Drafting Your Fantasy Audience

By Kacie Willis, 7 Stages

In October 2017, I was sitting in a coffee shop with Sara Leonard during a consulting session that was provided through a grant from the Audience Building Roundtable of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. I was feeling pretty nervous about conceiving a marketing strategy for the production The Followers; A Retelling of the Bacchae due largely to the ambitious thematic nature of the show and perhaps my own preconceived notions about “the types of shows” that Atlanta audiences wanted to see.

Strategies that Succeed

By Sara R. Leonard, Founder and CEO, Sara Leonard Consulting

As any client of mine and any attendee of the February 2018 Audience Building Roundtable (ABR) meeting will attest, I always remind organizations I’m working with that there is no silver bullet in audience building. If there were, all of the brilliant and diligent nonprofit arts administrators I see would have found it and put it to use. There is no single strategy or tactic that will be successful for all organizations. Each has a different identity: different missions, different values, and – of course – different audiences. But it occurs to me that when we make the time to create really good audience development plans, we’re equipping ourselves about as well as we possibly can.

Aspiration over Desperation

by: Rebecca Danis, The Atlanta Opera

How is a brand significant in the lives of its users? Cynthia Round (former senior vice president of marketing for The Metropolitan Museum of Art) posited this question during her session – “Can We Make Our Cultural Institutions Irresistible?” – at the American Marketing Association Nonprofit Marketing Conference in Washington D.C. in July 2017. Thanks to a scholarship from the Audience Building Roundtable of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, I attended on behalf of The Atlanta Opera.

The National Black Arts Festival: Communicating with our Audience

By Vikki Morrow, President & CEO

In early 2016, faced with a declining audience base, the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF) looked to better understand who our audiences are, why they support us and how we are serving them.

Current Situation: Our 30th Anniversary

One of our challenges is a change in programming that NBAF implemented during the last several years, moving from a festival season to year-round programming...

JANUARY 2018 ISSUE: Georgia Symphony Orchestra Experiences 13% Increase in Ticket Sales from 2015 to 2017

GEORGIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

By Susan Stensland, Executive Director

DEEPENING RELATIONSHIPS

Now in its 67th season, the Georgia Symphony Orchestra (GSO) has many years of rich history and tradition in Cobb County and surrounding areas. The continued survival and growth of our organization is a result of the commitment and dedication of hardworking arts appreciators and volunteers who recognize the value of the musical programs that we bring to our community. Thanks to the generosity of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, we were awarded an Audience Building grant to help grow our audience and be better positioned to deepen relationships with our community members.

To stay relevant in today’s very social world, we chose to use this funding to develop an action plan to attract new ticket buyers and energize existing relationships with loyal patrons. Our planning work, with the assistance of consultant Sara Leonard (another amazing resource provided to us by The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation,) identified key values of the GSO. We value being welcoming, inclusive, accessible, flexible, and collaborative. We incorporated these values in our communications and in our actual events, using the grant to fund the projects.

 

CONCERTS: A NEW COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCE 

Empathy is a critical element of the design method of planning that we have discussed at length at Audience Building Roundtable meetings. With this in mind, we have committed to listening carefully to our ticket buyers and patrons. We know that our musical performances must be high quality, varied in nature and thoughtfully curated. We found that our patrons enjoy the GSO as a place for social gathering where they are welcomed, recognized, and appreciated. To more fully be a welcoming place, we began to incorporate unique opportunities to enhance the concert experience.

For our Musical Promenade concert, we included Pictures at an Exhibition and added a juried art exhibit to make our pre-concert lobby experience more welcoming, inclusive, and fun. This brought visual artists and their fans to a multi-faceted event. During the performance, a slide show was added with paintings that inspired the musical composition. The audience was then “flash mobbed” by the GSO chorus in the lobby during intermission as a way of further immersing the patrons in the experience. 

