if they only had better marketing, the issue would disappear. Reality is that if a company is experiencing a significant decline, usually there are issues in both areas that need to be resolved.

At some point, the financial position of the company becomes untenable, and a turnaround team is brought in, usually in the form of a new artistic director, but sometimes a new executive director and marketing director as well. If executed well, strategic shifts in programming along with a well thought out rebranding and promotional campaign can lead to exceptional results. But a turnaround is only as good as its implementation.

Some things to consider when planning a turnaround...  

Identify Toxic Assets. The new guy hired to design and implement the turnaround knows one thing--what the company has been doing isn't working, and that the board desperately wants a change and they want it quickly. It can become overwhelmingly tempting to cut old programs immediately, and start from a completely fresh slate. However often times even the most struggling company has positives in which to start building from. Cutting everything quickly in an effort to rebuild from a new baseline can eliminate valuable assets. In for-profit turnarounds, the idea is to separate toxic assets from the others in an effort to give a new leader at least some base to work from. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater may be quick and it might provide an immediate signal that there is a new sheriff in town, but it usually isn't the most efficacious strategy. Instead of a hatchet, bring out the scalpel. Make precision cuts in an effort to save what can be used to help regenerate a new future.

Develop a Bridge for Audiences. When considering radical programming changes, make sure to design and implement a bridge for your current audiences. In a turnaround, the new is always given priority over the well established, but loyalty is something that takes years to cultivate, and I'd rather reinvent from a partial base than none at all. This is not to say that one should shy away from making needed programming changes, it is only to say that as much thought needs to go into how to introduce them into the market as went into designing the programs themselves. I've seen companies attempt to reinvent themselves overnight with little thought to patron migration, and as a result, they lost a majority of the base they had cultivated over prior decades. Major donors can provide venture capital to introduce new programming if engaged well, and audiences can be successfully transitioned into new programming if done so in a gradual and considerate manner. I know because I've done it on multiple occasions.

Market Research Doesn't Have to Influence Programming to be Helpful. When asked about market research, Steve Jobs famously told Business Week that he doesn't conduct market research because "a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  Similarly, Julie Taymor in an interview with The New York Times said she didn't believe in focus groups stating that "if focus groups had been used on The Lion King there would be no death of Mufasa because groups would have reacted negatively." Given that The Lion King is Broadway's top earner of all time, and at the time of Mr. Jobs' death Apple was the most valuable company in the world, there is wisdom in these remarks. However, I bet the marketing people working with Ms. Taymor and Mr. Jobs would have loved market research, not because they wanted it to influence product development, but it would have informed them on how to message the introduction of the product into the market. Even though in many cases "the new" is absolutely necessary and people may desire it without knowing, marketers have to break through an initial resistance barrier. 

Artistic Planning is Where it all Starts. I attempted to rebrand a company once without a clearly articulated artistic strategy. We were told that exciting new programs were going to be introduced to replace well worn ones, but when pressed, there were very few details. Feeling that we couldn't wait any longer, I started the first phase of the rebranding process thinking that the details could come later. Boy was I wrong. Two months later, everything came to a screeching halt when we were trying to develop a communications matrix around an amorphous programming change. We couldn't message what didn't exist. Luckily for everyone, the artistic team came to the same realization, and within a short amount of time, a brilliant new artistic strategy was developed, and we were back on the fast track. I learned an important lesson that day--for a complete turnaround to be successful, it all starts with a detailed new artistic strategy.

Cultivating New Audiences is an Expensive Proposition (at first). Marketers know that retention is cheap, and acquisition is expensive. We also know that both are absolutely critical. When introducing new programming, it is important to know that acquiring audiences for newly developed programs will require a dedicated effort over an extended amount of time as well as considerable resources. The "build it and they will come" assumption is flawed. Audience development is a process, and in the short term, often times it will result in a negative impact to the bottom line. New programming and audience development are investments in the future of the organization. That said, depending on the severity of an organization's finances, the necessary resources for such an investment may not be readily available, which can lead to the premature cancellation of new programs. If that occurs, it is a waste of time and resources.

