Oh Baby, I'm about to lose control!

It's a concert week for me. Tomorrow night, the Adrian Symphony Orchestra will present a pops concert to end the season. As of early in the week we had seven seats left to sell and none of them were "two-together" in the hall.

Mid-week I stopped by the local radio station to meet with the station manager who was going to do the narration for this concert when he surprised me with, "Hey, today the phones lit up when we gave away two tickets for the concert. We couldn't believe how quickly people were calling in!" Excuse me? We hadn't offered a ticket giveaway. Actually, at the time, we had a waiting list for tickets and had sent out an e-mail to our subscribers asking those who weren't planning on using their tickets for this concert to donate them back to the office in order to accommodate the demand.

It took me a moment to realize what had happened. Someone who couldn't attend decided that their tickets were precious commodities, and, instead of just letting them be re-sold they took it upon themselves to take them to the radio station, which would announce the giveaway. In other words they created their own marketing campaign.

Over the past eight years, the ASO has been engaged in reinventing itself and consciously serving as a laboratory for new ideas. We've taken some pride for our innovations: creating new tools for growing our audiences, launching a new multi-year donor model, and designing innovative artistic programs while being more responsive to our community. We're in a difficult economic climate - around 22% actual unemployment in this region - so seeing positive results is even more remarkable. We've made a plan, and it's working.

But it struck me that this was something entirely different.

Instead of a top-down marketing campaign conceived of in the office; instead of using free viral tools like our Invite a Friend or Be Our Guest cards that WE created to encourage our audience members to broaden our base; instead of utilizing Purple Cow elements WE built into the concert-going experience that guaranteed buzz on Monday morning after a concert - here was an audience member acting independently and creating their own campaign, finding a means of distributing the information locally, and then disappearing into thin air! It was a "Lone Ranger" moment. Who WAS that masked audience-member? I don't know! WE don't know.

Sometimes I ask myself what a vibrant arts community looks like. How do you know when you've found one?

Perhaps in the new model, it will be when someone creates their own campaign on Facebook or Twitter - "I'm giving away two tickets to this week's Bruckner symphony to the first person who responds!"

Vibrant arts communities may feel chaotic because the command structures we're used to won't be operational anymore. The forces for change will be decentralized.

Power to the people!

Oooo baby, we're about to lose control, and I like it!