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The First Key to Success -- Defining It

Without clear direction, success can never be achieved. We’ve all experienced situations where we run toward a goal as fast and furious as we can only to have the goal posts moved on us in route. When this happens over and over again, an organization is guilty of foolishly wasting precious resources at a moment when most are under resourced as it is.

Success begins with leadership. As Michael Kaiser discussed in his Huffington Post blog, there must be a leader. All too often, arts managers try to lead by consensus. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want people to be upset with them. In complex situations, many times the answer isn’t clear, and trying to get a wide variety of stakeholders moving in the same direction can be tough. But this isn’t a time to postpone critical decisions in an effort to get senior staff, board members and other various stakeholders to agree on a course of action. The executive has been hired to lead, and lead they must. Part of leadership is gathering all the data necessary from various perspectives, and then making a timely decision. Waiting for full consensus is folly because more often than not, time does not bring consensus.

When a problem reaches the desk of an executive director, usually it means that an easy solution isn’t available, because if there was a simple answer, senior managers would have resolved the situation. The life of an executive director involves making imperfect decisions daily. It isn’t a job for the lighthearted. Failure is often public and wide reaching. But make no mistake about it – inaction or a delay in decision making is a decision in itself. Taking no action in an attempt to build consensus around an issue that will never result in a consensus decision is even more costly than setting a clear course toward a defined goal.  As an outside adviser, I was once asked to participate in a meeting where senior managers from an organization were divided on a particularly divisive issue. Each argued their position passionately and articulately. At the conclusion of hours of conversation, the room looked to the executive director for a decision, at which time he asked for a vote of hands. I about fell out of my chair. Unfortunately for them, there were an even number of people in the room, and it was hopelessly deadlocked with a leader who would not make a decision because he desperately wanted consensus.

Someone has to lead, and one of the most important decisions a leader makes is defining success for the organization. Senior managers can and should be relied upon to develop strategies for success, but the leader must define the destination before a map can be created.

When defining success for arts organizations, here are just a few things to consider:

Growth vs. Sustainability. In a previous post, I asked if “right-sizing could be as sexy as expansion?” We live in the country of manifest destiny, super-sized meals and McMansions. Bigger is always better. But this mentality has led to obesity being an out of control epidemic, people purchasing homes they could not afford, and boom or bust economic trends. I see the same success metrics in play at non-profit arts organizations. Chief marketing and development officers are measured solely by growth, and if an organization tries to right size, top talent will leave because their numbers will shrink, not because of sub-par work, but merely because of a decrease in tickets to sell or programs to fundraise for. Why do we constantly equate success with growth, when it is entirely possible to demonstrate significant growth to the detriment of sustainability? If it costs you $2 for every additional $1 in growth, and that equation doesn’t equalize over time, then you will demonstrate growth until such time as your lines of credit are maxed out, your board becomes unwilling to conduct emergency fundraising campaigns, and the community becomes tired of your pleas for help. This is how once stable and reputable organizations get into trouble. Success should be defined, at least in terms of business models, by sustainability, not growth, which is not to say they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but all too often, we succumb to pride and make growth the more highly prized success metric.

Quantity vs. Quality. Similar to growth, I’ve found that some arts organizations in part define themselves by the quantity of work they produce. I’ve never understood this. Most artists are motivated by creating the highest caliber of work, but then arts organizations feel pressured to produce a certain arbitrary amount of plays, concerts or performances each year, with an increase in offerings usually regarded as a sign of success by board members, funders and the press. The highest quality products in the world are not produced in mass as mass production doesn’t usually dovetail with world class quality. Case in point, if asked, I’m sure Steve Jobs would have been happy to have the best computers on the market, even if his market share was significantly less than competing products. And today, TedX is experiencing brand erosion because of quick expansion resulting in it losing in part its competitive advantages. Long ago, I used to work for a company that only produced one or two plays a season because the average gestation time on a project was several years. Although some objected to the avant-garde nature of the work, the company was almost universally lauded for artistic excellence. However, if quantity of productions were the litmus test for success, it wouldn’t be considered a successful theater.

