Build your audience
March 22nd, 2007I’ve been meaning to post about an excellent workshop I attended in early March. Jerry Yoshitomi from California presented on marketing strategies for increasing audiences at arts events. The Audience and Market Development team at Creative New Zealand gets big ups for holding this free workshop, which was a follow up to a programme they ran in 2006 called ‘Engage Now!’.
It seems to me that Jerry’s ideas are useful across the cultural sector. To encourage repeat attendance, Jerry emphasised the importance of finding ways for your audiences respond to cultural experiences. Collecting reviews, quotes, images and video of audience feedback and posting it on your website is one way - the Auckland Theatre Company did just this when they invited the audience to be ‘theatre critics’ and submit reviews on the play Sweet Charity.
Jerry’s exacting focus on what works for the customer - understanding the social reasons for why people go to events - got us talking about how to cater for the time-poor executive (short events scheduled after work), the unmotivated ‘friend’ of the arts (engage their professional interest in your work and use them as advocates), and so on.
What was special about this workshop was the problem-solving process that Jerry used to get us all thinking. He asked us to supply specific audience development problems that were taxing our minds, and we came up with ‘do it yourself’, peer-to-peer marketing methods for addressing these issues. Conducting small experiments and then measuring the results is what Jerry recommends.
Keep an eye out for more workshops and seminars from Creative New Zealand. There’s a report on the ‘Engage Now!’ project (’Network Power: New Zealand Communities of Practice Case Study’) on the arts marketing website, fuel4Arts. Jerry is also a guest specialist on the fuel4arts online forum. You need to register on the website, but this great resource is definitely worth a look.
Categories
Links
Archives
Yes, the workshops in Auckland and Wellington were lively in developing solutions to the many problems we face in market and audience development. I was particularly impressed by the willingness of New Zealanders to imagine creative solutions and to quickly deploy them. NZLive is a great example of this innovation; and having feedback sessions to continually improve the site is to be commended.
Many of these ideas were built upon the successful Test Drive, Full House and E-Marketing workshops conducted by CNZ over the past several months. I speak frequently in the United States and Canada about the intelligent work of CNZ and the arts groups in New Zealand. The upcoming release of the report on the Asians and the Arts will be significant not just to New Zealanders, but to any country in the world with recent immigrants from Asia.
Keep up the great work. You’re an inspiration to the world.
Hi Jerry
Thanks for your support of FULL HOUSE. I thought I would add some details here about FULL HOUSE for the information of readers.
The ticketing & marketing manual for the arts is receiving great feedback. FULL HOUSE develops a more strategic relationship with customers. Rather than just treating the Box Office as an inconvenient external service, FULL HOUSE puts the customer 1st and Box Office central to arts marketing and audience development.
“An excellent reference book. The case studies and examples throughout the book are informative and inspiring. Reading the book makes me want to pull on the gloves and start digging around in our Box Office data.” - Tina Rettke, Customer Services Manager, Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Victoria.
“TERRIFIC! The most important strength of the book is the Action Plans - they give people a starting point and a real ability to progress the ideas. Another strength is the range of complexity of information. There is something useful for everyone regardless of their existing knowledge base. The case studies are also really valuable because they show that this stuff is actually being implemented in this country.” - Bronwyn Edinger, General Manager, City Recital Hall Angel Place, Sydney
“A highly valuable resource for all aspects of marketing, ticket selling, customer relationship marketing, etc. It draws from many resources and puts them all into one place. Smartly spiral bound, so it can be kept open to the relevant chapters/tasks.” - Jerry Yoshitomi, Chief Knowledge Officer, Meaning Matters LLC
“There is no-one in our industry who would not benefit in some way from reading Full House.” - Duncan May, Head of Marketing & Development, Glasgow Theatres Ltd, Ambassador Theatre Group in Arts Professional, Issue 145, 7 May 2007, page 11.
The ticketing and marketing manual FULL HOUSE: Turning Data into Audiences was published in print in Australia in November 2006 followed by the version commissioned for New Zealand by Creative New Zealand, in December 2006. Some of the issues addressed in the new publication include: CRM, privacy and spam legislation, permission marketing, online marketing and online ticketing.
A PDF sample of two chapters is available online at http://www.artsoz.com.au/FULLHOUSE_Ch1n2.pdf
The Australia Council for the Arts, with the assistance of Arts Victoria, WA Department for Culture and the Arts, Arts SA, Arts Queensland and Arts NT, commissioned Roger Tomlinson and Tim Roberts to revise and update the book BOXING CLEVER.
BOXING CLEVER: Getting the most out of the Box Office, originally published by Arts Council England in 1993, and described as: “A Manual on how to develop the Box Office beyond ticketing and use Box Office data for marketing”.
More information about the FULL HOUSE manuals and purchase is available online at http://www.artsoz.com.au/FULLHOUSE.htm
“It’s the one and only Ticketing/Marketing bible for Asia Pacific” - Karen Mosley, Chair, Asia Pacific Ticketing Association and Manager - Ticketing & Tourism, Tennis Australia
“It’s an extremely useful document and one which I’ve made mandatory reading for any staff.” - Benson Puah, Chief Executive Office, Esplanade: Theatres on the Bay, Singapore.
“FULL HOUSE is a timely and useful book for people in arts organisations keen to find out more about their audiences and the means by which to do it. It is on our students’ reading list. It should be on everyone’s reading list.” - Associate Professor Ruth Rentschler, Director of the Arts and Entertainment Management program, Bowater School of Management & Marketing, Deakin University