Andrew McIntyre, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre and Vicki Allpress Hill, The Audience Connection Andrew McIntyre and Vicki Allpress Hill challenge the way that Orthodox Arts Marketing has hijacked and distorted the conversation between our organisations and our audiences, turning what should be rich, rewarding relationships into mere grubby transactions. The big idea is to build communities rather than just service 'customers'. But that requires our organisations to be more porous: we need to truly engage, involve and even co-create with our audiences. Andrew and Vicki see great potential for a digital revolution that is truly personal and personalised but warn against just digitising bad analogue practice: we are in danger of replacing bad letters with bad, one-size-fits-no-one emails. New Zealand is a leader in audience insight. Creative New Zealand's adoption of Culture Segments as a national audience segmentation system and its pioneering work on the Optimise digital programme gives New Zealand organisations a unique head start for the coming revolution. What Andrew and Vicky are describing is the brave, new post-marketing world in which audience engagement is everyone's responsibility and far too important to be delegated to someone who happens to have 'marketing' in their job title. Orthodox Arts Marketing is dead. Long Live Audience Engagement!

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2. ANDREW
This morning we’d like to start a big conversation about the big conversation between
our institutions and our audiences
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3. Artists have been stimulating big conversations with and within their audiences since
art began. And it’s in those exchanges that the meaning and value of art can be
found. But the rise, some thirty-odd years ago, of Orthodox Arts Marketing has
interrupted, stifled, controlled, chanelled and stylised that vital free-flowing
conversation. And in its place we’ve had... copywriting.
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4. Orthodox Arts Marketing holds that artists are great people but that they’re not that
great at talking to the audience. This, the argument
goes, is a task best left to professionals. Copywriting’s purple prose is surely required
to entice the notoriously ticket-shy audience to the box office and to frequent our
museums and galleries. Copywriting claims that it’s just like our own words, only
better, in a different order and with cooler adjectives. It’s more eloquent than us,
wittier, more self-assured and far more persuasive. Copywriting always knows the
right words to say, and when. It finishes every sentence before starting a new one. It
anticipates the next question and answers it without missing a beat.
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5. No wonder, then, that it sounds nothing like a real conversation. Now, don’t get me
wrong. I love a bit of copywriting. It’s like an Olympic sport with marks awarded for
style; spin; and technical virtuosity. But, be honest. It all sounds, well, just so…
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6. ...generic
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7. It’s got so bad that I’ve been receiving versions of the same, tired old direct mail
letter for the past 20 years. Delete opera, insert ballet. Rinse and repeat. Why am I no
longer surprised that the New Zealand Herald or Otago Daily Times loved it so much
that the type for their quote suddenly triples in size? But if snail mail is looking tired,
if anything, those templated MailChimp emails seem even more cloned. And we all
know what we mean by ‘brochure copy’. Heck, we could all write it on auto-pilot. It’s
a style that’s become its own genre. Upbeat, perky, ever so-slightly breathless,
packed with nods and references to previous triumphs and relying on a central list of
hackneyed phrases. Why is it that dance is always so exhilarating?
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8. And we all know what we mean by ‘brochure copy’. Heck, we could all write it on
auto-pilot. It’s a style that’s become its own genre. Upbeat, perky, ever so-slightly
breathless, packed with nods and references to previous triumphs and relying on a
central list of hackneyed phrases. Why is it that dance is always so exhilarating? Of
course, even though Orthodox Arts Marketing is still perpetuating the old idea that
the audience is a mass of fickle, would-be non-bookers who might just be won over
by a compelling headline and a smart turn-of-phrase, the reality is somewhat
different. The audience is far, far smarter than that. Many have given up reading our
re-worked, over-polished but thinlydisguised sales pitches altogether. Our brochures
go straight to recycling and our emails are routinely trashed or sit unopened. Those
who do read our heavily copy-written offerings do so with their ‘bulls**t detectors’
on full alert.
