Marketing/PR

Lies, Damn Lies and Are We Ever Going To Use These Survey Results?

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My Google Alerts informed me that the phrase butts in the seats was used recently in what turned out to be a reprint of a 2008 article on MinnesotaPlaylist. The topic of the December 2008 issue was “Know Your Audience.” In addition to the original piece that brought me there, a couple others caught my attention as well.

The first article, Joseph Scrimshaw’s “Humans With Pulses,” addresses the idea that everyone will enjoy a quality artistic product if only they are aware of it.

“I’m beginning to think that failing to be specific about who you want in the audience presents a risk to both the profit and enjoyment of theater. There is a tendency for artists to believe that any cross section of people will enjoy their work. After all, theater is good. Theater reaches out to people. It’s easy to reason, “This piece of theater I have created is good, so why shouldn’t any human with a pulse enjoy it?” Music is good, too. When I was fifteen years old my two favorite musical acts were Frank Sinatra and Guns N’ Roses. I chatted with my Grandma about one and with my friends about the other. Unfortunately, there was no chance in hell of any crossover.”

Scrimshaw talks about being aware of the specific segments of the community who might be interested in a performance and why. Granted, the venues he seems to work in sound like they are at the smaller end of the spectrum and thus can serve very narrow segments of the population–like knitters. His description of the audience at his knitting-based, murder mystery comedy sounds like the diverse group everyone yearns for-

“We had knitters from 18 to 82, multiple ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. The knitting demographic trumped all because they had an investment in the show: They wanted to see if this Scrimshaw guy (who’s supposed to be funny) had anything interesting to say about this craft that is their hobby and their passion.”

Using the topic of demographics as a segue, John Middleton provides an amusing look at the whole idea of scrutinizing demographics in “They, the People”

She and her husband—let’s call him David—went to Mexico last year and have been thinking about a trip to Europe. However, they’ve both lost a lot of money from their 401(k) accounts and what with Nancy’s allergies and recent weight gain and David’s high cholesterol and occasional erectile dysfunction, that romantic trip to the moors of England might have to wait.

“Whoa!” you’re saying. “This is creepy. Does he really know this stuff or is he just making it up?”

I know this stuff. Visit the raw data (PDF) and draw your own conclusions. Remember, demographers don’t lie.

I actually checked out the raw data, and believe it or not the survey actually asked about all these aspects of the participants’ lives. Here is the real stuff to remember:

It’s true demographers don’t lie. But remember, these numbers are simply a tool. They are descriptive. They do not tell us what plays to do or how to do them. They simply allow us to think about Nancy and her life. They remind us that we’re not just asking Nancy to plunk down twenty bucks to see a show; we’re asking for an investment of her time. She has to find out about our production, decide to go, come up with a night she and David are both free, leave work in time to dress, figure out where our theater is, find parking, and so on. Are we making this process as easy for Nancy as possible?

You see, demographers are not soulless, art-killing philistines. We’re here to help.

However, if you still have doubts about the usefulness of demography, let me tell you something: You are not alone. There is a tiny checkbox labeled “terror” in the heart of every demographer. The system of gathering respondent data is filled with imperfections from start to finish. One flawed remembrance here, one inflated self-aggrandizement there—each insignificant on its own, but they start to add up. Then as we extrapolate the data, every imperfection becomes multiplied many times over until we have nothing left but a spider’s web of half-truths and sweat-soaked guesses. We crush this seething mess into solid-seeming charts, tables and graphs in order to give it the look of Truth, but we know: Demographers lie! And if you think this is only true of demographics, you’re kidding yourself.

Filling out the theme of surveying and data is Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw piece, “Doing Data.” What was immediately interesting to me was her story about studying in London and wanting to do her Master’s thesis on whether theatre and dance organizations used the data they collected. Her advisor couldn’t understand why.

“His response was of course all organizations use data, that wasn’t interesting, I should focus on what they were doing with the data or whether they were satisfied instead. He had worked for years with Theatrical Management Association, a service organization for theaters in the UK, and he had started an audience data collection and dissemination program in 1990—fifteen years before I was coming to him with this topic. So he thought my concerns were old news.”

But Sara knew this wasn’t how it was in the US where data was collected, but rarely acted upon. Part of the reason she felt was because people don’t know how to effectively use the information that passes through their hands. This is what she found in the course of her research:

“I was also surprised that less than 50 percent of organizations collected demographic information, as that is frequently needed for grant reporting. The results also showed that over 50 percent of organizations did not consistently have access to their own box office data—meaning that they had to rely on other methods to collect data about their audiences.

Do I have any recommendations? I think using data is simple and complex at once. The most important things are fairly easy: looking at the data, analyzing it for trends, inspecting to see if there are any obvious gaps. However, the key is really using the data to understand your audience—asking who they are, where they are, why they come to you, then using that data to help inform your future decisions. Do you want to compare yourself to other organizations? Do you want to reach people you currently aren’t reaching? Is your audience who you thought they were? Audience data can help to answer all of these questions more honestly.

[…]

…I don’t believe that there is a magic formula or a correct answer. Instead, I think it’s a process of using little pieces of information to help create an overall picture.”

I have to agree that it is both simple and complex to use data. For me it is as much about the suspected dearth of information from certain segments of our audience as trying to accurately process the information I do have. I know our audience surveys aren’t being filled out by a representative portion of our audience because we barely get any completed by people in the 20s and 30s, but we see a lot of them passing through the doors.

