It's the end of the year and our office is hopping, so I'm guessing that many of you are still around doing all the things you've not had a chance to do during the regular season! We are too...
I'm also going to make some downtime for myself over the holidays and will be back posting after the New Year.
I want to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season.
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.
I got there at 7:50 PM for an 8:00 curtain and headed to the men’s room. When I turned to the sink I saw an attendant with towels and soap, thrusting them at me. Knowing that if I took the towel, I would have to give a tip and knowing that I only had two $20 bills in my pocket, I decided “no attendant for me” and reached for the towel dispenser. But… it was empty. So I took the towel and since it was only minutes before curtain, grabbed all the change in my pocket that I had, and put it in the tip jar.
At this point, the attendant took the change out, and handed it back to me. He said “No, I don’t take this.” I asked, “Are you saying that you don’t want a tip, or that the tip isn’t enough? He said, “You can keep it.”
Several others witnessed this, and one other patron asked me as we left the bathroom whether what he had just witnessed was what he thought it was.
So, by now, I’m fuming. It's really unpleasant to be insulted. I’m now in a foul mood and I don’t enjoy the play at all. (It was a lousy production to start with and this made it worse.) I spent the whole first act resolving not to renew my subscription nor give an end-of –year donation, thinking about all the friends I was going to tell this story to, and drafting this post in my head.
So, what’s the lesson here? You can work like crazy as a marketer to build your brand, to win new subscribers and your organization can put on great shows.But all it takes is one little interaction like this to blow the whole thing.
How much time does your organization spend training each and every person that interacts with your patrons?
Joseph Burch at the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra alerted me to an interesting article today. It's about subject lines and the gist is that if you can relate your subject line to something that's in the news today, you'll get a better open rate. Their example links Brittany Spears to drunk driving and was sent by MADD.
http://www.ephilanthropy.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6372
The parallel for the arts is a
little harder. I mean, something like, "Hear the Next Pavarotti" is probably in
bad taste. But what about something as simple as "Fed Lowers Interest Rates --
Come Celebrate with a Concert." Again, maybe not so swift, but you get the
idea.
I think the point that's entirely
valid here is that a lot of what people focus their time on when they are online
is breaking news. And if your subject line can in some way relate to something
that happened yesterday, and you can do it in a smart & sophisticated way,
it's worth a try.
Of course, I'm an advocate of A/B tests. So if any of you try this, let me know.
Today, let's turn the tables and examine ourselves, rather than our patrons. Most of the time I write about how to send e-mail most effectively to make sure it gets read, and achieves a marketing objective. But today, let's talk about whether the e-mail in your own inbox is literally burying you, and how to manage it better.
Think of this post as something of a public service, motivated by a terrific article I was recommended, published on David Allen's Web site. If you don't know David Allen, he's a pretty well known author in the area of personal productivity. I've read his books over and over, and I give them as gifts to friends and business colleagues who are struggling with how to manage an overflowing "to-do" list.
I urge you to read this post in its entirety. It will challenge you (as it did me) to clean out my inbox of anything and everything that's been read at least once. If you have hundreds of e-mails sitting in your inbox, it feels awful, right?
These days I end the day with only a few e-mails, because I've been convinced there's another way. I've got my own system that works for me. Julie Allen, a productivity coach for David Allen does too. Take a look at hers; I think it might just change your life.
http://davidco.com/coaches_corner/Julie_Daniel/article9.html
I realize that a lot of the time, I write on this blog about the positive sides of the Internet, and how it's changing arts marketing. I admittedly consistently extoll the benefits of the medium, and have looked away at most of the problems (except for spam).
Today, one of my staff members alerted me to this article, which is so raw in its description of the negative effects of the web that it stopped me in my tracks. I won't reiterate what the article says, but suffice it to say, that it's possible that if drugs and cigarette addictions were the addictive scourge of the 1950's and 1960's, and coffee in the 1990's, the web itself may indeed turn out to be the next big addiction to worry about.