Impact vs. Financials. Alan Brown, Clay Lord and Theatre Bay Area have spent the last two years working on measuring the intrinsic impact of live theater. I won’t go into the specifics now as this study deserves its own blog post, but I must say that I am excited that the study is changing how people, especially funders, are defining success. This study has developed a new system to quantifiably measure the intrinsic impacts theaters are having on audiences, and funders are starting to understand that previous metrics, such as audience members served, might not deliver the full picture. Along with financial and attendance data, what if theaters started to define their success by the impact they are having on their communities, which for the first time can be benchmarked, measured and tracked year over year.

The first step on any journey is to clearly define the destination and to establish success metrics.

Leaders—set the course and the direction. Don’t fear lack of consensus. Be bold. Be ambitious. And be decisive.

Senior managers—establish clear success metrics, and track them relentlessly over time.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” – President John F. Kennedy, in an address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

Lost in the Crowd

Direct marketing practitioners know that success is primarily a numbers game. That's not to discount the work that goes into tweaking a control package, testing messages, building list models and analyzing data. However, the foundation of any direct marketing campaign, be it for ticket sales, subscriptions, memberships or donations, is the number of qualified leads in your database.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how many of us didn't know who are best customers were. Since that time, I have come to realize that many of us don't know who many of our regular customers are.

Performing arts organizations have a distinct advantage over a majority of museums as gathering leads usually stems from capturing information during the ticket buying process, although challenges do exist. Organizations that have a robust group sales business know that it's all about personal relationships as one group contact can bring in hundreds of patrons, and although that's good for revenue, it is a challenge for lead development. For the most part, performing arts organizations have no clue as to who attends as part of a group as they don't gather information for each attendee. And in some cases, private group sales agents don't want to release information as it would require handing over lucrative contacts. And aside from groups, performing arts organizations are becoming more reliant on third party vendors to move unsold inventory, but in doing so, in most cases, they sacrifice the ability to collect contact information. And how many of us track individual people attached to multi-subscription packages? If the leader of the subscription group decides not to renew, we don't have the ability to contact the others.

We estimated a couple of years ago at Arena Stage that at any given time, on average we only had the contact information for roughly 60% of the people in the house. I always wondered what the value of the other 40% was.

Over time, we put into place various mechanisms to assist in collecting more leads. Group leaders were given financial incentives to provide contact information for each individual in their group. We reached out to subscription purchasers and asked them to identify the other people on their account. And we instituted a policy that required complete contact information for all comp tickets, and started ticketing almost every free event.

Now that I've been in the museum world for all of two months now, I've noticed that their challenges are much more significant than those that face performing arts organizations. Some museums have millions of visitors each year, and they only capture contact information for a very small percentage of their visitors. Highly popular free admission museums don't want to institute time consuming procedures to capture information for fear that it would impede timely access to the museum (can you imagine the lines that would form?). On the other hand, most free museums have membership and fundraising circles that rely upon qualified leads. How do you fundraise in a cost effective manner if you don't know who your visitors are? It seems that I am by far not the first to stumble upon the holy grail of marketing challenges that museums face, but given my newness to the field, I was surprised how daunting capturing information could be.

Here are some possible ideas to collect information from those lost in the crowd:

1) Collect information at multiple contact points. Prior to getting to a museum, most people visit a website. Take public transportation. Park their vehicle. Why not identify new visitors to your website and feed them a small roadblock ad asking them to sign-up for information from your museum, including future discount offers and exclusive content. Could you station "visitor concierges" outside subway stations who offer tips on exhibits and museums, and collect information during the process? Could you partner with your parking lot to develop a way to capture visitor data?

2) Offer exclusive content. Exhibits are becoming more and more interactive every day. With more than 100 million smart phone users in the United States, could exhibits feature exclusive interactive content using QR codes that also captures data in the process? As museums build out content online, what if you placed some exclusive content behind a free "pay wall" that requires registration to access? or what if an exhibit offered to send you a free memento of your experience via email?

3) Ticket events. Many museums offer a large variety of free and popular educational programming and docent lead tours. Even though they are free, why not require a ticket or an RSVP? Visitors can register well in advance, or they can do so quickly on site at ticket kiosks.

