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.



What should we adopt? How can we adapt?

Posted by , Oct 12, 2010 0 comments



Amelia Northrup

Reading over the blog entries this week, particularly David Dombrosky's entry on the rise of the citizen critic and Ron Evans' post on online reviews, I was reminded of an experience I had a few years ago when our local paper cut its classical music and dance critic.  I had a meeting with many of the marketing directors in the city, who were understandably upset about the firing and convinced that their success was inextricably linked with newspaper coverage.

Many of these people had been in marketing for 30 years. When they first started out in the business, the primary marketing channels were TV, radio, and newspaper (and maybe billboard, telemarketing, or fax.) When a new medium was introduced, it might take a while to master, but that was fine.  The learning curve was viewed as an investment because you knew that medium would still be around in five years.

Compare that to now.  We have new, “must-have” technology platforms coming out nearly every 6 months to a year.  Today, we are being pushed toward mobile apps for phones and iPads, geolocation social media like Foursquare, and more.  We are not sure if these technologies will still be popular in three months, let alone five yea

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Randy Cohen

It's All in the Data: Supply and Demand for the Arts

Posted by Randy Cohen, Feb 07, 2011 5 comments


Randy Cohen

Randy Cohen

Randy Cohen

On January 31, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman posted a blog about (1) the issue of supply and demand in the arts and (2) the ratio of arts administrators to artists.  I had the opportunity to augment the first point using additional data as well as clarify the second in my posting.  Because these are two issues that may arise for you, we thought it worth posting here so you have the facts at your fingertips.

An examination of years of trend data indicate that demand for the arts is indeed lagging supply. The good news is that it also indicates that audiences are not walking away from the arts, but rather broadening how they choose to engage in the arts.

There is also one noteworthy correction to be made in the Chairman’s numbers and thus, one of his points.

On the supply side:

In our annual National Arts Index report, released just two weeks ago, we track the Urban Institute’s count of registered nonprofit arts organizations as one of our 81 national-level indicators. In the past decade, the number of nonprofit arts organizations in the United States has grown 45 percent (75,000 to 109,000), a greater rate than all nonprofit organizations, which grew 32 percent (1,203,000 to 1,581,000). Or to take the more startling look, between 2003 and 2009, a new nonprofit arts organization was created every three hours in the U.S.

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Chad Bauman

Are Subscriptions Dead? Maybe Not (Part 1)

Posted by Chad Bauman, Oct 04, 2011 0 comments


Chad Bauman

Chad Bauman

When I joined Arena Stage in 2007, I came to my new job with a couple of preconceived notions about subscriptions. Perhaps it was in part a reflection that I am on the Generation X/Millennial cusp, but I was certain that the subscription model was outdated and ineffective.

Many mature organizations that had developed their business models on subscriptions were seeing significant declines in subscriber numbers, and were literally caught between a rock and a hard place -- should they dump their subscription model and leap into the unknown, or keep putting band aids on a failing and timeworn strategy? Reports from major performing arts organizations at the time seemed to indicate a trend of declining returns, forcing a feeling that immediate change to a staple in our business model could be warranted.

In early 2008, Arena Stage along with a few other League of Resident Theatres members, began to test subscription alternatives in focus groups. In doing so, I was absolutely certain that the results would show at least one, if not several, attractive alternatives to subscriptions. I was wrong.

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Mr. Drew McManus

Success Stories

Posted by Mr. Drew McManus, Oct 06, 2011 0 comments


Mr. Drew McManus

Drew McManus

Drew McManus

Regardless if you're a client, consultant, or vendor you've been on one side or the other of this perfectly reasonable sounding question:

"Do you have any success stories or case studies on how your service produced a positive result?"

A typical response looks something like this:

"Why yes, after implementing Technology-X, Arts Organization Y experienced a 15 percent increase in single ticket sales in the first year alone. Arts Organization Z experienced a 23 percent increase over two years and a 12 percent jump in the number of annual fund donors."

Naturally, arts organizations want to know how a product or service produced a positive result but in an environment filled with pressures and problems, the decision making process can get cut a bit too short and decisions end up getting influenced by vendor provided statistics more than they should.

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Ron Evans

The Scale of Trust

Posted by Ron Evans, Oct 12, 2010 5 comments


Ron Evans

Ron Evans

I'm really enjoying the blog salon discussion by so many smart folks here on ARTSBlog. Technology in the Arts' David Dombrosky and I both decided to pick up the banner of discussing citizen reviewers and trusting online commentary. In his recent post, he talks about the need to educate citizen reviewers so they know how to write an intelligent review. And in my recent post, I talk about training people to trust what people are reviewing right now.

I thought this was a cool way to attack the problem, and people seemed to dig the perspectives via the comments they left. So I emailed David and asked is he wanted to join my on Skype and talk about these two ways of attacking the problem on a deeper level. You can listen in on the recorded convo below:

Ian David Moss (fellow ARTSBlog writer) also chimed in with some thoughts on how he and his friend Daniel Reid had considered some of these issues when it comes to some of the big “vote for your arts group to get a grant” challenges that are happening all over the place. Based on these conversations, I decided to take a crack at a simple rating system, let's call the “scale of trustiness” (or SOT -- let's bring the great word SOT back from its original meaning!) that you can store in your head when you're reading an online review for an arts event. You won't need to remember any number of points or anything -- it's enough that you just consider a particular review on the SOT scale, and if you're weighing two shows to go to, perhaps each review's SOT score can help you decide what to attend.

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Catherine Brandt

Two Clicks = Two Quarters (from Arts Watch)

Posted by Catherine Brandt, Mar 02, 2011 0 comments


Catherine Brandt

Catherine Brandt

Catherine Brandt

The good people at Hyundai have generously offered to help Americans for the Arts in curing our nation’s Crampomitosis problem. Never heard of it?

Here’s how Hyundai describes the condition:

"Millions of compact car drivers are fighting against leg-buckling Crampomitosis, caused by a chronic lack of leg room. These choice-starved people have knees riddled with teeth marks, toes pointing in impossible directions, and seemingly no choice when it comes to a comfortable car to drive."

Still wondering what in the world Crampomitosis has to do with Americans for the Arts? Let me explain. Clearly, Crampomitosis isn't really a medical condition. It’s actually Hyundai's way of giving back.

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