Real Estate agents have a neat little secret for making their products more appealing: Bake up a fresh batch of cookies during the open house and serve them to visiting guests. It’s not so much the free cookies that makes the house attractive, but rather the sweet aroma of butter, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon melting together and wafting through the house that evokes all sorts of warm childhood associations in the minds of just about any would-be home buyer.

My partner and I were house shopping a while back and found ourselves visiting what looked like a very cool fifties modern on a hillside in one of L.A.’s more ethnically diverse suburbs. But as we opened the door we were accosted by an acrid stench that overwhelmed the house and made it nearly impossible to enter.

Our curiosity got the better of us, though, and when we stepped inside we found a family sitting in the living room as if it were a regular Sunday afternoon and Grandpa standing at the stove boiling up an enormous pot of Brussels sprouts.

Now, Brussels spouts can be a tough sell to begin with, and even enthusiasts will tell you they taste a lot better than they smell when they’re cooking.

After a quick tour I found the real estate agent hiding in the back yard, gave her a sympathetic look and whispered, “What’s up with the family?”

She said, “I encouraged them to leave but it’s just not in their culture to leave their home open to strangers.”

“And the Brussels sprouts?” I asked.

“I said if you’re going to stay, at least cook something that’ll make the house smell like a delicious Sunday dinner.”

* * *

This family may have been unusual, but real estate agents will tell you that one of their hardest jobs is getting sellers to divorce themselves emotionally from their house and start seeing it through the eyes of potential buyers. That means taking down all the family photos, removing all the quirky personal design touches, clearing out the accumulated family clutter and featuring the house in such a way that buyers can easily envision themselves living there.

I think that’s perfect advice for arts marketers who’ve been living comfortably in the same place for a long time: Get rid of all the old insider photos that don’t mean anything to outsiders – the tuxedoed musicians, tutued ballerinas, swooning lovers and mugging Shakespearean clowns. Dispense with all the creative design ideas that say more about you than about what you’re trying to sell, cut the executive head shots, the society pics from the gala and the kids in the Ed. Program and feature the product in a way that puts the spotlight on new buyers and helps them imagine how much they’ll enjoy being there for your next event.

* * *

What’s ironic and perhaps instructive about the Brussels sprouts story is that the house was wonderful, but the marketing choices the sellers made, because they failed to consider an outsider’s perspective, really stank.

Next up: “Celebrate!”

A commenter on my previous post took me to task for not proving that my book contained actual suggestions for solving the problems I’ve been describing here. He wondered if I might mention one of those solutions in a blog post so I’m going to mention one now that’s directly relevant to the cliché we’re talking about today.

If you want to avoid clichés, do this: Challenge yourself to make your next message as much about your audience as it is about you. Divvy up your copy and graphic space and make certain that a full 50% of it is about the audience. That means copy will have to focus on the people you’re trying to sell to as much as it does on your product, and half the graphic imagery will depict audience members rather than the stuff you want to promote.

If this sounds difficult, turn on your TV and watch a few commercials. What you’ll see is people using and enjoying the products that marketers are trying to sell. Those advertisers could just show the product and describe how wonderful it is, but they know that marketing is all about understanding what their customers want and illustrating how the product satisfies their desires.

I popped on the TV just now and the first commercial I saw was for my local AAA Auto Club. The copy talked about the services they offered but it used the word “you” a lot so it was constantly referencing the audience. And the screen images alternated between graphics that showed the products and live action shots of real customers talking in glowing terms about how the products gave them what they wanted.

If you try to make your next marketing message as much about the audience as it is about your product, you’ll probably discover three things:

1. You’ll need to know who you’re talking to. If you’re trying to attract new audiences, for example, you’ll have to know exactly who they are so when you talk about them in your materials you’ll be speaking to the right people.

2. You’ll need to know what your audiences want. If you’re trying to attract new audiences but you don’t know what they want, you’ll find it impossible to describe how your product satisfies their desires.

3. You’ll have to cut back on the self-congratulatory boasting because, in devoting half the message to your audience, you’ll have neither the room nor the need for all that empty bombast. If The New York Times thinks your show is wonderful, for example, but you’ve learned that your new audience doesn’t read or care about The New York Times, you’ll know exactly what to cut.

Our marketing traditions have encouraged us to shout, “We’re Wonderful!” at every opportunity and trust that there are enough people out there who care about our wonderfulness to meet our sales goals. But if blasting “We’re Wonderful!”at the marketplace is no longer sufficient to motivate fence-sitting audiences, we’re going to have to meet some new people, find out what they want and then talk with them about how our products will make them happy.

