Arts in an Age of Technology

If The Pudding Is Really That Good, Why Don’t They Serve It?

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As corporate blogs go, I sort of like Southwest Airline’s. They do a pretty good job covering all sorts of topics from opening new facilities and showing pictures of their mechanics performing maintenance on the their aircraft to discussing the impact of hurricane’s on their operations. Of course, being Southwest they also indulge in goofy pursuits like sharing their grandmother’s banana pudding recipes.

I think the blog is pretty effective for them as a forum for communicating information about their company and answering customer questions about the choices they make.

One thing they did recently which I thought could be especially effective for arts organizations is have an entry and podcast on how to work for the company and what to expect once you apply. (podcast doesn’t have permalinks so you’ll have to find the 9/24/08 episode.) They talk about all the crazy stuff people did to get noticed but also note how long it took some of these people to get hired given that they receive hundreds of thousands of applications every year.

Arts organizations taking a page from their book could talk about what people might expect working for the organization and what the place would expect of an applicant. This could help strengthen and diversify the applicant pool. I am partially thinking back to comments Andrew Taylor made last January about how arts organizations shouldn’t discount people simply because they don’t possess skills that have an exact one to one correlation to the job description they wrote. It is great to hire true believers who have already invested their hearts in your industry but in the long run more dispassionate new blood might lead to a healthier situation.

If you don’t have the resources to maintain a running blog or podcast, it would probably still be beneficial to have a one or two recorded conversations with people talking about their experiences with the company posted in the Human Resources portion of your website. The emotion transmitted in a voice is certainly compelling than a lengthy text account of the same information.

Eyes Give You An F

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There have been a number of studies conducted regarding how web page visitors interact with the pages they visit and what the most effective layout might be. One of the most prominent studies was conducted by Jakob Nielsen who used eye tracking studies to discover that people viewed pages in a roughly “F” shaped pattern. People read left to right at the top of a page but as they continue, they start scanning along the left column only.

The details of the study linked to above are pretty interesting. Another website, Virtual Hosting.com coalesced the major suggestions Nielsen made along with those from other studies to create a list of simple ways people can improve the effectiveness of their websites. (Tips for blogs on conveniently on the next page.)

The most surprising of their 23 tips is the first one- Text attracts attention before graphics.

I will leave it to my curious readers to continue on and find out why…

How Will Your Organization Live On?

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In the past, whenever I would get anxious about whether a marketing plan would work, I would always think about New Coke. If ever you think that someone who is smarter, has a bigger research and marketing budget, more personnel and resources could do a better job, all you have to do is look at new Coke to realize having these benefits at your disposal are no guarantee of success.

Now as we watch Bears Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG Insurance, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Washington Mutual encounter troubles we are basically provided with more contemporary examples of how this is true.

Of course, even if your marketing budget is 1/100,000,000,000th of Coke’s, the stakes and disappointment if your plan fails are not equally exponentially less than they experienced. In fact, since there are fewer people to distribute blame around to, your experience may be greater.

It can also take far fewer and far less severe mistakes and mismanagement to lay your organization low. The events of the last few months have brought an all to familiar reminder of organizational mortality. If there is one realization most non-profit arts organizations embraced long before the for-profit world, it is that there is no such thing as “too big to fail.” A great many arts organizations have experienced “donor bailouts” and come back strong while the cash infusion allowed others to linger awhile longer before finally closing.

The reminder for many arts organizations is that they don’t have any intrinsic right to exist. There were far more people invested in the continuation of the aforementioned corporations than have ever willed the continuation of an arts organization. As a result some of these companies have been bought out or merged. But as of the time of this entry, it doesn’t look as if anyone is going to step forward to save Lehman Brothers. There have been some merger partnerships between arts organizations in the past to save one or the other of them (first that comes to mind is Asolo Repertory Theatre and Sarasota Ballet circa 1997). But for many arts organizations, that option doesn’t present itself.

As many organizations of every type are wont to say, a organization is not the physical presence as it is the people and ideal that it represents. If anything is going to remain of an arts organization after its demise, it is that. If an arts organization is smart, they will devote a lot of energy to cultivating and sustaining their image and ideal throughout their existence.

Pam Am Airlines once spanned the world regularly serving every continent except Antarctica. The airline failed in 1991 and subsequent attempts to resurrect air service under that name likewise failed. However, the cachet of the name is still powerful and currently appears with the familiar logo on the side of railroad freight cars. The company even named their quarterly reports (of hopefully their success) Pan Am Clipper, the terminology the airline used for their planes. And people still hold hope that the airline will fly again. In a Forbes article last year, a Miami attorney was looking to license the name for an airline flying internationally.

Few arts organizations have that sort of name recognition on a national level. But it is possible to generate value for an arts organization on a local or regional level. Given that it is quite possible we are in a transitional stage for the way the arts are presented and experienced, many arts entities may go out of business over the course of a few years. The name may re-emerge as with Pan Am, with a different physical manifestation altogether but with intangibles like the core identity, quality and values transferring intact.