In his book The Art of the Turnaround, Michael Kaiser discusses his classic mantra "good art, marketed well" as a centerpiece for a successful turnaround. I agree with Mr. Kaiser that often times turnarounds require adjustments to programming or marketing, and in some cases, both. But over time, it has become an alarming trend to see an increase in the number of failing organizations that do both relatively well. I've started to wonder, as many others have, if mature organizations are failing because their business models haven't fundamentally adjusted to the rapidly changing external environment in the past fifty years.  In moments like these, I'm reminded of a quote from Buckminster Fuller, who said "you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I'm fearful that training institutions are teaching models that are dying a slow death, and that major institutions continue to look to senior managers entrenched in failing systems for the cure. I believe that co-management hybrids pairing the wisdom and experience of more senior leaders with the inventiveness and curiosity of Gen X'ers and Millenials could be the best bet. But one thing is for sure--rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic won't save the ship. For that, you have to find the fundamental cause of the problem. It could be programming. It could be marketing. It could be both. Or, it just might be that we are clinging on to a business model that is rapidly failing us.

Can right-sizing be as sexy as expansion?

On Thursday of last week, Thomas Cott featured several articles on "right-sizing" in the arts in his daily "You've Cott Mail." As many of his emails tend to do, it has stuck with me for days. See his email came at an opportune time for me. I had just given the plenary speech at American University's Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium which partially focused on NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman's "supply and demand" speech, and soon thereafter, Rebecca Novick authored a blog entitled "Please, Don't Start a Theater Company."

A central theme from these various sources began to emerge, which was packaged quite nicely by Rebecca when she said: "In the past fifteen years, the number of nonprofit theater companies in the United States has doubled while audiences and funding have shrunk. Neither the field nor the next generation of artists is served by this unexamined multiplication of companies based on the same old model. The NEA's statistics on nonprofit growth, set against its sobering reports on declining arts participation, illuminate a crucial nexus for the field, a location of both profound failure and potential transformation."

If data indicates that the field continues to expand at an unsustainable rate propagating the continuance of a model that is considered by some to be out of touch with current realities, then why do we continue in such a manner? My thoughts below...

It's as American as apple pie. Let's face it, expansion is sexy. We are the children of manifest destiny. Starting from nothing and growing an empire. Conquering new frontiers. These are all American ideals. Hell, many of our childhood boardgames indoctrinate this philosophy. Is it any surprise that as adults we equate expansion with success? And this perception of success is handsomely rewarded. Grow your audience and your revenue, and you will increase your likelihood of additional contributed revenue. But if those metrics decline, you'll need to do some explaining.

Follow the money. In the 1990s, educational programming became a funding priority, so every theater across the nation rushed to create an education department. To some, it didn't matter if the programming was sub par, they just knew they needed a department to be competitive. In the 2000s, capital projects became a priority, and more than a decade later, we have new buildings all across the country. Some were desperately needed as aging infrastructure was failing, while others were less of a necessity but were built on hopes of significant future returns. After opening, some organizations thrived in their new facilities, while many others struggled almost from day one. In his article "New Facilities Aren't Always a Qualified Success" in the Kansas City Star, Scott Cantrell discusses the challenges of several major new performing arts centers, including Dallas's AT&T Performing Arts Center, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center and Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center. All of which opened without finishing their fundraising campaigns and operated with multi-million deficits. Two years into the new decade, it seems that funders have started to realize the magnitude of the problem, and are now beginning to focus on sustainability as a priority, providing working capital to companies to right-size, rather than providing incentives to expand.

