Blog Posts for arts marketing

Thank you to the many people who have been blog contributors to, and readers of ArtsBlog over the years. ArtsBlog has long been a space where we uplifted stories from the field that demonstrated how the arts strengthen our communities socially, educationally, and economically; where trends and issues and controversies were called out; and advocacy tools were provided to help you make the case for more arts funding and favorable arts policies.

As part of Americans for the Arts’ recent Strategic Realignment Process, we were asked to evaluate our storytelling communications platforms and evolve the way we share content. As a result, we launched the Designing Our Destiny portal to explore new ways of telling stories and sharing information, one that is consistent with our longtime practice of, “No numbers without a story, and no stories without a number.”

As we put our energy into developing this platform and reevaluate our communications strategies, we have put ArtsBlog on hold. That is, you can read past blog posts, but we are not posting new ones. You can look to the Designing Our Destiny portal and our news items feed on the Americans for the Arts website for stories you would have seen in ArtsBlog in the past.

ArtsBlog will remain online through this year as we determine the best way to archive this valuable resource and the knowledge you’ve shared here.

As ever, we are grateful for your participation in ArtsBlog and thank you for your work in advancing the arts. It is important, and you are important for doing it.


Ron Evans

Consistency Is More Important Than the Latest Thing

Posted by Ron Evans, Oct 04, 2011 1 comment


Ron Evans

Ron Evans

Let's face it. Arts marketing and technology planning can be overwhelming at times. Especially for folks who are new to it.

I recently taught a class about self-marketing online, to a group of individual artists in San Francisco. They were all fired up about technology; it was awesome to see. But a lot of them didn't have a plan, and because of this, they didn't have consistent activities they could measure over time.

The effect was that that they were getting really frustrated chasing the next “silver bullet” and not finding any sort of results or satisfaction.

I can see how that can be really frustrating (especially for an individual artist with no staff to help). So we spent some time talking about creating a simple online marketing plan, and most importantly, establishing various behavior modification techniques to help them stick to a consistent marketing schedule.

I know many of you will have heard of S.M.A.R.T. Goals (hey everyone, did you know that S.M.A.R.T has been expanded to S.M.A.R.T.E.R?). This format is an excellent one for setting priorities so that you can get rid of the stuff that's not SMART(ER) and focus on the stuff that is.

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Justin Karr


Ben Cohen

Giving Back While Filling Theater Seats

Posted by Justin Karr, Ben Cohen, Oct 06, 2011 0 comments


Justin Karr


Ben Cohen

Givenik, a service affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters, connects charities and Broadway theatergoers. When theatergoers buy tickets through Givenik.com, they elect to contribute five percent of the ticket sale to a charity of their choice. Charities benefit through revenue earned on ticket sales. Broadway shows benefit through the attention and goodwill generated when Givenik is promoted to a charity’s supporters.

For Givenik to be successful, it must appeal to all three audiences: charities, shows, and theatergoers. Charities must agree to participate in Givenik and promote it to their supporters. Shows must agree to sacrifice a portion of their ticket revenue. Theatergoers must be aware of the service and what shows and charities are available on it. Social media is particularly well-suited for solving problems like ours by enabling us to connect all three audiences in a cost-effective way.

We primarily use Facebook and Twitter with a Givenik brand user. Our principle strategy is to connect charities, shows and their supporters to us and to each other via service posts.

Show fans become charity fans, charity fans become show fans, and everybody becomes Givenik fans. There is nothing fancy here; this is Social Media 101.

We try to remain engaged in the chatter in both the nonprofit and Broadway worlds and contribute to the conversation wherever we can.

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Susannah Greenwood

How Can Wrong Be So Right?

