The Mark-Up

We've Moved!

2009-08-11T14:55:00.001-07:00

Okay, I've moved. In an electronic sense -- Theatre Bay Area has consolidated all of our blogging onto the Chatterbox, which I really recommend you take a look at. So for now and evermore, this blog is retired!

Free is the Way of the Future, says Chris Anderson. How Can Theatre Channel That?

2009-08-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Chris Anderson has just come out with a new book called "Free: The Future of a Radical Price." In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews it and reacts to it, using his trademark psychological analysis. Free creates more demand, yes: People respond to Free far more than they do Cheap. Money in the Free world is made on advertising. Anderson credits the new abundance of information for making Free lucrative, and he says that the old economy based on scarcity can no longer function.

Free does create a user base, however. So how can we apply Free to the theatre world?

Advertising is the key business model for Free. But what happens when advertising can't work? Herein lies the conundrum of YouTube, a free service that Gladwell says has made Google absolutely no money: YouTube does not have to make a judgment on content quality because it's all free, but advertisers won't buy space on pages with user-generated, poor-quality content, so YouTube had to purchase the rights to professionally-produced content and thus had to spend lots of money to lose less of it on its free service.

Theatre faces the same dilemma, not because of quality but because of scarcity, again. In theatre, advertising opportunities, one of the only ways to make money on Free, are few and far between. There are programs, which provide a little bit of space. We could try using some product placement. But the reality is, theatre attracts a very set amount of people, a smaller audience than you would find for a brand of food, a billboard on the side of a heavily-trafficked highway, or a movie seen across the country at thousands of theatres seven times daily. Advertising cannot sustain a theatre. Donations and ticket revenue can -- if business is good. We cannot go Free all the time, not with capital costs for productions.

What we do have is Free Night of Theater, and it does bring in a lot of people. Theatre is not a waste of time if no resources are spent to attend it, so FNOT allows people the freedom (pun intended) to be adventurous and go out of their comfort zones. But what with the costs of putting up a show, Free all the time wouldn't make a lot of business sense. FNOT's value to theatres lies in creating an audience base that will come back and will pay for what they once got free. Because the Free Night is a scarcity, people are willing to pay for it if they have a positive experience - or so goes general thought. Theatre follows the old market model, then. We should not sound the death knell for a market based on scarcity yet.

But theatre is also abundant. Theatre Bay Area as an organization shows that, what with our hundreds of member theatre companies. What theatre relies on is the vast differences between different companies and different productions. You can see your theatre in an intimate black box or a large, grand theatre. You can go to a comedy or a drama. You can experience niche theatre or mainstream theatre, avant garde or traditional, with puppets or live people. Whatever you want. So theatre tries to counteract its abundance. Perhaps that's our salvation. It is where the journalistic world is falling -- sure, there are different voices, but objective hard news is pretty much the same all over; hence, there is an abundance that cannot be counteracted with variety.

So the way to use Free for theatre is as a scarcity. It's the logic of Free Night and why Free Night is such a boon for the industry. It appeals to the psychological appeal of Free without costing companies an arm and a leg, and if the theatres put on successful shows, will bring in paying customers. The key is to make sure it stays a scarcity, and to make sure that the customers still see the value of a live performance rather than a taped one on the money-losing Free YouTube. Here is where marketing comes in.

Gladwell writes at the end of his article, "the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws." So Free, Gladwell says, can't be an iron law. Free can't be universal, and this is clearly evident in the theatre industry. Theatre can use Free, but sparingly. But it must be used to expand the audience.

Wanna Job?

2009-06-29T12:05:00.001-07:00

Theatre Bay Area's put the word out for a new freelance magazine designer. Check out the listing -- deadline is July 6 (and we're serious about deadlines, being a magazine and all)...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/med/1241652225.html

Princeton Student's Study Says There's a Gender Bias. But I'm Still Celebrating.

2009-06-25T11:55:00.001-07:00

A much-publicized study - Emily Glassberg Sands' Princeton University thesis - confirms that more plays are produced by men than by women, but here's the shocker - it's the fault of female artistic directors.

The New York Times reports that when the blame was laid, an audience member blurted out, "Say that again?" I would wager many of you did the same thing when you first heard the news.