The America, Vol. 1, concert showcasing works of American composers, included a bluegrass band in the lobby before the performance and the Georgia Spiritual Ensemble in the lobby at intermission. The Just the Beginning concert that closed the 2016-2017 season happened to fall on Earth day, so we created an earth-themed photo booth in the lobby, and the GSO partnered with Trees Atlanta to give saplings to each of our concert attendees. Everyone loved their free gift and the collaborative atmosphere. We added a VIP option to our GSO Jazz concerts, where guests can upgrade to a reserved seating section, and attend a meet-the-musicians reception before the show.

During the 2017-2018 season, our “concert extras” continued on the themes of being welcoming, inclusive, accessible, and collaborative. We added musical performances in the lobby, a new stop-n-shoot backdrop for social media photos, a surprise visit during and after our Holiday concerts by the famous Santa from the Macy’s parades, Valentine’s Day treats, and collaborations with the Morehouse College and the Spelman College Glee Clubs, the Georgia Spiritual Ensemble, and the Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers. 

Through spring 2018, we will assess our quantitative data to determine the impact of our new strategies on our ticket numbers. Ticket sales from 2015 to 2017 increased from an average of $5,714 to $6,448 per concert, a growth of almost 13%. We hope for even more growth as we continue our implementation of new strategies. Audience response to the enhanced concert experiences has been overwhelmingly positive, energetic, and appreciated. Attendees have said that they not only look forward to the music but also to the pre-concert surprises which will be there for them!

 

COMMUNICATION: SHARING OUR VALUES AND OUR “AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE”

The second part of our strategy is to incorporate our values into our communications. This summer we rolled out a new website designed to be up-to-date, user-friendly, and compatible across all mobile platforms. We purchased video equipment and have plans to create blogs, videos, and social media posts that invite our audiences to get to know our musicians, to get a glimpse into the world of the symphony and create a sense of community ownership.

We began an ongoing analysis of our web traffic and trends. Our new website has more analytical capability, which will aid in collection of online traffic. We refocused our marketing on social media platforms, making use of our new video equipment and new website. Early results are positive, with considerable increases in online activity. 

Our primary focus for social media has been on Facebook, as it reaches our target demographics and found a 16.7% growth in page likesover the past year. In the past few months, we experimented with different Facebook ad campaigns, testing the results of videos versus event sharing with photos. We found it interesting to note that men clicked on our videos more than women, at a rate of 57% -43%. Women clicked on posts and events more than men: 67% - 33%. The highest number of our fans are online from 9am-9pm on Wednesdays – Fridays. We get the most significant response from videos and are learning to strategically plan when our posts and event reminders are sent and which audiences to target. Our first video post in 2016 received 110 views. Using our new video equipment together with our new data-based initiatives founded on the study of our analytics, our current video for “From Darkness to Light” has received 5979 views. That is an increase of over 5000% which is significant for our organization's visibility.

The Georgia Symphony Orchestra is enjoying the renewed energy and excitement from the community. We are grateful to The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s Audience Building Roundtable for providing the tools to help us grow stronger as arts leaders and in service to the people of our region. We are happy to share our ideas with the other Roundtable members and with others in the arts and culture community.

JANUARY 2018 ISSUE: Community Engagement: Adding Value to Productions, Developing New Audiences, and Supporting the Mission - All at the Same Time.

TRUE COLORS THEATRE 

By Jennifer McEwen, Former Executive Director, True Colors Theatre Company

Thanks to The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, True Colors was able to expand a marketing initiative that we first tried in 2013: a Community Conversation Series. We were able to use the grant to produce a community conversation series for the entire season, focused on cultural understanding, with each conversation directly tied to a theme within the three plays we produced during 2016-2017. This grant allowed us to look at each True Colors production as a question for the community — How does race influence the law? What can save failing schools? How can we combat the stigma of mental health? In addition to deepening our relationships with our existing patrons, we found that these conversations have also introduced new patrons to True Colors.