Build it, and they will come. Prior to launching a capital campaign, most organizations commission at least one feasibility study to determine whether or not the company has the capacity to raise the necessary funds to pay for capital improvements. But how many thoroughly study whether or not there is enough support in their communities to sustain an expansion for decades to come? When Arena Stage opened the Mead Center for American Theater, I was thankful that the new building only increased overall capacity by 6% in comparison to the previous structure. Although renovations and improvements were desperately needed, I wasn't convinced that we could introduce a large amount of additional inventory into a city which was already trying to support five previously built new theater complexes. If desired and demand warranted, Arena Stage was able to increase inventory by expanding beyond its typical 9 month season, but they weren't forced into an expansion due to a large increase in the capacity of the new complex. The challenge for Washington at this moment is clear--we have dramatically increased supply over the past decade, and with our capital projects now complete, we must develop and support new audience development campaigns with as much gusto as our capital campaigns. We have to build our audiences, which up until now, we haven't successfully done in the last decade. This is the real challenge. Ten years from now, will our new theaters be empty?

Can you display it? I find it fascinating that many museums have an aggressive acquisition plan but only display a very small percentage of their current collection. There seems to be a commonly accepted premise that major museums only display 10% of their collection because they are limited in terms of space and resources. I can understand acquiring new objects that aren't in display condition for research purposes, but why expand a collection of display quality objects if you don't have the opportunities to display what you currently have? Again, I'm a novice in museum studies, but it would seem to me that before expanding, a museum might consider shifting its resources to developing traveling exhibits so its current collection can be seen. What's the point of acquiring items with very little likelihood of every displaying them to the public?

What's going on in Ohio? I've been closely following two non-profit arts organizations based in Ohio over the past few years, as I believe they can be an example to us all. The first, the Columbus Symphony, was featured in Thomas Cott's aforementioned email. After struggling for years, they conducted a study that indicated that the city of Columbus could only support a symphony with an $8 million operating budget instead of the $12.5 million budget they currently had. From this, they decided to "right-size" their organization to match the current demand in their market by joining forces with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts. Meanwhile across the state, the 90 plus year old Cleveland Playhouse laid off several senior staff members, dropped two productions from its season and trimmed its budget by 18% in 2009, prior to moving to the newly renovated 515 seat Allen Theatre in 2011. Previously, the Allen Theatre boasted 2,500 seats, but when the Cleveland San Jose Ballet left town, the Cleveland Opera downsized and Broadway tours dried up, the Allen Theatre was only in use 90 days out of the year because it was too big for most productions. The solution--the Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland State University and PlayhouseSquare partnered resulting in a newly renovated Allen Theatre with 1,985 fewer seats! And it seems that it has worked out quite well for all involved. Revenue for the Cleveland Playhouse more than doubled and an underused space became the new talk of the town.

This isn't to say that expansion is always bad,  sometimes it is absolutely necessary. However, it isn't always beneficial, even during moments of great success. If your theaters are playing to capacity, perhaps you have discovered the sweet spot for your organization. Push just a little further, and too much of a good thing could tip the scales in an unfavorable direction, leaving you wondering how you managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Expansion can be attractive, but stability is pretty damn sexy too.

Purposeful Acquisition

Several years ago, I wrote a post entitled "You want to get into trouble? Concentrate on new audiences." At the time, I was confused and frustrated with the relentless focus on developing new audiences. The field's obsession with the new to the detriment of the loyal seemed illogical. My good friend Laura Willumsen, senior consultant at TRGArts, summed it up quite nicely by saying "we should find a way to love the one we're with, before we start courting others." Pretty safe advice that came at the perfect time for me.

Three years later, I have come to realize that healthy arts organizations have equally robust campaigns focused on new acquisition and retention, and increasingly we are focusing on improving the overall lifetime value of our customers.

For those with retention problems, I would still advise spending a majority of your resources reducing attrition before launching costly acquisition campaigns. There is nothing worse than spending a significant amount of resources enticing new patrons in the front door while your current customer base runs out the back door. And from a financial perspective, that is one of the easiest ways to sink the ship.