“…set against the backdrop…”

Really? Is that the best you can do?

Think about that phrase for a minute. How many times have you read it? How many times have you written it? How many times have you approved marketing materials that contain it? Is it the best way to express whatever it is that you’re trying to describe? Or is it a convenient crutch that enables you to crank out blurbs that conform to “that’s the way we’ve always done it” expectations?

“Join us for a compelling drama about a failing industry desperately clinging to tradition and fatally unwilling to learn how to save itself. It’s a tragic story of self-absorption, laziness and stubborn ego set against the backdrop of economic upheaval and the explosive birth of the digital age.”

Try this. Google these four words: writing tips avoid clichés.

I got over five million results. You?

# # #

Next up: “We’re Wonderful!”

Poetry is not marketing.

Poets use language to evoke images, ideas and feelings in reader’s minds. The goal is usually some sort of transcendent synthesis that creates a connection between the writer, the reader and whatever broader realm the poet wants his readers to inhabit.

Marketers use language to describe how their products will satisfy their customers’ desires. The goal is to motivate customers to buy the product.  Big difference.

The brilliant marketer Scott Boilen didn’t use poetry to sell the Snuggie.  He showed people sitting on their couches eating popcorn and flipping channels without having to unwrap their blankets because that’s exactly what his customers wanted.

I got an email from an arts organization the other day that wanted me to “take a journey around the world” by subscribing to a concert series featuring composers from different countries. It was an attempt to use a poetic metaphor – in this case travel – to sell me tickets, but as I just mentioned, poetry isn’t marketing so it didn’t work.

It didn’t work because: 1. The poetry sucked. Any good writing teacher will tell you to steer clear of overwrought clichés – and travel metaphors in the arts are about as hackneyed as you can get.  2. It didn’t describe the product in terms that reflected my desires. I wouldn’t want to go to a concert hall to travel around the world even if the idea were fresh and original.  3. When it comes right down to it, it’s not a trip around the world, it’s a classical concert series fercrissakes. If I want a vacation, I’ll call my travel agent.

Traditional sales-dependent art forms are in big trouble, but for some reason we still allow ourselves to publish vapid, self-indulgent amateur poetry in our marketing materials when we should be speaking a direct, persuasive, customer-oriented language that motivates new audiences. The only reason anyone should ever use a travel metaphor in a promotional message is if their research revealed a hunger for metaphorical travel among the audiences they were targeting:

“Our focus group participants expressed a strong desire to engage in imaginary travel to foreign countries by listening to music from time to time that was written by international composers.”

Sounds silly, doesn’t it?  Of course it does.  It’s absurd.  The likelihood of those younger, more culturally diverse audiences we’ve been whining about expressing such desires is ludicrous. Try slipping some of your own fanciful promotional poetry into that sentence and see if it fits.

“Our focus group participants expressed a strong desire to celebrate live theatre.”

Or better yet, do some research to find out what your fence-sitting audiences actually do want, then sell them your product by telling them in direct and un-ornamented words and images exactly how it will fulfill their desires.  It is impossible to write inane promotional poetry when you’re talking to real people in real language about the things they told you they really care about.

I know some of you are arguing with your computer screens right now, “But, but, but we’re the arts! We’re not selling Snuggies, we’re selling transcendent experiences. Our marketing would be dull and lifeless if all we did was satisfy the mundane desires of couch potatoes.” And you may be right; poetic metaphors may be necessary to fully express what’s so special about the products we sell. But it’s not up to us to assume what new audiences want, or tell them what they should want or, god forbid, try to awaken wants they didn’t even know they had. That’s a job for poets who aren’t looking for a cash return on their investment. The rest of us have to start where Scott Boilen starts – on that couch in front of that TV – and learn what’s going to motivate people to get off their lazy, polyester-wrapped asses and come to our events.

Poetic metaphors may help to make our language more expressive, but when it comes to travel, the only journey we should care about is the one that begins on that couch and ends at our venue doors.

Next up: “…set against the backdrop…”

So I’m rehearsing with Gustavo Dudamel last night…

Sorry.  I’m not a shameless name dropper, but in this case I just couldn’t help myself. I actually was rehearsing with Dudamel last night and I’m going to use the experience to illustrate a point about communication and culture.