We started this series in 2013 with one conversation each year, connecting topical social issues with themes in our plays and giving participants a safe space to discuss race and issues surrounding race. The goal of our Audience Building Grant was to expand these conversations from one to three (in a year) to fill patron demand. We were able to accomplish this, starting in October 2016 when we hosted the first conversation for the season: an expert panel to discuss “Combatting the Mental Health Stigma in the African American Community” before we opened David Auburn’s “Proof.” The group included psychiatrists, counselors, and journalists and was one of the most engaged and impactful talks we’ve held. Audience members discussed in-depth additional challenges and hurdles that people of color encounter when dealing with and finding resources for mental health issues.

In February, we hosted a one-on-one conversation with Monica Pearson interviewing Dr. Meria Carstarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, at Clark Atlanta University. The event was well attended with an unusually diverse audience, and it was evident that we were reaching an audience beyond the traditional True Colors ticket buyer. Similarly, our June conversation around “Race and Policing,” moderated by social justice journalist David A. Love and featuring Atlanta’s Chief of Police Erika Shields, journalist Alexis Scott and Rev. Markel Hutchins, was equally successful in generating both attendance and audience engagement. This conversation had a packed house and a diverse audience, many of whom were first-time attendees. We used these events to offer special incentives to future True Colors performances, and we have successfully reached new patrons.

This grant gave us the freedom to explore different venues for each conversation, partnering with the Southwest Arts Center, Clark Atlanta University, and Actor’s Express. We strategically chose our venue partners based on the conversation topics, based on our assumption that audience demographics are correlated to venue location. We used grant funds to pay for travel, lodging for our out of town speakers, technical support, marketing and PR initiatives to support the programs, including radio and print press, social media promotions and email promotions.

We found that planning for this initiative allowed our team to implement innovative and strategic methods of engagement for both the theatre company and the community. The conversation series has been set up in a way that introduces new and existing patrons to our work. These free programs created a safe and nonjudgmental environment for our audience to express thoughts and opinions about issues facing their community. Our community conversations have added value to our productions for our existing patron base and engaged nontraditional theatergoers in our work, which then translated into ticket sales.

To see more about our community conversations, click here: https://truecolorstheatre.org/events/community-conversations/

JANUARY 2018 ISSUE: Do Good. Be Great. Shift from Marketing to Storytelling

Museum of Design Atlanta

By Maria Royal, Museum of Design Atlanta

After attending the AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference this year, I learned that it takes defining the “why” to set yourself apart and it takes human-powered stories to inspire others to care.

 

IT ALL STARTS WITH THE WHY

As Simon Sinek puts it, “most organizations know what they do. Some know how they do it. But very few know why they do it,” or what their larger purpose is. Using Apple as an example here – the iPhone gives users a lens through which to capture the world, their products enable innovative design work, and on top of having good products that work they choose to market user stories to reveal a kind of empathy and reverence for their audience, positioning the device as the enabler and the user as the pioneer. This realization altered my entire approach to marketing the MODA brand and building the museum’s audience. Nonprofit marketers must begin to think of their brands as people with human voices in order to move audiences from event-loyalists to brand-loyalists.

 

DO GOOD. BE GREAT.

AMA’s overall conference theme this year, Do Good.Be Great, brought some of the best story tellers in the nonprofit realm to Washington DC. Among many compelling presentations, the following three speakers stood out and spoke in some ways directly to MODA’s mission – to use design as a force to inspire and create positive change in the world through exhibitions, education, and programming for visitors of all ages. Here are a few game-changing tips I took away:

 

MARTHA ADAMS, CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER FOR THE
GIRL RISING CAMPAIGN

For Martha Adams, the goal of the Girl Rising campaign was to inspire audiences with real stories that would create lasting emotional connections. Why? In order to highlight the critical role that education plays in life. The Girl Rising team created nine chapters with nine different girls to reveal nine unique stories that distill a sense of trust, authenticity, and consistency with the audience. In her words, “if you know how to nurture a human relationship, you know how to build a brand” and in some cases, it’s an emotional connection to a brand’s mission that matters more than customer satisfaction with a particular product. Since brand status is something that must be earned, it’s the user who gives a brand its value. For Martha, promoting Girl Rising was not about driving sales but about building a strong community of like-minded individuals to back a movement for education.

