I am starting to ask myself some interesting questions as an artist at this conference. This conference is focused on how in this struggling economy can arts organizations take advantage of current marketing trends to engage their patrons in new ways that will allow their patrons to feel like they are more significant than just a source for money. Current arts organizations' marketing trends are starting to suggest that they start to include the patron in more behind-the-scenes activities to bring more value to the patron's experience. One of the ways to achieve this is to offer some kind of "meet the artist experience," i.e. short videos of the artist in their studio, artist interviews,  special events where people meet the artist, etc. The general arts public seem to want to have more of an experience than just being thought of as a monetary donor.

Does that mean that the artist themselves is becoming a marketing tool? In the future, how much choice and privacy will the artist be able and expected to keep and still fulfill the organization's requests? If as an artist you decide that your work is really about the work and not you as a person, how do you keep the artist as a person separate from the artist as her art and process? If you don't have some separation will the artist start to take on people comments like they are talking about the artist personally?

As blog submission number one gets posted let me say Providence is a gorgeous backdrop for the work that is being accomplished at this year’s NAMP conference. While sipping on a coke on the flight here I was reading in the in-flight magazine about the top ten locations for observing fall foliage; Vermont was listed, New York, Washington, among other states. Not listed was the state of Rhode Island. During the plane’s descent into Providence’s airport stretched out as far as my eye could see were puffs of green evergreen tree tops and puffy tops in every shade of crimson. These colors are not experienced in Minnesota. The charm of New England has not been lost on me.

The theme for the first day of the conference for me was ACTION!

David Court’s opening plenary was a great way to kick-off or raise the curtain on this year’s conference. David’s remarks reminded me that to be successful there is no one size fits most strategy for attracting audiences to participate in our activities. We must be innovative in our communication strategies and tailor our messaging for the new consumer. Our communication channels have to be on stand-by waiting for the patron to begin an interaction with us on the patron’s timeline and in the patron’s language.

Once again I find myself at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, which is being held this year in Providence, RI. This is my fifth conference, and instead of presenting like I have done in the past, I really wanted to listen in on other sessions to hear what is being discussed. I have been asked to blog about my experiences for Americans for the Arts.

This morning I was lucky enough to sit in on the Every Dollar Counts: Using ROI to Prove Marketing Effectiveness session. I decided to go to the session because one of my favorite arts marketing experts was presenting--Philippe Ravanas, marketing professor at Columbia College and former VP of Corporate Communications for EuroDisney. I have seen him speak at several conferences and he is always extraordinary.

This morning he discussed a situation he found himself in when he was the Manager of Client Development at Christie's in London. Each year, they would produce a beautiful catalog of auction items that they would send to most of their database. These catalogs were highly coveted, and cost the organization $20 a piece to produce, however Philippe noticed that his ROI (return on investment) for these catalogs was poor.