The study says there are fewer female playwrights than male playwrights. This contention is not a new one. I don't think this means much, though. We're in an era in which gender roles are changing. That takes time. Women are slowly coming into their own as playwrights, led by such luminaries as Sarah Ruhl (my personal favorite), Theresa Rebeck, and Wendy Wasserstein. I have a feeling in the near future the number of women playwrights will significantly increase. No data to back that up, of course, but based on who populates the theatre community I've experienced and the college writing classes I have sat in on, we're doing just fine.

More data from the study even encourages me: work by female and male playwrights is produced at the same rate. So once more women are in the field, if all stays constant, we will actually achieve the 50-50 production rate people seem to clamor for.

It is Sands' second study that is the most concerning here: she sent a play with a male name on it to some theatres and with a female name on it to other theatres. The plays "by women" were rated lower than those "by men," despite having the exact same content. And all those doing that rating were women themselves. Sure, you can spin that as a "Mean Girls" phenomenon, which will only perpetuate the backstabbing stereotype that women already endure. It's tough data to refute, but I really want to refute it. Maybe women are sabotaging each other - but what if they're not? If we assume that women are to blame, isn't that continuing to worsen the lot of women in the arts?

Causality cannot be assumed on the basis of one study alone. We should not be making concrete conclusions about anything Sands found until the work is replicated, preferably many times. And I hope that when it is, the results are different. But even if they are not, we cannot go vilifying the women calling the shots in the theater, diminishing their credibility and furthering gender discrimination there. Women must take it upon themselves to improve their fairness - perhaps this can serve as a wake-up call. I applaud Emily Glassberg Sands for engaging in this work and starting a debate. Getting people talking is always a good thing for women struggling to achieve equality.

With the rates of actual production of work by men equal to work by women, however, it appears whatever gender discrimination Sands may have found is not actually having an overall effect on female success in the playwrighting world. Whether this is because men are overcompensating or not, I don't really care. Were I a female playwright, it wouldn't matter to me if the theater producing my work were helmed by a man or by a woman. What would matter is that my work was produced at all. And that is what I choose to focus on.

If women are discriminating against themselves, they better wake up and stop engaging in reverse-discrimination. But I'm not ready to accept that as a conclusion. And if it is true, the solution is simple: Women, wake up and stop it. Here's the bottom line: Women are produced at the same rate men are, and as female playwrights proliferate, so will female-written work. That is cause for celebration.

Arts participation is declining. We all knew that. So now what?

2009-06-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

The National Endowment for the Arts recently released results from its 2008 Arts Participation National Survey. Last year marked the 5th time the survey has been administered since 1982. And guess what? It spells doom and gloom.

I'm sure no one out there is really surprised that attendance has declined for all arts forms (except musicals - we still love our easily-digestible escapism) since 2002. What is surprising here is that, not only is the average arts audience now older than the average American adult, but even that older group of 45-to-54-year-olds is not coming out to arts events as much as they used to. Ballet, non-musical plays and museums are targets.

Some things didn't change - arts participation and civic engagement are still intrinsically tied together, and education level remains a solid predictor of arts activity. Exposure to arts education remains critical to continued arts participation. Children are, of course, the future in the arts, as one-third of children in school (ages 5-17) have seen a live performance in the past year outside of their school environment, a statistic comparable to that for college-educated adults. I guess that's encouraging.

The NEA prefaced the report on these findings with a disclaimer about the recession. They think it had a large impact on their findings, to which I can only say, "Yeah, and...?" Of course the economy is impacting arts participation. Live performances cost money, with the exception of Free Night, and people don't really have any money to spare right now.

But what's encouraging about findings from this survey is that it is clear interest in the arts has not really declined. New questions about Internet use reveal that 40% of Internet users listened to, viewed, downloaded or posted artworks or performances in the past year, most of them on a regular basis. The difference is that this remote viewing, via recordings or broadcasts, at least in this economy, is currently enough to satiate public thirst for arts consumption. Live theater is the only event that still has more live participation than remote participation via recordings or broadcasts, and who knows how long that will last?

