If you work in the arts, the answer is:

It’s about the product.

Marketing in the arts is all about promoting our products’ superior qualities. Take a look at just about any arts marketing vehicle and you’ll find the content there devoted exclusively to the art, the artists and the institution. Marketing is about telling the world how wonderful and important we are, and that means making the content of our marketing all about us.

But in the world of commerce, professional marketers know that marketing is about the customers and the extent to which products will satisfy their needs and desires. This is why so much professional marketing features people having their needs and desires satisfied as a result of having purchased the product.

Start looking thoughtfully at the advertising around you and you’ll begin to notice a preponderance of images of people being made happy by products. And you’ll find language that zeroes in on customers’ needs and desires and then describes the way the product satisfies them. In the example here, Hyatt could have featured all sorts of images and copy about its wonderful rooms, conference facilities, restaurants and amenities, but they chose to show a woman being made happy alongside language that addressed her needs and desires.

Professional marketers know that marketing content is about both the customer and the product. It’s about the place where customers and products come together, and how happy the customers will be as a result of this meeting.

If you’re an arts marketer who’s having trouble persuading customers to purchase your products, and your marketing is all about you, consider what would happen if you focused on them instead. What’s more likely to move a potential new customer to come to your concert, a picture of your conductor swinging a baton? Or is it a picture of someone who looks just like your new customer having a great time in your venue?

If you’re like most arts administrators – especially older arts leaders – you’re stammering at your screen right now: “But, but, but… this isn’t how we do it! That’s not us! We’re above pandering to the customer. We don’t descend to their level of needs and desires, they’re supposed to come up to our level of presumption. Art transcends the mundane. It lifts people to a higher plane. We tell them how wonderful and important we are so they’ll be moved to aspire! We exist in an elevated place that people are supposed to know is worth wanting to try to get to. If we come down to them, we may never make it back onto our lofty perches.”

Genius Cartoonist B. Kliban

Here’s the deal. If you don’t connect with people at the level of their needs and desires, you can’t move them. It just won’t work. The only reason self-congratulatory arts marketing ever worked in the first place was that there were a lot of people who believed they needed to aspire, or who possessed an unfulfilled desire for the kind of aspiration that the arts wanted to sell. But that’s just not true anymore.

Effective marketing is about customers’ needs and desires. If you don’t have a large pool of available customers who possess a preexisting, avid, motivating desire to obtain what you’re trying to sell, and you’re devoting all of your marketing content to talking about how wonderful and important you are, the game’s pretty much over.

If on the other hand you have a pool of potential new audiences with a different set of motivating needs and desires, and you use your communications to demonstrate how your products will make them happy, the possibilities are abundant.

I dare you to do what Hyatt did. Publish a picture of people who fit your audience demo having their needs or desires satisfied at an upcoming event. It doesn’t have to be the only image you use, but have the courage to put your customers front and center for a change, and let your product be the background in an experience that’s all about them.