Live 2.0 Edition 6: The Audience Edition

We hope you enjoy the Audience Edition of Live 2.0.

This month’s Edition features:

Audience: It’s What You’re There For by Jim McCarthy

Q&A about Audience with Terry Teachout

Showing Your Pride (Without the Pride Flag) by Mark Blankenship

Catchy Doesn’t Sell by Trevor O’Donnell

Mark Twain Is Right by Missy Yoshitomi

Audience: It’s What You’re There For by Jim McCarthy

You can probably trace the origin of this month’s Edition to a lunch meeting I had with Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal (and who also wrote a contribution to this Edition. Don’t miss it below!). As always with a person with as big a brain as Terry’s, the conversation ranged from topic to topic, but kept landing on the role of cultivating and delighting audiences as the key to success in arts and entertainment.

And as straightforward as that seems, some people, perhaps especially in the arts, have this idea that the audience is irrelevant to what is put on the stage. They believe that “creativity” means ignoring everybody and spewing forth whatever comes out, no matter what anyone thinks, including the people expected to fund said work.

The other extreme, of course, is pandering. That means slavishly being whatever a paying audience wants in order to succeed.

Here’s what I think about that:

First, creativity is not the unbridled freedom to express whatever you want at any time. That’s called babyhood, which is a time when your every utterance is greeted with delight, you’re not expected to do anything for anyone else, and you’re given unconditional support. It may have been fun while it lasted, but if you’re reading this, that phase of your life is probably over.

Second, pandering is a lot harder than some believe. Hollywood commits massive resources to pandering all the time, but only rarely does it work. (Ok, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” I’ll give you.) If you don’t believe me that it’s hard to be a successful panderer, I suggest that you give it a try. It turns out that people’s tastes are extremely complex, and it’s easy to get them wrong, even if all you’re trying to do is give them exactly what they want. Think of it this way: even pornography is a competitive business, and that’s pandering at its purest.

Third, true creativity is in using constraints to create something great. As Terry said to me, “That’s why poetry traditionally rhymes.” Maybe it’s not coincidental that back when poetry tended to be more structured, it played a much bigger role in the culture. That’s debatable, but certainly, there’s a true creativity needed to take one’s talents and desire for self-expression and find a point of important overlap with something that somebody (not everybody, but somebody) wants to see.

Fourth, I see no difference in value between unbounded self-expression and pandering. I put them on an equal plane of value. That’s not to say that good work can’t be produced in both of those modes. It is, but as a rule, both are ways of operating that are more likely to fail to produce anything of lasting value or commercial success.

The best works tends to be neither pandering nor pointlessly self-expressive. Just a couple include last year’s Iron Man movie and Cirque du Soleil, both enormously successful. Iron Man, let’s face it, is a movie about a comic book hero, but it was done with such style and originality that it became about more than getting a few summer movie kicks and instead turned into something that will continue to be watched for a long time. They could have settled for lifting a few bucks out of summer moviegoers’ pockets by recycling the same old superhero tripe (like the Hulk movie which came out the same summer), but they didn’t. By the way, box office on Iron Man was about two and a half times Hulk.

Cirque du Soleil is a crowd-pleaser and a gigantic commercial success, but it’s also pretty sophisticated as a work of performing arts. In a slightly different setting, what Cirque does could be a flop, and there are many imitators that are flops. But the vision that is behind Cirque assures us that these extraordinary creative powers that the group has are put to use on behalf of the audience.

And that’s really the point: you are there because of the audience. They want you to bring them something creative and unexpected, but they also want to like it.

The rest of the Edition explores the ways audiences can be cultivated by using some really concrete examples. In some cases, these examples can be applied much more broadly, and I hope that you find something useful for your own organizations in them.

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Q&A about Audience with Terry Teachout

Live 2.0 had a chance to get The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout’s opinions on how artists should look at their audiences. Terry is a long-time drama critic, author on a range of subjects, and has recently debuted an opera he co-wrote, “The Letter,” at the Santa Fe Opera Festival. Terry is also a regular contributor to ArtsJournal.com

Live 2.0: You’re a critic, an industry observer, author and, now, a librettist. Having all those perspectives, what, in your opinion, is the right way for artists to let audience influence their work?