So what do arts organizations do with that? Does live theater go the way of opera and start doing simulcasts and more PBS specials? (By the way, opera was one of the hardest-hit art forms according to the survey, but I wonder what viewership for the Metropolitan Opera's new simulcasts have done for these numbers.) Do the prophecies about the Internet making human contact and actual emergence from the living room null and void come true, and do they apply to the performing arts, the last bastion of hope for real unmediated experience? Well, I hope not. But maybe this is the only way to keep the arts economically viable, at least until the recession improves. And to me, that's what this survey is suggesting.
Literary reading - what the survey posits is the most affordable form of arts participation - is the only activity that went up since 2002, so clearly money's got something to do with all of this. Maybe Free Night's 5th anniversary this year can make things happen. Maybe Obama's United We Serve initiative, which incorporates volunteerism in the arts, can stimulate interest. Maybe those kiddies going to performances will help more of their parents get out and support the arts. Here's hoping.

Free Night in discussion

2009-06-23T12:12:00.001-07:00

Following a great article on Chloe Veltman's blog, Lies Like Truth (hosted on Artsjournal), I've been in a very engaging comment discussion with a couple Theatre Bay Area members and fellow Artsjournal readers about the value of Free Night of Theater as a program, and the survey data that supports our assertions that Free Night has been a success.

I recommend you all take a look and offer your insights, if you've got em. As I say in the commentary, Free Night's a constant work in progress -- so all constructive criticism is welcome.

Among Giants

2009-06-22T13:53:00.001-07:00

I suppose the first order of business is to introduce myself. My name is Sabrina, I am an intern at Theatre Bay Area this summer, and I will be blogging to you weekly. I have no marketing credentials to speak of - I'm a rising junior at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern and spent a summer in the marketing department at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, but that's about as far as it goes - but I do love theater, and I will be spending the season surrounded by people who understand how to market it. Hopefully this qualifies me for some amateur insights.

What brought me to TBA was a desire to get to know the theater community in San Francisco. Having come from Chicago, where theater is ubiquitous, I felt strangely alienated from theater on my home turf. I had lived my whole life here and had always been involved with and passionate about theater - and yet I was only really familiar with ACT and Berkeley Rep. Even though I heard time and again that I called one of the largest theater communities in the country home, San Francisco seemed to me to have only the giants - and not even as many giants as Chicago.

That's a problem. Coming to TBA, I now know that there are hundreds of theaters spread out around the Bay Area, and many of them produce the quality of work as the aforementioned Tony-winners. So why don't I hear about these other companies?

That's what I'm hoping to find out this summer. I suspect that the marketing failure here is in reaching out to people in a much more sprawling area than metropolitan Chicago. The Bay Area demands we go farther out of our way for exciting theatrical experiences. I never hear about the Marin theater companies, for example. While I'm not sure I would go all the way out there for a play, if people were buzzing about it there's certainly a chance my curiosity would get the best of me. I also suspect the Bay Area may be lacking in mid-size theater companies that have the marketing resources a tiny black box or storefront wouldn't without the big-budget cachet of ACT.

Perhaps these are questions everyone in the arts marketing world already knows the answer to. But if someone like me, highly interested in theater, isn't hearing about all of these other Bay Area companies, something's wrong. I think it's worth wondering what we can do about it.

State Department Asked Twitter To Delay Downtime During Iranian Protests

2009-06-16T16:30:00.001-07:00

I almost can't believe this. New media has its moment.

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-delays-downtime-so-iranian-protesters-can-protest-2009-6

Oh no! Is twitter actually useful?

2009-06-16T10:04:00.001-07:00

Just as I'm writing my latest column for the August issue all about my experience live-Twittering the TCG conference, my twitter feed comes up with this tweet:

SocialMedia411: The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links” - Twitter Equals Traffic. (TechCrunch): http://bit.ly/dO9XL

And indeed, if you follow the link, it's fascinating -- we may have actually found a way to at least indirectly monetize twitter -- by linking to dynamic content elsewhere.

Check it out. Oh, and follow me @claytonlord.

Talkin' Generations

2009-06-10T08:43:00.001-07:00

Back from TCG and still trying to get caught up, but I did want to post about a divisive keynote speech from the conference given by 20-something wunderkind journalist Nadira Hira on generational differences both within the workplace and in audiences. If any of you saw Lynne Lancaster at last year's TBA conference, you know most of the information Nadira was talking about -- boomers and Y's (aka, sort of, Millennials -- apparently it's all very amorphous) get along with each other because they share world views, X's are sort of out in the cold (and are apparently generally bitter and introverted - this, of course, riled up the X's in the audience. In my experience, bitterness has more to do with life experience than the year you were born, but...).

