The Truth About Attracting Younger Audiences

In the past few weeks, I have served on a couple of panels and delivered a few speeches about attracting younger audiences. In doing so I found that many people harbor some misconceptions about attracting younger audiences. I understand that younger audiences are a sexy topic to funders and board members, but there are a few things we all need to think about before launching our assault on the Gen X'ers and Millenials.

• Product. Of the four Ps of marketing, most will agree that product is the most important. So why then is it the least considered when looking at ways in which to attract younger audiences? If your core artistic product is not appealing to younger audiences, then you will almost assuredly fail to get them to fully engage with your organization. Throwing an after hours party, turning a performing space into a disco or hosting themed young professional events might get targeted demographics into the door, but what we really want is for them to engage with the mission of the organization. If the mission precludes the organization from programming attractive art or an artistic leader isn't sensitive to the programming desires of young adults, you might be able to get them in the door, but they will never be a stakeholder of your institution. Just as location is king in real estate, in the arts, nothing is as powerful as the programming.
• Price. News Flash -- many younger audience members have money, and are not as price sensitive as some of us assume. Consider this study that reports that the 37 million young adults from 25 to 34 years of age in the U.S. have an aggregate income of more than $1.1 trillion. In an attempt to explain the absences of young people, I think we have jumped to price as the primary issue because it is much easier to change than product. However, I would argue that those who have to adjust tickets to bargain basement prices to attract younger audiences primarily have a problem with the product. Consider that in 2008, Ticketmaster reported that the average price for a ticket to a Coldplay concert was $217. For those lucky enough to have seen Coldplay, you know their events are filled with Gen X'ers.
• Place. Secondary to product, we should be asking ourselves if our institutions are welcoming to younger audiences. Churches and theaters are both struggling to attract younger members, and I believe are failing for many of the same reasons. Things to ponder: 1) what is the average age of your ushers? if they are the first people to welcome your audience, would someone in their 20s be welcomed by a peer or by someone that could be their grandparent? 2) Gen X'ers can barely remember a life without computers. Millenials have never been without the Internet. Yet we expect audiences to disconnect and remain in a dome of silence when they are at our institutions. Why not provide free wifi? configure our websites to work on handheld devices? 3) Is your organization's virtual presence as inviting as your real world location? can I purchase tickets, get answers to my questions, and engage with you on my schedule?
• Promotion. Secondary to price, this is the area that most institutions focus on. Video + Facebook + Podcasts does not automatically = younger audiences. You should think of new media tools as just a means of communicating. Nothing more, nothing less. Like any other tool, you have to know how to properly use it, and then use it to put the right message in front of the right audience. Most new media initiatives require two separate, but crucial steps to properly execute a campaign: the building of a communications infrastructure and the creation of content. You can have amazing content, but no friends to connect with. Or you can build a network of thousands of friends, and lose them quickly with the mediocre content. But for new media tools to work, you must have a product, place and price which are all conducive to younger audiences, and then you can concentrate on perfecting your new media skills.

As marketing directors, we have the least amount of control over product and place, and the most amount of control over price and promotion. Therefore we concentrate our efforts in the areas that we can affect, but if you don't get the first two right, you are wasting your time with the last two.

How We Can Support New Work (an addendum)

My latest blog post entitled How Marketing Directors Kill New Work caused quite the stir among my colleagues. For those that know me, I have never been one to shy away from controversial issues, especially if I have a strong position on the subject. With that being said, I stand by what I wrote, but decided that I should probably add an addendum as several good points were raised by my readers.

I was challenged by some to address the steps that marketing directors can take to help support new work. I must admit after rereading my post, I found myself to be a little more critical than helpful, which wasn't my intent. So below are some suggestions, ideas and responses to comments:

