One of the most frequently asked questions Rory and I hear from arts marketers is “How can we attract audiences that are totally new to our organization?”  It seems to us that organizations have gotten better at drawing current audiences – the “low hanging fruit” – back to attend additional events but brand new patrons are elusive.  Some of the most exciting approaches we’ve seen are Carnegie Hall’s annual festivals– once a year citywide cultural feasts which bring together a range of performances and events at dozens of partner organizations throughout New York City around a compelling theme. The festivals – now in their seventh year – are working to energize current audiences and attract brand new audiences to the most traditional of settings.

Imagining a New Artistic Paradigm:

In 2005 when Clive Gillinson left the London Symphony to head Carnegie Hall, he brought a collaborative temperament and a fascination with the possibilities New York City’s cultural colleagues could offer.  He began to imagine what could be achieved by taking a holistic view of the city’s artistic opportunities surrounding arts and culture. His goal was to build on Carnegie Hall’s 122 year tradition of presenting great musicians from around the world by providing a broader context for audiences -curating compelling journeys of discovery by providing rich cultural content around the music. He sought to present performance in a new way, using the artistic assets of NYC’s cultural community to enrich audience experiences, inspire artists, unlock the creativity of his staff and ignite the imaginations of the city’s cultural communities and citizens.

Placing music at the core of the festival, the cross departmental Carnegie Hall team began with the planned 2007 residency of the Berlin Philharmonic and explored the possibilities of placing the scheduled performances in a broader context of Berlin’s robust arts and culture scene. The team expanded the performing lens to look at Berlin as a cultural incubator, and decided to recreate its dynamic arts scene for New Yorkers and visitors with the first Carnegie Hall citywide festival.  Carnegie Hall – acting as an artistic catalyst and engagement impresario – reached out to visual arts, cultural, community, literary, film and even other presenting organizations, to make Berlin come alive with events occurring all over town for 3 weeks in 2007.

Mr. Gillinson explains the revolutionary concept: “In fall 2007, we added a new dimension to Carnegie Hall’s programming mix with our first citywide festival, Berlin in Lights, a three-week celebration exploring the vibrant arts scene of the German cultural capital with more than 50 events at Carnegie Hall and leading arts organizations throughout New York City.”

“At the time, Carnegie Hall had long been known for presenting incredible performances by the world’s finest artists of all musical genres as well as some shorter series.  With Berlin in Lights and the other major festivals that we’ve since offered annually each season, our goal has been to build on this tradition to develop larger journeys of discovery for audiences.  We’ve worked with the many wonderful partner organizations throughout the city to create extensive specially-curated series of events that explore compelling themes, spanning all aspects of arts and culture,” said Mr. Gillinson.

Berlin in Lights created a Renaissance of collegiality and collaboration in New York City and was the first in a series of annual festivals, bringing audiences, organizations and artists together around cross cutting themes.  Carnegie Hall will launch its 7th festival in Winter 2014, focusing on VIENNA: City of Dreams in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Frick Collection, The Morgan Library, the Museum of Modern Art, The Paley Center for Media, The Julliard School, Neue Galerie and Le Poisson Rouge, among other leading NYC institutions.

Objectives/Results:

The overall audience development goals of the festival programming at Carnegie Hall are to draw its traditional subscription and single ticket audiences to new experiences and to attract new audiences to Carnegie Hall’s programming.

The programming of music as part of a larger artistic journey also serves to create a mobilizing “event” to draw media attention and focus staff and partner energies around something bigger than just another concert or series of concerts.  “We want our current subscribers to be surprised and intrigued,” stated Naomi Grabel, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Marketing, “and to create a compelling reason for new audiences to give us a try.”

And it works!!  In a time where we’re hearing that subscriptions are dying and audiences are turning away from traditional art forms – especially classical music – Carnegie Hall reports than more than one third of audiences who buy a ticket to a festival performance are NEW to the organization.  And even more tellingly, 10-15% of attendees who came to Carnegie Hall for a festival, return to hear/see something else during the rest of the year.

