By Jim McCarthy Jan 8, 2010 0 comments

Seth Godin Unknowingly Backs Me Up

Yesterday, I talked about how you always need to build the show around the value placed on it by the audience, and not build the show and then figure out how much you need to charge.  (Because price has nothing to do with cost, remember?)

This, for me, is at the heart of running your live entertainment organization in an audience-oriented way.

Marketing guru Seth Godin unknowingly backed me up with a post to his blog recently, when he said the following :

You won't have any more luck repairing the market than all the king's horses and men did repairing Humpty.

You won't have any more luck repairing the market than all the king's horses and men did repairing Humpty.

“It’s extremely difficult to repair the market.“

Read Godin’s whole piece.  It’s brief and tells the interesting story of Groucho Marx and his ability to change with the marketplace, going from vaudeville to movies to TV.

Unlike Marx, many arts marketers (but by no means only arts marketers) spend way too much time thinking about how to do just that.  If only everyone appreciated the beauty of  chamber orchestra, or “Waiting for Godot” or modern interpretive dance.  If only, if only.  Give us legislation, mandatory arts training, early morning oboe boot camps, whatever it takes to make this lot of dummies understand what we do.

And then they wonder why ticket sales disappoint them.

Like my friend Terry Teachout said answering my question about the one piece of advice he’d give to people in the opera business:

“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.”

Or, to paraphrase Ned Flanders, “Let’s not should our audience to death!”

Because if you find yourself wanting to “repair” the market, here’s a thought.  It’s probably not the market that’s broken.  It’s you.

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