Likewise, so many people purchase tickets at the door where we don’t have the time to collect information not directly related to the ticket purchase that the only data I have is from the lesser percentage that plan ahead. I could send reminder postcards to people who make their decisions last minute and perhaps improve my relationship with them. My software tells me exactly what time they made their purchase–if only I knew where they live or who they are!

I don’t want to be making decisions about how to serve all of my audience based on what I know about 20% of them. I figure that is a formula for retaining slightly more than that 20% but that is all I have to work with at the moment. Though that isn’t to say we can’t ask audience members to help us serve them by making note of their account numbers so we can better track simple things like attendance preferences. We may still miss a large segment of the audience, but we will narrow the gap a little and let people know their presence is important to us.

Consolidating Back Office In Columbus

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I was listening to NPR this weekend and caught a story about Columbus Association for the Performing Arts CAPA, a Columbus, OH organization which area arts organizations have contracted to perform administrative functions.

About a year ago, I wrote about the excellent series the Non Profit Law blog did on the experiences non-profits have encountered merging their administrative functions.

Most of the examples used in that series were social service organizations so it was of some interest to hear a little about how arts organizations were entering the same arrangement. I wondered if it might become more prevalent in these tough economic times given that six Columbus area arts groups entered into arrangements with CAPA in the last year and a half. (This assumes there are businesses around the country who are able to offer these services. Not aware of too many in existence.)

I share a similar concern as Russell Willis Taylor quoted near the end of the piece. Relationships really matter when making the specific case for your organization in the community. Since CAPA seems to have varying scopes of responsibility with each client company, presumably an organization can reserve certain functions for itself and perhaps be involved with CAPA’s efforts on their behalf. But for a lot of artists and groups, the temptation to cede those functions to another so they can concentrate on creation of work alone may prove seductive. In the long run, their presence and public profile may wane as a group like CAPA’s waxes due to their adroit handling of so many responsibilities.

I don’t doubt that an arrangement with a group like CAPA can be extremely beneficial. Large for profit companies outsource their accounting, human resources, marketing, advertising and other functions all the time to great effect. But they also work very closely and stay very involved in every activity affecting the public image of their product because that is what is necessary.

As a little aside- I must confess that I had a moment of glee when I heard them describe the political cartoon implying CAPA is taking over. That anyone feels an arts organization is growing too powerful is so novel a concept, I can’t help but feel some joy. I mean, I don’t think I have heard anyone accused of that since the late 19th century with the Theatrical Syndicate. (Okay, I will grant you Clear Channel/Live Nation.)

Friday As The New Wednesday? Only On Broadway!

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Ken Davenport at Producer’s Perspective recently reprinted a preference survey conducted by the Telecharge ticketing service. Telecharge set out to discover at what times Broadway audiences would prefer to attend shows. The results were pretty interesting. It wasn’t really surprising to me to learn that people would rather have weekend shows start at 7 pm and that people who go to matinees like to eat after the show and those who go to evening shows want to eat before. But I found it interesting that people would rather have the weekday matinee be on Friday rather than Wednesday.

This raises the question about how well do we really know our audience’s preferences. I know that some people in my audience would prefer an earlier start time on week nights. But others need the extra time to wait for the traffic to clear enough to make it over to the theatre. Still, I am sure there is a lot I don’t know about my audience preferences.

Of course, there are other matters to consider. In the case of the Broadway study, one of the biggest impediments to changing the matinee day to Friday is that bus operators and schools don’t want to have their groups in NYC on a Friday night. Davenport notes that shows that aren’t dependent on these groups for their audience base might try some experimentation. Even if you aren’t on the 8 shows a week schedule Broadway is, there are other practical concerns like not overburdening your cast and crew with back to back performances and other time related stresses to consider.

Anyway, there are some observations made toward the end of the report that may just be interesting for their own sake, but could also drive some conversations in your offices.

Info You Can Use: Cell Phone Donations

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If you have been excited by the prospect of using cell phones as a mode of donation after hearing of the success in raising funds for Haiti, you may want to do some research and calculations. The cell phone and credit card companies have gone out of their way to make it easy to donate for Haiti relief and waived most of the ancillary costs.

You on the other hand, probably won’t be so lucky.

Hawaii Public Radio had a short piece covering a meeting sponsored by a local foundation on the subject of cell phone donations this week. (link downloads mp3 file. This link if first doesn’t work. Look for raising funds..social media) A representative from a cell phone company talked about the costs to set something like this up- $500 set up fee, $400 monthly fee and a a .35 per transaction fee.

With costs like that, it would likely only be worth your while if you had a large group of people already giving that you wanted to provide an alternative mode for donating.

Now that said, I can easily see the costs coming down as those for whom it makes sense use the service. Once all those involved with the transactions create more efficient processes, the service may become more affordable. Someone is likely to invent an app for the iPhone or Facebook which will facilitate the whole exchange and two years from now it will be a $2 billion business in $25 average increments.

Another observation that is made in the story related to social media was in regard to who one puts in charge of coordinating it. One speaker cautioned against putting the youngest person in the office in charge of social media just because they understand the software the best of anyone. “They know the tools, but they don’t understand the sophistication of your message and they don’t always understand the intangible qualities…of how you actually communicate with people out there.”

I have a suspicion this is something a lot of people have already thought to themselves but were afraid to say it for fear of showing just how out of touch with social media and its great power they are. It just takes a visit to sites like Failbooking.com to see some pretty poor choices when using Facebook. Though to be fair, I sort of question the wisdom of this water safety ad by Royal Life Saving Society Australia.