“It gives us a way to penetrate the busy lives of over scheduled New Yorkers and visitors by creating a focused cultural journey which engages a variety of artistic appetites,” stated Synneve Carlino, Director of Public Relations.   “And it inspires our staff to work together across departments to creatively market and promote our festivals.”   In recent summers, Carnegie Hall has tried new ways to spread the word about its festivals to targeted audiences, for example, launching street teams at summer festivals to reach Latino New Yorkers in advance of 2012’s Voices from Latin America festival and traveling to the annual Dragon Boat Festival in Flushing, Queens to promote its China themed festival in 2009. ”We want to engage with people who may not be aware of Carnegie Hall and tell them about a range of programming that they might enjoy.”

A Frame Not a Formula – Making it work:

The realities of making collaboration work call for imagination, flexibility and sensitivity throughout planning and execution.  As Naomi Grabel says: “We don’t take a cookie cutter approach, each festival is unique and calls for fresh thinking about design, collaboration and promotion.”

Some of the key ingredients to success include:

• Advance planning – speaking with major partners 2-3 years in advance about important artistic programming initiatives at Carnegie Hall – such as building on the 2014 planned seven performance schedule of the Vienna Philharmonic to create the Vienna: City of Dreams festival.
• Working with leading artists to build programming around themes such as Jessye Norman who imagined the 2009 Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy festival and Carnegie Hall Debs composer chair, Osvaldo Golijov, an artist who provided key advice for the Voices from Latin America festival in Fall 2012.
• Responding to milestones of mutual interest to partners such as the joint celebration, with the New York Philharmonic, of the 90th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as the Philharmonic’s music director with Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds in Fall 2008.
• Being sensitive to partners’ unique personalities by encouraging them to present a wide range of offerings within the festival theme.
• Keeping collaborations simple by letting each partner take responsibility for ticketing, fulfillment and individual promotion for their own performances.
• Building promotional assets useful to all partners and accessible to all audiences, including a micro web site, sharable signage, background video, ads, brochures, etc.
• Connecting all internal resources – creating a cross-departmental Carnegie Hall team for each festival with artistic, marketing, development, ticketing and education staffers on board.
• Respecting and celebrating the culture highlighted – approaching target constituencies such as the Latino audience for the Voices from Latin America festival or the Chinese-American community for the Ancient Paths, Modern Voices: A festival Celebrating Chinese Culture (Fall 2009) with appropriate media outreach, bilingual materials and timing.

And the result is a series of annual events that create a cultural feast for New Yorkers and visitors.  As Mr. Gillinson says, “We hope that Carnegie Hall festivals will tempt audience members to go beyond single performances or the offerings that they already know and love.  We want to inspire them to try new things, exploring interesting themes, painted across a wide cultural canvas.”

Whitacre has inspired millions via his new approaches to audience engagement, making audiences participants in the creative process. We’re studying the key aspects of effective crowdsourcing and suggest an approach that engages by making the engagement matter. Our new crowdsourcing framework – Making It Matter—focuses on three basic rules:

1. Make it Matter

2. Make it Easy

3. Make it Fun

We suggest encouraging visitors to an organization’s website to help make a difference and serve the common good, while enjoying the competitive/collaborative process of participating. Here are a few examples we think are interesting and effective:

The New York Public Library (NYPL) which boasts more than one million social media followers invited visitors to transcribe more than one million dishes from 15,000 historic menus, engaging followers in a task that could only be accomplished by a crowd of concerned foodies http://menus.nypl.org

Another NYPL project celebrates national poetry month with the first national poetry content on Twitter eager poets will have the thrill of having chosen offerings become part of an official NYPL poetry ebook http://www.nypl.org/media-center/national-poetry-contest

UMS (University Musical Society) encourages audiences to curate its virtual lobby – an online companion to the center’s actual lobby where visitors can comment on performances and connect with other fans and critics http://www.umslobby.org/.