I am sure these suggestions only offer a way to make a small dent in the overall problem, but the challenge is clear -- finding easy, affordable and efficient ways for visitors to self identify themselves as wanting more information from musuems is of utmost importance to our direct marketing strategies.

Planning a Turnaround

Deficit budgets have started to accumulate. Core audiences have began to slip away as smaller and smaller houses become the norm. And there is a palpable sense that a once formidable company has lost its way as a growing group of stakeholders from donors to press start asking what happened?

Almost certainly, the marketing department is pointing its finger at the artistic staff laying the blame for the downturn solely at their doorstep, while the artistic staff believes that if they only had better marketing, the issue would disappear. Reality is that if a company is experiencing a significant decline, usually there are issues in both areas that need to be resolved.

At some point, the financial position of the company becomes untenable, and a turnaround team is brought in, usually in the form of a new artistic director, but sometimes a new executive director and marketing director as well. If executed well, strategic shifts in programming along with a well thought out rebranding and promotional campaign can lead to exceptional results. But a turnaround is only as good as its implementation.

Some things to consider when planning a turnaround... 

Identify Toxic Assets. The new guy hired to design and implement the turnaround knows one thing--what the company has been doing isn't working, and that the board desperately wants a change and they want it quickly. It can become overwhelmingly tempting to cut old programs immediately, and start from a completely fresh slate. However often times even the most struggling company has positives in which to start building from. Cutting everything quickly in an effort to rebuild from a new baseline can eliminate valuable assets. In for-profit turnarounds, the idea is to separate toxic assets from the others in an effort to give a new leader at least some base to work from. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater may be quick and it might provide an immediate signal that there is a new sheriff in town, but it usually isn't the most efficacious strategy. Instead of a hatchet, bring out the scalpel. Make precision cuts in an effort to save what can be used to help regenerate a new future.

Develop a Bridge for Audiences. When considering radical programming changes, make sure to design and implement a bridge for your current audiences. In a turnaround, the new is always given priority over the well established, but loyalty is something that takes years to cultivate, and I'd rather reinvent from a partial base than none at all. This is not to say that one should shy away from making needed programming changes, it is only to say that as much thought needs to go into how to introduce them into the market as went into designing the programs themselves. I've seen companies attempt to reinvent themselves overnight with little thought to patron migration, and as a result, they lost a majority of the base they had cultivated over prior decades. Major donors can provide venture capital to introduce new programming if engaged well, and audiences can be successfully transitioned into new programming if done so in a gradual and considerate manner. I know because I've done it on multiple occasions.

Market Research Doesn't Have to Influence Programming to be Helpful. When asked about market research, Steve Jobs famously told Business Week that he doesn't conduct market research because "a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  Similarly, Julie Taymor in an interview with The New York Times said she didn't believe in focus groups stating that "if focus groups had been used on The Lion King there would be no death of Mufasa because groups would have reacted negatively." Given that The Lion King is Broadway's top earner of all time, and at the time of Mr. Jobs' death Apple was the most valuable company in the world, there is wisdom in these remarks. However, I bet the marketing people working with Ms. Taymor and Mr. Jobs would have loved market research, not because they wanted it to influence product development, but it would have informed them on how to message the introduction of the product into the market. Even though in many cases "the new" is absolutely necessary and people may desire it without knowing, marketers have to break through an initial resistance barrier. 

Artistic Planning is Where it all Starts. I attempted to rebrand a company once without a clearly articulated artistic strategy. We were told that exciting new programs were going to be introduced to replace well worn ones, but when pressed, there were very few details. Feeling that we couldn't wait any longer, I started the first phase of the rebranding process thinking that the details could come later. Boy was I wrong. Two months later, everything came to a screeching halt when we were trying to develop a communications matrix around an amorphous programming change. We couldn't message what didn't exist. Luckily for everyone, the artistic team came to the same realization, and within a short amount of time, a brilliant new artistic strategy was developed, and we were back on the fast track. I learned an important lesson that day--for a complete turnaround to be successful, it all starts with a detailed new artistic strategy.