That said, if attrition and renewal rates are within the range of industry standards, more than likely it is time to concentrate on acquisition. Here are a couple of thoughts...

Programming. If you are looking to acquire new audiences, either you can dig a little deeper in your current well, or you can dig a new well altogether. If untapped audiences remain within your core programming, then continuing to dig deeper in your current well probably makes the most sense. If however, you find that your current programming has tapped out its audience base, digging a new well with expanded programming might be the key to acquiring new audiences. Digging a new well requires developing mission driven programming focused on an unmet need within your community. New programming initiatives are usually costly, and often times are prematurely abandoned when they don't hit a desired net revenue goal in a short period of time. Arts organizations need to view new programming initiatives as an investment in future audiences which will pay out over years instead of months. While digging new wells, it is important to maintain and cultivate your current well. Don't abandon the old for the new--let the returns from the old provide the investment capital for the new. Often times marketers are afraid of new programming because they don't want to risk offending current subscription audiences, but if you maintain a base level of traditional programming while offering an opportunity or two to test drive new programming, you will mitigate your risk of subscriber attrition. And for those who have highly subscribed houses, new programming might be the only opportunity that you have to get new audiences into your theaters which would otherwise be mostly sold out on subscription. During my final week at Arena Stage, I had to chuckle when a reporter asked me if we increased our number of musicals in the upcoming season because they were "cash cows." If only he knew that most musicals we produced actually lost money. Aside from artistic reasons, from a marketing perspective, we increased the number of musicals to attract more first time audiences, which we will then try to convert into lifetime patrons.

Direct Marketing. During the last year, I have heard of several companies eliminating acquisition efforts entirely due to budget cuts, thinking that investing exclusively in retention campaigns would result in higher returns over time because the ROI was better than comparable acquisition campaigns. Unless you are in desperate shape, please do not kill your acquisition efforts entirely. And here's why--if you currently have a healthy 80% renewal rate for your members/subscribers, it means every year you will lose 20% of your base. Statistics show that even if you have a flawless renewal campaign, you will still lose 10% due to changes in lifestyle or death. To replace those lost, you must invest in acquisition or budget for a reduced base each year that you don't. If you cut acquisition entirely, with an 80% renewal rate, you will lose half of your entire base in three years. And getting them back is going to be incredibly expensive! When looking at acquisition costs, often times it will take two to three years for a new member/subscriber to produce a net positive result, but over a lifetime, these new acquisitions will be responsible for years of renewal revenue.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. When the economy took a nosedive in 2008, marketers responded by looking for places to cut by thoroughly monitoring the cost of sale for individual campaigns. Normally, I would encourage such behavior. But I believe it has resulted in a zero sum game of gains and losses among the various theaters in the Washington, DC area. Studies show that even as venues have dramatically increased their capacities, theater audiences in our nation's capital have not grown. And as we all looked for opportunities to reduce our marketing expenses, we refocused our acquisition campaigns to aggressively target the list segments that performed the best, which frequently were qualified leads of theatergoers from other companies. The most cost effective means of acquiring "new" audiences was soliciting patrons from other theaters. Acquiring "new" audiences didn't actually mean developing new theatergoers as much as it meant marketing to previous theatergoers who had never visited your theater before. This wasn't dirty pool. It is standard operating procedure in any highly competitive marketplace. But as I left Arena Stage, being incredibly proud that we had almost doubled our subscriber base in three years, I found myself being more interested in the number of none theatergoers we were able to convert into theater patrons. And the truth is I don't know because we never tracked it. As a community, the greatest challenge we have is developing truly "new" audiences in Washington, DC. If we are using each other as a primary source for our "new" audiences, then we aren't creating a healthier community as our individual successes come at the expense of others. Therefore I encourage marketers to look at acquisition in terms of developing completely new audiences for the community as well as acquiring new audiences for your organization. The latter will improve your individual health, while the former the health of the artistic ecosystem.