What I found fascinating about Nadira's speech was the fact that she was a Gen Y talking about Gen Y's -- she didn't really try to do more than that, and spent most of her time looking at the specific characteristics of us Y's (to give you the timeline -- Boomers are late 1940's to early 1960's, X'ers are late 1960's to late 1970's, Y's are 1980's to 1995, Millennials are 1996 onward). We're driven by mission over money (to a point), are outspoken and entitled, work harder and more quickly than our older bro's and so's, and share an optimistic and driven vision of the world with our Boomer parents and our Greatest Generation grandparents. We come off as demanding and pugnacious, but get work done on time and well.

One of her main points was how to deal with an inter-generational workplace -- especially now that the Y'ers are starting to end up in management positions, sometimes over X's and Boomers, and sometimes after having been in the organization (or workforce) for fewer years than their older compatriots. No matter what generational dynamic exists in the workplace, her discussion centered around looking at the fact that Boomers are essentially the parents of Y'ers -- which means that Boomers (in a grand sense) "raised us this way." AKA, if we're too outspoken and blunt and transparent in our personal lives for your taste, look back on how you raised your kids. And then think about how you deal with them. Or conversely, if you're the Y'er managing people, think about how you deal with you parents (and older brothers and sisters) -- reframe your work relations in terms of family dynamics.

I'm not sure how far this takes you, but I do know that I get along well with Boomers (in a lot of ways, better than I get along with X'ers, although not universally). I like to think I'm not totally self-absorbed, but I do have healthy ego that has gotten me in trouble before. I don't have nearly the same issues with separating my personal and professional life as my older compatriots (I have one Facebook profile for everyone, and I figure they'll learn whatever they learn about me -- and interestingly, this has really helped in connecting with some of my colleagues around the country, as they may know me only slightly, but they do know about some of my personal journey, be it my husband's latest acquisition of two chickens or my angst at the passage of Prop 8). When I brought this up with Kerry Adams-Hapner, the head of the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, she was horrified at the idea of dropping those walls. "It must be a generational thing," she said. I agree.

My prediction is that another 5 years in the workforce is going to blunt some of the outspoken obstreperousness of my generation, but hopefully will allow the optimism, mission and drive to remain. I think we'll continue to be transparent in our lives, and will continue to think that people really want to hear our 140-character tweets (or whatever's the next best thing by then). Oh, and I think we'll rule the world, of course. And when we take over, you'll find out first - on Facebook.

The pricing variations

2009-06-04T09:21:00.001-07:00

@TCG...Just had a very interesting chat with Steven Roth, 1/3rd of the
Pricing Institute team who presented in Palo Alto early last month.
We discussed specifically how to make the demand pricing schemes he
espouses available and doable by small and midsize companies. The
thought we came up with was actually jack-knifing a variable pricing
model into a ticketing system so that companies, working essentially
on the brownpapertickets fee-per-ticket model, would be able to set
thresholds and tiered pricing so that it would auto-adjust based on
date, time till the event and availability. We'd be trying to change
the whole paradigm, shift patrons away from last-minute behavior by
incentivizing early ticket buying and rewarding such behavior -
ideally in a way most companies could afford. Thoughts?

Follow-up to the lion

2009-06-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here's the poster I referenced earlier.

Is that lion staring at me?

2009-06-03T11:53:00.001-07:00

As I was walking to the BART to get to the airport, I was confronted
with the stunning new ad campaign for ACT's At Home at the Zoo. If
you haven't seen it yet, it depicts a dressed-down man standing still
in a blurred group of business men. The man's head has been replaced
by a lion's.

What gets me about this graphic? It didn't hit some of my co-workers
as strongly as it hit me. I think it's something about the forlorn-
ness of the image, coupled with a sort of passive ferocity. It works
for me by making me think - first wondering if I actually just saw a
guy with a lion head, then drawing on my knowledge of Edward Albee,
who wrote the play and is as expert as anyone at ferocity, absurdity
and alienation - all the things this image has.

In my experience, it's not easy to pull off a metaphor as absurd as
this on a campaign graphic - they come off confusing or, worse,
misleading. Pretty cool to have done it. Take a look at www.act-sf.org.