Cultivating New Audiences is an Expensive Proposition (at first). Marketers know that retention is cheap, and acquisition is expensive. We also know that both are absolutely critical. When introducing new programming, it is important to know that acquiring audiences for newly developed programs will require a dedicated effort over an extended amount of time as well as considerable resources. The "build it and they will come" assumption is flawed. Audience development is a process, and in the short term, often times it will result in a negative impact to the bottom line. New programming and audience development are investments in the future of the organization. That said, depending on the severity of an organization's finances, the necessary resources for such an investment may not be readily available, which can lead to the premature cancellation of new programs. If that occurs, it is a waste of time and resources.

In his book The Art of the Turnaround, Michael Kaiser discusses his classic mantra "good art, marketed well" as a centerpiece for a successful turnaround. I agree with Mr. Kaiser that often times turnarounds require adjustments to programming or marketing, and in some cases, both. But over time, it has become an alarming trend to see an increase in the number of failing organizations that do both relatively well. I've started to wonder, as many others have, if mature organizations are failing because their business models haven't fundamentally adjusted to the rapidly changing external environment in the past fifty years.  In moments like these, I'm reminded of a quote from Buckminster Fuller, who said "you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I'm fearful that training institutions are teaching models that are dying a slow death, and that major institutions continue to look to senior managers entrenched in failing systems for the cure. I believe that co-management hybrids pairing the wisdom and experience of more senior leaders with the inventiveness and curiosity of Gen X'ers and Millenials could be the best bet. But one thing is for sure--rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic won't save the ship. For that, you have to find the fundamental cause of the problem. It could be programming. It could be marketing. It could be both. Or, it just might be that we are clinging on to a business model that is rapidly failing us.

Can right-sizing be as sexy as expansion?

On Thursday of last week, Thomas Cottfeatured several articles on "right-sizing" in the arts in his daily "You've Cott Mail." As many of his emails tend to do, it has stuck with me for days. See his email came at an opportune time for me. I had just given the plenary speech at American University's Emerging Arts Leaders Symposiumwhich partially focused on NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman's "supply and demand" speech, and soon thereafter, Rebecca Novick authored a blog entitled "Please, Don't Start a Theater Company."

A central theme from these various sources began to emerge, which was packaged quite nicely by Rebecca when she said: "In the past fifteen years, the number of nonprofit theater companies in the United States has doubled while audiences and funding have shrunk. Neither the field nor the next generation of artists is served by this unexamined multiplication of companies based on the same old model. The NEA's statistics on nonprofit growth, set against its sobering reports on declining arts participation, illuminate a crucial nexus for the field, a location of both profound failure and potential transformation."

If data indicates that the field continues to expand at an unsustainable rate propagating the continuance of a model that is considered by some to be out of touch with current realities, then why do we continue in such a manner? My thoughts below...

It's as American as apple pie. Let's face it, expansion is sexy. We are the children of manifest destiny. Starting from nothing and growing an empire. Conquering new frontiers. These are all American ideals. Hell, many of our childhood boardgames indoctrinate this philosophy. Is it any surprise that as adults we equate expansion with success? And this perception of success is handsomely rewarded. Grow your audience and your revenue, and you will increase your likelihood of additional contributed revenue. But if those metrics decline, you'll need to do some explaining.

Follow the money. In the 1990s, educational programming became a funding priority, so every theater across the nation rushed to create an education department. To some, it didn't matter if the programming was sub par, they just knew they needed a department to be competitive. In the 2000s, capital projects became a priority, and more than a decade later, we have new buildings all across the country. Some were desperately needed as aging infrastructure was failing, while others were less of a necessity but were built on hopes of significant future returns. After opening, some organizations thrived in their new facilities, while many others struggled almost from day one. In his article "New Facilities Aren't Always a Qualified Success"in the Kansas City Star, Scott Cantrell discusses the challenges of several major new performing arts centers, including Dallas's AT&T Performing Arts Center, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center and Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center. All of which opened without finishing their fundraising campaigns and operated with multi-million deficits. Two years into the new decade, it seems that funders have started to realize the magnitude of the problem, and are now beginning to focus on sustainability as a priority, providing working capital to companies to right-size, rather than providing incentives to expand.