The Seattle Opera makes new opera goers feel comfortable via its First Timers Opera Blog, inviting a neophyte to report on her experiences and suggest new ways the art form can be more welcoming http://seattleopera.org/tickets/ring/ring_2009/confessions/

What all these projects have in common is sensitivity to audiences’ passionate interests and short attention spans. The workflow demands are easy, the process is so engaging it can become additive and the bottom line is fans leave behind a meaningful “product” for other viewers to enjoy.

 Tell us what you think and how crowd-sourcing is working for you.

That is one of the questions we ask as we continue to research the impact and effectiveness of various social media experiments.  Our national data indicates that fundraising is the toughest nut for arts organizations to crack using social media and digital communications and more than 24% of our respondents reported they were not getting any results at all.

Kickstarter/Indiegogo style campaigns are growing in popularity but have heavy time and resource demands. We believe that before undertaking an external Kickstarter type campaign – with attendant commissions and timetables — arts organizations should consider “do it yourself” options.

We looked across the country for exemplars who had found a way to solve the fundraising challenge, powerfully engaging with audiences to convert ticket buyers into fans, fans into evangelists and evangelists into donors.  Some of the most interesting development work in the country is being done by TimeLine Theatre Company in Chicago.  TimeLine’s marketing and development team leaders, Lara Goetsch, Director of Marketing and Lydia Swift, Development Manager, forged a dynamic partnership to cultivate prospects and help advocates leverage their personal networks for the benefit of the company. 

TimeLine pioneered a cultivation tool – called TimeLine’s Cultivation Pyramid – to guide the company’s marketing and development work.  It’s based on a process that exists either formally or informally in all organizations – rooted in the idea of moving individuals up a ladder, or pyramid, of increasing support. 

Click here for a full review of the process and TimeLine’s unique approach link to: http://www.patrontechnology.com/blog-the-cultivation-pyramid-moving-prospects-to-lifelong-donors

As part of our continuing How Strong Is Your Social Net? research project we are gathering mini-case studies about arts and culture social media experiments that “get it right” and analyzing projects that didn’t work but provided opportunities to learn. Please share your thoughts about what’s working and what you’ve learned along the way.

We invite you to contribute to the art field’s knowledge bank by telling us about significant ways your organization has implemented online strategies and how social media is helping you accomplish organizational goals, solve problems and engage with audiences in new and powerful ways. We’d also like to hear about unexpected challenges during implementation – especially when they led to improvements and insights.
Share your story — tell us about your best/worst experiences with Social Media and Digital Communications.

Please Leave a Reply below and include in your “comment” these elements:

1. a one-line headline encapsulating your program or experience;
2. a brief description of the issue or challenge that your organization was trying to solve;
3. highlights of implementing the solution; and
4. what were the results, learnings and landmines?

Joined by Stephen Litner, Director of Digital Media at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), we reviewed effective practices from presenters across the country and engaged attendees with strategic questions about channel selection, balancing engagement with promotion, translating content to new mediums and building short and long term fan and financial support. Review the full presentation which can be downloaded here.

Event details

Armory’s Director of Communications, Jon Lapointe, joined the institution not long after the crash of 2008.  Due to the economic crisis, pressure on the bottom line caused Armory to reduce the communication department’s print budget in a cost-cutting effort.  They did less print advertising and reduced the size and expense of the large, elaborate printed promotional pieces that had previously been the primary means of getting the word out.  These cards were reduced to a postcard format.  Meanwhile Armory shifted to promotion via email and Facebook.  But Jon thinks Facebook is the biggest driver.  “We have more Facebook fans than recipients of our email blasts.  We send 5,000 or 6,000 emails via constant contact.  The open rate for these is 1,200 in the best case.  But we have over 6,000 Facebook fans and there are 2,300 impressions generated by every Facebook post.”

Even though there have been improvements in the economy and in Armory’s budget condition, Jon sees no need to go back to print.  “We’ve seen steady increases in class enrollment. Last summer was the best we ever had.  Also we’ve had the best fall ever – typically a slow period.”  Armory has also posted a new volunteer form online.  This has brought in more young volunteers, age 30 or younger, than they ever had before.

