Im throwing a bomb at something. And Im definitely in the blast zone. My institution, particularly in the area of arts marketing, has a butts-in-seats problem. Everyone looks around at each other and says why are our numbers so low? Some folks will shift the blame to people like me who have seen some success with projects like Sweet Tea Shakespeare, or because I have a hand in social media for the program. The argument Ill hear is that theres too much noise or that other projects get more focus -- for instance, our University has a very successful annual dance concert during homecoming that folks bust down the doors for -- never their project. Never their focus. Why isnt their excitement for OUR project when theres so much excitement for others? Why are those other projects featured always on time? Always well-designed? Always front-line? This is what I think: 1) You have to have dedicated resources -- financial and human -- to market anything. You can have volunteers, cheerleaders, a staff person, a bank account, whatever. But you need resources. If you are underperforming, look FIRST and what percentage of your budget is dedicated to marketing (not PR -- PR is potentially free). If that number is less than 20% of your budget while youre complaining about a butts in seats problem, youre not in the game. Secondly, look at how your staff and volunteers are appropriated. If you dont have a person with laser-like focus on marketing your thing, youre not in the game. If you have a person with split responsibilities, youre not in the game. If you have no volunteers, youre not in the game. Marketing costs money and time. Plain and simple. If your audience numbers are lower than youd like, look at whether youre spending money at all on posters, direct mail pieces, ad buys, signage, tastemaker programs, etc. Also look at whether you have a marketing staff. If you tie up your money OR your people in production/content/widget-making, you are taking care of supply, but not demand. If you are not *saturating* the market, youre not in the game. In Fayetteville, FSU loses out to a regional theatre, a symphony orchestra, at least 2-3 other cultural institutions in town, PLUS the Crown Coliseum, the civic concert series, and the state school down the road (which, by the way, charges an arts series/space fee for its massive performing arts series). 2) If you rely only on social media, or only on ads, and not on the people involved in your thing -- as in the people involved in your thing arent doing the legwork for you -- youre not in the game. 3) You may not have a market. Sorry to say it, but institutions and tastes change. It used to be that every liberal arts program in the country required foreign language. Now they dont. Curricular restructuring, particularly at FSU, has resulted in arts programs that once shared in a common wealth of students in arts classes are now competing against each other. You may be producing plays that dont speak to your market. You may be doing plays at the wrong time of year. You may be pricing out your market. 4) You may be hard to find -- geographically and in terms of information about your program. 5) No one loves the thing you love the way you love it. You may be doing good work -- excellent work, even. Some people just dont love watching student actors. Some people dont want to watch plays at all. If your Chancellor and marketing office and athletic boosters are all saying come to the volleyball game and not come to the play, youre hearing all you need to know about priorities. 6) Marketing is 100% about brand and momentum. If people dont know who you are and what they can expect -- one show is good but some are just okay and some are really bad -- you will have no stable identity, no brand, no momentum. 7) THIS institution has reduced its support -- financial and personal -- since Ive been here (4+ years) from a major University publication on the arts to... nothing. The theatre budget alone has lost 50% of its allocation. We have 50% fewer faculty. The arts program was able to hire a parttime marketer, but has not been able to replace the position -- or even get a graphic artist hired on contract -- for several months. Expectations for teaching *without* a load reduction for producing plays or directing ensembles have risen -- so more classes, more students, and less time to dedicate to program building and promotion. The building has sustained significant flooding on a few occasions. More seats are broken than there used to be -- with no repairs forthcoming. All this while the two major theatres in town have gotten new artistic directors and new momentum. 8) You may be the problem. If people used to attend in great numbers, you may have taken that for granted. You may also be demoralizing to the people who might normally do the work for you. If your only communication with the marketing office is Hey, do this thing for me. Again. Over and over, you may be a parasite. 9) Committees of people making decisions about your content/program/series/dollars/personnel/resources will never be as efficient as a smaller group that has more flexibility to act unilaterally. At FSU, theres a departmental faculty structure, an area-specific structure, a Fine Arts Series committee, a separate marketing structure, a separate fundraising structure, a traditional academic affairs structure, separate business office apparatus, etc. That is *incredibly* inefficient compared to a smaller group or project that only has to engage with one or two of those structures. 