As a quick follow-up to last week's post about the change in newspaper readers' habits my favorite research web site Emarketer.com posted this chart today which shows that more than a quarter of respondents to a recent survey said they are reading print newspapers less often.
I’ve been thinking a lot about newspapers these days. Almost a day doesn’t pass without some news story about a cutback, sale, or drop in circulation at a leading newspaper. In fact, earlier this week, CBS MarketWatch had a story which started this way:
Even though the market expects poor results from newspaper companies, the actual results can come as a shock. Gannett (GCI) is off over 5% to a 52-week low of $15.93 on poor numbers.
Perhaps it’s on my mind a lot because I’m finding myself amongst perhaps the most beleaguered class of writers – classical music critics. Recently there have been severe layoffs of culture critics at The New York Times. This kind of thing is happening all across the country, and for the first time it’s a structural change, not an incremental one.
What is going on, and what does it mean for our industry?
In this case, we can’t blame general moral decay or the lack of interest in the arts directly. Rather the explanation lies in something a lot more subtle and frankly more painful to admit publicly. The fact is that we’ve all had it too good for the last 20 years or so.
Newspapers, for editorial reasons -- but not economically justifiable ones -- have given arts & cultural coverage disproportionately large print space relative to the economic value those articles provide. Unlike yesteryear, people buy printed newspapers to get hard news, sports and finance, and maybe comics or the weather. Fewer and fewer are picking up the paper rushing to read a symphony or theater review, or to plan their cultural outings using the weekend listings section.
How can I prove this to you? Well, what if you were to look over the shoulder of ever reader of every newspaper and look at what articles people are actually looking at? What would we find out?
Clearly we can’t do this so easily, but we do have a pretty good surrogate. Online versions of newspapers provide exactly this kind of reporting – page by page. And, although I’m not privy to actual results, we can quickly deduce from the publishers’ recent actions that those page view reports must be indicating that not too many people are reading those arts sections. Certainly not enough to justify the investments they have been making in writers to create articles for them.
In an environment in which newspaper revenues continue to be decimated by free classifieds on Craigslist.org and the shift from paper to digital consumption of their product, the owners are facing an advertising gap. Only about 8% of all ad dollars have flowed online so far, and when they do, the price that newspapers can get for ads in those digital pages is vastly less than in their print equivalents.
So newspapers are forced to make decisions now on a microeconomic level. Whatever sections generate more page views (and are therefore more attractive to advertisers), they will invest in, and vice versa. And since arts critics are professionals and command appropriately professional fees, they are not economically justifiable, and are being squeezed out in any way the papers can muster.
What I have also observed is that arts press offices are now forced to pick up the slack. Press offices now routinely provide housing, air and car transportation, meals, and other benefits for critics because they know that if they don’t, the critics won’t be able to afford to come.
So, what about the future? Let's assume this trend continues for the next few years, and that cultural coverage will be reduced in printed newspapers. And let's assume that online coverage in newspapers won't be eliminated, but it will be reduced. And let's also assume that the competition for arts patrons' attention online will increase, as high-quality blogs and independent cultural sites like www.showup.com proliferate. The result will be that your audiences will stop looking to newspapers as their primary trusted source of cultural information.
What does that all mean for the industry? It means that arts & cultural organizations need to rethink they way they operate. In addition to courting bloggers, and whatever online writers still remain, they must now recognize that the only surefire way to to replace the trusted communication stream that their audience got from newspapers is to provide fantastic online content directly to their patrons.
We are moving into an age of the self-publisher. Each organization can command its own one-to-one relationship with its audience if it sets its mind to doing so. And the stronger and wider that relationship is the more effective it will be of replacing what used to be.
I see two ways of thinking going on now. The first is what I see from many I talk with: they are lamenting what’s changing or falling apart in the industry and are seeking more and more ways to prop it up and keep it going. The second is from those that are embracing the future and leading their organization to a different kind of relationship with their audience. They are intensely studying the changes that are happening, and investing real time and significant financial resources into the development of their online activities with video, blogs, and other content.
It seems obvious to me which kind of thinking will yield the most success. And, if you really want something that will knock your socks off, read the new Salon article about what the Obama campaign is doing online. That’s what I’m talking about!
What always amazes me is how much money non-profits spend in direct mail marketing, when the evidence shows that e-mail works better, costs less, and is easier to do. I don't fully understand why making a significant investment in e-mail marketing is something so few managers are willing to do. In my conversations, there always seems to be a reluctance to break away from the tried-and-true. So it is for those of you among my readers that I direct this post.
Apparently the word about e-mail marketing has gotten out to America's biggest corporations. Last week, a report was released by Direct Partners. It was a study of responses from 30,000 surveys sent in April, to senior executives at companies with 2007 revenues exceeding $100 million. 28 percent of respondents said that e-mail works most effectively for them, with 24 percent reporting that direct mail does the best job.
Here's the entire article, which is worth a read.
Of all people, I am the last to admonish non-profits to "act more like a business" - but in this case, corporate America seems to be "getting it" a lot faster than we are.
For some time, I've been writing about how video is going to change the Web experience, even more than it has already. I sometimes gauge the infiltration of new technology by using my "New York Subway Test" – based on what I see people doing while they are on the train. It was of interest to me today that no fewer than three people in my subway car (including me) were watching videos on their cell phones or portable devices.