(I’m singing the Mahler 8th this Saturday with the L.A. Phil, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and over eight hundred other singers, not because I’m a great musician, but because I sing with the Pasadena Master Chorale and we were asked to help fill the ranks.)

Maestro Dudamel speaks English not so good. He says so right away but it’s not really an issue because music provides him with a language that his singers readily understand.  If he wants us to speed up in certain places, he says, “accelerando.” If he wants us slow down in other places he says, “ritardando,” And if he wants the tenors to be a bit more lively in some spots he says, “Tenors, don’t be boring there,” in which case his English works just fine.

But on my way home after rehearsal, if the jerk in front of me is too busy texting to see the light turn green, I don’t shout “Molto accelerando!” That would be ridiculous.  I shout “MOVE you friggin’ bonehead! What the hell are you waiting for?” or something like that, because that’s the language spoken by people who drive cars in L.A.

If you want to get the job done, you have to use the language that the people you’re speaking to understand, the language that means the same thing to them as it means to you, the communication you have in common.

So with that in mind, let me ask you a question:  Is “culture” an insider word or a common word? Do people on the outside attach the same associations to the word “culture” that we on the inside do?  Do new audiences – those younger, more culturally diverse people we talk about so often – think the same thing when they hear the word “culture” that we do? I once asked my young niece what popped into her head when she heard the word “culture” and she said, “boring stuff Grandma liked.”

We’d have to do a lot of research to learn what “culture” means to new audiences, whether their connotations are positive, neutral or negative, and whether the word has the persuasive power to lure new audiences into the fold. But in the meantime, we may want to err on the side of caution and try not to let one of our favorite insider words creep so automatically into our external promotional language. If your street pole banners say “Cultural District,” for example, and young people like my niece think that means district for boring stuff Grandma liked, you might want to try “Arts & Entertainment District” instead.

I’m lucky to be participating in an extraordinary cultural event this week, but I would never try to persuade someone to come to the performance by describing it that way. I say, “the music will send chills down your spine,” because that’s exactly what’s going to happen to them within the first two bars and culture has nothing to do with it.

Next up: Travel Metaphors

BREAKING NEWS: 

NEW DATA SHOW PLAY NOT THING: ARTS INDUSTRY REELS!

Los Angeles, January 26, 2011: Dealing a devastating blow to the cultural community, researchers revealed today that the play is not actually the thing.  Shattering a long-held belief among arts pros, researchers at the Southern California State University announced results of a study which proves conclusively that the play, while important, is only a part of the thing, and the thing is much larger than anyone had previously imagined.

“We were surprised, too,” said Dominic Biondello, PhD., lead researcher on the project, “but our study proves that the “the thing” is the desirability of the entire evening out, and the play is a secondary consideration.” The play may once have been the thing, but for many people, especially younger entertainment seekers, Biondello’s research suggests that the thing has more to do with the totality of the experience than the play itself.

The SCSU team studied the motivations of theatregoers of varying ages and learned that older audiences tend to place primary importance on the play while relegating other components of the experience to peripheral status.  But younger audiences tend to make their leisure entertainment choices based on numerous factors including the appeal of the destination, availability of food and drink, relative value of the combined components and the extent to which the experience offers certain social rewards.

“The package is the thing,” said Biondello. “I realize this will be disappointing to the arts community, but the play could just as easily be bowling, baseball or hanging out at the local watering hole.”  He and his team refrained from reading too much into the data, but they did suggest that arts organizations might want to place added emphasis on the drinking, dining, shopping, socializing and related leisure entertainment aspects of arts event-going in order to become more attractive to non-traditional audiences.

“It’s painful,” says Wayan Boyet, Executive Dirtector of the So. Cal. Association for Arts and Culture (SCAAC).  “We were so sure the play was the thing. Shakespeare said it was and we believed it. This is going to be a bitter pill to swallow. I mean, this is something we take for granted; we say it all the time.”  A perennial favorite among amateur arts marketers, “The play’s the thing” is a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that many assume attributes significance to plays in general, but is really just a minor plot point reiteration.

“Boy are we in trouble,” said Adrian Armado, Marketing VP for the Santa Monica Stage Company.  “We just sent out two hundred thousand season brochures that say “THE PLAY’S THE THING” across the front cover.  Now people will think we’re lying – or stupid. We all thought it looked great on the mock-ups, but now… This is terrible.  O, woe is me.”