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9. Think about it. We’re all audience members ourselves. We all get sent these same-
old, same-old brochures and emails. And we don’t believe a word of them. We know
the game and we read between the lines. So, let’s ask ourselves. I mean, really ask
ourselves, why would our intelligent, media-literate, clever audiences not be doing
exactly the same? A few of them work in marketing too! It’s time we recognised that
audiences don’t want to receive a letter signed by a Marketing Manager, no one
wants to read anything that sounds even vaguely like it’s been written by one. I know
this. That used to be my job title and it used to be Andrew’s too. Thousands, literally
thousands od these letters I have “signed”, mass printed and stuffed into envelopes in
my time. My stepson took his girlfriend to an arts performance when they were first
dating a couple of years ago. They loved the experience and yes, he confirmed, he’d
like to go to another one. Somehow he ended up on the organisation’s postal mailing
list. Now, about once every two months, religiously, a letter arrives. Without fail, he
glances at the letter concerned and puts it directly in the recycling bin. I keep thinking
of that poor Marketing Manager steadfastly sending his or her letters hopefully into
such a vacuum. Gen Y are like canaries in the mines for testing bad, adjective-ridden
copywriting. They’re skeptical and they can spot that templated “written by a
marketing manager” bullsh*t from a mile away. Watch them closely. In “Marketing To
Millennials And Other Skeptical Customers?” writer Micah Solomon “Understatement
is one of the secrets of branding, marketing, and advertising in our post-credulity,
social media-saturated, millennial (Gen Y) -influenced world.”
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10. If the task is to bring artists and audiences closer together, then we are not really
succeeding any more via Orthodox Arts. If anything, it’s potentially created an opaque
layer between the creatives that make the work and the audience they’d love to
engage – and who would love to hear directly from them. We are in an age where
promotional messages are being filtered out at best and viewed with outright
suspicion at worst. We are in an era of “content marketing” – delivering valuable
information to build trust and strengthen relationships, not sales messages. A recent
article in Forbes.com articulated it beautifully: “While consumers continue to tune
out traditional, intrusive marketing communications, they increasingly crave the type
of genuine, customer-focused information that content marketing delivers.”
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11. So, if we are to have any hope of dialogue with our audience, if we want them to
engage with us, then we’re going to need to take a step back from the clichéd
copywriting. Many of you we know have already stopped – today we’re going to see
some really smart examples of real connections between art and audiences, but let’s
ALL vow, here and now, to never send(in a rushed or thoughtless way) another one of
those emails or write any more of that brochure copy. We’ll feel better for it, and the
audience will be thankful. Filtering the bulls**t is a soul-destroying task when all you
crave is a genuine, meaningful personal connection with someone who has made,
curated, loves or has breathed life into the work.
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12. About a week ago Australian Ballet posted a stunning image on Instagram of their
current Bodytorque: DNA season – their showcase of emerging choreographic talent
from their ranks. The images for the season are so glorious, by the way, words are
scarcely needed, but I loved the real and human way in which they talked about the
season in the image caption: “Bodytorque:DNA took our breath away last night!
Were you there? What did you think? And who’s going tonight?” And so the
conversation began: “It was simply amazing.... What I loved the most was the two
male dancers on variations of the same classical piece of music. Greetings from a
Spanish here in Melbourne.” No cliches. Honest enthusiasm.Not an “exhilarating” in
sight – maybe a little breathless but believably so. And an immediate response from a
real audience member.
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13. We all have to sell things – tickets, donations, musical scores, recordings,
programmes... Some times a clear, strong and confident call to action is what’s
needed. But we need to remember that when we send a sales message, it reinforces
that the audience member is a ‘customer’ and that we are seeking a transactional
outcome. That’s going to be necessary sometimes. But is it all we want? And if it’s
the only way we ever communicate with our audiences is that really going to build
the kind of relationship we aspire to have with our audiences? Is it going to make
them feel close to our art? It’s like that friend who doesn’t realise she’s doing it, but
who only ever phones me when she wants something from me. If just once she called
to say “hey I was just checking in to see how you are going” orto say “wow, that was
fun last night?” . emailed me with “this useful resource I saw that might be of interest
to you, it would make all the difference. It could transform me from having my slightly
suspicious guard up and avoiding taking the calls to feeling appreciated and wanting
to give back something. Isn’t it the same with our audiences?
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14. When all we ever send our audiences are ticket offers and requests for donations,
they’re going to feel kept firmly in their place: at arm’s length. And it’s really hard to
embrace at arms length. We need to be applying the principles of building
relationships with our friends, to building relationships with our audiences. Instead of
building what we see as databases full of customer sales leads we need to be building
real communities of engagement and support around our institutions and our work.
