Speed Dating BSO style and “I see Old people!”….

Is there still a school of thought that says just get them to the hall, you know the young ones and they will be hooked forever? Seems like the Boston Symphony marketing folks are doing their best to prove Einstein’s theory of insanity:

……..doing the same thing over and over again and expecting  different results…….

I’m kind of perplexed.  With such incredible resources and with probably as deep a talent pool in their administration as there is in their Orchestra, and with probably hundreds of resumes pouring in when there’s even a sniff of a job opening, couldn’t the BSO  come up with something more developed or innovative than $20 for a ticket if you’re under 40? (plus a $5.50 service fee per ticket!) I am wondering if this might be a pattern.  They presented a two year Schoenberg festival that started in2006 and all but admitted that they were expecting many people to exchange out of it:

So far, subscribers have traded in 745 tickets for the four all-Schoenberg performances that kick off Thursday night; that’s twice the norm. Kris Sessa, 57, a music librarian at Boston University, is among them. ”I just don’t enjoy his music,” Sessa says.

”Art has never been a popularity contest,” Levine says, a phrase he uses often.

And then there’s the $40 million endowment fund “to pay for music director James Levine’s ambitious and expensive programming” i.e code for: aside from the cost of putting new music on with the extra rehearsals (really? the BSO?), they need to replace the lost revenue from people not buying tickets!  I mean if they can do a $20 promotion like this then obviously there are seats to be had!

I am perplexed because to be honest, I want to look to the major orchestras for examples of how we can successfully innovate, but it seems there is no innovation here at all at least with the above mentioned examples.  I mean how can you program Schoenberg successfully?  When the BSO announced their Schoenberg festival a couple of years back, I was hoping to hear of something that would show us a way to integrate this challenging composer.  They didn’t.   It can be done, the conductor Andreas Delfs showed me something when in one program with the Milwaukee Symphony he opened with Survivor from Warsaw, followed it with the Barber Adagio and then they played Survivor from Warsaw again!  The report I got was that the Schoenberg had a huge impact the second time through.  Now that is gutsy and innovative and it’s success makes it a possibility for us to do it….sometime!

Focusing on this ticket promotion, speed dating is so last year!  Selling random single tickets to the “young”, hoping for love at first listen, a bit of a pipe dream is it not?  With the swath of failed “get the young” marketing campaigns, this feels more like they are giving up on really trying to create a new generation of subscribers instead replacing that idea with a quick annual revenue bump.  Relationship building takes time, depth, commitment and an organizational effort to fundamentally look at how to make the concert experience suitable and accessible for each demographic.  There are so many developed marketing tools, demographic studies and behavioral studies etc… all behind the scenes stuff, that can help build an audience.  Instead orchestras seem to want to make a big noise and be flashy with what they do for the “young” .  It might sell tickets in the short term, but wont build a subscriber base or create accessibility and a community narrative in the long term.  It’s so one dimensional to focus solely on the price of a ticket and not the actual experience that ticket will bring to the person buying it.   Take for instance this comment from a reader of the article (with one minor spelling correction):

I think that scheduling by the BSO and many other classical organizations omits a lot of people. They persist in 8pm concerts. The return home is usually well after 11pm for Boston locals, and often past midnight for commuters to such places as the Cape.
If the BSO would move one of their concerts to Sunday 3pm, this would leave time for commuters to attend, have dinner and still return home by 9pm. It also would simplify baby sitting logistics a bit.

Whilst there are BSO and Boston Pops events on Sundays, if you look at the schedule for this promotion, it doesn’t include any Sundays.

What is always puzzling to me  is that even with the average age of single ticket buyers at 49 and subscribers at 54 (pretty much everywhere) being widely known, precious little marketing is ever seemingly done for that group (I’m not talking just about the BSO here).  Empty nesters for instance would seem like a prime category to market to but  it’s just not that sexy, and I am guessing wont get the feel good publicity that marketing departments seem to crave (from Guitar Hero promotions for instance).  There is still such a tiny percentage of the average age attendee demographic listed above that is attending and yet the barometer of success it seems, is how young looking and hip the audience is, over how many actual people are in the seats.  Sometimes I think it is downright insulting to an older person and nothing to be proud about when you read something like this:

As she spoke, she sipped white wine in the orchestra’s bar, sprinkled with gray-haired men in tweed jackets and bowties and women in fur coats. A few tables away, Jeremy Lakaszcyck, a 29-year-old graduate student, sipped a vodka tonic and studied the program. Lakaszcyck had purchased $20 tickets for his boyfriend’s 24th birthday.

“You don’t have to be 70 years old to appreciate a good performance,” he said

Cue the greatest scene from Fried Green Tomatoes:

If hypothetically a board of an orchestra passed a motion stating that the income from ticket sales had to rise from 30% to 40%, I think somehow the strategy would change from let’s get the 20 somethings, to let’s get ticket buyers who are likely to be repeat buyers i.e between the ages of 49 – 54!

Now one cannot fault a donor who in this case is making up the difference between the $20 ticket and the regular price, but there’s also something a little “pitchy” about this under 40 thing.  I would think in these economically challenging times, a deal should also be considered for subscribers who are trying to live off decimated retirement incomes, or for anyone who subscribes that needs a price break right now to be able to attend because of job loss, or salary reduction.  Demonstrating that we will work with people through their current challenges to continue a relationship, will only bring rewards from those same people when times get better for them.  We mostly all price break for students (as the BSO does and as we all should) for the reason that students have limited resources, so we should for all in the same limited resources predicament.

We need to stop this exclusive obsession with the young, and instead obsessively focus on everyone!

2 thoughts on “Speed Dating BSO style and “I see Old people!”….”

  1. Hey Ron,

    I think your arguments regarding the programming of the BSO are interesting. However, you did not give us the number of tickets that were exchanged in Milwaukee for the concerts that were presented. Are we to assume that because some folks you talked to thought that this was innovative and effective that they did not get the same results as far as attendance is concerned? Knowing that Kris Sessa was already predisposed to not like Schoenberg, should we think that she wouldn’t have handed in her tickets anyway so she could listen to Survivor from Warsaw twice? Is the Barber Adagio such a big draw that she would have attended?

    The Schoenberg concerts in Boston, if I remember correctly, were often paired with Beethoven. An interesting combination that was employed to show the progression of Germanic symphonic music. Maybe this is too subtle to account for being innovative.

    Boston is an incredibly conservative town and the Boston Symphony audience is no exception. Maybe the ticket and attendance loss of 7% was considered acceptable for the musical merit of what Mr. Levine wanted to accomplish.

    I also think that it is worth noting that while the BSO ticketing scheme you mentioned is ridiculous, they do continue early Friday afternoon concerts to accommodate their audience that is able to attend at that time. Something that very few orchestras would even attempt to try.

    By the way, I don’t live in Boston or know anyone in the orchestra.

    Thanks.

  2. Thanks for an original article! As an avid reader of your blog I am always looking for online information regarding interesting topics.. Do you have a MySpace fan page? I would really like to become a fan!

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