Marketing the arts

Seth Godin's blog about throwing out the old 4 Ps has been picked up in a variety of placed.

Doug and I discussed his points in relation to the strategy we are preparing for our non-profit dance organization client. Artists dislike when you refer to their "product" but it does need to be "sold" to an audience. And the audience for contemporary dance is very small.

So I thought I would review the 4 Ps here (via wikipedia's entry on Marketing Mix) and see how it is or isn't related to the cultural "products" being peddled by non-profit art organizations, in particular dance, and also see how Mr. Godin's take might be more relevant.

Product - An object or a service that is mass produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units. A typical example of a mass produced service is the hotel industry. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system. Typical examples of a mass produced objects are the motor car and the disposable razor.

Is a cultural product a commodity? A dance product is a time-bound event-- as soon as it is performed it has ended. You retain no image and no tangible object of the dance event; unlike live music (whose nature is to exist then not exist), few people reproduce for sale/distribution studio versions of the live dance event that could then be watched (and sold) over and over again. It is true however that recordings are often distributed for free to presenters in order to sell the work or company.

Price – The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. It is determined by a number of factors including market share, competition, material costs, product identity and the customer's perceived value of the product. The business may increase or decrease the price of product if other stores have the same product.

No dancer has the same product so uniqueness is not an issue. On the other hand, very few people appear to want the product at all. Ultimately the 'fee' paid by the presenter is a sad amalgam of grants to both the presenter and the dance company, with neither side breaking even, and little contribution from the general public.

Place – Place represents the location where a product can be purchased. It is often referred to as the distribution channel. It can include any physical store as well as virtual stores on the Internet.

This, I suppose, would be the venues where you can see live dance. There is a "distribution channel" so to speak. It would include most theatres and performance spaces augmented by the occasional corporate conference or official ceremony.

Promotion – Promotion has four distinct elements - advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale. Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from television and cinema commercials, radio and Internet adverts through print media and billboards. Public relations are where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word of mouth is any apparently informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals, satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum.

Promotion appears to be the most important in this scheme of things and yet the most consistently neglected due to lack of funds.

Seth Godin boldly claims:

Never mind the "P"s. Marketing has five elements:

Data
Stories
Products (services)
Interactions
Connection

DATA is observational. What do people actually do?

Cultural organizations should be asking: do people consume our product? If so, for what reason? When? Who are they? Surveys are constantly going out but the quality of the data in this sector is dismal.

STORIES define everything you say and do. The product has a myth, the service has a legend...

Is the 'myth' the brand? (At least one component of it)...We are actively incorporating this point into strategic directions. Small organizations can make themselves seem bigger and more powerful with good automated systems and a good website, IMHO. And then...

PRODUCTS (and services) are physical manifestations of the story. If your story is that you are cutting edge and faster/newer/better, then your products better be.

So if you SAY you are doing the best work out there, then do it.
But that of course is subjective when it comes to culture.
The work with the biggest buzz is rarely of the highest quality.
On the other hand, most of this high quality work is invisible to 99% of the population. So...

INTERACTIONS are the hero of marketing, because there are so many and most of them are cheap.

This needs more explanation in my opinion.

CONNECTION is the highest level of enlightenment, the end goal. Connection between you and the customer, surely, but mostly connection between customers. Great marketers create bands of brothers, tribes of people who wish each other well and want to belong. Get the first four steps right and you may get a shot at this one.

Some questions marketers must ask: Does this interaction lead to connections? Do our products support our story? Is the story pulling in numbers that demonstrate that it's working?

What is the quality of the connection? In so many cases it is poor, frazzled, disorganized. And the onus upon this aspect of marketing is even greater because the dance event is LIVE; it must occur between human beings; in time; in space. In that way it's the only aspect of the company that matters: what does it produce live?

Any thoughts?

Photo credit: Laurent Zeigler