Blog Haiku

2009-06-03T08:04:00.001-07:00

Apparently emailing in my blog entries makes them appear as haiku.
Sorry about that...

To TCG!

2009-06-03T08:02:00.001-07:00

I'm off to the TCG conference in Baltimore later today thanks to the
Duke Foundation. I'm going to be attempting live updates from the
conference, and may even be picking up Twitter - follow me
@claytonlord. In the meantime, wanted to put out the word that
Berkeley Rep is looking for a Communications Manager - more at www.berkeleyrep.org
.

Engage This!

2009-06-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance has just released the first-ever Cultural Engagement Index report. The CEI looked at arts participation of all sorts and cross-referenced other demographics with it. Some of the findings (all reprinted from www.philaculture.org):

Investments in culture are also investments in civic engagement and quality of life
A richer picture of cultural engagement appears when a broader definition of culture is used
Personal practice correlates with higher levels of audience-based activity
Communities of color are vitally engaged
Engaging more adults with modest education levels suggests emphasis on personal practice activities
The presence of children in the household appears to increase, not decrease, cultural engagement
Keeping older adults engaged in personal practice is a key challenge
Cultural role models are a key to increasing cultural engagement

Key Findings

Across different age groups, Cultural Engagement is highest for younger age cohorts 18-34. Engagement then falls off for older cohorts because of a decline in personal practice activities.
Across lifestyle groups, adults with children have more active creative lives than those without children.
Cultural Engagement levels for African Americans and Hispanics are consistently higher than those for Whites.
Cultural Engagement levels for those who cite cultural role models in and out of the family report twice the levels of engagement than those who cite no role models.
Higher civic engagement is directly correlated with higher cultural engagement. Respondents who participated in all five civic activities listed (socialize with neighbors, attend religious services, do volunteer work, have a library card and have voted in the last year) scored three times higher than those who reported no civic engagement activities.
Males and females have different engagement patterns: Men are more active making original videos or film, composing music, and remixing material found online. Women are more engaged in painting and other original art creation, writing about their lives in journals or blogs, and attending professional dance performances.

Most compelling, the research points to correlations between personal practice activities and audience-based activities.

Respondents that took music lessons more frequently were also more likely to attend live music performances.
Respondents who reported taking photographs with artistic intentions more frequently had higher levels of cultural engagement for visiting art museums.
Those who expressed an interest in exploring family history had higher levels of engagement visiting history or science museums.

Read it all and more here: http://www.philaculture.org/research/reports/cultural-engagement-index-cei/key-findings

Pull Out Your Pink Slips!

2009-05-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

Crowded Fire has innovated again, in what may prove an interesting press hook/altruistic endeavor. For their most recent show, they offered up free tickets to people who could prove their unemployment -- in the words of Tiffany Cothran, their managing director, "it's really just taking Pay What You Can one step further."

Andrew Lloyd Webber did a similar thing in London, you might remember, except of course it was specifically targeted at stressed stockbrokers. Not quite as altruistic. I'm interested abstractedly, but would be worried about the devaluation issue...although by linking it to actual, provable unemployment, that makes it more interesting/manageable/discussable without devaluing the work. More about altruism, less about filling houses...

According to Tiffany, 2 people took advantage this time, and it got picked up by at least 2 blogs (plus, now, me) -- one of the blogs mentioned this in context with Free Night, talking about the relative value of giving tickets away, and while I really don't agree with what was said there, I think it is valid to wonder about the value of promotions like this for the long-term value of theatre. I think, though, that a giveaway in this context may be more useful as a publicity/goodwill making tactic than it is detrimental (if at all) to long-term value.

Why Theatre's Like Baseball

2009-05-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

John Killacky of the San Francisco Foundation just published 10-point plan to survive as an arts organization at blueavocado.org that I suggest everyone check out. What caught me (which was probably sort of a throwaway line, but that's what usually catches me), was a reference about halfway through to children growing up to follow the sports they play when their young. This extends, of course, to the arts -- child musicians are most likely to follow musical organizations as adults, etc etc.

But what's interesting to me is what underlies that phenomenon -- and my theory follows along the same lines as language development theory -- that is to say, a child can easily learn a second language. All the nuances, all the forms, how to communicate -- it all comes naturally to a child -- and even if, after that, they don't speak it for 15 years, if they come back to that language, they are significantly more able to pick it back up than an adult trying to learn it for the first time.