 

JOHN VRANAS, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER FOR
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION

John Vranas began his presentation with a statement that tickled his audience of nonprofit marketers, “No money, no mission,” making a compelling argument for how crucial it is that marketing and development to dovetail. John explained that the need for funding to support the Make-A-Wish program always existed but in the organization’s early years, it turns out they were telling the wrong story.

Historically Make-A-Wish focused their marketing efforts on showcasing the end result –wishes made possible by their organization. After years of sub-par returns on their marketing investments, they realized they were telling the wrong story because they had identified the wrong hero. The real heroes in this story were the people who actually made the wishes possible – the donors, fundraisers, volunteers, social workers, and the doctors working together for a cure. Flipping their model completely and adapting their why to showcase funders and doctors as the heroes yielded tremendous success that allowed the organization to eventually scale up to 102 individual foundations in the US.

 

JENNIFER MARTINDALE, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER FOR
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS (YBCA)

With the idea that “cultural shifts precede change,” Jennifer explained that YBCA exists to serve as a creative home for civic action – a place for people to carry change forward. Under new marketing leadership YBCA put new programs in place to actively support and celebrate San Francisco’s change-makers. Their team started the YBCA 100, their own award program to highlight their city’s top change-makers, inviting as many honorees as possible in to speak on one question – what’s the question that keeps you up at night and how are you addressing it? Their team launched a Think Tank for prototyping new city improvements complete with a Culture Bank that selects risky organizations and artists who can’t get grants to fund as long as the artists are designing for good in their city.

 

BRINGING IT BACK TO ATLANTA: BUILDING A BRAND-LOYAL COMMUNITY FOR MODA

Re-inspired by the incredible work of the above organizations, I returned to Atlanta to restructure the MODA marketing plan for 2018 with an overarching marketing goal of building a brand-loyal MODA community that understands the power of design to change the world and that believes MODA is essential to doing it for Atlanta. I worked with my team to create an internal and external marketing plan to help turn this goal into a reality.

On the internal side, we are working to build an army of radically friendly, cohesive brand ambassadors to drive membership up by 20 percent year over year, capture data, and push patrons to brand loyalty organically. We are finalizing a brand voice guideline to ensure message consistency and to better define our why when conversing with patrons in our exhibition space, at our events, and in our camps and classes.

On the external side, we are aiming to increase patron brand loyalty and donation amounts by 20 percent year over year. There are a number of strategies that support this objective including better defining our why to set ourselves apart in external communication pieces, choosing the right hero in development pieces, and taking a human-centered approach to both our paid and earned marketing efforts.

We are creating real campaigns around MODA’s mission-centered work including exhibitions, Design Conversations, and summer camps. We are focusing our social communications on celebrating the people in Atlanta and beyond who are living our mission of using design to make the world a better place. And once we ramp up these specific MODA initiatives, our blue-sky dream is to move from event-marketing campaigns to brand marketing campaigns at the end of the 2018 calendar year.

Presenting Data in New Ways ... Mapping the Web Experience ... And other Audience Building Tales

By Kristie Swenk Benson, Director of Communications, High Museum of Art

On July 16, I landed in Washington, D.C. for my very first Nonprofit Marketing Conference. Being new to the nonprofit industry, I thought this conference would be a great entry point for me as the director of communications for the High Museum of Art.

Member Login
Welcome, (First Name)!
Forgot? Show
Log In
Enter Member Area
My Profile Log Out