The Asolo Theatre moved operations from a theatre that originated in Asolo, Italy into a theatre that originated in Dunfermline, Scotland. Arena Stage moved across the Potomac River into Virginia and no one doubted they were the same organization. Identity is not tied to physical places. Now if either went out of business and reemerged as a video game developer or communications company, their new customer base would probably have few overlaps with their old one. But there would still be a association with quality entertainment experiences lingering in people’s minds which can have positive results for the new companies.

Fuzzy Definitions

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During his talk prior to the design charette for Performing Arts Center Eastside, Alan Brown cited the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown apparently has access to the raw data which is not listed in the NEA report. The answers Brown lists from the survey may cause you to question the results of the surveys you conduct.

Brown lists an admittedly small excerpt of the verbatim responses to the question: “What was the last “classical music” concert that you attended?” Among the answers listed are Tito Puentes, The Stompers, Showboat with Tom Bosley, Music Man, King and I and Oliver.

For the question, “What was the last “opera” that you attended,” Phantom of the Opera appears five times along with Les Miz, Brigadoon and “It was on Broadway” (remember, these are recorded verbatim).

Not having access to all the raw data, I have no idea what percentage of the answers these represent. As I suggested, it does make you wonder when people answer surveys that they enjoy and want to see more classical music or opera, if your concept of classical music/opera is the same as theirs. These results are from 10 years ago so I wonder how much less significant these categories are to people these days.

I also wonder if there isn’t a constructive way to make use of this situation. By and large people attending a performance have absolutely no idea if the hosting organization is for profit or non-profit (and a foggier notion of what that may mean). They aren’t there to support their favorite non-profit, they are there because they enjoy the product. They may feel a loyalty and trust in the organization but it might not have any relation to the tax status.

With this in mind, would it be a benefit to arts organizations to de-emphasize classical and opera and focus on the idea that they produce great performances? You wouldn’t want to abandon the label altogether or misrepresent what you were offering because you would alienate people who did know the difference between opera, classical music and musical theatre (or ballet, modern, jazz; Shakespeare, Miller, Godot, etc) The Philadelphia Orchestra isn’t going to get away with advertising a concert as their latest remix of that rockin’ composer of the 20th century, Rachmaninoff. Unless, of course, they do treat his music to a remixing, the nuances of their interpretation vs. another orchestra’s will hardly constitute a remix.

Acknowledging that people don’t care how performances are categorized as long as they have an enjoyable experience changes the way you market performances. If the definition of classical music is rather nebulous, the fact that the violinist received a Pomme Rouge when they were 17 is nearly bereft of meaning. (As it should be, my mother was giving me pommes rouge before I was 5 years old.) Marketing has to focus on why someone will enjoy the performance and not overly concern itself with convincing someone they like the organization’s definition of classical music or whether the recipient likes classical music at all.

This probably sounds strange because the performance is of the organization’s definition of classical music. But what I am getting at is that the focus shouldn’t be on telling everyone what a great and important guy Beethoven was. Certainly, mentioning Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 is a waste of column inches in a newspaper for all the influence it is likely to have. Telling people they will enjoy it because the opening motif is one of the most recognizable phrases in the world and has been appropriated and integrated in numerous compositions since can be convincing. The idea that it is Death knocking at Beethoven’s door is certainly compelling.

I know that this is pretty much discredited but that is the story Pat Conroy tells students in The Water Is Wide. I first read the book 20 years ago and that fact has stuck in my mind since. If the piece can inspire excitement in poorly educated students who were entirely unaware of classical music, what impact will it have on people who are marginally or generally aware of it? Even more importantly, the kids didn’t know classical music to know if they liked it or not. I’d bet they would have categorized Beethoven alongside any other piece of well played music they came across.

Of course, the water flows both ways in regard to this sentiment. When asked if they liked opera, someone might say they liked Phantom but didn’t really care for The Magic Flute. A good experience with what they think is opera, classical music, Shakespeare (but really Oscar Wilde), won’t guarantee liking the “real” thing. Nor may it inspire experimentation even if they equate Phantom with opera due to simple lack of name recognition.

So what I am saying is, just put the information out there telling people why they will enjoy a performance and let them decide if they will or not. In some respects, if people are defining what might traditionally fall in a Pops concert (Marvin Hamlisch, Burt Bacharach) as classical music, it could help, however marginally, to gently dissolve the barriers of definition and include familiar pieces like Beethoven’s 5th. The 1812 Overture certainly hops back and forth across this fence. Bugs Bunny helped turn classical music into pop music. Perhaps there is something to be gained by tossing the Blue Danube Waltz into the pops. I still associate that piece with the cartoon of swans swimming behind their mother (starting around 4:15 in this video) And who can forget “Kill da Wabbit” and “Spehwur and Magic Helmut” from “What’s Opera Doc?”