10) No one is making people attend anymore. Say what you will, but part of the college experience is being required by a class to go see a tenor sing a recital. No requirements? Curricular changes? If students arent required to come, they wont. 11) Student affairs, as a higher educational enterprise, does not integrate with academic programs since about a decade ago. If a student has to decide between a pageant or a bounce house night or a ball game with free pizzas and t-shirts OR going to see The Laramie Project or a gallery opening, guess which events are going to lose out? This is why #10 is important and why student affairs and academic affairs need to get married. 12) The problem of making art is that sometimes you can make the kind people want and sometimes you MUST make the kind people need (students or audience). This is the same dilemma facing people who want to eat healthily. If you are the health food cafe downtown, some people will come and patronize your business. But theres a McDonalds every mile or so all across town and people will eat there, too. Doesnt mean you dont matter. Doesnt mean you arent necessary. Sometimes you just have to be you. 13) Integration is, I think, the only thing that works anymore. Partnerships. Want people to come see Copenhagen? Better see if all chemistry and physics faculty will put it in their syllabus. Want to talk about bullying? Call every public school administrator and see about working out a school show. 14) Weve stopped being content with small and good. Listen to my mixed metaphors: I used to garden a lot. I was not a pro by any stretch, but I learned that if you have a cucumber vine and you let your cucumber grow to be the size of a pumpkin, the cucumber will not taste good. You will not want to eat it. If you have two good shows a year as opposed to four (even if you USED to do four), do two instead of four. That doesnt mean you cant experiment with more. Just means if your concern is about why people arent responding to your product, try good and small. Theatre requires human beings. It MAY have other things -- lights, sound, projections, scenery, etc. -- and those may serve your piece well. But it REQUIRES live, in-person, human beings. Theres an argument to be made that the more you replace those live, in-person human beings with technologies, the more you are putting your theatre into competition with things like film, television, sports broadcasts, etc. Some people will respond to that, of course. But theres an argument to be made that unless you have the budget ($$$$$$$$) to compete with those other media, youre really just working against yourself. Small and good and live and in person. Let me put this another way: Art is an exchange between actor and audience. The best, most intimate relationships with people involve close, personal, human-oriented exchanges. Think about that. And then think about whether you want sound effects, lighting, projections, wires, complexities, props, and doodads when you make love to a person. The answer: sometimes you MAY. Good! But sometimes, you just want to share breakfast, have a good day, sit in the same room together for a while, and then go to bed with someone. You are not underachieving when you do this. You can be good while being inexpensive. You can be good while being so simple on the production side that you can spend all those dollars on marketing. You can be good by taking on small work that not many people will respond to. You can be good by being content with an audience of 25-40. 15) Relatedly, you get lovers and friends by being a good lover and a good friend. That simple. If youre not out watching other peoples shows (at high schools, regional theatres, etc.), youre not doing that. Theatre audiences are MADE OF THEATRE PEOPLE much of the time. If youre not contributing to the relationship, others wont either. 16) We can stop being conservative. Listen: liberal theatre people are some of the most conservative people I know. They want to do the thing that got them into the business. They want to do the play they loved in college 15-25 years ago. They want to do what other successful, like-minded people are doing. They want to do what they were successful at 2, 5, or 10 years ago. They like good old boy/girl systems and they like making administrators and non-artists feel inferior as they respond to our statements like Were just different. Or the arts just dont work that way. Or you need to come to us, not the other way around. They want to cast people according to the color of their skin and not the content of their characters. They believe in institutions rather than people being the seats of power. They believe in things like having buildings and infrastructure and corporations. They want to legislate engagement. And so on. In reality, this approach is a turn off -- politically, socially, theatrically -- and it is often unsustainable. Smart, capable people can pull it off, yes. But that feat is rare. No one. No one. No one wants a lover who is constantly comparing you to their former lovers from 15 years ago. The more sustainable, more marketable approach is to be flexible, to meet people where they are and to connect those people to things that will move them, to build loving relationships through the art NOW in a way that is sensitive, that comes from intimate knowledge, and which risks vulnerability and care in that relationship. Thats what folks have always responded to. Thats why people become loyal. Thats why Shakespeare is a big deal. Thats why Jesus is a big deal. See folks. Describe them. Come up with the best way you know how to love them. Thats theatre. Thats art. The rest is make work.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 21:40:09 +0000
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