The Truth About Attracting Younger Audiences

In the past few weeks, I have served on a couple of panels and delivered a few speeches about attracting younger audiences. In doing so I found that many people harbor some misconceptions about attracting younger audiences. I understand that younger audiences are a sexy topic to funders and board members, but there are a few things we all need to think about before launching our assault on the Gen X'ers and Millenials.

• Product. Of the four Ps of marketing, most will agree that product is the most important. So why then is it the least considered when looking at ways in which to attract younger audiences? If your core artistic product is not appealing to younger audiences, then you will almost assuredly fail to get them to fully engage with your organization. Throwing an after hours party, turning a performing space into a disco or hosting themed young professional events might get targeted demographics into the door, but what we really want is for them to engage with the mission of the organization. If the mission precludes the organization from programming attractive art or an artistic leader isn't sensitive to the programming desires of young adults, you might be able to get them in the door, but they will never be a stakeholder of your institution. Just as location is king in real estate, in the arts, nothing is as powerful as the programming.
• Price. News Flash -- many younger audience members have money, and are not as price sensitive as some of us assume. Consider this study that reports that the 37 million young adults from 25 to 34 years of age in the U.S. have an aggregate income of more than $1.1 trillion. In an attempt to explain the absences of young people, I think we have jumped to price as the primary issue because it is much easier to change than product. However, I would argue that those who have to adjust tickets to bargain basement prices to attract younger audiences primarily have a problem with the product. Consider that in 2008, Ticketmaster reported that the average price for a ticket to a Coldplay concert was $217. For those lucky enough to have seen Coldplay, you know their events are filled with Gen X'ers.
• Place. Secondary to product, we should be asking ourselves if our institutions are welcoming to younger audiences. Churches and theaters are both struggling to attract younger members, and I believe are failing for many of the same reasons. Things to ponder: 1) what is the average age of your ushers? if they are the first people to welcome your audience, would someone in their 20s be welcomed by a peer or by someone that could be their grandparent? 2) Gen X'ers can barely remember a life without computers. Millenials have never been without the Internet. Yet we expect audiences to disconnect and remain in a dome of silence when they are at our institutions. Why not provide free wifi? configure our websites to work on handheld devices? 3) Is your organization's virtual presence as inviting as your real world location? can I purchase tickets, get answers to my questions, and engage with you on my schedule?
• Promotion. Secondary to price, this is the area that most institutions focus on. Video + Facebook + Podcasts does not automatically = younger audiences. You should think of new media tools as just a means of communicating. Nothing more, nothing less. Like any other tool, you have to know how to properly use it, and then use it to put the right message in front of the right audience. Most new media initiatives require two separate, but crucial steps to properly execute a campaign: the building of a communications infrastructure and the creation of content. You can have amazing content, but no friends to connect with. Or you can build a network of thousands of friends, and lose them quickly with the mediocre content. But for new media tools to work, you must have a product, place and price which are all conducive to younger audiences, and then you can concentrate on perfecting your new media skills.

As marketing directors, we have the least amount of control over product and place, and the most amount of control over price and promotion. Therefore we concentrate our efforts in the areas that we can affect, but if you don't get the first two right, you are wasting your time with the last two.

How We Can Support New Work (an addendum)

My latest blog post entitled How Marketing Directors Kill New Work caused quite the stir among my colleagues. For those that know me, I have never been one to shy away from controversial issues, especially if I have a strong position on the subject. With that being said, I stand by what I wrote, but decided that I should probably add an addendum as several good points were raised by my readers.

I was challenged by some to address the steps that marketing directors can take to help support new work. I must admit after rereading my post, I found myself to be a little more critical than helpful, which wasn't my intent. So below are some suggestions, ideas and responses to comments:

• Seek the help of the playwrights. In promoting new work, particularly if a new work speaks to an audience unfamiliar to you, seek the help and advice of the playwright. You know your organization's audience, and they know the target audience of the play. Combined, you should be able to find ways to attract your traditional audiences to the work and develop methods to entice new audiences into your doors. In my couple of years at Arena Stage, playwrights like Lisa Kron (Well), Daniel Beaty (Resurrection), Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), and Matthew Lombardo (Looped) have been incredibly helpful in developing marketing strategies. Still to this day, I find that playwrights are surprised when I ask for their input on marketing strategy, messaging, artwork creation and outreach events.
• Budgeting. Several colleagues lamented that executive leadership forced them to set earned revenue goals too high on a new work knowing full well that they would not be able to achieve them. My advice is to develop earned revenue projection tools that are accurate and stick to your guns. In the past two years, our earned revenue projections at Arena Stage have been off by less than 1%. We have developed a sophisticated system that has been proven to work in even some of the most difficult economic circumstances. Although the entire senior staff discusses the assumptions and logic behind the forecasts, ultimately we support our revenue forecasts as a team. The surest way to ensure failure for a new work is to set an unattainable goal, for when you miss the goal by a wide margin, it can cause leadership to shy away from new work, when in reality it was a forecasting issue, not a programmatic issue.
• Start early. Every arts administrator has to deal with issues of capacity, particularly in an economic climate where many companies have had to reduce the size of their already overtaxed staff. In taking on new work, we should remember that audience development is a slow and time consuming process. It can take a year or more of intense, dedicated work to make inroads into an untapped community. All too often, due to the typical planning cycles of regional theaters, marketers are not given enough time to develop and execute an effective strategy. Artistic directors can help marketers by lengthening their planning cycle for new work, so that marketing staff have ample time to develop an audience.
• Don't Over Do It. Ask any marketing director, and they will tell you that acquisition campaigns are much more costly than retention campaigns. When looking at audience development, we are dealing with large acquisition campaigns. These campaigns take a significant investment not only in terms of money, but also in terms of staff time. Unless a marketing team is exceptionally large, I would advise tackling only one or two projects per year that focus on new audience markets. Any more, and you run the risk of not being able to provide the support these projects need.

The entire team ensures the success or failure of a new work. It is important to note, as I was reminded several times in the past couple of weeks, that a marketing director is only one member of the team. However, I can only control the actions of one person -- myself -- and that is why I focus on what we as marketing professionals can do to increase the success of new work.

How Marketing Directors Kill New Work

As I only post when something catches my attention, my posting habits are a little sporadic. Sometimes I will write a couple of posts in a week, and other times I will only post once a month. I have been feeling pretty guilty lately about not posting more, but nothing really jumped out at me until very recently.

In the past couple of weeks, two things have impacted my work as a marketer--I was extraordinarily fortunate to attend a convening of Black playwrights as part of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, and I finally got around to reading Outrageous Fortune, the new report put out by TDF about new play development. Via both contexts, I heard numerous complaints about how institutional theaters market new work.

It became clear to me that marketing directors, in some cases, have the ability to kill new work. In Outrageous Fortune, one playwright contends that institutional theaters are "about a certain kind of system...when plays come in, they want to systematically find a way to market them." Another playwright states that new play production "comes down to marketing. Some say we love this play; we can't find the audience for it. It pisses me off, because a lot of people in marketing don't know how to find new audiences." It is easy for marketers to take offense, however we should admit that at too many institutions, this is the case. Marketing directors are like anyone else; we are creatures of habit. If we have been in the job for awhile, we start to develop systems for marketing products. We know how to market musicals, new plays, African-American work, political satire, etc. But what happens when the Artistic Director brings us something that we can't pigeon hole? Well, I guess that depends on the person sitting in the marketing director's chair. Some of us get excited as it presents an opportunity to learn and grow, and a chance to build our audience base. Others might be daunted, and instead of facing the challenge, they retreat to the comfort of the known. But let's be clear--whether we accept the responsibility or not, it is our job to find an audience. The audience for more challenging, esoteric work might be smaller than a crowd-pleaser, but either way it is our duty to go into the community and find those people to support the work. In thinking about this issue, I am reminded of a piece of advice my mentor gave me in graduate school. She said a producer's job is to find ways to say yes.

While reading Outrageous Fortune, I had an interesting interaction with a playwright. When questioned why a play hadn't made a commercial transfer despite being critically acclaimed, the playwright said the producer had a difficult time projecting revenue due to the late buying habits of the audience. To all those on the outside, it was almost impossible for us to understand why a commercial production would not be forthcoming. If it was indeed a case of projecting revenue, then the marketing director has failed this extraordinary new play. Just because our jobs become difficult doesn't mean we have the luxury of being able to choose to carry out our responsibilities. Revenue forecasting is incredibly difficult, especially in light of the current economic crisis. However, who better to forecast revenue than those with the tools to do so?

Are these cases of marketing directors behaving badly? It sure looks that way. We got into our jobs knowing the territory. We are tasked with developing new audiences, supporting the mission of the institution, forecasting revenue, promoting all types of work, etc. If you don't like any of those tasks, then you should move on. Maybe the job isn't for you. Don't jeopardize the livelihoods of playwrights, or the advancement of our craft, because you don't want to take on a tough task.

That being said, before I finish this post, I wanted to mention that there are two major sources of revenue at non-profit institutions--earned revenue and contributed revenue. If marketing objectives have the ability to sacrifice your institution's mission, then I would argue that you have become too reliant upon box office revenue. For-profit companies focus on one thing: building a product that has audience appeal sufficient enough to make the most possible profit. Non-profits as well have a singular focus: fulfilling their mission. At no point can marketing objectives jeopardize an organization's ability to fulfill its mission. If you get to that point, you might as well become a for-profit entity.