Quick reflections on a changing media landscape

Just a few thoughts on the changing landscape of arts journalism...

Content aggregation vs. reporting. As newsroom staffs are being cut, an alarming number of original source reporting outlets are shifting to content aggregation. Very few media outlets now have dedicated full-time reporters that are assigned to the arts. With an increase in content aggregation and a decrease in original reporting, editorial power is shifting to the fewer outlets that are creating content which in turn feeds the increasing number of aggregators. Just a short time ago, it used to be that a significant story would be covered by several local and national outlets, allowing a well-rounded view of the story to emerge. Today, whatever the view of the originating source becomes the defacto view of aggregating outlets, thereby often times giving a single reporter the responsibility of judge, jury and executioner. That said, I have found that there are some journalists who aggregate content, and then editorially expound upon amassed content. I have found that in doing so, these journalists feel the pressure to produce original editorial based upon what others have said, but they do not view themselves as primary source journalists, meaning that they will comment on previous work, but will not expend the energy to actually conduct interviews or investigate if forgone conclusions are accurate.

The rise of "gotcha" journalism. It used to be that purposefully snarky reporting was the realm of the social blogosphere, or at best, the weekly alternative paper. In a surprising turn of events, the Washington Post, one of the most respected new sources for arts journalism in the country, sent out the following message in late February: “Got a grievance to air about the Washington arts scene? Is complaining your favorite form of catharsis? Our Sunday Arts section is seeking critics like yourself, who are interested in giving our local and cultural scene some tough love.” Why would such a reputable news source specifically solicit grievances and nothing else? Wouldn't they want a balanced view from the community on the impact of the arts in our nation's capital? particularly at a time when arts funding is getting slashed? I fear that ill-conceived attempts at gaining readership will result in using tactics that just a few years ago would have been laughed out of the newsroom. Quality arts reporting, as it rapidly diminishes in communities across the nation, should become a strong competitive advantage for those that continue to invest in it. For another viewpoint, please check out Howard Sherman's excellent post here.

Pay to play, and the abandonment of journalistic ethics. I have a feeling that even prehistoric publicists had to deal with "news outlets" that refused editorial coverage unless advertising money was attached, but it used to be that these outlets were few and came with tarnished reputations in their communities. Today it is almost as likely that a marketing director will arrange an editorial feature via an account rep as it is a publicist via an editor. And outlets aren't shy about it. Previously a publisher might say to you with a wink that he would see what he could do, but now they flat out tell you if you want to be reviewed, you need to buy an ad! If a feature article, and much more so a review, is attached to an advertising buy, journalistic ethics have been thrown out the door. Just on principle, even when I did have the resources to make an ad buy, if an offer was made, I walked away from the table. There has to be a line.

To tweet, or not to tweet? If you are an executive of an arts organization, and you are considering joining Twitter, here are a couple of things to consider:

• Twitter is a community. If you do not have the time to adequately nourish online relationships in Twitter, don't join.
• You are always on the record. It is an open community in which anyone can ask any question at any time. Don't let the relaxed environment fool you. Every 140 character response is on the record. For a good laugh, please refer to the top 10 celebrity Twitter scandals. It is easy to understand why journalists encourage joining, as many a good story have come of it.
• Silence speaks volumes. Thinking about joining, and then side-stepping the tough questions? Often times what you don't say communicates even more than what you do say. You should be prepared to answer questions that you won't want to. And in this environment, "no comment" doesn't go over quite so well.

That all said, if you have the time and are comfortable with complete transparency, then a Twitter feed can provide for strong relationships between you and a wide audience.

Learning from the Past, Looking toward the Future

A little more than a week ago, I announced that I would be leaving Arena Stage to lead the marketing and membership efforts at the Smithsonian Associates at the end of March. I've been overwhelmed by the kind words and best wishes sent my way. For that, I am very grateful.