Recently Jon has been fine tuning Armory’s Facebook presence so it is now not exclusively about Armory.  Items now highlight interesting art installations that may be on view anywhere in the world, from London to the Netherlands projects.  These are interspersed with items about Armory studio classes and contemporary art exhibitions.  Jon thinks the ecology of the feed is important – that it’s not all about Armory all the time.  “It’s like curating the messages on Facebook.  We need a variety because parents of children in the classes don’t really care about the exhibitions program and young art fans without kids don’t care about the studio program,” that Armory promotes with postings like photos of an “Oreo Cameos” project – portraits carved by kids into the filling of Oreo cookies.

- Featured quote from Jon Lapointe

“We substantially reduced the communications department’s print budget, reduced our reliance on print, focused our energies on social media and web marketing and have seen attendance levels increase.”

- Proof points

• It’s possible to reduce the print media spending and grow one’s constituency.
• In one’s social network presence it’s important to balance the amount of self-referential material with citations of relevant ideas from a variety of sources.
• Keep in mind multiple constituencies for the organization and sustain information that appeals to each group.

Links:

www.armoryarts.org/

http://www.facebook.com/armoryarts

http://www.armoryarts.org/twitter

http://www.armoryarts.org/youtube

Milwaukee Theater Invites Fans to Meet in Special Tweet Seats

To build new audiences for its Spring 2011 production of the Lion in Winter, the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCB) reached out to Twitter mavens with strong online followings, creating a designated section in its three level proscenium theater where tweeting throughout the performance was encouraged.  Originally worried about distracting other members of the audience, the company experimented with a special “tweet seats” area reserved for 15-18 tweeters.

Veteran Tweeters occupy their own gallery at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Cabot Theater, tweeting comments and real time reviews during productions.

The company found the new online activity was worth providing complementary “Tweet Seats” to strong Tweeters, reporting that resulting awareness and buzz about the show have justified the investment.  This Tweet Seats section has become a draw for tweeters who often bring friends, new to theater going.  For each performance, the company takes the first 18 tweeters who sign up and continues to recruit new candidates with strong  followings to encourage attendance.

This real time reviewing has helped MCB to relate to potential new audiences.  Monitoring the twitter feeds during performances has allowed the MCB to take advantage of spontaneous events to alert fans on Facebook to the dynamic “only in live theater” experiences.

The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre has a strong Facebook presence and began using QR codes in the 2011-2012 brochure.  Codes are included on each show page and link to preview video and behind the scenes information about each production.   QR codes are also used on promotional postcards to build awareness of upcoming shows. Video features scenes enacted at the annual season announcement party or interviews with the company’s artistic director or visiting guest directors.

Quote: “Our producing artistic director, Michael Wright, was concerned about annoying traditional audiences with disruptive Twitter action during performances but after we closed off a special Twitter section in the gallery, he was open to trying Tweet Seats to reach new audiences. Our ongoing challenge is to make time to respond to all the positive comments we receive.”

Proof points:

• Integration of Tweet Seats into ongoing performances
• Identification of Twitter mavens with strong enough followings to make complimentary seats worth it
• Monitoring and responding to comments in the Twitter-verse

Links:

www.milwaukeechambertheatre.org

www.facebook.com/MilwaukeeChamberTheatre

milwaukeechambertheatre.com/about-us.aspx

This mid-sized Atlanta Theater weathered a recession driven perfect storm, reaching out to its community of supporters to raise $500,000 in 4 months.

Twenty five year old Georgia Shakespeare one of the leading theater companies in the South solved two problems using social media to create an outpouring of interest and support.

Christmas in July

Solving problem #1 — The company saved its season – and broke box office history — with a 48 hour Christmas in July Sale in 2010. Keeping the box office open for 48 hours straight, staff used social media to offer midnight specials – like one dollar children’s theater tickets for 4 at 4am – and pumped enthusiasm into selling out productions in its slowest time of year. The campaign was fueled by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blog posts. It brought the company together and created excitement about current shows while pre-selling December’s A Christmas Story.

