off-stage right

Over at marketing guru Seth’s Blog a few days, I read the below and it has stuck in my mind for a while.

The platform vs. the eyeballs

This might be the most subtle yet important shift that marketers face as they deal with the reality of new media. Marketers aren’t renters, now they own.

For generations, marketers were trained to buy (actually rent) eyeballs.

A media company assembled a large amount of attention. A TV network or a magazine or even a billboard company found a place you can put an ad, and they sold you a shot at reaching their audience.

You, the marketer, don’t care about the long-term value of this audience. It’s like a rental car. You want it to be clean and shiny when you get it, you want to avoid getting in trouble when you return it, but hey, it’s a rental.

And so when we buy ads, we ask, "how big an audience" and then we design an ad with our brand in mind, not with the well-being of the media company or its audience in mind. And if we get a .1% or even a 1% response rate, we celebrate.

A trade show booth is an example of eyeball thinking. The trade show organizer assembles attendees and your job at the booth is to grab as many as you can.

Old media was not the same as old branding. Media companies built audiences and then brands rented those audiences.

Suddenly the new media comes along and the rules are different. You’re not renting an audience, you’re building one. You’re not exhibiting at a trade show, you’re starting your own trade show.

If you still ask, "how much traffic is there," or "what’s the CPM?" you’re not getting it. Are you buying momentary attention or are you investing in a long term asset?

Now, when you buy something (that thing you used to call ‘media’), you’re not paying for eyeballs, you’re paying for a platform. A platform you can use to build your own audience, one that you can nurture, educate and ultimately convert. You’ll take care of this audience differently, measure them differently and have a different sales cycle. This isn’t natural, but it works.

The rest of the post addresses shifting from capturing immediate, short-term attention to building an audience for a platform and the “expense” of doing so, but what stuck with me and kept gnawing at my at my brain is this – if new media and expanding marketing platforms are all about building audiences, loyalty and extended communication methods, why aren’t the arts leading the way with this technology? 

Arts institutions have been doing nothing but building audiences for years.

This reminds me of all the branding discussions that ever organization was having a few years ago.  I was completely frustrated by all of the consultants who were telling arts organizations to work on their brands as institutions and offering very expensive services to help do so – institutional branding is intuitive to an arts organization as is audience development, if they aren’t being done well it is a due to leadership failure/lack of focus/poor allocation of resources.  All arts institutions have a brand and all arts institutions income (earned and contributed) is based in audience development.  The quality of these can depend on a lot of things – and that is a different post (and goodness knows I have spent a lot of the blog talking about those relationships that build loyalty, institutional awareness and yes, brand).  For the sake of this post let’s say you accept that statement as an inherent characteristics of an arts organizations.  if that is the case, than why aren’t the arts leading the way in new media?

We have an abundance of creativity in our institutions.  We have a large contingent of young staff members and volunteers to whom this technology is integral to their communication and day to day lives. Most importantly, we have been thinking about and working on audience development for ages, we don’t have to change our way of thinking in any way!  We just have to play with the new technology and use it as a creative tool for expanding our marketing efforts.

I have written dozens of posts about the great initiatives organizations have been taking.  I have tweeted hundreds of articles on the subject.  So why aren’t we the leading innovators in new media?

• Is it that we are doing a lot of the work and not getting credit?
• Is it that we are afraid of change so we haven’t channeled our creative resources to this new form?
• Is it about lack of budget or human resources?
• Is it that the leaders of major institutions are slightly older and not utilizing the technology the way their younger staff members, artists, and volunteers are?
• Are we so insecure in our own value that we look to other industries for ideas rather than exploring the Wild West of new media ourselves?

The creative process has been utilized in business theory for years.  The definition of learning organizations could be the definition of the process of creating new work in many arts organization.  Ensemble companies, directors and actors have created wonderful workshops for commercial business that use the skills of artists to make better leaders and business people, but it took a long time for folks to realize this and to take credit for it. 

Let’s not let old school practices, our own fear or insecurities, or lack of respect of the arts as a business from the corporate world hold us back in exploring and leading the way with this new technology and taking the credit for it.  Let’s be bold in our ideas and take pride in our work.

New media is about communication and relationships – this is what the arts are about.

So I am hoping that some day soon, I open my favorite magazine, Harvard Business Review, and I find a case study or article about how other industries can learn from the arts and how arts organizations have blazed a new trail in the use of new media.  Let’s go for it.

Related posts:

1. Social media platforms and theatre experiences, two companies expanding the boundaries of technology, the theatrical process and live performance
2. Guest Blogger: Samantha Kindler on Social Media
3. Silence is Golden – not when it comes to social media
4. Learn your lessons well. Arts organizations should focus on the art at all times, not just in turbulent times.
5. Ben Cameron, Program Director of Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, address to the Illinois Arts Alliance