• Seek the help of the playwrights. In promoting new work, particularly if a new work speaks to an audience unfamiliar to you, seek the help and advice of the playwright. You know your organization's audience, and they know the target audience of the play. Combined, you should be able to find ways to attract your traditional audiences to the work and develop methods to entice new audiences into your doors. In my couple of years at Arena Stage, playwrights like Lisa Kron (Well), Daniel Beaty (Resurrection), Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), and Matthew Lombardo (Looped) have been incredibly helpful in developing marketing strategies. Still to this day, I find that playwrights are surprised when I ask for their input on marketing strategy, messaging, artwork creation and outreach events.
• Budgeting. Several colleagues lamented that executive leadership forced them to set earned revenue goals too high on a new work knowing full well that they would not be able to achieve them. My advice is to develop earned revenue projection tools that are accurate and stick to your guns. In the past two years, our earned revenue projections at Arena Stage have been off by less than 1%. We have developed a sophisticated system that has been proven to work in even some of the most difficult economic circumstances. Although the entire senior staff discusses the assumptions and logic behind the forecasts, ultimately we support our revenue forecasts as a team. The surest way to ensure failure for a new work is to set an unattainable goal, for when you miss the goal by a wide margin, it can cause leadership to shy away from new work, when in reality it was a forecasting issue, not a programmatic issue.
• Start early. Every arts administrator has to deal with issues of capacity, particularly in an economic climate where many companies have had to reduce the size of their already overtaxed staff. In taking on new work, we should remember that audience development is a slow and time consuming process. It can take a year or more of intense, dedicated work to make inroads into an untapped community. All too often, due to the typical planning cycles of regional theaters, marketers are not given enough time to develop and execute an effective strategy. Artistic directors can help marketers by lengthening their planning cycle for new work, so that marketing staff have ample time to develop an audience.
• Don't Over Do It. Ask any marketing director, and they will tell you that acquisition campaigns are much more costly than retention campaigns. When looking at audience development, we are dealing with large acquisition campaigns. These campaigns take a significant investment not only in terms of money, but also in terms of staff time. Unless a marketing team is exceptionally large, I would advise tackling only one or two projects per year that focus on new audience markets. Any more, and you run the risk of not being able to provide the support these projects need.

The entire team ensures the success or failure of a new work. It is important to note, as I was reminded several times in the past couple of weeks, that a marketing director is only one member of the team. However, I can only control the actions of one person -- myself -- and that is why I focus on what we as marketing professionals can do to increase the success of new work.

How Marketing Directors Kill New Work

As I only post when something catches my attention, my posting habits are a little sporadic. Sometimes I will write a couple of posts in a week, and other times I will only post once a month. I have been feeling pretty guilty lately about not posting more, but nothing really jumped out at me until very recently.

In the past couple of weeks, two things have impacted my work as a marketer--I was extraordinarily fortunate to attend a convening of Black playwrights as part of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, and I finally got around to reading Outrageous Fortune, the new report put out by TDF about new play development. Via both contexts, I heard numerous complaints about how institutional theaters market new work.

It became clear to me that marketing directors, in some cases, have the ability to kill new work. In Outrageous Fortune, one playwright contends that institutional theaters are "about a certain kind of system...when plays come in, they want to systematically find a way to market them." Another playwright states that new play production "comes down to marketing. Some say we love this play; we can't find the audience for it. It pisses me off, because a lot of people in marketing don't know how to find new audiences." It is easy for marketers to take offense, however we should admit that at too many institutions, this is the case. Marketing directors are like anyone else; we are creatures of habit. If we have been in the job for awhile, we start to develop systems for marketing products. We know how to market musicals, new plays, African-American work, political satire, etc. But what happens when the Artistic Director brings us something that we can't pigeon hole? Well, I guess that depends on the person sitting in the marketing director's chair. Some of us get excited as it presents an opportunity to learn and grow, and a chance to build our audience base. Others might be daunted, and instead of facing the challenge, they retreat to the comfort of the known. But let's be clear--whether we accept the responsibility or not, it is our job to find an audience. The audience for more challenging, esoteric work might be smaller than a crowd-pleaser, but either way it is our duty to go into the community and find those people to support the work. In thinking about this issue, I am reminded of a piece of advice my mentor gave me in graduate school. She said a producer's job is to find ways to say yes.

While reading Outrageous Fortune, I had an interesting interaction with a playwright. When questioned why a play hadn't made a commercial transfer despite being critically acclaimed, the playwright said the producer had a difficult time projecting revenue due to the late buying habits of the audience. To all those on the outside, it was almost impossible for us to understand why a commercial production would not be forthcoming. If it was indeed a case of projecting revenue, then the marketing director has failed this extraordinary new play. Just because our jobs become difficult doesn't mean we have the luxury of being able to choose to carry out our responsibilities. Revenue forecasting is incredibly difficult, especially in light of the current economic crisis. However, who better to forecast revenue than those with the tools to do so?

Are these cases of marketing directors behaving badly? It sure looks that way. We got into our jobs knowing the territory. We are tasked with developing new audiences, supporting the mission of the institution, forecasting revenue, promoting all types of work, etc. If you don't like any of those tasks, then you should move on. Maybe the job isn't for you. Don't jeopardize the livelihoods of playwrights, or the advancement of our craft, because you don't want to take on a tough task.

That being said, before I finish this post, I wanted to mention that there are two major sources of revenue at non-profit institutions--earned revenue and contributed revenue. If marketing objectives have the ability to sacrifice your institution's mission, then I would argue that you have become too reliant upon box office revenue. For-profit companies focus on one thing: building a product that has audience appeal sufficient enough to make the most possible profit. Non-profits as well have a singular focus: fulfilling their mission. At no point can marketing objectives jeopardize an organization's ability to fulfill its mission. If you get to that point, you might as well become a for-profit entity.

