Quick notes on Twitter

The Harvard Business Review has a new study out on the use of Twitter. 

Two points stood out to me:

- 10% of all Twitter accounts account for all 90% of all Twitter posts

- The average Twitter account has one tweet sent.

Obviously this means there are a lot of false starts out there.  Individuals and organizations that open accounts and then never return.  A big reason for this is that it takes time and effort to generate content.

That highlights a broader theme concerning social media, consistently creating and distributing content.  It does your organization no good to create a presence on so many platforms that you can continue to offer fresh content.  Create a plan that you can execute on an ongoing basis and you'll become a voice your followers/fans/members can come to rely on.

National Arts Marketing Project Conference

I'm happy to announce that I'll be speaking with the Nasher Museum's Wendy Hower Livingston at the National Arts Marketing Project annual conference in Providence this fall.

Our discussion is titled  "Printing Money: Stretching your collateral budget".  I've worked very closely with Wendy over the last six months to help the Nasher develop alternatives to their traditional print projects and I'm looking forward to the presentation.

If you'd like to see a list of all the scheduled topics for this year's conference here's the NAMP's conference home.

Museums10

Long article in Business West about the consortium of museums that are working together in Massachusetts.  Officially started in 2006, M10 brings together 5 university art museums with other attractions.  The result is a highly marketable entity.

Every two years the full group conducts a special exhibition with each member featuring a different aspect on a theme.  Outside of the special exhibition period the museums still collaborate to market themselves as a cultural destination.

Read the full article.

Betterwall

A few months back I wrote about an Arizona company, Vy and Elle, that recycles banners into gift bags and totes.  There's a similar company in the Denver area called Betterwall.  But instead of recycling the material for other uses, they resell the promotional vinyl banners and posters from museums to the general public.  The pieces are usually then displayed as art for the home or office.

If you're interested in talking with them about reselling works from your organization the contact info is info@betterwall.com or the phone is 303-756-6615.  A portion of the sales price goes back to your organization.  

Facebook URL's

Saturday Facebook began allowing personalized URL's for page owners.  This means that www.facebook.com/00987653 has become www.facebook.com/dewey.mooring.

If you are currently using Facebook to talk with fans of your organization, it's probably a good idea to claim your organization's name.  While Facebook is working to prevent "squatting" on brand names, it is still easier to get there first than to fight someone for your brand name after it has been claimed.

Find out more here or go directly to www.facebook.com/username/ to set your personal URL.

Perspectives on Art Organizations and the Economy

The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently held a roundtable discussion on the ways arts organizations are dealing with the double whammy of lower ticket sales and slower fundraising during the recession.

Participants included Chris Elam, founder and artistic director for New York's Misnomer Dance Theater and Steve Runk, Executive Director of the New Jersey State Council for the Arts.

One of the questions covered was how to make sure the arts remained a priority in their communities as local governments are making budget cuts.  Here are some of the thoughts Steve Runk shared: 

"Arts groups need to be able to talk about all the ways their programs and activities produce public value, whether that is impact on the local economy, in education, addressing at-risk youth, contributing to tourism, healthcare, aging, etc. The arts play a role in advancing all these community issues and priorities, as well as having an impact on individual and community quality of life. We need to measure and document that impact and then tell that story. We are currently finding and have found in the past that in the public/government sector the economic argument has been the most persuasive."

During the session the panel also referred to an interesting study of arts organizations in the Puget Sound region and how they were reacting to the economy.  Since its release a number of other regions have reported similar findings.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has posted a full transcript of their panel discussion and it's well worth the 15-20 minutes it takes to read.

A quick conversation with the Seattle Opera

Yesterday I wrote about the Seattle Opera's Confessions of a First-Time Opera Goer contest.

As a followup, Kristina Murti, Associate Director of Marketing at Seattle Opera was kind enough to answer a few more questions about the promotion.

Ticket: Where did you get the idea to search for a young, behind-the-scenes host?  

Murti: We are fortunate enough to have received a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation for the Arts to support creating virtual communities around the opera.  So this project is part of many we are doing for that grant.  All of the projects we are doing this summer around the Ring have to do with storytelling – either telling of the actual Ring stories themselves, or how we produce the Ring, or how someone experiences it here or elsewhere. So for this project we are focusing on telling the story of someone who is attending the Ring for the first time.  Since we also want to achieve the goal of creating an online community, we thought that using a young person would be the best fit for that.  

