Advisory Board for the Arts sponsored a webinar discussing how Utah Symphony shifted its marketing focus to emphasize emotional factors and shared values.  Karen Freeman, Executive Director of Research at Advisory Board for the Arts, observed that this approach can be effective because “people make choices based on emotional factors but justify it with rational considerations.”  Essentially, how this might manifest is you may choose what car to purchase based on an emotional association but decide it is a good choice based on things like gas mileage, dealer incentives and utility to your family.

Freeman says that providing a high quality art experience will attract people, yes, but that isn’t enough to sustain you. As noted in the chart below, for 1/3 of your audience, investment in the art form is a motivator because it is part of their identity. The other 2/3 have a different factors which motivate them.

The different motivating factors for the other 2/3 of audiences were identified by John Falk, using different category names, in Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. I wrote about these categories in a bit more in detail on my personal blog for those interested in learning more.

Something to be particularly aware of however, is that regardless of whether someone feels emotionally connected to culture as part of their identity or not, the motivation for a specific visit may vary from visit to visit. One week they may visit based on a desire to gain expertise, next month it may be to support family and friends and next year it might so they can say they saw a famous work. Since what will resonate this time will be different from the last time, a variety of messaging needs to be employed for every opportunity being offered

Around the 13:15 point in the video, there are examples of Utah Symphony promotional materials which span the continuum of appeals, from functional benefit to emotional value. While it doesn’t appear the symphony created campaigns that evoked shared value, Freeman uses Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign to illustrate what that might look like.

Utah Symphony employed the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET)  to get a sense of what people valued about the organization. At around the  17:45 they discuss how they asked people to bring in 10 images that represent the symphony that do not include any pictures of symphony, musicians or instruments.  If you think this is a great idea you want to do, be prepared to communicate expectations very clearly, perhaps with some repetition. In the Q&A segment later in the video, Jonathan Miles, VP of Marketing & Public Relations at Utah Symphony says getting people to understand what they supposed to bring to the interview was just about the most difficult part of the process.

Using ZMET elicited some good results. Someone brought picture of an Adirondack chair explaining they felt the same sense of calm in the symphony as they did in their chair at the lake. Among the additional questions the interviewer might use were asking about any feelings that they couldn’t find appropriate picture for. What else might be in the picture if the frame is extended? Interviewees were also asked to provide sensory metaphors – what color, smell, touch associated was associated with or perhaps or not associated with attending the orchestra?

They also mentioned a simpler approach might be to use the 5 Whys. It is a technique popularized by Toyota where you ask “Why” type questions at least 5 times to get to the core of what motivates them. At the the 22 min point Freeman presents chart which sort of illustrates where the Why technique might lead.

The first why might elicit a response that someone values the symphony for live performance. Asking why live performance is important might get an answer of extraordinary experience. Why does that matter? Makes me a better person. Why is it important to be a better person? Creates a sense of inner harmony.

Freeman says if you only asked Why once or twice, you will end up focused on product features and benefits and not really learn about what people see is a value of the experience to them as a person.

Using ZMET did see an increase in sales, revenue and reactivated buyers and according to Jonathan Miles it also shifted the way symphony staff spoke internally about patrons and reframed decision making about the patron experience. The internal change probably had more far reaching influence in success than if they had employed this technique superficially as a formula for success.

Miles said instead of trying to find out those who were engaged with arts and culture at other places weren’t coming, they tried to learn more about the core values embraced by superfans and then help people who shared the values of superfans see how those values were manifested at Utah Symphony performances through the superfans’ eyes.

Last 30 min is Miles talking about how they conducted the interviews, things to keep in mind, and how he cultivated internal allies around the approach and campaigns.

One amusing coincidence they stumbled upon was that they used images in some of their ads (see ~53:15) which mimicked scanable links to Spotify songs so people thought they could listen to the same songs those depicted in the images were. They ends up scrambling to reissue the ads so that people could scan them to do just that.

My colleague and frequent collaborator Ann Marie Sorrell is fond of saying that engagement with diverse communities must be more than “checking a box” and she’s absolutely correct.  Ann Marie and I are long-time collaborators in this work, starting with a multi-year initiative many years ago at Palm Beach Opera.

As National Black Business Month has just concluded, I’m reminded of an article in The New York Times which brought this concept to the front of my mind once again. It shines a light on the sometimes performative nature of A.D.E.I work, often at times when it is convenient such as Black History Month, MLK Day, Juneteenth, etc. Many organizations in our sector continue to maintain audience demographics that do not reflect the communities they serve.