I think theatre's like that, at least to a degree -- people who aren't regular theatregoers have trouble with the "language" of theatre -- where to go, what to do, how to know when a show's done, what to expect, what to wear, etc. And all of these little niggly issues that people who've been trained in that "language" get intuitively affect the ability of these newbies to enjoy and sink into the live theatre experience.

This is, in some ways, being borne out in the WolfBrown intrinsic impact data (we just got to look at the final report, and it's very exciting) -- but more on that later.

I guess, in short, I'm worried that the argument for live arts for children is more complex than just instilling the value of live arts in them before TV and movies and whatever else puts their claws into them. I think it's also about teaching them the vocabulary of theatre, the nuance, the steps you have to take to go down the rabbit hole -- because it gets parabolically harder to instill that stuff as the years go on.

Pricing Like You Mean It

2009-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended the one-day Pricing Institute session underwritten by the Hewlett Foundation and presented by Artsopolis and Theatre Bay Area down in Palo Alto. While the whole session was a bit of a blur (compressed from 2 days into one, and presented to companies ranging in size from the SF Opera to City Lights in San Jose and smaller), the general premises of the day were both exciting and enlightening.

In a sentence, the Pricing Institute essentially advocates figuring out what your patrons will pay for a ticket, and charging them that amount -- and the kicker is, in most cases, that amount is more than what you're currently charging. In addition, PI points out that different nights have different demand levels (as do different areas of the house), and if you're not pricing to maximum advantage in both dimensions you're losing money.

What's so neat about this is that, if you do it right, you need not a single new person in the house to make substantially more money (or at least that's the hope). They highlighted a (gigantic) opera venue in England that they rejiggered the pricing on that made six figures or more in extra ticketing income just by changing their pricing.

If I had a complaint about the session, it revolved mostly around the fact that it was built and targeted towards giant companies (ACT, Opera, etc) -- and of course, in the Bay Area we really only have a handful of those. I felt like there was so much potential applicability for small-to-midsize orgs that wasn't being shown -- this stuff can work for those size companies, but it's very hard to demonstrate that when the exercises all center around houses of 1,000 seats or larger.

One participant from a smallish midsize org, I heard, attended a private session (also underwritten by Hewlett) and was actually told that they didn't have much data on companies his size. This seems problematic -- but I know the PI people are working on that, and hopefully we'll be able to work with them to push more information about applicability out in the near future.

For more information on the Pricing Institute, visit http://www.thepricinginstitute.com/.

Update -- for a thoughtful article on varied pricing, visit
http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/is-dynamic-pricing-in-your-fut.php

Rebel Yelp

2009-05-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

An interesting (if a bit late, given all the attention Yelp's been getting here for months) article on how detrimental to newspapers Yelp has become is on Slate this morning:

http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/0s-1s-and-s/2009/05/04/rebel-yelp

Fiscal Pulse and the Coming Big Shrink

2009-04-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

The results of the Fiscal Pulse report are now available at the brand new DataPoint page on Theatre Bay Area's website. You can find it here: http://www.theatrebayarea.org/datapoint.

Also, an interesting (and harrowing) tidbit. Given the projected decline in funding from all sources across the country (which is indeed reflected in the pulse report), at least one major funder is projecting a substantial decrease in the number of nonprofit theatre organizations in the coming years. John Killacky, arts program officer at The San Francisco Foundation, estimated in a recent presentation that 20% of the 50,000 arts nonprofits across the country (a full 10,000 of which are in the state of California) will cease operations as a result of the financial crisis. For those of you without calculators, that's 2,000 arts nonprofits going away in California alone.

Harry Potter and the Scary Downside of New Media Marketing

2009-04-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today, a friend of mine from college who happens to have become somewhat of a big deal in the Harry Potter fan universe (she used to run Leaky Cauldron) sent out a message to her Facebook people saying that she’s going to be restricting access to her friends from real life after a stalker/threat episode made her wary of having so much personal info out there for all to see.