Some have also asked if I plan to continue blogging. As you may have noticed over the years, my blog covers topics that I am passionate about, often times motivated by current trends and experiences. As I move from a performing arts organization to a museum and research institution, undoubtedly my perspective will evolve over time. However, I hope to continue to contribute to online dialogue and debate.

My four-and-a-half years at Arena Stage have been the most rewarding and exhausting of my career. When one decides to pursue a career in a field they love, like many theater artists I know, these two adjectives are not mutually exclusive; in fact, many would argue that you can't have one without the other. When joining Arena Stage, I knew there were very few precedents for what we needed to accomplish, and with the opening of the Mead Center and a 2.5 year transition ahead of us, a clear path wasn't always available. It was an opportunity that intimidated me, but I knew that I would get an education of a lifetime.

In looking back, I've learned quite a bit along the way...

• Always give an "exclusive" to your best and most loyal customers. Trust me, if they read something important in the daily paper before they hear it from you, they won't feel like part of the family.
• Customer service can be a significant competitive advantage. When the whole world has come to expect awful customer service, it creates an easy opportunity to shine.
• When hiring, if you have to pick between the two, a "fire in the belly" always trumps experience. One can teach skills, but one cannot be taught to take pride in their work.
• Resources are an investment--monitor and expect returns. Marketing directors have two primary resources: human and financial capital. Where and when to invest each is a critical decision. When budgets are tight, monitor cost of sale and make data driven investments rather than emotionally driven ones.
• Decisiveness is critical. Leap or die. Would you rather sip champagne and listen to the violins on the Titanic, or slap on a life vest and jump into the unknown? The unknown may be scary, but the known isn't an option. A delay in decision-making will almost always be costly, as it is rare for circumstances to change, but options will diminish. The non-profit theater landscape in the United States is changing rapidly, and adjustments must be made.
• Maximize successes to mitigate risks. Unless you present nothing but bankable commercial successes, risks are inherent in the theater. When you catch a break, ride it for all that it's worth in order to mitigate the risk that is right around the corner.
• Looking for improvements? Track results. By tracking, you send a signal to the company that something is important. Important enough to monitor. By not tracking, you send an equally powerful signal that something isn't worth the effort. Know your vital statistics, and track them aggressively.
• Marketers are masters of perception, not reality. Unless you are talking about financials, marketers should keep their attention on perception. Perception, as we know, is reality for most.
• Subscriptions aren't dying, theaters are killing them. If patrons can get great seats at a significant discount at the last minute, the value proposition of a subscription doesn't exist. Best seats at the best prices = more subscriptions (as long as the product is good).
• Develop a strong team, and hire to your weaknesses. Major accomplishments are always a team effort. Honestly assess yourself, recognize your weaknesses, and hire people that are better than you in areas where you need improvement.
• Comp tickets are disrespectful. There are a few good reasons to give a comp here or there, but nothing devalues the work of an organization or artists more than giving away free tickets. Why do we expect society to value the arts if we don't?
• Make decisions for tomorrow instead of today. Often times we are faced with decisions that could result in a short term gain, but a long term loss. Unless you are in desperate times, always set yourself up for a better tomorrow, even if it makes a more difficult today.
• Take a Pavlovian approach to discounting. Use discounting as a means to encourage desired behavior. Want people to purchase early? Avoid late discounts whenever possible.
• Marketing and Development are two sides of the same coin. Look at revenue generation as a team with the goal of raising the most revenue at the least cost. Consolidate resources, eliminate redundancies, invest in campaigns that perform the best across the departmental divide, and look at your customers holistically with an eye toward building loyalty and lifetime value.

I will always remember my time at Arena Stage fondly, and am thankful for the education I received.

Looking forward to catching a performance in the near future--this time though as an audience member (and yes, I will buy my tickets).

