Monday, May 24, 2004

Simple Truth Number Two

Last week I posted simple truth number one for arts and cultural marketing: namely that audiences don't buy an event, but the promise of an event. The thought of the arts as an 'experience good' -- that is, a product or service that you can't know until you experience it -- isn't a radical thought, but it's an essential basis for how we should engage our audiences.

While it can seem insanely complex to engage audiences one at a time instead of in bulk, given that each of them will have different expectations about the experience, there's another simple truth that eases the burden just a bit: only a small percentage of any arts audience actually buys the tickets.

This simple truth comes courtesy of arts marketing and audience research firm Audience Insight LLC (project director Alan S. Brown), and the Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study for the Knight Foundation (which I've mentioned before). Says the report:

At any given ticketed performance of music, dance or theater, a majority of those in the audience did not personally buy a ticket. Someone else bought it for them. The average number of tickets per order, industrywide, is somewhere around 2.5. Of the people who did not actually buy their ticket, a portion of them did not engage in any part of the purchase decision process at all. They accepted an invitation from a friend or family member.

What does this mean on a strategic level? It means that when you look out on an audience at a performing arts event, or watch people enter a museum exhibit, you are not seeing a bunch of qualified prospects for future engagement. Less than half of that room contains qualified prospects, the other half are those they invited to come.

Of course, you may say, there are husbands and wives, arts lovers and their dates, parents and their children, but that's only part of the story. Brown suggests that there are actually two types in any audience -- initiators and responders -- and only one of those two is really likely to buy another ticket.

What motivates these 'initiators' to select events, invite a group of friends, and manage the logistics of a social night out? According to the Knight study:

Initiators are psychologically wired to 'get it together' when it comes to cultural events. Some Initiators do the organizing because no one else is around to do it — 'If I don’t do it, it won't happen.' In some cases, they are single adults or are in a relationship where the other partner does not share the same cultural interests....

There are other, more subtle reasons that drive Initiators to do their thing. In the focus group discussions, several participants suggested that initiating cultural outings satisfies a deep need to nurture and enrich the lives of their friends and family. For these people, the process of working through the logistics of planning a cultural outing (identifying activities, contacting people, getting the tickets, etc.) is meaningful because it satisfies an emotional need to nurture.

It's a common strategy of arts groups to capture as many names of their attendees as possible, and to blanket all of them with information, brochures, direct invitations, and discounts. This simple truth suggests that there is a smaller, more powerful group in that bulk list that deserves the bulk of your attention. They are the ones that call the box office to order more than three tickets more than once a year. They are the ones to set up an eVite that bundles a cultural event with dinner before and drinks after. They are the ones pointing and talking in your gallery with their friends and family around them -- adding meaning and context to the cultural experience of others.

In short, these are the evangelical travel agents that should spark the love and energy of any marketing manager. And these are the people we need to empower. Help them find you. Help them succeed in their social engineering projects. Give them the tools to be smarter about your art offerings to their friends. And stop trying to market their friends directly -- it's a waste of your money and your time.

There are initiators out there. Find them, help them, feed them, and get out of their way. It's a simple truth with powerful implications.

posted on Monday, May 24, 2004 | permalink