The Only Thing to Fear, is Fear Itself

I am writing this blog from Minneapolis, where I am attending the Theater Communications Group National Conference which begins tomorrow. It seems that June is a very popular month for conferences. I just got back from the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, and when I return to DC, I am off to Baltimore for the ASAE Membership Marketing Conference. Keep an eye on the blog and I will share with you some of my thoughts from these various events.

Since I was working the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, I unfortunately didn't get the opportunity to see most of the speakers (however, they are going to post audio and video of the keynote speaker and the six innovator speakers on their website and blog). I did get the chance to hear keynote speaker Lyn Heward from Cirque du Soleil. One of the things that Lyn addressed which has stayed with me over the past couple of days dealt with risk taking. She contended that one of the most dangerous things an organization could do was to remain stagnant and avoid risks for fear of failure. I couldn't agree more. Usually I see this problem with large organizations which rest on their past successes, and choose to stick with the status quo. However successful organizations are in a constant state of flux--always examining their market position and how to better serve the needs of their stakeholders.

I have been very fortunate to work for organizations which embraced calculated risk taking. I would encourage every marketing director to set aside a small portion of their budget for experimental marketing campaigns. Sometimes you will lose, and sometimes you will win, but it is part of doing business. Maybe some of these very large respectable theaters which have either closed lately or which are currently struggling at some point became comfortable and stagnant rather than remaining dynamic and addressing the needs of the current market place. Don't be afraid of failures. Embrace them. Learn from them. And move on. With that said, below is a list of some of my most brilliant failures, and quick successes:

Recent Brilliant Failures:

1. Hot Spot Marketing. A salesman from this company came to me to see if I would be interested in advertising on their new information kiosks that they were placing in hotels and destinations around Virginia Beach. It sounded very interesting. A tourist in their hotel would be able to go down to the kiosk, search for theater listings, see upcoming shows, and print out coupons and directions to the theater. Virginia Beach is a tourist hot spot and we were trying to tap into that market. So I used some of my experimental marketing funds and took a gamble. Total flop -- the tourist market in Virginia Beach is mostly over the summer and we stop producing in late May (not to mention, I don't think there were enough of these kiosks around to make a difference).

2. Concierge Guides. We created 150 concierge guides and invited several other arts organizations to send us information on their current offerings. Once compiled, we hand delivered them to the largest hotels in a 20 mile radius of our theater. At first it worked just fine, but quickly we discovered that we needed to update these guides several times a year to keep them current and if we didn't hand deliver updated information, it never made it to the concierge. It was costly and time consuming to drive to 150 hotels on a regular basis, which made it tough to keep up-to-date. Other companies were having the same problem. Soon these guides became out dated and were no longer being used.

3. Welcome Home Kits. We contracted with a national company which produced welcome home kits for new movers into our area. We would pay them a sum of money, and in return, they would insert a coupon for us into their welcome home kits. We soon found out that our coupons were being lost in the crowd, and that we could create our own welcome home kits and mail them at a cheaper cost. Lesson learned.

Recent Successes:

1. Necessity if the mother of invention. At Virginia Stage Company, we couldn't afford a ton of billboard advertising because it was controlled by one company which was very expensive. So I got to thinking how we could accomplish the same thing for a cheaper price. I worked with our master electrician, and for a $250 investment, we bought a Source 4 lighting instrument and created a custom gobo advertising our upcoming shows. We then mounted it on a building in downtown Norfolk, put the light on a timer, and beamed the image onto an adjacent building in the evening. We got permission from the owners of the buildings. It turned out great. And got a lot of attention from passersby and the press.

2. We noticed that our subscription audience was aging so we took some non-traditional methods to advertising subscriptions such as creating a DVD brochure instead of a print brochure, creating video and putting it on YouTube, etc. Over a period of two years, we had double digit growth in subscription income and over 2,000 new subscribers.

Take calculated risks. Expect and be prepared for failures, and welcome the successes. This is a part of doing business. The worst thing we can do is fear failture so much that we no longer take the creative risks that we so desperately need.

Would you like a DVD with your happy meal?

So I have been putting in a lot of hours lately getting ready for the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, which means many of my meals unfortunately have been from some of the best gourmet fast food places in my neighborhood. On one of my treks out to pick up some lunch, I stumbled onto a McDonald's which had a DVD rental kiosk on the outside. Maybe this isn't new to anyone else (I guess the project was launched several years ago), but it got me thinking. What an ingenious idea. Not only does it provide convenience for the customer, but the customer is required to come back to McDonald's to return the video, at which time it is likely that he will order another McDonald's product. I am seeing many theatres lately who are trying to become social destinations--not just a place to view a play, but to do several other things at the same time. There are your GLBT nights. Your wine sampling nights. During Contact at Virginia Stage Company we even offered swing dance lessons before and after the show. Are our patrons expecting more than just a theatrical experience? Do they want a one stop shopping destination for entertainment?

Metropolitan Opera Follow Up

This just in from the New York Times: The Metropolitan Opera is Going to Expand its Simulcasts.

Mr. Gelb anticipates that the number of people who attend live Metropolitan Opera productions and those that view them in the theater next year will be about the same (around 800,000 people).

Met Opera Tickets Selling Like Hot Cakes!

Where are all the naysayers now? You know who I am talking about. Those folks who said that Peter Gelb was crazy for simulcasting operas from the Met to movie theaters around the world. Wouldn't it hurt ticket sales? Wouldn't people rather pay a cheaper price and see a Met opera in the movie theater? Apparently not.

Give credit where credit is due. Ticket sales at the Metropolitan Opera, which has been striving for a broader audience under new General Manager Peter Gelb, rose 7.1 percent in the 2006-07 season. It was the opera house's first ticket-sale increase by season in six years! Check out this article: Metropolitan Opera Ticket Sales Rise for First Time in 6 Years.

Congratulations Mr. Gelb. Excellent work.

P.S. Hear about it all straight from the horse's mouth. Elena Park, the Metropolitan Opera's Assistant Manager in charge of creative content, is a plenary speaker at the 2007 National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Miami, November 2-5.

Monday morning marketing brilliance...

Elisa Zlotowitz, Human Resources Manager at Americans for the Arts, sent me these photos that were forwarded on to her:

Web 2.0 -- The Machine is Us/ing Us

Three Blog Posts to Read

A friend of mine who works at the American Association of Museums sent me a link to a new blog which he said I would be interested in. I have been reading it for the past couple of weeks and have found it fascinating. If you get a second, check out Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 Blog.

Several things have been on my mind lately, but nothing as much as Americans for the Arts Annual Convention which is coming up in three weeks. We are constantly trying to find ways to improve the convention experience for our attendees, and this year's convention has many new bells and whistles. Needless to say, I have been reading a lot about conferences lately, and found Nina Simon's blog post Game Friday: Conference Connections really interesting. It solves the whole "I don't know anyone here" problem.

I have also been struggling with the phenomenon that is Second Life. For those of you who don't know what it is, check out the website. The best way I can describe it is a virtual earth, much like the video game SIMS. It has been getting a lot of press lately because of the role that it is playing in the political arena. It was announced recently that Second Life would host the first virtual political debate, and that presidential candidates are giving out virtual "I support XXXX for president" t-shirts that avatars are wearing. So how are the arts are going to play a role in this new environment? Check out this blog from Nina Simon about how museums can take advantage of Second Life.

Last but not least, I found Lewis Green's blog post Web 2.0 Reality Check and thought--are we all just wasting our time?