Setting aside whether she should have had all of that out there for (let’s face it) perfect strangers, this got me thinking about the perils of new media, especially because my friend is sort of a master at it. She built Leaky Cauldron into the premiere site for Potter fans during the heyday of the Harry Potter craze, peddled that fame into a book, and has used her Facebook and Twitter feeds to mobilize a (surprisingly large) number of fans into not only continuing to be obsessed with Harry Potter for years longer than is really feasible, but to regularly and unsolicitedly check in with their “friend” on her Facebook wall. She had, at the height of her Facebook friendships, something like 4,000 friends. She’s now using Twitter (and, until this latest issue, her Facebook profile) to promote the first-ever LeakyCon (yes, a Harry Potter conference).

I will here unmask myself as a recovering Potterholic, and point out to all of you that never really got the craze that harnessing this particular cultural phenomenon (she has met J.K. Rowling…in Rowling’s mansion, people!) is a very impressive act, even if the catalyst is, in the end, pop culture fluff.

And yet, to do so, my friend essentially had to continue portraying herself as first and foremost a consummate fan – not a voice-on-high. And as such, she opened up her personal life in a way that is now becoming problematic.

I was having a conversation once with Kerry Adams-Hapner, the head of the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, about Facebook and the perils of opening up your personal life to, in this case, your work colleagues. At the time, I breezily and nonchalantly said that I didn’t feel I had anything to hide – and the truth of the matter is I really don’t. Now, whether (were I to, say, suddenly become famous) I would open up my Facebook profile to random fans from across the country, I’m not sure – but if I thought it would sell whatever I’d created, I might find some facsimile. And before hearing of my friend’s problems, I might just have done it to my own.

When I was at Roundabout Theatre in New York, I was an intern in the development department. They were so busy dealing with their high-end donors that when they sent out solicitations or, for example, opening night invitations to people below a certain level, they would put down the RSVP name as Bonnie Mills. Bonnie didn’t exist, and when someone called, I (the intern, who was actually in charge of RSVPs) was instructed to say that Bonnie wasn’t available, but I’d be happy to help. So far, so good. But what caught me off guard was the gratitude that some of these people expressed – to Bonnie – a woman they had never met. They told me stories, about how nice it was to get another invitation from her, how she must surely be busy, etc.

People seek connections in their leisure activities – they validate the activity, make it feel less superfluous. That’s the secret, and goal, of good marketing, especially now. But the flip-side is that a small percentage of people, given that new and exciting access, can abuse it.

Working with new technologies is vital to selling your product, and the fact of the matter is that new technologies work best when people can feel a heartbeat on the other side of the screen – blogs, vlogs, personal profiles, pictures. With that comes the duty to care, and be careful – especially when putting actors, directors, technicians, or other staff members on the forefront.

Fiscal Pulse - slow but steady...

2009-04-17T11:08:00.001-07:00

I'm looking over the almost-final draft of the TCG/Theatre Bay Area sponsored Fiscal PULSE Survey results -- and it's got some very interesting trends in it. Lots of not so great (and not so surprising) news, like over half of respondents expect to have cash flow problems in the coming year, overall the respondents will be shrinking budgets by as much as 5% (over $4 million), etc etc.

But amidst all that, there are some really interesting glimmers -- as I predicted, this crisis is forcing people to adopt the new media they should have adopted two, three years ago. Companies are also opening up to more creative discounting programs, going back to high-touch interactions with core patrons, and thinking creatively about new income-generating programs. All of this is good, and healthy, and necessary.

What's also nice to see is that, by and large, companies are protecting their own -- representatives are very reticent to fire people, reduce salaries, reduce benefits -- those are options of last resort. Which isn't to say we won't get there -- we might, but not yet.

More on this once it's out -- wouldn't want to steal TCG's thunder too much...

The Geography of Buzz

2009-04-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

This is fascinating article from today's NY Times that discusses a study on where the highest cultural buzz spots are (in this case in New York City). It's interesting mostly for its implications -- the results, generally speaking, indicate that the most "buzz worthy" spots in NYC are...theatre districts! Lincoln Center, Broadway, Rockefeller. It is, as the article mentions, an analog of sorts for Richard Florida's arguments about the rise and importance of the creative class (something which, you'll be happy to know, is alive and thriving nicely here in the Bay Area).

Interesting stuff...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/arts/design/07buzz.html?hpw

SF Chron jumps in on the number of non-profits in SF

2009-04-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Did you know there is a non-profit organization for every couple hundred people in SF? Over 7,000 all-told. And now the SF Chron has an article about it.

Check it out: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/02/BA6S16QTIN.DTL