Read here about what's going on in China, and how some teens are so addicted to playing games online they lose touch with reality.
Sound familiar? Scary.
If there's one thing that the web is
good at doing, it's getting people to do things for free. From Wikipedia entries
to bloggers, people do a lot of things just for pure enjoyment or personal
satisfaction. Those marketers that understand how to harness this creative
energy stand to gain a lot.
I saw this play out last week in an e-mail
for Hillary Clinton's campaign. In preparation for the Youtube.com presidential
debates, her staff sent out an invitation for people to create a 30-second video
that they can use during the debate. It will be interesting to watch some of
these entries.
I've been calling on the arts
community to start using video in creative ways, and in my most recent post last week, I highlighted
what the Cincinnati Opera has been doing.
How about taking the next step and
soliciting your supporters and patrons to upload their own ads, testimonials or
promotions for your events, or for your cause. The idea holds a lot of
potential, and just like with political campaigns, the arts engender a lot of
passion.
How about we put that passion to work? Let me know if you try this!
For a long time, I've been doing a section in my seminars called "next generation e-marketing" in which I talk about the future of arts marketing. Recently, I've been focused a lot more on video which I think will be the e-holy grail for arts marketers.
And, what I've been saying is that video can help motivate participation in the arts like nothing else. But, I say, let's forget showing snippits of the play, or the opera or the concert. There are Union issues, rights isuses, and the like. And furthermore, that stuff is usually really boring.
My call to the industry is to get really creative - and fun. So, today I'd like you to see an example of something I think is really great from the Cincinnati Opera. It's a promotional video meant to drum up interest in its upcoming production of the opera, Nixon in China.
You can Watch it here
Need I say more?
Today, thousands of people will be waiting on line. They will bring blankets. They will eat, they will joke. They will get chummy with people on line next to them -- total strangers that they otherwise would never talk to. They will hang around expectantly waiting for their nirvana experience.
I'll bet you thought this was going to be about the iPhone. After all, I'm predicting that today's iPhone launch will eclipse any new product entry we've seen in decades in terms of the sheer scope of the hype that's been created.
But I'm actually writing about another line that thousands will be waiting on today for hours. A line that formed yesterday and the day before, and last year, and for the last several decades each summer here in New York. I'm talking about The Public Theater's "Free Shakespeare in the Park."
As a culture-going New Yorker I've spent many weekend days over the years getting to Central Park at the crack of dawn to wait with my fellow Shakespeare lovers for free tickets for a performance later that night. I can remember going there at 4:30 AM one year, when Meryl Streep was in "The Seagull." I remember waiting in 100 degree weather to see Patrick Stuart in "The Tempest." And, today a bunch of members of my staff are doing the same thing - they took the day off to go wait for tickets to see this year's "Romeo & Juliet" which got spectacular notices in the press.
As I reflect on these two waiting games, I'm wondering whether it's the same thing that motivates us to do this seemingly irrational thing?. Waiting on line for hours to buy a $500 phone? Waiting on line for hours to see Shakespeare? Is it that they really want the phone or to see the play that badly? Surely there are suitable alternatives.
Or is it that there's a basic human desire to participate in communal experiences that make this kind of line waiting fun, rather than horrible? I was at the MET Opera the other day, and its $20 "rush" ticket program generates the same kinds of enthusiasm -- and lines.
An economist would say it's merely about price - supply is short, demand is high. That's it. I think there's more to it than that - and buried inside, something of a lesson for arts marketers. The human desire to participate in "events" is very real. Today thousands of people will have their "story" about what it was like to be there. They will tell their friends, and repeat the story for years. It's real world viral marketing.
Perhaps this is something to keep in mind when you're planning your marketing programs. We're reminded today of what can happen when you motivate a huge number of people -- it's great marketing pure and simple. Let's watch today play out in grand-scale in Central Park, and at the Apple store and see if we can't take back some lessons for our own marketing.