It’s too early to tell what this reveals about Shakespearean quotes in general, but Biondello is excited about the possibilities. “We can’t say for sure at the moment, but early indications suggest that music may not actually be the food of love, and our colleagues in Brisbane are about to pull the proverbial trap door out from under the ubiquitous but unverifiable contention that the entire world is a stage.”

# # #

Next up: “Culture”

There’s a fascinating conversation happening over at Artsjournal this week about whether the arts should be leaders or followers, and it got me thinking about the language of leadership.

In the arts, we tend to speak to the world around us in a prescribed, formulaic, rigidly traditional language that involves plugging names, dates, venues, adjectives – and even images – into long-established templates.  Take out that last brochure, radio ad or email you just deployed, extract the details and you’ll have a vivid illustration of what I’m talking about:

Don’t miss this _____ night of _____, with all the _____, _____ and _____ that only _____ can offer. It’s a _____ story of _____ and _____, set against the backdrop of _____. Experience the _____ as _____ meets _____ in this _____ tale of _____, _____ and _____, starring the internationally acclaimed _____, best known for _____ and the unforgettable _____.”

Think about the range of communications channels the arts use to speak to the world around us from street pole banners to buckslips, look at the frames into which the details have been inserted, and it becomes obvious that the language of arts marketing is about as canned as a Hormel ham. This is not the language of leadership, it’s a language spoken by people who’ve been following the same fill-in-the-blank traditions for so long that they’ve lost sight of how to speak in a fresh, natural, persuasive vernacular.

The mark of leadership, meanwhile, is the ability to convince others that a cause is worth following. Look at great leaders in politics, religion, business or social movements and you’ll find inspirational, charismatic, persuasive individuals who describe their causes in relevant, meaningful, motivational language that leverages the needs, wants and desires of their listeners. Think of the way Barack Obama spoke to undecided voters in his first campaign: “This isn’t about me; this is about you!”

Obama didn’t take old presidential stump speeches and change the details for his campaign, he took pains to understand what his “new audiences” wanted and crafted fresh, honest, colloquial messages with those audiences in mind.  Leaders become leaders by convincing people that they’re worth following, and they usually do it by speaking honestly and passionately about the things their followers most want in a language those followers understand.

So the next time you’re tempted to trot out some decades-old arts marketing templates, think about who you’d like to see in your empty seats, find out what they want, and then say what needs to be said in order to lead them through your venue doors.  Chances are the messages you come up with won’t fit into any of the traditional cans in your arts marketing canon.

Next up: Shakespeare Quotes

Speaking as a long-time arts marketer who’s created countless marketing messages over the years, I can honestly say that there are few experiences more satisfying than applying skill and talent toward the process of developing creative campaign ideas.  And there are few experiences more rewarding than discovering the ultimate solution to a unique marketing challenge.

We all know that magical moment when the brilliant headline or campaign concept rises up to proclaim itself as the obvious choice because it makes everyone in the conference room crack up or slap their hands on the table in enthusiastic affirmation. “Yes! That’s it! That’s the one we’ve been looking for.”

And we all know that incredible feeling of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing the results of our creativity in print or on screen for the first time. “I did that. That’s my idea. Those are my words. I made that incredibly clever, catchy, coy campaign concept up out of nothing and here it is in tangible form.  Why, tomorrow it’ll be printed on a huge banner and hoisted over the marquee!”

There’s no mistaking the creativity and cleverness that fuels the development of so many arts marketing ideas. Arts marketers are a creative bunch of people who work in a creative enterprise. It stands to reason that our output would be more inspired than ordinary marketing and that we’re better prepared to rise to creative challenges than most ordinary folks. After all, marketing is a creative endeavor that calls for creative solutions and the creative energies of creative people.  Isn’t it?

“It’s Time to Face the Music and Dance!”

“Buckle up for Broadway’s Boeing Boeing”

“The Pops Presents a Scintillating Symphony of Stars!”

“It’s a door-slamming, scene-stealing, side-splitting zany, madcap romp!”

“Join us for a Singularly Sensational Season!”

Or is it?

The arts have a long, venerable history of talking to loyal audiences with clever but not necessarily strategic wordplay.  It’s so much a part of what we do that we never really step back to look at it or ask if it’s doing the job it’s meant to do. But what happens if the campaign idea that cracked us all up in the conference room has no impact whatsoever on the audience we’re trying to persuade?