There are several insights in the article, some of which I’ll share here:

[Black History Month] in which D.E.I. firms are ordinarily flooded instead became a reminder, for clients, that their drive should persist throughout the year.

Wise words from Faith Kares, senior director of research and impact at Beloved, a firm working to deepen DEI practices & antiracist leadership:

Dr. Kares was skeptical as she watched dozens of corporations appoint new diversity and inclusion directors in 2020. “Giving $60,000 to these positions is nothing,” she said. “It’s a slap in the face. What’s going to happen in five years when it’s not on trend anymore?”

As many performing arts organizations schedule concerts, museums put on exhibitions, and everyone puts on a show on social media with a flurry of content featuring the diversity hashtag-of-the-month, have we ever stopped to think that this might actually be hurting us rather than helping? Reaching out one person — let alone an entire community — just once per year doesn’t demonstrate very much sincerity.

And finally, one key point:

…unless [an organization’s] senior leaders are engaged, because they know that without that commitment the efforts could easily get sidelined.

Without the sincere and mindful commitment from everyone at an organization, building a true relationship with underrepresented and historically excluded communities will not be a success.

All of that said, I invite you to do an honest audit of your organization’s A.D.E.I activities. Are you engaging in true relationship-building and fostering systemic change?

While it has sort of been generally known that visitors to arts and cultural organizations aren’t fully aware of whether the organization is a non-profit or not, Colleen Dilenschneider recently posted research that qualifies just how few visitors are able to make that distinction, (subscription required) what the implication of that lack of knowledge is, and how to reverse that perception.

Basically, even the disciplines with the best levels of awareness of non-profit status don’t even get close to 50% awareness.

Overall, only 38.6% of US adults believe that nonprofit exhibit-based organizations are nonprofits. This number considers visitors and non-visitors alike and the weighted attendance distribution of each organization type in the US.

Nonprofit performing arts organizations are in a similar situation: Fewer than half of recent patrons correctly identify them as nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit live theaters and live theater organizations are least likely to be accurately perceived as nonprofit organizations, and nonprofit orchestras are most likely to be perceived accurately as nonprofit organizations.

The data Dilenschneider presents, solicited and analyzed by her employer IMPACTS, is likely to be rather depressing to most arts and cultural organizations because it not only reveals a lack of awareness, but how few people even think about the business models of places they have recently visited and with which they have participated. When they do try to identify the business model, they are frequently wrong.

This matters because people are willing to donate to organizations they perceive to be non-profits. The implications of not perceiving an organization as a non-profit are pretty clear. There are actually a number of factors outside of an organization’s control that color perceptions. For example, being in Washington DC or a state capital can contribute to the perception of being government run.

From my own experience, organizations who receive office space or residency status within a facility run by another entity can lead to confusion about how the resident organization is funded. In some cases, fans who identify the facility with the work of a favored resident group have assumed the resident owned the large complex rather than a couple small offices and shared access to a copier.

The solution, according to Dilenschneider isn’t to emphasize your organization’s tax status, but rather the organization’s mission:

Here’s where things get interesting (in our nerdy opinions): People are most likely to correctly identify organizations as nonprofits when they can align that entity to its unique meaningful achievements and missions. It may not be shouting a tax status from the rooftops that sticks, but instead the perceived values and impactful initiatives that an organization brings to its respective communities and constituencies.

My emphasis, or perhaps it is better stated, de-emphasis, because she bolded that entire sentence but I wanted to call attention to the terms unique & meaningful. A pretty good sized span of Dilenschneider’s entry is devoted to narrative and charts showing what constitutes meaningful differs based on discipline and organization. The general survey data she presents can give you direction about what is relevant for your organization’s format and discipline, but deeper meaning can be community specific.

Based on the work of people like Nina Simon and Ruth Hartt, these will be things that are relevant and meaningful to the community, not the organization.

According to Dilenschneider’s data there is a cost to not emphasizing meaningful achievements:

People who mistakenly categorize nonprofit organizations as having other funding structures and operational statuses generally cannot name a single meaningful achievement associated with the organization in question, despite being aware of or perhaps even visiting that organization.

Did you know according to surveys conducted a few months ago, the most entertaining performance based organization in the world is the Sydney Opera House, followed by the Hollywood Bowl and the most entertaining exhibit based organization in the world is the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial followed by the Gettysburg National Military Park?