TT: I think that artists usually do their best work when they write with a specific audience in mind, and the more they know about that audience, the better. You wouldn’t write the same opera for a group of eighteen-year-olds that you’d write for a group of fifty-year-olds–at least not if you had any sense. Conversely, I don’t think that artists do their best work when they deliberately set out to write immortal masterpieces. That’s the best way I know to write a pretentious, self-important piece for which posterity won’t give a damn. The first step toward writing a masterpiece is to forget about posterity and do your very best to seize and hold the attention of the people who are coming to see your show tonight.

L2: Over the last few years, the cultural influence of so-called Generation Y has gone from being a thing of the future to a thing of the present. How does this change things for established cultural institutions? Do you think it creates opportunity for live entertainment entrepreneurs?

TT: It changes everything. Generations X and Y feel no sense of obligation to established cultural institutions or traditions. Any opera or drama company that assumes it can appeal to under-40 audience members by suggesting that they should like Puccini or Tennessee Williams has already lost the battle. If you’re marketing Mozart to under-40 audiences, you have to start from scratch and make the case for Mozart. I’m not sure I’d call that an “opportunity,” but it does require a kind of fresh thinking that has long been in short supply in the arts community, many of whose members suffer from an acute case of entitlement mentality. In the long run, shaking off the you-owe-me-a-living mindset can’t help but be a good thing, no matter how hard it is to do in the short run.

L2: You have an opera that is debuting this week. Can you tell us about that?

TT: I wrote the libretto for “The Letter,” an opera by Paul Moravec that opens on July 25 at the Santa Fe Opera. It’s a musical version of a play by Somerset Maugham, the same play that was turned into a hit movie by William Wyler in 1940. You’ve probably seen the film version of “The Letter” on Turner Classic Movies–it’s the one where Bette Davis plays a married woman who murders her lover, then tries to escape the gallows by claiming that he tried to rape her. Our operatic version features Patricia Racette in the Davis role. The director is Jonathan Kent, the British stage director, and the costumes have been designed by Tom Ford, the American fashion designer.

L2: Tell us the story of how your version of “The Letter” came about. There was a strong philosophy about the audience at work, wasn’t there?

TT: Very much so. Paul and I never had any interest in writing an opera for eggheads. We sought from the beginning to write a mainstream work that would make musical and dramatic sense to ordinary operagoers–as well as to young people who’d never seen an opera. That’s why “The Letter” is a fast-moving melodrama that’s designed to feel like a movie–it plays for ninety minutes and has no intermission. Paul calls it an “opera noir,” which I think gives a pretty clear idea of what we had in mind. We wanted it to be something like a cross between “Tosca” and “Double Indemnity.” In addition, the musical language is tonal, meaning that “The Letter” has tunes you can hum. Yes, it’s more demanding than a Broadway musical, but our hope is that anyone who liked “Sweeney Todd” will like our opera as well.

L2: Envision two different futures for the Live Arts and Entertainment world, one in which organizations become more audience-centered and one in which they remain largely as they are now. In 10 years, how do these two different worlds look?

TT: Ten years from now, audience-centered fine-arts groups will be alive, well, and flourishing. Every other kind of group will be sick unto death. It’s as simple as that. Fine-arts audiences are aging much faster than the general population, and the reason for this is that most fine-arts organizations either haven’t figured out how to market their product to people under 40 or aren’t willing to try. It’s essential that the marketing directors and artistic directors of every drama company, symphony orchestra, opera company, and dance company in America pull their heads out of the sand and start thinking about how to sell their product to young audiences–not next year, not next month, but now.

L2: If you could give one piece of advice to everyone in the opera business, what would it be?

TT: Put a sign in every office that reads as follows: MOST PEOPLE THINK THEY DON’T LIKE OPERA. YOU WON’T CHANGE THEIR MINDS BY TELLING THEM THEY SHOULD.

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Showing Your Pride (Without the Pride Flag) by Mark Blankenship

Mark Blankenship is a cultural critic and reporter who contributes to The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and many others. He writes about popular culture at The Critical Condition.

It seems like every live event has a gay following. There are websites for gay NASCAR fans (Gaytona.com), gay sports nuts (Outsports.com), and even gay line dancers (BigAppleRanch.com). Obviously, producers and promoters who make this base feel welcome can carve out a very lucrative niche.

But how do you let potential gay customers, who often have money to burn, know that you want them?