The Lure of Star Power

I just finished reading Playbill.com's Top Theatre Stories of the Year. The leading story discusses how stars sell tickets, and in a year with a down economy, it seems that the only thing that sells tickets are the stars. From this little story it seems clear that if you don't have an A-list star in your show, don't even try a Broadway transfer.

Arena Stage in the past few seasons has been lucky enough to host a few stars, most notably Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking and Valerie Harper in Looped (and not surprisingly, both productions found their way to Broadway). From a marketing perspective, nothing makes my job easier than a star, particularly stars that are lovely to work with as both Carrie and Valerie were. But let's be honest, it doesn't take a marketing genius to sell tickets to star powered vehicles. And it isn't just New York that has a taste for the stars. The Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Kennedy Center just presented two star productions that sold out immediately: Phedre with Helen Mirren and A Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett. It used to be that New York and Los Angeles were the cities that needed stars to sell, but it looks like DC might be going that way as well. Or maybe the entire country.

But there are problems with stars as well:

1. Star productions are a gamble, especially for regional theaters. Most Broadway productions can guarantee stars, but regional theaters for the most part cannot. Regional theaters tend to announce productions and casts several months before a show opens in time to sell subscriptions and advanced single tickets. However, during the time between the announcement and the opening, a star can get a better offer from a Broadway production, television series or movie which will lead them to pull out of the regional production, leaving audiences with an expectation that theaters can no longer fill.

2. Most times even with a guaranteed star appearance, run lengths have to be shortened as the schedules of most stars won't allow them to appear for a run length of several weeks, meaning that these productions will more than likely be off subscription. To capitalize on the star production, many theaters use them to boost subscription sales by only allowing subscribers to purchase the very limited quantity of single tickets to the star show. However, often times, patrons will purchase the cheapest subscription package available only for the opportunity to purchase the star production, and then won't attend the rest of the subscription shows leaving theaters with half empty audiences throughout the season.

3. Are regional theaters building an appetite for something they cannot always feed? If theaters have a couple of successful years of bringing in stars for productions, what happens when they can't find a star production for a year or two? In essence, they have built an event based audience that they can't always feed. And in this case, these types of patrons aren't loyal to the company, they are loyal to productions that feature stars. They are the most fickle of any audience segment. The first time you don't deliver, they will move on to somebody that is.

4. Are regional theaters teaching hoards of future patrons that only star vehicles deserve their patronage by filling their programming with stars if and when they get them? Or even a larger concern for me, what about those companies that regularly program poorly conceived productions that showcase a star over a brilliantly produced production without a star? The Playbill article focuses on this issue, citing several poorly reviewed, star centric productions on Broadway that financially recouped along with numerous well reviewed productions that lacked stars which struggled from day one.

There is no doubt about it--a star production can be fun. Your audiences will love them, you will sell plenty of tickets, and they will bring national attention to your part of the world. However, like anything else, maybe some moderation is in order?

Make sure you keep one foot in both courts

Sometimes at the conclusion of a speech that I am giving, I have someone from the crowd come up to me and thank me for all the great information, exclaiming that they are going to end their direct mail campaigns in order to shift resources to technology based viral marketing campaigns. At that moment, I usually cringe and apologize, for I definitely communicated something that I didn’t intend to. For those that read this blog, you know by now that I am a proponent of using technology to grow audiences, building communities and diversify revenue streams. That being said, most major arts organizations find themselves with a foot in two different courts—how to please the audiences of tomorrow, and still serve the audiences of today.

We sometimes forget that there are four generations in play in our audiences: the Silent Generation, the Baby-Boomers, Generation X and the Millenials. Many books have been written, white papers drafted and speeches given (including by yours truly) on how to effectively target Generation X and Millenials as they are the future for arts organizations. However in doing so, some rabid believers have advocated throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Allocating all of your resources at any one of these groups, unless you have programming that only speaks to a certain generation, is foolish, certainly as foolish as not diversifying your stock portfolio.

Let’s take a look at subscriptions. Most arts marketing professionals agree that the subscription model is dated, and is dying a slow death. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should pull the plug on them today when they still probably have a good decade left in them. Several performing arts organizations still receive a major portion of their earned revenue via subscription sales, and although Danny Newman might have published his treatise decades ago, his point that subscriptions protect a company from poor reviews and the fickle buying habits of single ticket buyers is still spot on. At every performing arts organization that I have worked for, I noticed a declining subscription base, and within two years with strategic changes have stopped the decline and started increasing the number of subscribers. I don’t say this to seem like a miracle worker (for which I am not), but it does make me wonder how much marketing directors are directly responsible for declining subscribers.

I am starting to believe that the decline of subscriptions might be in part a self-fulfilling prophesy. If a marketing director fully believed that subscriptions were dying, and that nothing could be done to affect declining subscription numbers, then he might be inclined to focus his limited resources on addressing the needs of his “future audience,” thereby ensuring the decline he was forecasting.