Partners or Competitors

A little more than a week ago, the Washington Post in an extraordinary effort by a daily newspaper, published a series of articles on the state of theater in Washington, DC. As part of that series, Nelson Pressley, a frequent contributor for the Post, wrote an interesting piece on the financial status of the community. In it, he notes that in terms of capacity, the Washington theater community has grown tremendously over the past decade, while government funding has decreased significantly and according to theaterWashington, the annual theater attendance has remained the same since 1988. Mr. Pressley also cites that each theater that has expanded reports significantly increased audiences, and several have recently set all-time sales records.

In the Twittersphere, this article raised the same question that NEA Chairman Landesman asked in his now famous "supply and demand" speech given at Arena Stage in January 2011. Is there enough demand to support the increase in supply? This isn't a new question. It is something I questioned in this blog in 2008, and it is something that arts administrators discuss at every conference I have ever attended.

Setting aside for the moment the data from theaterWashington, on a positive note, I've seen some extraordinary things in the DC theater community in the past few years. I'd heard that the city can only support one or two major hits at any given time, however in the late fall of 2010, several theaters reported exceptionally strong attendance numbers for multiple shows running at the same time, including Oklahoma! and every tongue confess at Arena Stage, Candide at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sunset Boulevard at Signature Theatre, and A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre. Well, there went that long held belief. When Arena Stage was considering a 13 week summer remount of Oklahoma!, I was told that the city could not support a long sit down production of a major musical in the summer as August was completely dead in these parts, and we couldn't succeed with Congress out of session and everyone heading to the beach. Surprise, surprise when not only Arena Stage experienced sold out houses at the height of the summer doldrums, but Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company did as well with their remount of Clybourne Park. As a community, I don't think there is anything we like better than being told we can't do something, and then proving that we can.

But to Nelson's point, we have a significant challenge ahead of us. In discussing his article on Twitter, playwright Stephen Spotswood asked me "how much do DC theater companies feel like they are in competition with each other?" Soon thereafter, Peter Marks, theater critic of the Washington Post, asked me to answer the question on the record. And this is my attempt...

Are DC theater companies in competition with each other?
Yes. In my opinion, to think otherwise would be naive. People have limited disposable income, especially during tough economic times. However, we are very lucky. Washington, DC is weathering the economic downturn better than any other city in the nation. Although we have had our challenges, we have a leg up on everywhere else, and perhaps this is why we have been able to expand during turbulent times. But in terms of how people are going to spend their leisure time, theaters are in competition with each other as much as they're in competition with movies, sports, other performing arts, museums, television, YouTube, video games, etc. To say that we aren't is simply untrue.

That being said, if I am in competition for discretionary spending dollars, I want it to be with another theater. Why? I can't get patrons to come to my theater if they don't see theater as an option in the first place. My primary responsibility as a theater marketer is to get people interested in the theater. To increase the stability of our community, we have to grow the base of theater patrons in our city. We don't have any other option, and to do that, we have to view ourselves as partners first and competitors second. If we focus on cannibalizing each other's audiences, it will be a losing battle. One theater may win one year, but inevitably it will lose the next. The only way everyone wins, including the city, is if we cultivate a growing audience for all of our theaters.

In responding to Stephen's question, I would also say that I tend to think that competition in the marketplace is good. When competition is stiff, it pushes everyone to do their best. To produce work of the highest quality. To provide the best customer service. To nurture the best local talent, and to present preeminent artists from around the globe. Please forgive the personal anecdote, but I know I have a more rewarding workout when there is a strong runner on the treadmill next to me. If there is no one by my side pushing the pace, I won't exert as much energy. I want to keep up. I want to compete. And because of our competitive spirit, DC audiences will get to experience the best efforts of all.

As I look into the new year, I resolve to elevate my gaze whenever possible from being exclusively on the theater where I work to the community as a whole. I hope that competition will improve us individually, and that working together will improve us as a whole.