I remember being in the lobby of the Wynn Resort while Avenue Q was playing its short-lived Vegas run.  For marketing, the show had stanchions throughout the casino with posters that said, “See what all the fuzz is about,” and on the posters they had mounted actual puppet fuzz.  As creative goes, it couldn’t have been more cute, coy or clever, but as strategic messaging goes, it didn’t work. I watched for a painfully long time to see if anyone looked at the signs, much less tried to figure out what they were saying, and nobody bothered.

This is the perfect illustration of how the clever wordplay we love so much in our conference rooms fails to connect with new audiences.  In New York where loyal, pre-motivated audiences abound, the fuzz concept was fine.  But in Vegas where shows compete fiercely for distracted customers, the same message failed to connect. In the nonprofit arts where we once had the luxury of speaking to large audiences of loyal patrons with cute, coy, clever – but often inane – messages, we did OK.  But now that we’re engaged in fierce competition for distracted new audiences, we have to ask if our inherent creativity is up to the task.

As I point out in the book, marketing is a rational process that involves knowing what people want and describing how what we sell satisfies their desires. If new audiences want high quality artful leisure entertainment and great places to enjoy time with peers, that’s what we need to be talking about in our messaging. Yes, we do need to get their attention, but if the fuss is about the fuzz and not the fervor (damn that creativity), all the cleverness in the world won’t bring new audiences through our doors.

Ours may be a creative industry, but when it comes to marketing, it’s probably best to keep the creativity on the stages and in the galleries and start using more objective approaches in the conference rooms.

Next up: Fill-in-the-Blank Templates

In my book I make a point of singling out the hoary old clichés that arts marketers use to promote their products to diminishing audiences of aging fans.  These worn out words, phrases and images are part of an arts marketing lexicon that we seldom question, but I thought it might be interesting to dust a few of them off, take a closer look, and ask if they’re helping or hurting our cause.

Marketing, as we all know, is all about knowing what potential customers want and describing how our products satisfy those desires.  So, using this as the ultimate test, I’m going to scrutinize ten of my favorite arts marketing clichés here and in subsequent posts and ask if they’re the right language for attracting new audiences.

First up: Anniversaries

If marketing is based on knowing what people want, the only reason we would ever mention an anniversary in our earned revenue generating messages would be because potential audiences told us they wanted to celebrate our anniversaries by buying tickets to our events.  Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a hell of a lot of research to determine what target audiences want, and never once has anyone said they want to celebrate my organization’s anniversary by buying a ticket.  Never.

Anniversary celebrations are rampant in the arts and they’re often used to anchor marketing campaigns, but when it comes to earned revenue, there is very little about anniversaries that could be called persuasive.  When it comes right down to it, the audiences we most need to persuade (younger, more diverse, etc.) don’t care about our anniversaries and even if they did, they wouldn’t necessarily find them compelling reasons to buy tickets and come to our events.

So why do we crow about anniversaries?  Well, back in the old days when marketing was more about getting the word out to pre-motivated fans than satisfying the actual desires of new audiences, anniversaries were great publicity angles that could get us a feature in the Sunday paper.  We put a lot of energy into anniversaries because they meant something to our traditional support systems and celebrating them publicly was a good way to “get the word out” or “generate awareness” or “publicize” the season.

Now of course those traditional support systems are changing.  Media are increasingly user-controlled, funders are less willing to give, and loyal long-time patrons are dying.  At some point we have to ask if the clichés that worked for them are still a good idea, or if passively reminding the world that we’ve been around for 25 years is an effective way to motivate new audiences to participate.

Motivating new audiences means understanding their needs, wants and desires.  If we want to persuade new audiences, we have to allow what they tell us they want to determine the content of our messages.  If we do it right, empty, non-strategic clichés like anniversary celebrations will never make it into our marketing campaigns.

Next up: Artsy Wordplay

Happy New Year!

Marketing the Arts to Death: How Lazy Language is Killing Culture is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the Apple iBook Store.

The advance press campaign is underway and full launch will commence next week.  If you’ve found yourself here a bit early, don’t hesitate to say hello or, if you’ve had a chance to read the book, by all means leave a comment.

The book is meant to be fun, easy to read and maybe just a little bit naughty, but it’s also a serious critique of our flawed messaging models and a useful set of guidelines for fixing what’s broken. If you’re looking for ways to increase earned revenue without having to increase marketing costs, the six bucks you pay for this e-book here will be one of the best investments you’ll make all year.

If you want a little taste of what the book is like, check out the post below.

Thanks for visiting.  Thanks for reading.  And have a very, very prosperous new year!