Posted by Susannah Greenwood, Oct 13, 2010 0 comments


Susannah Greenwood

Susannah Greenwood

Oh, Chad Bauman you might be my new hero. Your insightful article on A Collection of Worst Practices was in a word, awesome. In another word, brave. Just one more word… awesome. Oh, wait, I already said that. Dammit. But, seriously, we’re brought up all our lives to believe mistakes are bad. You mess up that one term paper and it’s 40% of your grade and your GPA is affected for life, you’ll never get into grad school, you’ll never attract a spouse, you’ll end up miserable living in a ditch, a worthless piece of detritus and probably a total sot (not to be confused with Scale of Trustiness). What, your parents never used that argument? Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but so many times the consequences of mistakes are seemingly so monumental that you don’t take any risk at all. You never grow. And let’s be honest, sometimes those BEST practices don’t have the same results for you in your organization.

I’m here to support loud and clear MISTAKES. Boy, do I love sharing the mistakes. Sure they can be a bit of a sucker punch to the pride, but mistakes and sharing them are at the core of collaboration, education, and the continued drive for improvement and ultimate success. Hopefully your mistakes aren’t BP sized, no one wants that, but it’s easier to rise from the ashes if you just approach things with the attitude of practice makes perfect…or maybe not perfect, but very respectable progress and desired outcomes. When people say we are building on our “experience” what they really mean is, “we messed up a lot, but we won’t do that again. Not the same way at least.”

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Patricia Martin

The Power 7: A Checklist For Future Business Models in Arts & Culture

Posted by Patricia Martin, May 18, 2011 5 comments


Patricia Martin

Patricia Martin

Open talk about new business models in the arts is a cultural signal. It’s a watermark that tells us the tides are shifting. Digital culture is eroding some of art’s traditional value proposition.

That’s not what worries me.

This does: Even if the arts can come to occupy a new role in people’s lives, will they will be able to communicate this role to attract new users—especially younger audiences?

Cultivating younger audiences will be important. They are the future. But using marketing messages and tactics from the past to reach them might mean that your organization—no matter what its business model, will not be around to see them join your ranks. 

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Sam Horn

How Can I Turn a NO into a YES?

Posted by Sam Horn, Oct 04, 2011 0 comments


Sam Horn

Sam Horn

During a recent Win Buy-In: Get Anyone Intrigued in Anything in 60 Seconds workshop I gave in Europe, a participant raised his hand and asked, “What can we do if we anticipate our decision-maker is going to say no? Do you have a way to turn that into a yes?”

Me: “Certainly. What do you have in mind?”

Participant: “Well, my son is on a traveling soccer team. We just hired a professional player to coach his team and we need to raise money for his salary.”

Me: “So, how are you planning to do that?’

Participant: “Well, we’re going to approach our local bookstore, but we know the owner gets hit up for donations all the time.”

Me: “Good for you. You’re already half way to winning buy-in because you’ve already put yourself in the shoes of your decision-maker and read his mind. Make it easy for him to say yes."

Me: "Ironically, the key to getting a yes is to ask yourself, ‘Why will they say no?'"

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Ms. Sara Billmann

When a Bigger Audience May Not Be a Better Audience

Posted by Ms. Sara Billmann, Oct 06, 2011 7 comments


Ms. Sara Billmann

Sara Billmann

I’ve been thinking a lot about audience lately, and how we often we fall into the trap of marketing our performances TO certain audiences rather than thinking about what kind of audience experience we can design to attract the ‘right’ audience for the work that we’re presenting.

It’s a very subtle shift in thinking, but one that I’m starting to think can have a big impact on the work we do.

As a presenter, my involvement in the creation of any given work is basically non-existent. While I’m part of the curatorial team that puts together each season for our audiences, I seldom see the work that we present in advance and rely heavily on the press kit, recordings, and YouTube videos to gain a real understanding of the artists we present (ironic, isn’t it, that while we tout the importance of the live performance experience, we rely on digital media to understand it ourselves).

For most performances, that method works just fine – I either have past experience with an artist, or it is a relatively straightforward performance, and I have easy access to understanding the program and the artists.

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