Art or Audience

Doug McLennan, Editor of ArtsJournal, invited me to participate in an online debate on leadership in the arts. To kick things off, a panel of bloggers were asked to respond to the following prompt:

"Increasingly, audiences have more visibility for their opinions about the culture they consume. Cultural institutions know more and more about their audiences and their wants. Some suggest this new transparency argues for a different relationship between artists and audience. So the question: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more?"

There has been vigorous debate on this issue, and to check out all the arguments, please visit the "Lead or Follow" online discussion here.

As for me, below is my response to the aforementioned prompt:

This week we examine the nature of leadership in the context of developing the most fruitful relationships with our audiences. Good relationships often strike a healthy balance between competing interests, and frequently this balance is forged over the course of many years. Arts organizations have relationships with their patrons, donors and communities, and those relationships are constantly evolving. As such, I find the framework of this debate limiting, as I would argue that great arts organizations lead and follow, and that we shouldn’t be asking if we should do more of one than the other, but instead ask if we are doing the leading or the following at the appropriate times.

There are moments when arts organizations must lead, and that leadership becomes a catalyst of great change. In 1948, the National Theater in Washington, DC closed its doors rather than integrate, and a twenty-four year old Zelda Fichandler decided it was time for the city to have a producing theater of its own. She was an early proponent of the idea that communities should reclaim ownership of their theaters, and now sixty-one years later, there are more than 1,900 non-profit regional theaters in cities across the nation. It took a leader.

There are also times when we follow. As of 2008, minorities accounted for 48% of all births in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2050, the Asian and Hispanic population will double, African-Americans will increase and the white population will decline by 9%. In addition, the percentage of the population that is elderly will almost double. Look at your board of directors, staff, donors and audiences—do they reflect your community? Is the physical structure of your building suitable for a growing number of elderly patrons? As a field, we are behind the curve, and we have much to learn from following as our communities are changing faster than we are.

In terms of audience development, it is important for arts organizations to play both roles well. Our principal challenge as arts marketers is presenting art as a viable option for leisure activity. We have many barriers—ticket prices, transportation and parking, lack of arts education in our schools, inaccessible and aging infrastructure, etc. Not to mention, the abundance of free and easily accessible alternatives from our competition. A 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts published by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that American arts audiences are getting older, and their numbers are declining at significant rates. In 2011, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman delivered his now famous “supply and demand” speech from Arena Stage, indicating that demand for the arts is currently outpaced by supply, and suggesting that we consider pruning our numbers. We have a problem in this country. And if we have to produce more populist work in order to overcome potential barriers for first time patrons, I am fine with that. In fact, I am more than fine—it is what we should be doing.

Populist work is often, for lack of a better term, a gateway drug. Lure them in with a musical, roll out a comedy, put in a Broadway touring production. Do what it takes. Once they have an exceptional first time artistic experience, art becomes an option and then we work to get them addicted. From the perspective of an arts marketer, once a new patron walks through our doors via a “gateway” play, my job is to get them back. Once they have had a few experiences, my responsibilities shift. I now focus my attention on broadening their experiences and pushing their boundaries. And they will be ready. But forcing them to run before they crawl will end up in a disappointing experience for all.

Each patron has an individual relationship to an arts organization. We have a responsibility to offer up a balanced diet that feeds each artistic soul. For those with a developed palate, we lead, push, challenge and sometimes offend. And for those new to us, it is perfectly appropriate to offer up a piece of cake in order to get them to sample the exotic quiche.

Currently at Arena Stage, we have a tremendous production of John Logan’s Red directed by Robert Falls. In the script, painter Mark Rothko’s assistant Ken delivers a powerful speech, in which he says:

“You know, not everything has to be so goddamn important all the time! Not every painting has to rip your guts out and expose your soul! Not everyone wants art that actually hurts. Sometimes you just want a fucking still life or landscape or soup can or comic book.”

Remarkable arts organizations are more than just temples of art. We are relationship builders. Today we lead, tomorrow we may follow, but we take our cues from our communities, for whom we were built to serve.