Sure, we’ll need to use a database and a segmented CRM system – we’re
professionals, not luddites – but we need to remind ourselves it’s the human
relationships we’re interested in, not the kilobytes of data. Our audience member is
not Database Record No. 2-4-3-6-1, it’s Kate, who organises all her family and friends
to visit us.
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15. And we’re fortunate. Cultural experiences are amongst the most personal, powerful
and memorable we can have. Every encounter, real or virtual…is an opportunity to
make a really powerful connection with an audience member.
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16. Relationships are not difficult, audiences are pre-disposed to them and we are,
actually, naturally very good at them. Every time we welcome someone into a venue,
every time they have a shared experience in a performance or a hosted moment in
museum or gallery the bond is strengthened.
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17. All our communications need to evoke the experience of a one-to-one encounter
with the creative fanatic behind the work. We need to share more than just the
details of what’s on. We need to convey our inspiration and our heartfelt desire to
share the experience with them, personally. We need to share our humanity. And
when we ask audiences for their opinions, collect their feedback and listen to their
stories it’s like adding rocket fuel to the relationship, especially when we act on what
we’ve heard. This dialogue is personal and our responses are personalised. All this is a
long, long way from the one-way, downward push of Orthodox Arts Marketing.
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18. Some cultural organisations have gone much further. They’ve invited their audiences
to create, to produce and to co-create work. International Audience Atlas data
suggests six in ten audience members would like to co-create with us. From the
audience dramaturgy of theatre-in-development programmes like Toronto-based
Theatre Passé Muraille’s ’Buzz’ and London-based Battersea Arts Centre’s ‘Scratch’ to
the increasing number of museums routinely using formative evaluation to pre-test
exhibition concepts, plans, titles and prices, audiences are becoming stakeholders in
the work.
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19. Of course, while we should make the most of every real-world, face-to-face contact,
no cultural organisation has the resources to truly personalise every communication
and to deal with each individual on a one-to-one basis every time.
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20. That’s where Culture Segments comes in. Segmentation is a good compromise
between the incredibly ineffective one size fits all and the impossibly inefficient one-
to-one. New Zealand Culture Segments classifies people into meaningful and
practically useful groups within which people share deep-seated values, beliefs and
propensities. Understanding these Culture Segments, consciously targeting them and
differentiating your messaging, presentation and the experience you’re offering
makes every one of your communications far more relevant and valued.
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21. By simply ‘tweaking’ the communication between versions for different segments,
you can quickly build out a ‘mass personalisation’ campaign, increasing audience
response and building brand trust. You can differentiate your communications
whether or not you have a direct marketing database. Even when using ’broadcast’
channels such as posters and advertising, messages optimised and for specific Culture
Segments will find their target far more reliably than messages optimised for no
segment. Understanding these Culture Segments… makes every one of your
communications
far more relevant and valued. And using Culture Segments media insights, those
messages can be carefully placed in particular chosen titles and channels where your
target segments are most likely to see them and have the greatest propensity to
respond, forward, click or book. Increasingly, organisations are ‘screening’ their
database members on joining – and via updates – to collect answers to Culture
Segments’ short ‘Golden Questions’ together with other ‘relationship’ data like Brand
Equity that profiles an audience member’s levels of loyalty, trust, risk taking, sense of
belonging and propensity to join, to donate or to volunteer. A database holding this
kind of rich relationship profiling is a very powerful tool indeed.
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22. As a sector, we really need to put down that Digital Megaphone.
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23. The advent of digital communications should, by now, have revolutionised our
audience relationships.
You would think so.
We have the means at our disposal to segment, target and personalise.
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24. The web and the devices we carry have such rich relationship tools… While some
cultural organisations are deeply digital, adoption rates in others are positively glacial.