One popular strategy is the “gay day.” Every year, theme parks and baseball stadiums across the country partner with gay groups to host events that celebrate the LGBT community. To show their support, promoters might drape pride flags on every available surface, host an after-hours dance party, or hand out rainbow-colored leis that can be worn like beacons of progress on the tilt-a-whirl.

Even when they’re tacky—and they usually are—gay days are fun, because they imply that LGBT patrons have been embraced on an institutional level. It’s much easier to enjoy yourself when you know you won’t be harassed for holding your partner’s hand.

You also see this kind of outreach in advertising. Budweiser runs gay-themed ads in magazines like The Advocate, and in 2007, Levi’s caused a stir when it shot two versions of the same commercial, one starring a gay couple and one starring a straight couple. The gesture made a clear statement: “We notice you. We want your business. No judgments over here.”

The downside of gay days and special ads, however, is that they encourage a sense of “otherness.” They suggest that while gay people may be accepted, they still aren’t quite normal.

And that’s not the story America is telling these days. Gay people are moving further and further into the mainstream—just look at all the states approving gay marriage—and in the years to come, the most successful live events will be the ones that incorporate this progress into their outreach.

In other words, rather than hosting a few special gay programs, producers and promoters should consider making the gay sensibility part of their everyday marketing and branding.

And when I say “gay sensibility,” I don’t mean coating posters with glitter or shoehorning a Melissa Etheridge song into a halftime show. Blunt gestures like those can feel insincere.

A modern gay audience can be courted in subtler ways. Earlier this month, for instance, the online travel website Orbitz.com released a commercial that’s mostly about the company’s hotel room deals. One of the guys in the ad, however, has a Human Rights Campaign logo on his shirt. Without making the commercial about the guy’s sexuality, Orbitz acknowledges its support of LGBT clients.

That’s refreshing, you know? Sometimes, it’s nice to be part of the regular picture, instead of being stuck in some special frame that’s hanging a few feet down the wall.

I should add, of course, that the “gay day” model does have its place, and that many gay patrons value gay-only events. But if the current social climate is any indication, the demand for deeper inclusion will be exploding for years to come.

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Catchy Doesn’t Sell by Trevor O’Donnell

Trevor O’Donnell is a marketing consultant who has developed innovative marketing and sales initiatives for numerous performing arts producers and presenters including Disney Theatrical Productions, Cirque du Soleil, the Music Center of Los Angeles, the Nederlander Company, Cameron Mackintosh, Center Theatre Group and many others.

Arts marketers have been doing a fairly good job of embracing technology, but every time I get an email that says, “Experience your Imagination” or “Celebrate Live Music” or “The Play’s the Thing,” I wonder if our message content is keeping up with new delivery methods.

These catchy phrases have been bouncing around the arts for decades but comfortable as they may be, they have nothing to do with selling tickets. Effective marketing is not about being cute, creative or clever; it’s about understanding what audiences want and explaining how our products satisfy those desires.

With that in mind, here are three simple things arts marketers can do right now to make sure their marketing messages sell.

1. TALK TO THE FENCE SITTERS

Barack Obama spent two years in churches, community centers and living rooms listening to the people who would elect him president. He had a deep, intimate, personal understanding of the desires of the undecided electorate and he directed the bulk of his persuasive energies toward winning their vote.

Meanwhile in the arts, we spend most of our time courting the base. We rarely concern ourselves with the outer margins of our potential audience and when we craft marketing messages, we aim exclusively at those who have an avid, active interest in what we do.

Obama’s genius lay in designing messages for undecided voters while making certain they also appealed to the base. He aimed at the fence sitters and in so doing crafted persuasive – but nonetheless inclusive – messages for the broadest possible range of voters.

Arts pros who still publish catchy clichés for insider audiences may want to take a cue from Obama and start talking to uncommitted outsiders in a language they understand.

Try This:

Write a profile of your ideal fence-sitting new audience member including her name, age, worldview and demographic characteristics. Then, ignoring the members and donors for a while, design a campaign just for her.

How does this outsider campaign differ from the insider campaign? Do you really have to use the tried-and-true every season, or can you aim for the outermost margins knowing that your message will also work on the inner circle?

Ultimately, it’s where we aim that determines our reach. Target too close to home and you’re bound to leave somebody out. But aim for the fence sitters, and you’ll cast the widest net.

