For the second year in a row, PMP invited Eric Booth to hold a seminar and workshop at the Curtis Institute of Music on audience participation and engagement in musi-cal performances. Mr. Booth, an innovative arts educator on staff at The Juilliard School, has also enjoyed careers as an actor, a market researcher, and a teacher, and combines these fields in his approaches to improving the experience of con-certgoers. Last October, Booth’s event focused on language that might be used before, during, or after a public performance to enhance the listening experience.

Mr. Booth included a great deal of interactivity in his morning seminar, Raising the Invisible Curtain: How Can We (and Why Do We) Bring Listeners Further Inside the Music? He asked the audience to brainstorm the qualities of a successful musical experience and demonstrated different ways of framing performances of William Carlos William’s poem “The Red Wheel Barrow”—with no introduction, with a lengthy biographical introduction, and with an illuminating detail regarding the composition of the poem—concluding the demonstration by asking for feedback on which frame was most helpful to listeners.

Booth went on to articulate the task of engaging audiences and delivering a re-warding experience. The aim, he suggested, is to “tap [the audience’s] competence” and to provide them with an “entry point” to the performance. His rule, he said, is “engagement before information”—the expressive and interpretive experience begins only after the line of communication has been established. He encouraged performers to prioritize the piece’s personal relevance for the audience and to

“be the thing,” to find a way to portray or embody crucial aspects of what will be performed. Elucidating the structure of a piece before it is played, he argued, can help maintain audience members’ attention and give them more opportunities to connect with the music.

For the afternoon work-shop, Hands On: How to Enhance the Interactivity of Your Program, a number of local artists presented introductory remarks that they might make for a piece. Example introductions were given by Alan Harler, Artis-tic Director of Mendelssohn Club; Linda Reichert and Jan Krzywicki of Network for New Music; Mogauwane Mahloele, a South African musician and instrument maker, and Diane Monroe, a composer and violinist who performs in both jazz and classical idioms. Each performer, with unique styles, spoke boldly before the group and received feedback both from the audience and from Mr. Booth.

PMP 33

Engagement Before Information: Eric Booth Interacts

RAISING THE INVISIBLE CURTAIN: HOW CAN WE (AND WHY DO WE) BRING LISTENERS FURTHER

INSIDE THE MUSIC? AND HANDS ON: HOW TO ENHANCE THE INTERACTIVITY OF YOUR PROGRAM

SEMINAR AND WORKSHOP WITH ERIC BOOTH

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2004

DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

Above: Eric Booth

Left (l-r): Jan Krzywicki, Linda Reichert, Eric Booth,

Mogauwane Mahloele, and Diane Monroe

PMP 32

Kate Prescott, President of Prescott & Associates in Pittsburgh, presented a seminar at Settlement Music School on Understanding and Using Research for More Effective Marketing Strategies. At-tended by approximately thirty individuals representing Greater Philadelphia’s non-profit music organizations, Ms. Prescott explored how the staff of these organi-zations might improve their marketing strategies by making better use of extant market research. Prescott reviewed sev-eral of the major research studies that have been conducted recently regarding arts participation and spent a significant

portion of the seminar explaining the charts and numbers generated in the studies.

She began by pointing out that many artistic organizations make the mistake of believing that everyone is their audience, that they are marketing to everybody. In fact, Prescott explained, only a modest percentage of the population represents a viable potential audience; organizations’ marketing efforts are most effective when directed at that population. Also, she noted that audiences reported a wide ar-ray of reasons for not attending artistic and cultural events. In other words, rather than there being one obstacle between organizations and potential audiences, there are in fact numerous, minor hurdles, and there will be no one method for filling seats.

Prescott went on to speak from her own experience of conducting marketing services for the Pittsburgh Ballet, including taking phone surveys regarding particular shows. She closely compared the lan-guage used for more and less successful productions. Interestingly, survey participants said that they liked both types of productions. The more successful productions, however, were described in glowing, personal terms that resonated with each listener’s life experience.

She described the success of special offers made to audience members to go backstage at the Pittsburgh Ballet; they were eager to see what goes on behind the scenes, she said. Also, she recom-mended that organizations aim to offer their audiences “flow,” defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the “best moments” that “occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Not a simple task! But it is one that musical performance has lived up to for centuries.

When Matt Levy asked me to write a short piece on my philosophy of arts mar-keting I wondered if I actually had one. Upon a bit of reflection I would sum it up by saying that “Arts marketing is not about selling tickets; it’s about building strong and lasting relationships.” Ticket sales are just one outcome of an effective ongoing process of marketing and audience development.

I believe the relationship premise is important for several reasons. First, we can all identify with it because we’ve all had relationships, good and bad. Secondly, it means that marketing is about people—not just nameless butts in seats, but living, breathing, feeling people. And it recognizes the need for several fundamentals: understanding and respect, mutual benefit, and good communication (after all, how many of us enjoy relationships where we’re misunderstood and taken for granted, don’t get anything in return, and can’t talk about the issues). All of this suggests that effective marketing isn’t al-ways neat, clean, or easy.

Understanding and respecting your customers is about knowing who they really are, what their world is like, and how your product fits into their world. It also means realizing that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone is going to love what you do (yes, even after they come to a performance). So you need to figure out who you are most compatible with and target those folks rather than the entire world. And because relationships thrive when there is mutual benefit and reward, arts organizations need to take a good hard look inside to see if they are really giving their audiences the product and experience they are looking for. This has nothing to do with dumbing down; it is simply very difficult to sell people something they don’t want or need. Finally, once you understand who the customer is, you need to communicate with them in their language. One of the greatest weaknesses arts organiza-tions have are their communications materials because they are typically written from the organization’s perspective rather than the consumer’s. The problem is that if a potential customer can’t immediately figure out what their personal ‘value equation’ is (e.g. is this worth my time, my money, my effort, etc.), most will simply not respond.

A few other relationships are also key to effective arts marketing. One is internal—marketing cannot be the sole province of the marketing de-partment or communications manager; it must involve all aspects of the organization—including the artistic. Arts organizations should also forge and maintain lasting relationships with marketing experts (design, research, direct response, etc.). Very few arts managers have significant marketing experience, so you will need to get advice from those who do. You should find the best people, not the cheapest, and you should treat them as part of the team. A corollary issue here is saving money where you can and spending it where you should. Finally, developing closer relationships with other arts organizations should be a given. You not only learn from each other’s experi-ences, but the last several years have shown that collaboration, when done well, is a very good thing—whether it be in joint marketing efforts, sharing space, programming, etc.

While it may not be easy, I’m confident that arts organizations that con-tinuously strive to improve upon all of these relationships and learn from the lessons each one brings will reap many lasting benefits and rewards—includ-ing ticket sales!

Illuminating Arts Market Research MY PHILOSOPHY BY KATE PRESCOTT

DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

UNDERSTANDING AND USING

RESEARCH FOR MORE EFFECTIVE

MARKETING STRATEGIES

MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2004