Solving problem #2 — In fall 2011, the company was pushed to near extinction by a perfect storm public and private funding falloff. Again the company turned to its social media network. On September 9th the Managing Director issued an appeal to save the company which went viral overnight attracting media coverage and reaching out to people all over the country who claimed Georgia Shakespeare as home.

Followers like NYC actor Sid Solomon asked his friends to celebrate his birthday with a contribution to Georgia Shakespeare which had given him his first acting job after College. Former Manager Director Robert Fass, now based in Los Angeles, connected with his online colleagues, asking them to support his former alma mater.

In 2 weeks between September 9th and 23rd the company raised $325,000 from 1025 people all over the U.S. – the smallest gift $3.77 the price of a beer, the largest $50,000 from a local foundation who didn’t want to see the company fold. They’re now 80% toward their goal of raising $500,000 by yearend.

Posts communicated subscribers’ and friends’ special connection to the company as patrons posted stories on “what Georgia Shakespeare means to me” and why it matters to Atlanta and live theater.

Development Manager, Donna Weber, described the effort: “When we created the Christmas in July promotion we decided to ‘Go Bigger or Go Home’ and have an event that the community couldn’t miss. We used our summer college interns to help but everyone from the managing director to the stagehands took turns manning the box office during our 48 hour sale. We broke all box office records and started an Atlanta ‘Christmas in July’ tradition other arts groups have embraced.”

Proof points:

• Promotions fueled by social media can powerfully connect with new audiences and create community buzz around an institution and season
• Fund raising that taps into patrons’ and friends’ sincere attachment to an institution can build momentum and reach far beyond geographic boundaries
• Fan and supporters are an organization’s most powerful evangelists

 

 

Classical music aficionados, alumni, neighbors, patrons, students, donors, applicants and friends are finding community in their love of music and their connection to the 87 year old elite music academy.

The Curtis Institute of Music had numerous disparate communities looking for information about applying to the school, performance details and information about former colleagues and graduates. Jennifer Kallend, director of Public Relations, decided to put all this activity into one online location and invite constituents to “share the love” on Facebook. Now with 3,000+ fans, Curtis’ Facebook page is dynamic and welcoming and has spun off a specialized area for alumni only to share more intimate conversations about their relationship with school and their current career trajectories.

The Curtis Symphony Orchestra

Curtis –one of the few tuition-free music academies in the US– has a unique constituency. Based on the theory that gifted musicians “learn by doing,” it offers a rich annual performance schedule featuring students and alumni.

Communications staff sought ways to engage the Curtis “family” with all that was happening at the conservatory and to invite interested music lovers into the discussion. One of the first outreach efforts was a holiday video – featuring students and faculty talking about their favorite moments of the year – which was posted on Instant Encore, the Institute’s dedicated YouTube channel and on its website.

Key elements of the online “repertoire” of the Institute are low-barrier-to-entry, two-minute audio slide shows — with musical performance excerpts — giving visitors a vicarious concert experience. These mini performances have attracted the greatest number of views, especially from friends of the Institute or its students who don’t live locally and want to participate in the programming.

Other popular offerings include performance videos which can be streamed and brief – You are There – videos of events and activities the Institute offers, such as the Curtis Symphony Orchestra seasons in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, and a partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Spiral Q Puppet Theater in a citywide interactive art event. Communications staff has stopped creating “talking head” video interviews as they don’t engage music lovers in a vibrant experience. The most important aspect of all Curtis’ uses of social media is to drive traffic to its rich website which contains many options for engaging with artists, students and performances.

“What I’ve found to get the most views is actually the least complicated product to create – and audio slide show with a 2 minute excerpt of a performance. I can make it using Windows Movie Maker right on my Windows system! It’s an easy way to help far flung friends and family participate in our concerts and feel part of Curtis. The most important thing is to create a comfortable space for everyone who cares about the institution to find what they need and ‘share their love’ of Curtis,” said Jennifer Kallend, Director of Public Relations.

Proof points:

• Brief audio slide shows — with musical performance excerpts — attract the greatest number of YouTube views
• The most important aspect of all Curtis’ uses of social media is to drive traffic to its rich website