In my case, I was "time-delaying" watching an episode of "Charlie Rose" from last week, and while I have no way of knowing this, my guess is that the others may have been watching something that they otherwise would have seen live on TV. I have no grand statement for what this means, except that it's not that hard to connect the dots. Folks in the arts have lots of video content to share - rehearsals, interviews, audience reactions -- and all of this stuff can motivate participation in a way that no other marketing medium can. Someone could be watching last night's pre-show interview with the playwright during their morning commute!
And backing up this point, yesterday’s eMarketer reports that over half of people over 61 years old say that "their computer has become more of an entertainment device then their TV." Furthermore, research from Solutions Research Group says that in the next five years, video-based entertainment will grow by a third, to an average of eight hours per day -- with most of the gain going to online video, not TV.
So, as more and more people access videos in the subway and elsewhere on their cell phones and computers, doesn't this scream out as a big marketing opportunity for our industry?
Last week I was at the National Performing Arts Conference in Denver (which explains my brief hiatus from this blog), and I went to a presentation at Opera America assessing the success of the Met Opera's Live in HD initiative. While it may have been unexpected news for some, I was not surprised to learn that the folks that go to these productions are primarily already opera-goers and -lovers. They are overwhelmingly middle aged, white, upscale, urban culture-lovers who have merely found another avenue to enjoy opera. While the statistics do show that some small percentage of the audience (I recall something under 15%) said it was their first opera experience, this opera experience was by no means a "starter" event for most attendees.
More to the point, the respondents overwhelmingly reported that going to the movie theater to see opera would very likely encourage them to go to see the live experience. The biggest takeaway for me is the same one I've been seeing for years.
Exposure in video or television to something that is otherwise a live event only heightens the interest in the live experience, rather than replacing the need for it.
E-mail marketing, “Web 2.0,” blogs, texting, podcasts, online video – how can an overwhelmed arts executive sift through all of today’s new technology to find what is really working ? At this session, we'll help you cut through confusion and direct you to the most important things you should be focusing on to optimize your online marketing -- no matter the size of your budget.
I got some flack about my last post, because it didn't seem like it was possible that older folks were online more than younger ones. I do buy that argument, so I'm going to try to make amends here.
Let's have at it from another perspective. Here's a study from Focalyst that does a better job of framing the opportunity to market online to seniors. As you can see below, "gathering information" and "travel planning and reservations" are in the top five categories of what this audience finds useful to do online. And, by extension, we already know that making ticket purchases online is now preferred by this audience.
What's also fascinating is that apparently folks over 62 notice Web advertising more than younger people. My guess is that younger folks are more adept at tuning out these ads. All of this bodes well for our ability to continue to reach and motivate this culturally active generation.
For the last six years I've been fighting the myth that older arts patrons aren't online as much as younger people. Many arts executives make the assumption that marketing online really means marketing to a younger audience. To a large extent, that is true - but there's plenty of evidence that older patrons are in fact online as well.
Our research has shown this for years, and the trend is getting stronger. In fact, in our 2008 Arts Patron Research study, 45% of people over 55 said that buying online was their preferred method of buying single tickets for arts events.
As such, I wasn't surprised this morning when I saw this chart from a recent study by JupiterResearch and Ipsos Insight which shows that folks over 55 actually spend more time online than younger people.
I do find this report a little suspect, because it says that multi-tasking isn't taken into consideration. But JupiterResearch is a respected outfit, and since this data squares with what we have seen for years, I think it's more true than not.
I feel like I ought to do a seminar titled "Marketing Online to Audiences over 55."
I was in Toronto this weekend speaking at the annual TAPA Trade Forum, presented by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts. This was a full day of seminars, all about marketing and other arts-related issues in Canada. I'll have more on my thoughts about Toronto later this week - however, today I want to focus on an incredible statistic I heard at the conference, and an even more incredible experience I had when I got to work this morning -- all having to do with Facebook.
First, according to what I heard at the conference (and this article), Toronto has over 1 million Facebook users. Apparently half of all Canadians are online, and 80% of those people are also on Facebook. That probably describes why during one of the morning sessions, the speaker, Sean Howard, summed up his wishes for the Web this way: "Why do I have to go to any other sites? I just want everything on Facebook!" Clearly I thought something must be in the water up there in Canada more than just the basis of great beer, since so dramatically many Canadians are addicted to Facebook.
But then when I got to work this morning, we welcomed back Lily, who had just spent the last 10 days on vacation in Japan. I happened to take a peek at her Facebook page last night wondering if she had posted anything after she got back. I noticed she had already uploaded some 60+ pictures of her trip, complete with annotations.
The interesting thing is that I wasn't alone. By 9:15 this morning I had talked to 8 of our staff members, and 6 of them told me that they had already looked at Lily's pictures as well. And the two that hadn't done so admitted that they were away from their computers yesterday, otherwise they would have.
As a marketer, clearly Facebook is a phenomenon to pay attention to. However, something to remember is that nobody is making any money advertising on Facebook. And it's not clear that arts organizations get much more than bragging rights when they create their own Facebook pages. Indeed, Facebook as a company has yet to prove it can do much more than aggregate an audience. It's certainly not a business yet. But then again, neither was Google until it invented AdWords.