We know from surveys that subscribers tend to be older, and more than likely are part of the Baby-Boomer or Silent Generation. We also know that these generations have been purchasing tickets in this manner for years, are usually more comfortable with transaction conducted over the phone or via mail, and therefore respond better to some classic direct marketing techniques such as direct mail or telemarketing. However if you are underfunding direct marketing in order to fund other priorities (such as online marketing), then the decline in your subscription base might be caused by poor strategic marketing decisions.

When creating a holistic marketing campaign, a wise marketing director should always keep in mind that we are serving multiple masters—each master having a different set of expectations and desires. The key for all marketing professionals is putting the right offer in front of the right people using a communications vehicle that gives the message the highest possibility of success.

What if they are just tired?

In the last few weeks, I have been doing quite a bit of traveling. I have gotten the opportunity to speak with many of my colleagues from around the nation, and they are all saying the same thing -- ticket sales are down this year. Last year, I kept hearing that well branded products were doing very well, while less known fare was struggling. Now I am hearing that even annual cash cows (think A Christmas Carol and Nutcracker) aren't doing well. When a classic theater has problems selling Romeo and Juliet, you know something is up.

So it got me thinking about what is going on (and of course, this is just an opinion). We are all seeing reports that even though some aspects of the economy might be improving, many are still getting worse, such as unemployment. Unemployment is the highest is has been in 20 years. Last year when the stock market crashed and it became clear we were all in for what looked to be an unprecedented global economic crisis, many companies panicked. They didn't know how to project future revenue, so they opted to look at the side of the ledger they could control -- expenses. With that came the layoffs.

Those lucky enough to survive the layoffs took on responsibilities that were normally handled by two or three people. Many managers noted that the resulting model was unsustainable, but thought that most people could put up with the extra load for a short period of time, hoping that the economy would improve and that hiring would be possible. Well, it has been over a year, and unemployment is getting worse, so the unsustainable model of having one person carry the workload of three continues.

As arts administrators, I no longer believe our largest challenge is dealing with people's fears about the economy. That was so last year. Instead, we now have to deal with people who are simply exhausted, and when Friday comes, they want to do nothing more than spend the weekend on the couch in order to recuperate and be ready for the next grueling work week. Whereas last year, our largest competitors might have been other cultural destinations or sporting events, I am starting to think that our most significant future competitor might be cable television and a warm bed.

Blogging from NAMP...

Once again I find myself at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, which is being held this year in Providence, RI. This is my fifth conference, and instead of presenting like I have done in the past, I really wanted to listen in on other sessions to hear what is being discussed. I have been asked to blog about my experiences for Americans for the Arts so these posts can also be seen on their blog.

This morning I was lucky enough to sit in on the Every Dollar Counts: Using ROI to Prove Marketing Effectiveness session. I decided to go to the session because one of my favorite arts marketing experts was presenting--Philippe Ravanas, marketing professor at Columbia College and former VP of Corporate Communications for EuroDisney. I have seen him speak at several conferences and he is always extraordinary.

This morning he discussed a situation he found himself in when he was the Manager of Client Development at Christie's in London. Each year, they would produce a beautiful catalog of auction items that they would send to most of their database. These catalogs were highly coveted, and cost the organization $20 a piece to produce, however Philippe noticed that his ROI (return on investment) for these catalogs was poor. It was costing him too much to produce and mail these catalogs in terms of how much revenue they were bringing in. After researching the problem, he found that they were mailing these catalogs to almost every purchaser, including those people who purchased once twenty years ago and people who only purchased a minor item just to get on the distribution list, as the Christie's catalog seemed to be a popular coffee table item. He soon cut back the distribution, and only sent the catalog to his higher end purchasers. This action greatly improved his ROI on the catalog.

It brought me back to a previous blog post I wrote about the future of the subscription brochure. If you read the post, you can see that I have some serious doubts as to whether or not a subscription brochure works as a sales piece. That being said, our subscribers at Arena Stage love our season brochure because it invites them into the process. There are articles by our featured artists, a letter from our artistic director, beautiful artwork, etc. We have heard from our subscribers that they anxiously await our brochure each year, and that these brochures have become collector's items. So they perform a very valuable function in maintaining relationships with our higher end purchasers, but they aren't necessarily needed to push acquisitions. In fact, we have found that other smaller pieces with a clear central message that cost significantly less to produce and mail actually perform better for acquisition campaigns.

As Diane Ragsdale says in her article Recreating Fine Arts Institutions : "Arts leaders may be tempted to think that the solution to dwindling audiences lies in better marketing, but if arts organizations are going to survive, they have to put more than the season brochure on the autopsy table." I completely agree with Diane...but what happens if an organization isn't even willing to put their season brochure on the autopsy table?