If you are thinking, geez, people have a pretty morbid conception of what is entertaining if they are listing two military cemeteries ahead of The Louvre (#3 on the list), according to Colleen Dilenschneider and her colleagues at IMPACTS Experience, it is actually how the general public defines entertaining that is different from how arts organizations define the term. (subscription required)

You may have read my earlier post about Dilenschneider’s research which finds people have a hard time discerning whether your arts organization is a non-profit or not, even if you tell them, so you’ll appreciate just how much work she and her colleagues are doing to show arts professional and creative insiders how their perceptions differ from those of program participants. She notes that for a lot of arts professionals “entertaining” is associated with superficial, trivial, and frivolous experiences, whereas their goal is to provide deep, meaningful, educational experiences.

The reality is, those are the same concepts cited by people who ranked places like the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial as having high entertainment value.  The top five adjectives used were: Inspiring, Beautiful, Meaningful, Powerful, and Moving.

It should be noted, all the answers provided in these surveys were to open ended questions. Respondents weren’t given a list of organizations or adjectives to choose from. The places that rose to the top of lists as being entertaining were apparently at the top of people’s minds.  I should also note that not everyone in the world was asked to identify the most entertaining places in the world. Respondents were mostly in North America, Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

As you may begin to discern, it is the overall context of an experience that determines whether a place is considered entertaining or not. The same is true for performing arts organizations which tend to be more comfortable with being considered entertaining. (Though there is certainly still a sense of delineation between what is a real experience and what is frivolous.) So what IMPACTS learned might be disappointing to many performing arts organizations – the context in which the experience occurs influences the perception of entertainment more than the quality of the experience.

Experiencing a performance in an iconic setting reliably contributes to elevated entertainment ratings across multiple programs and experiences by the same presenting organization. Similarly, we’ve found that the exact same “entertaining” performance can be perceived as more or less entertaining depending on the location of that performance.

[…]

People believe the Sydney Opera House to be the most entertaining performance-based organization in the world, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that every single performance presented within its walls is reliably and equally entertaining. Instead, this location may be most strongly cited because the art, architecture, and iconic nature of this space extends beyond individual performances. Similarly, seeing a performance “on Broadway” contributes to higher entertainment scores

One of the sub-headers in Dilenschneider’s post sums it up ““Entertaining” can mean meaningful – not meaningless.” People participating in an experience can deem it entertaining because they found it meaningful to them. Her post has tons and tons of great data and insight that is best read at the source.

Having read all this research, you may be struck with dismay because your organization doesn’t operate in an iconic structure or arts district, but it should be noted that when asked what entertaining mean in the context of cultural organizations, “something you want to share” and “unique” followed terms like “inspiring, engaging, meaningful, relevant, and fun”. It is absolutely possible to create experiences which are meaningful, relevant, unique and something people want to share within the context of a smaller organization in a manner that larger organizations are entirely unable.

Smaller organizations can involve participants in silly activities and fun videos that connect with a community in ways larger organizations can’t. On my personal blog, I have written about museums that provided anyone who wanted to wander in with an opportunity to hang out with noted artists and gallery owners who were serving themselves out of a pot of jambalaya on the stove. Nina Simon has talked about creating pop-up museum exhibits to failed relationships in a bar.

Even if the terms listed above don’t match your definition of entertaining, you likely understand they describe the experiences people in your community are seeking.

One of the ways communities are using arts and creativity to revitalize buildings and downtown districts are murals on buildings. However, not all surfaces are suited for murals. The best intentions of contributing to a more attractive, welcoming streetscape may result in the building owner regretting their decision.

The Historic Preservation Commission for Loveland, CO has created a webpage and downloadable publication warning about the damage and potential structural issues that may result in painting the old brick of historic buildings.

Many of the issues painting brick structures creates are related to trapping moisture in what is normally a relatively porous, breathable material. Temperature changes causing expansion of that moisture can undermine the structural integrity of the brick and mortar.  The paint can obscure the development of these issues until the damage becomes severe and repairs more costly and extensive.

The other thing they note is that murals may end up hiding or muting distinctive architectural features that might be better amplified in order to celebrate the rare character of the structure and community.

There are some types of brick that are suitable for painting. Even some historic brick was intended to be painted, but only with substances which allowed them to breathe:

The wise approach is to do a little research and testing to determine what the appropriate materials and approach are for a specific building. There are options for different aluminum, plywood, and engineered fabrics  upon which murals can be painted and attached to buildings. The webpage and publication provide some advice about how to anchor the panels (into the mortar rather than brick) and fabric (breathable acrylic gel). Certainly there are likely other products and approaches one might utilize.

Keep in mind that geographic location should also be factored in to the materials and process chosen. The guide linked to here is calibrated to the conditions of cold, snowy winters and glaring summer sun at elevations exceeding one mile. Murals will weather differently in the relatively warmer, more humid climes of the southeast and drier, hotter deserts of the southwest, as well as the mix of annual weather conditions across the rest of the US.