Introducing young people to opera is an ongoing part of our audience development goals.  We have successful programs for group sales in the high schools and colleges with ticket prices as low as $30 for seats in the orchestra.  We also have the largest young professionals group in the country with almost 700 members (of which 85% subscribe to Seattle Opera).

Ticket: Has the response met or exceeded your expectations?  

Murti: So far we have been thrilled.  We had a 3 week period where we accepted applications.  We had about 25 people send in their applications directly to us or post on our Facebook page.  We had another 25 people audition through a Live Casting call we did at a recent performance.  It was really hard to select down to 5 finalist and we have had over 5000 people vote to select the winner, which we are announcing on our blog tomorrow.  Of course the main part of the project is introducing our host to Seattle Opera’s Ring over the course of the summer, and culminating in that individual attending the Ring starting August 9.  So most of the project is yet to come.  We plan to release short videos over the summer and also the winner will be blogging.  In mid September, we will have a release party for the final 10 minute documentary.

Ticket: Will you consider continuing the program after "The Ring" has completed its run? 

Murti: We’ll have to see how this first one goes.  There was a lot of enthusiasm not only from the contestants but also from the voters, and our own audience.  

Attracting more first-timers

The Seattle Opera has put together an interesting program called "Confessions of a First-Time Opera Goer".  It's an online contest featuring five young people competing for the chance to be an official reporter during the preparation and performance of Wagner's "The Ring".

Each entrant has an application video posted on Seattle Opera's blog.  Voting ended last week.  The winner will file behind-the-scenes reports for the next few months leading up to opening night on August 9th.

I'm hoping to ask some questions of the contest's managers at Seattle Opera and share those with you in a future post.

Are reports of traditional advertising's death exaggerated?

The Wharton School and the Advertising Research Foundation are releasing 21 papers later this month concerning advertising usage and effectiveness.  The studies cover a variety of topics, from DVR's effect on TV advertising to the impact of web ads.

The early summaries of the data seem to say that many traditional outlets like TV and print are not losing effectiveness in the way recent reporting would lead you to believe.  

However I'm going to remain a little skeptical until I can read some additional information.  The DVR findings seem to based on one study done in South Africa.  The overall findings on overall TV advertising effectiveness seemed to be mixed depending on the size of the advertising.

I do agree wholeheartedly with one of the overviews.  They found that word of mouth marketing often starts with, and can still be driven by, paid media.  Beyond that I'm looking forward to reading the reports.

Here's AdAge's story about the research.  And here's the ARF's Site to order a copy of the reports.  You'll have to do the free sign up with the ARF before you can order.

Should our offerings be reshaped? Part II

Yesterday I started a discussion about ARTNews' article "Reshaping the Art Museum".  

Again, generally I'm in favor of anything that makes art more accessible and engaging for general audiences.  But the danger comes when the art or the scholarship is sacrificed to bring those audiences in.

Consumer products often have easier math.  More users mean more units sold.   Creating wide appeal holds obvious benefits for those brands.

But we know that many of our organizations are more dependent on the support of a few large benefactors.  One committed supporter can have more financial impact than 10,000 casual fans. In almost all cases these supporters are there because of their commitment to our long-term mission.  A move to "Art Lite" to attract larger audiences runs the risk of alienating those that are most important to us.

Is there a middle ground, yes.  It starts with judging any new offering against your current mission and then having a dialogue with your most important supporters.  When a new consumer-focused program both meets your mission standards and has donor input, it's time  to move ahead aggressively in bringing the arts to a broader audience in your community.

Should our offerings be reshaped?

There's a great article in the June Issue of ARTnews magazine titled "Reshaping the Art Museum".  It's an in depth discussion of the ways many museums are reaching out to broader audiences.  I think it's a worthwhile read whether you're in the museum business, theatre or another other arts endeavor.  Connecting with audiences beyond the core arts supporter is an issue that extends to each of us.

Here's an excerpt that struck me.

If these leaders succeed, the art museum of the future will offer the customer service of an Apple store, the comforts of a Barnes & Noble, and the dynamism of a town square. It will have areas where visitors can plug in or tune out, where they can immerse themselves in virtual-reality games or speak to live curators in the galleries, and where they can comment on the art they see—or make their own.

There are a lot of positives in making your organization more inviting and intellectually accessible to the general public.  Art, regardless of form, has little chance to affect or transform a person if they never come to experience it.  And as a marketer I'm nearly always in favor of consumer-focused products.

I can think of at least one reason to be thoughtful in the way this is done however.  I'll talk about that in my next post.