The local canoe and kayak emporium has a great radio spot that describes what they do (I’m paraphrasing):
We don’t sell canoes and kayaks. We sell something much more valuable: time on the water. Time on your own. Time with your partner. Time to reconnect.
The sales pitch shows that this retailer knows what their customers actually buy. Certainly, they pay for a kayak. But they’re really assigning value and handing over cash for what the kayak allows them to do…where it takes them (or more accurately, where they expect it to take them).
In contrast, open almost any performing arts season brochure and see what that organization thinks they sell: artists and repertory, musical excellence, performers ‘hailed as a master’ by some newspaper or another, a beautiful hall or venue. Certainly, those things are essential to the final experience (just imagine how a leaky canoe would impact your ‘time on the water’). But they are really just vehicles (pardon the metaphor) for what audiences actually purchase.
The kayak radio commercial ends with a particularly blunt an insightful sales pitch, worthy of attention by arts marketers everywhere:
Come buy some time on the water.
We’ll throw in the boat for free.
This lies at one end of the spectrum of advertising messages. The spectrum starts with ”what we have,” the laundry list of cars, carpets, or discounted kitchen utensils etc., all laid out for sale with prices and model numbers. The other end of the spectrum is ”what you need,” these are messages that really pull at the heartstrings. You get: time with family, contentment and inner peace, fulfillment and an individual identity.
Both techniques have their place. In the right market, you can make a fortune with the catalogue style ads if you know what you are doing. That is how Ed Mirvish built his theatre in Toronto, one spatula at a time.
However, it would certainly be advantageous to any arts organization to use the ”heartstrings” approach. You could easily turn this canoe message around for a gallery or performance centre.
This type of ”relationship” or ”lifestyle” marketing has a place in the arts, however it needs to be done with caution.
More often than not, emphasizing the experience over the product works best in very competitive markets where the products are extremely similar. Think ”Barnes and Noble” versus ”Waldenbooks” — they both sell the same books, it is the environment they create that differentiates them. Sodas, tennis shoes, groceries, are other excellent examples of this type of situation.
In the arts, that type of identical product competition is not as clear-cut, if there at all. Sometimes the best thing to do is simply sell the product –- let the consumers know times, dates, subjects, and important points about the program.
Where experience marketing could be of great help is in reaching out to a non-arts audience. This however, should not be done by a single organization, and thus reducing the availability of funds for direct marketing, but instead by an arts council, corporate sponsor, etc.
The best example I can give is from my own work experience. The educational organization I work for has spent a great deal of money, time, and staff resources on ”image” marketing. Our registrations and income have barely been able to move forward, and in some cases have fallen. Why? The students simply want to know when, where, and what is being offered. They cannot find that information out from an ”image” or ”experience” promotion, and it turn don’t sign up. Either that or we spend staff time on long phone calls as our customers’ call trying to find out what is going on.
This is a valuable insight into macro marketing methodologies, using psychographic referential modelling to bore into potential users’ proclivities.
An example, using the synoptic systemology used by Andrew Taylor (blue water thinking) is encapsulated by the following process:
Kayaks are a vehicle (!) to skim over blue water (thinking, allegorically).
Cold blue water may represent anathematical or challenging ideas; hot water may be troublesome, as in getting into it; but you don’t want to risk your aspirations for your kayak by attempting to raise its temperature.
In other words, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.