Researchers have now concluded, through a recent study, that candy is more tempting when you can see it and it’s within reach. Shocking but true.
According to the AP report on the study, the researchers ”gave 40 university secretaries 30 chocolate kisses in either a clear or an opaque candy jar placed on their desks or 6 feet away. The dish was refilled each night, and researchers counted how many candies were eaten over the next four weeks.” The conclusion?
Secretaries ate an average of 7.7 kisses each day when the candies were in clear containers on their desks; 4.6 when in opaque jars on the desk; 5.6 when in clear jars 6 feet away; and 3.1 when in opaque jars 6 feet away.
There’s probably some profound metaphor for marketing the arts in these results. I’ll leave that to you. I just keep picturing grad students in lab coats — who must have something better to do — tormenting university secretaries with chocolate kisses, candy jars, and tape measures. Isn’t research a wonderful thing?
|| There’s probably some profound metaphor
|| for marketing the arts in these results.
There sure is.
The short answer, especially in the realm of performing arts, is that, despite the advent of low-cost, easy-to-use, practically ubiquitous, multimedia-based collaborative tools, just about all arts organizations are still promoting upcoming performances in opaque jars that aren’t even within arm’s length. And because art promoters are not embracing these collaborative tools, audiences have absolutely no idea how many chocolate kisses are inside the candy jar until they arrive at a venue and the curtain rises. Bottom line: a lot of kisses, unfortunately, go uneaten — which may be a good thing if you’re stuck in a chair all day in front of a computer. But as far as the arts go, it’s a serious problem.
I’m sure the above needs some elaboration:
Most art marketers are still in the sell the sizzle not the steak mentality of building audiences. When you only had the ability to print flyers, send mass mailings and advertise through traditional media channels, selling the sizzle was about all you could do. You can’t offer somebody a compelling taste if you don’t have the tools to deliver a taste.
But things have changed. You have websites, blogs, podcasting, streaming video, Flash animations and more that provide marketers with tremendous opportunities to engage audiences in new, exciting and compelling ways. But guess what? Arts organizations are using these new tools as if the old rules still apply. They continue to promote unreachable opaque jars of chocolate kisses as the sole inducement to get people into the theater. In other words, today’s audiences, despite the proliferation of instant communication technologies, know little more about a performance entering a theater than they did 5, 10 or 20 years ago.
Does that make sense? Wouldn’t more people attend performances if they had a deeper understanding about a theatrical or dance performance before they entered a theater? If they could see video clips of rehearsals, audio interviews with the choreographer and pictures of practice sessions, wouldn’t that engage people and get more people into the theater?
The underlying problem is not that these interactive tools don’t exist. The underlying problem is not that these tools are too expensive or too difficult to use. The problem is that people in the arts world are operating under the wrong philosophy.
So the moral is if the jar is opaque, you are not giving your audience a preliminary taste of the action. But if you de-opaque the jar move it just a little closer to your audience and let them get a solid preliminary bite of the upcoming action before they buy a ticket, then you will fill-up the auditorium to the rafters!
The analogy of chocolates reveals the image of the arts as an after dinner sweet. The hardening of this entertainment image is what the world of marketing is really achieving with such discussions. But guess what? That “after dinner sweets” is the message which is destroying — this is not too blunt a word — the arts. The arts, since the beginning of human time, have been ways to communicate and connect with what is otherwise left to dogma and religious doctrine. They are as far from entertainments as is a real marriage. It is this that a good arts manager must always keep in mind. Unfortunately, we as audiences and we as performers even, only feel the real need for the arts in the quietness of personal stillness, away from the noise and rush of the advertising and media world.
That contradiction is what the arts administrator needs to keep foremost in his or her mind at all times. Otherwise they participate in the “dis-education” or destruction of art, managing and selling what is rapidly becoming mass entertainment. Websites, blogs, previews, and other marketplace blips are as meaningful as candy chocolate kisses when it comes to a real person’s need to hear Beethoven speak again.