Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

The Language of Our Relationships

Last month I was in Las Vegas and I went to a conference where I had the opportunity to hear some of the more important entertainment companies on the strip talk about their work. These were the folks that put on the shows for Celine Dion and Elton John, as well as highly-staged corporate events. Something  I heard over and over has stuck with me these past few weeks and seems highly relevant to our business.

Each one of the speakers referred to the people that attend their shows as "guests." Never "ticket buyers", never "customers", always "guests".

It got me thinking about how we refer to our customers. I named our company "Patron" Technology because it seemed to me that if you treat each person as a potential patron (i.e., a donor) you'd be treating them right from the start. We create technology that helps you build relationships with your patrons.

How many of us have attended cultural events and feel treated like guests or patrons? How would you expect to be treated if you were a guest, versus a ticket buyer?

I don't go to nearly as many events as I once did, but my overall reaction is that we ticket buyers are often treated like cattle. Maybe it's just my New York City experience, but the process of getting into the theatre, getting past the lobby and seated isn't great. I've harped on this issue before, but I think it bears repeating. This weekend I was in a theatre lobby where well meaning but misguided interns where literally shouting at us. They screamed out where  we should go, which line to stand on, and all the things we should not do. "Keep moving, keep quiet, turn off your cell phones, there is no intermission, check your coat here." 

When was the last time you greeted a guest in your home like that? Perhaps we can learn something from Las Vegas, and perhaps it's simply vocabulary. 

Buy a CD? Buy a Book? How Old Fashioned!

A few weeks ago when I was preparing my opening session for our E-marketing E-mersion conference, I had  planned to include a section about the future of the personal ownership of content, or lack thereof.  I went down the path, but ultimately pulled it out of my talk, having gotten cross-eyed looks from from my staff. I also thought that it was just too wacky a notion to put forth quite yet, because there are so few early examples of it.

First, let me lay out my thinking about what "it" is. It's clear to me that eventually, when the connection between the Internet and some mobile device that plays audio and video is truly seamless, nearly free and completely ubiquitous, that the idea of owning a CD or a movie, or even a track of music will become obsolete. 

Rather, companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo and others will have vast storage databases of essentially all content; all books, all movies, all videos and music. It won't be free to download, but what you'll do is sign up for an annual license and then you'll have an "all-you-can-eat" experience. (This is the current business model for Napster, if anyone is paying any attention.)

Why would I have to "own" a CD if I could call it up whenever and wherever I wanted? Doesn't what I just described provide the very same value that we now associate with owning something? We have it - we control it and we can get it whenever we want. So if Amazon can deliver that to me, for less cost than the annual price I spend on music now, with more convenience and more portability, where's the value in ownership? That's my thinking.

So, now to the point. This week we saw Amazon release its Kindle book reader. At first, one thinks of all the other failed book readers out there, until you really focus on what the device really is. Essentially, it's a wireless content machine that connects to Amazon.com. Sure, you can "download" 200 books and have them with you at all times. But the buzzer went off in my head when I heard Jeff Bezos say something like "if you download a book and delete it, and later want it back, we store it for you in your Amazon.com account."

This is the beginning of the future of non-ownership I'm talking about. Aside from the familiarity of owning a physical book, is there any reason to "buy" a book if I could have access to any of millions of books per year for a license fee of $199/year? You have to believe that Bezos is thinking in that direction. And I read rumors that Amazon will soon start streaming movies directly to your computer.

I recently walked by my former local Blockbuster, which has been closed for a year, and it now seems like a dinosaur. How long will it be before I we say the same about Barnes & Noble?

The Intimacy of Imperfection

Yesterday I got an e-mail from one of my marketing  heroes, Steven Brock, who runs BlueBear LLC an Interent site usability and research company that works with Fortune 500 companies. In the e-mail was a gem of wisdom which I wanted to share, since it encapsulates a lot of what I've been thinking recently.

Steve says:

The issue/challenge across every category that’s trying to find its way online is breaking down the “sterility” of the content. That’s because online, stuff that might work offline looks stiff.  The immediacy of the medium requires a new tonality or “voicing” – one that’s off the cuff, more intimate, “behind the scenes”  quality.  I actually do think there’s a new “voice” to be had here.  This is going to sound weird, but think about letters you’ve heard that were written during the Civil War – the formality of the “voicing”.  You know what changed that?  The telephone.  Now, the Internet’s changing it again.  It’s changing the way we talk to each other.

I think this is true with regard  not only for text, but its even more true with respect to video. What we all used to strive for, highly polished, edited and slick video production, comes off pre-packaged and inauthentic online. YouTube isn't about great production value, it's about the intimacy of imperfection. The more slick and edited, the less the message is to be trusted.

There's a lot of implications here, and if there ever was a time where the idea that publishing on the Web requires different skills and a different sensibility than for publishing in print, that's time is now.

Our Conference Theme Echoed by IBM

As you know, last week we mounted our first large-scale e-marketing conference, our E-marketing E-mersion E-vent.  In the past we've done single seminars for an hour or a few hours, but this was our first effort at a multi-track, all-day event.

Judging from the intensity of the note-taking by our participants and the results from our survey, I think we are on the right track. One of the things I did in planning the conference was to invite speakers that would bring examples and experiences not only from the arts, but also from Fortune 500 companies and outside the US arts world.

I think often we get too myopic and think that unless something is being done in our specific genre it's not relevant. Actually, what I was hoping to convey last week was that arts marketers need to learn how to do better e-marketing in a big way, and and ultimately they should be learning not only from each other, but from corporate America and abroad.

One of the big themes of my keynote talk had to do with segmentation and targeting. Although it's not nearly as sexy nor does it generate as many eager questions as talking about Youtube, it's vitally important. I made that point, as did several of our guest speakers.

And talking about Fortune 500 companies, I was really pleased to read a press release this weekend about a new study issued by IBM Global Business Services, titled "IBM Predicts the End of Advertising as We Know It." I encourage you to read the press release at least, if not the whole study.

Here's a few quotes that should whet your appetite:

To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices.

IBM believes that all players will need to invest heavily in consumer analytics and automation to gain more insights about the consumer and how to reach them. For example, interactive advertising paired with consumer analytics provides compelling knowledge of who viewed and acted on an ad rather than estimates of impressions, allowing advertisers to maximize revenue and yield management.

Marketing is marketing and whether you're IBM or the Iowa Brass Museum, the contours of the evolving world of arts marketing seem to be the same for everyone.

Inspiring Japanese Trends

In the last week I've been to both the ArtsReach Marketing conference, and am writing this from the NAMP conference in Miami. I thought that I might be reporting back and picking up tid-bits of information to share with you. In fact, I've been running around like crazy and have hardly had a chance to really digest much of anything. I hope to have some pearls of wisdom later in the week when I've had time to really reflect.

Meanwhile, It's been great seeing many of you and my overall take is that the field of arts marketing has been greatly enhanced by these conferences and there's are more and more organizations doing smart marketing than I've ever seen before.

However, I digress. The real point of this post is to share a really interesting article that caught my eye today. It validates something I've been saying for years - that the PC will dwindle in importance as cell phones and PDAs become better and better as a replacement. Here's some validation from Japan.

More than 50 percent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  This comes from an AP article which you can read in its entirety here.

Seems to me that's a pretty high percentage. Also seems to me that the same will happen in the US sooner than later. The implications are pretty important for our digital marketing. More portability means more use, and more use means more and more potential to reach our patrons easily and quickly.