digital trends the arts can't ignore
DESCRIPTION
A talk I gave at a meeting of mitos21 PR and marketing managers, at the National Theatre on 9 November 2013. The brief was to give a perspective about wider digital trends, and ask some provocative questions about how organisations use or misuse digital. mitos21 is a group of theatre professionals associated to some of Europe’s most powerful and important theatre institutions.TRANSCRIPT
Chris Unittchrisunitt.co.uk | @ChrisUnitt
Digital trends the Arts can’t ignore
Part 1Arts organisations that do digital
The same but…BetterMore
QuickerTargetedTracked
Tools
EmailSocial media
AnalyticsSEO
Digital display advertisingCrowdsourcing
Mindset
EcommerceCommunity management
Showing behind the scenesExperimentation
User focussed developmentPhased/iterative development
Trend 1Mobile.
Trend 2Focus on the user.
User testingFocus groupsA/B testingIteration
Trend 3Print to digital.
Trend 4Competency v innovation.
Away from…Form over function
AppsToo many microsites
Crashed websitesWhole website rebuilds
Towards…User-centred designResponsive design
Scalable infrastructureA/B testing
Evolving websites
That’s all fine, but…
“Everyone sort of grudgingly accepts that ‘digital’ is something you need to at least pretend to be doing but
the situation hasn’t quite reached the point where reality has caught up,
we can still kid ourselves that having a website and ‘doing Twitter and
Facebook’ is enough.”Ash Mann
Trend 5Web-only projects.
The problem with these projects…
Often…
Poorly supportedLimited shelf-life
No continuity
Trend 6Lean methodology.
Trend 7Hiring senior digital leaders.
Part 2The people who are really good at this
If you had a laptop, some spare time and the same mission…
What would you do?
Trend 8New online stars.
Part 3Digital organisations that do Art
Whose stage is this?
Trend 9Unbundling.
Trend 10Competition for attention.
Part 4The world stage
Trend 11Global reach.
1.5m million visits43% from outside of the UK
Beyond The CurtainHow Digital Media is Reshaping Theatre
We may not have a choice. Beyond Canada’s borders theatre companies are taking advantage of opportunities provided by the digital age. Canadians can now watch the National Theatre Live, Live from the Met and Live from Lincoln Centre at their local cinema, but apart from occasional exceptions,
cannot enjoy the best of what Canadian performing arts has to offer.
Trend 12Digital transformation.
“We were no longer going to be ‘The Atlantic’, which happened to be digital.
We were going to be a digital company that also published
The Atlantic magazine.”
“Digital activity is forcing us to rethink our creative
practice. For over a hundred years our activity has been
grounded in collections displayed in buildings. Theaffordances of digital means
we are rethinking this.”
TrendsMobile
Focus on the userPrint to digital
Competency v innovationWeb-only projectsLean methodology
Hiring senior digital leadersNew online stars
UnbundlingCompetition for attention
Global reachDigital transformation