And while the rest of the internet is brim-full with authentic, opinionated,
wonderfully idiosyncratic user-generated content (reviews, ratings and
recommendations), most of our websites by comparison read like tightly controlled
brochure marketing sites. We’re so guilty of taking the adjective-rich brochure copy
we already wrote and pasting it into our website pages, promo email templates and
even Facebook status boxes. And even when audience members see past our cliches
and speak to us right where we could be be having a conversation; where comment
boxes reside on social media and blogs - we’re sometimes not even responding And
take email. It’s cost-effective, we can segment by characteristics and we can deliver
fast and relevant communications that include images, video, quotes and links. We
can speak in direct ways to our current audiences but also so easily target the
infrequent, lapsed and lapsing audiences that make up such a huge and forgotten
proportion of our databases. Yet we’ve all been guilty, and many still are of sending
undifferentiated, impersonal email ‘blasts’ wrapped in garish HTML graphic templates
that scream ‘generic web advert’ not ‘personal message’. Instead of using email to
finesse our relationship messaging, we’re talking (even shouting) at them in “one-size
fits no-one” style. It’s never been easier to make all our messaging carefully
differentiated and powerfully personalised. Yet, the danger is that instead of moving
beyond old-fashioned Orthodox Arts Marketing into a new, post-marketing world of
genuine audience engagement, we simply end up importing its flawed tenets, wrong-
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25. headed assumptions and discredited bad practice into our new digital relationships.
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26. Bad direct mail letters become bad email blasts.
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27. But the world of digital communications offers us myriad ways to connect, engage
and build communities around our institutions and our work.
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28. Digital content can be richer, more intimate and more readily available in real time
than anything we’ve had before. We can upload or stream our actual creative work
to the web or even syndicate it to cinemas. Thousands now watch operas from the
Met in New York, plays from the National Theatre in London or enjoy a personal tour
of the latest British Museum exhibition with the Director as the guide. Rather than
cannibalise the ‘live’ audience, digital distribution both extends the market and
creates a stronger desire to make a real-world visit.
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29. We can also share the process of making our work in ways that the audience find
completely compelling – a peek backstage…
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30. …a fly on the rehearsal room wall, conversations with the performer, artist, writer,
curator, director or choreographer. All these ramp up anticipation and increase
audience’s readiness to receive.
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31. But the ultimate impact of digital content can be found in user-generated content and
in user-shared links to our content. It’s like deputising half your audience as members
of your communications team. Word of mouth has always been invaluable. Word of
mouse is multiplying the effect. To extraordinary levels. When we calculated the
collective friends of Facebook fans of the 38 organisations taking part in our
Optimiser online benchmarking pilot here in New Zealand we nearly fell over.
31,442,741 - 31,442,741 people are just one click away from the people who
love these organisations enough to be connected to their Facebook pages. And
what’s so great? We can track this word of mouth. It’s has always been notoriously
difficult to track- and do we trust those surveys really? But word of mouse leaves
digital tracks that can be followed, collated and analysed to give us unprecedented
insight into audience responses.
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32. We live in a fabulous age rich with opportunities for audience engagement and
genuine real-time conversation. We can remove that opaque layer whenever we
choose to. And we’re blazing a trail here in New Zealand. Creative New Zealand’s
Optimise online marketing capability building programme is producing inspiring
initiatives that are facilitating this connection with our audiences. And 38 deeply
brave and forward thinking organisations have opened the bonnet on their online
analytics and let us in to find the trends and insights that will move us forward as a
sector. Every time we throw a communications stone into the audience pond, digital
tools can help us to choose a better stone and track all the ripples it makes. Rather
than just broadcasting our messages and hoping that they find their mark, we can
now trial different approaches and accurately track every response from opening an
email, clicking on a content link, sharing on social media, forwarding to others and
booking a ticket. We know that the closer the contact with the work and its makers
the more the audience lights up in response. We can now see and even measure that
response by event, communication and segment.
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33. We stand on the threshold of a completely new era. Change is afoot and there are so
many examples of great new practice in our sector. And New Zealand is pushing its
way to the front. Many of these examples are digital, but many are good old-
fashioned analogue: face-to-face is still by far the most personally powerful medium
of all.
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34. This Big Conversation gathering is about sharing that great practice with each other
so that we can all start an even bigger conversation with our audiences. What’s clear
is that building genuine audience relationships is not about digital technology. It relies
much more on our desire to share our creative inspiration with the audience, our
willingness to make our organisations personal, porous and transparent and our
insistence that audience engagement is everyone’s responsibility from the board
room to the tea room. It’s far too big and important a task to simply delegate to
someone who happens to have ‘marketing’ in their job title.
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