2. STOP TALKING NONSENSE

Last spring the citizens of Los Angeles were directed on banners around the city to “Celebrate Salonen.” As a marketer I knew they meant that Esa-Pekka Salonen was leaving the Philharmonic and they wanted us to buy tickets to his last few concerts. But as a casual concertgoer, I was confused. Should I bring a gift? Will there be cake?

There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘celebrate’ or any of the other old chestnuts in the arts marketing canon: When there are plenty of self-motivated customers in the marketplace, using catchy messages can be an effective way to get their attention – even if those messages are hackneyed or inane.

But motivated arts consumers are disappearing fast, and the fewer there are, the less effective those hoary old marketing messages will be.

Marketers who’ve been recycling the same formats, phrases and images for the last few decades need to start designing smart tactical messages for new under-motivated audiences.

Try This:

Draft a letter to the fence sitter you profiled above. Persuade her to attend your event: Dear Montana, I’m writing to tell you about… Write seven solid paragraphs and then compare the letter to your most recent flyers, emails, brochures, ads, etc.

If you actually do this, you’ll discover two extraordinary things: You didn’t use the canned language from the promotional pieces in the letter and you probably devoted over half the letter to explaining why Montana should come to your event.

If using straightforward language to explain why new audiences should attend is the best way to persuade them, it should be the basis of your marketing strategy.

3. ANSWER THE QUESTION, “WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?”

Given a choice between a re-run of “The Office” and a chance to go to the opera, I’ll take “The Office” any day. It’s not that I don’t like opera; I subscribed to the Met for a few years and loved it. But my impulse to commit the time, energy and money is weak, and then to figure out how to dress and where to eat, and the traffic… Geez, is it really worth it?

When it comes to opera, I’m the quintessential fence sitter. And because I’m both a fence sitter and an arts marketer, I play a game with the folks here at the L.A. Opera that goes something like this: Tell me what’s in it for me and I promise you I will come.

So far I’m winning: The giant head of Placido Domingo that hangs over the doors of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has yet to answer my query.

Meanwhile, my neighbor, Richard, is 90 years old and a loyal L.A. Opera subscriber. Nobody has to tell Richard what’s in it for him because it’s hard-wired and no amount of competition or inconvenience is going to suppress his opera-going impulse.

The difference between old audiences and fence-sitting new audiences is the intensity of their impulse to attend. The stronger the impulse, the less marketers have to do; the weaker the impulse, the more explicitly we must describe the rewards.

Try This:

List five things that you know Montana really wants in life. Next to each one describe how your product satisfies that need:

Need: Montana wants meaningful social experiences she can share with her 20-something peers.

Solution: Our venue provides quality shows and a comfortable facility for a full evening of dining and entertainment.

Next, rank the five items in terms of how well you’ve matched your product to the need and let the really good ones form the foundation of your message strategy.

It is impossible to generate meaningless clichés when you’re explaining how your product satisfies actual needs and desires. If Montana wants a rewarding night out with people she cares about, telling her to experience her imagination or celebrate your product won’t work.

Nor will telling her that the play’s the thing. Montana’s night out with friends is the thing, and if you approach her thoughtfully, you may be lucky enough to be a part of it.

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Mark Twain is Right by Missy Yoshitomi

Missy Yoshitomi is Goldstar’s Venue Relations Manager for Los Angeles and Associate Producer for EpicMegaPro

As a theatre producer I understand that audience feedback can be a touchy subject. It isn’t that we don’t care what the audience thinks; of course we are hoping to create a show that entertains and captivates. But when we find ourselves face-to-face with a scathing member review there is a voice that rises from the depths of our collective producer souls that rages, “Who do they think they are! The New York Times?! I want to see them do half of what we did here tonight!” Am I right? Admit it, you know it makes your blood boil. Through my years at Goldstar I have read my fair share of these member reviews. Yes, sometimes people do think they are The New York Times. They think that the plot was disjointed, or that the playwright was too self-indulgent or worse- that the main actress was too old for the role…and she happens to be your wife.

In times like these remember these words from Mark Twain:

“When an audience do not complain, it is a compliment, and when they do it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.”

Whether your show engaged or enraged you got them off of their couch and into an experience that stirred emotions. Next time though, you may want to move your wife behind the scenes…they say that’s where the magic happens.

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