Build it, and they will come. Prior to launching a capital campaign, most organizations commission at least one feasibility study to determine whether or not the company has the capacity to raise the necessary funds to pay for capital improvements. But how many thoroughly study whether or not there is enough support in their communities to sustain an expansion for decades to come? When Arena Stage opened the Mead Center for American Theater, I was thankful that the new building only increased overall capacity by 6% in comparison to the previous structure. Although renovations and improvements were desperately needed, I wasn't convinced that we could introduce a large amount of additional inventory into a city which was already trying to support five previously built new theater complexes. If desired and demand warranted, Arena Stage was able to increase inventory by expanding beyond its typical 9 month season, but they weren't forced into an expansion due to a large increase in the capacity of the new complex. The challenge for Washington at this moment is clear--we have dramatically increased supply over the past decade, and with our capital projects now complete, we must develop and support new audience development campaigns with as much gusto as our capital campaigns. We have to build our audiences, which up until now, we haven't successfully done in the last decade. This is the real challenge. Ten years from now, will our new theaters be empty?

Can you display it? I find it fascinating that many museums have an aggressive acquisition plan but only display a very small percentage of their current collection. There seems to be a commonly accepted premise that major museums only display 10% of their collection because they are limited in terms of space and resources. I can understand acquiring new objects that aren't in display condition for research purposes, but why expand a collection of display quality objects if you don't have the opportunities to display what you currently have? Again, I'm a novice in museum studies, but it would seem to me that before expanding, a museum might consider shifting its resources to developing traveling exhibits so its current collection can be seen. What's the point of acquiring items with very little likelihood of every displaying them to the public?

What's going on in Ohio? I've been closely following two non-profit arts organizations based in Ohio over the past few years, as I believe they can be an example to us all. The first, the Columbus Symphony, was featured in Thomas Cott's aforementioned email. After struggling for years, they conducted a study that indicated that the city of Columbus could only support a symphony with an $8 million operating budget instead of the $12.5 million budget they currently had. From this, they decided to "right-size" their organization to match the current demand in their market by joining forces with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts. Meanwhile across the state, the 90 plus year old Cleveland Playhouse laid off several senior staff members, dropped two productions from its season and trimmed its budget by 18% in 2009, prior to moving to the newly renovated 515 seat Allen Theatre in 2011. Previously, the Allen Theatre boasted 2,500 seats, but when the Cleveland San Jose Ballet left town, the Cleveland Opera downsized and Broadway tours dried up, the Allen Theatre was only in use 90 days out of the year because it was too big for most productions. The solution--the Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland State University and PlayhouseSquare partnered resulting in a newly renovated Allen Theatrewith 1,985 fewer seats! And it seems that it has worked out quite well for all involved. Revenue for the Cleveland Playhouse more than doubled and an underused space became the new talk of the town.

This isn't to say that expansion is always bad,  sometimes it is absolutely necessary. However, it isn't always beneficial, even during moments of great success. If your theaters are playing to capacity, perhaps you have discovered the sweet spot for your organization. Push just a little further, and too much of a good thing could tip the scales in an unfavorable direction, leaving you wondering how you managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Expansion can be attractive, but stability is pretty damn sexy too.

Purposeful Acquisition

Several years ago, I wrote a post entitled "You want to get into trouble? Concentrate on new audiences." At the time, I was confused and frustrated with the relentless focus on developing new audiences. The field's obsession with the new to the detriment of the loyal seemed illogical. My good friend Laura Willumsen, senior consultant at TRGArts, summed it up quite nicely by saying "we should find a way to love the one we're with, before we start courting others." Pretty safe advice that came at the perfect time for me.

Three years later, I have come to realize that healthy arts organizations have equally robust campaigns focused on new acquisition and retention, and increasingly we are focusing on improving the overall lifetime value of our customers.

For those with retention problems, I would still advise spending a majority of your resources reducing attrition before launching costly acquisition campaigns. There is nothing worse than spending a significant amount of resources enticing new patrons in the front door while your current customer base runs out the back door. And from a financial perspective, that is one of the easiest ways to sink the ship.

That said, if attrition and renewal rates are within the range of industry standards, more than likely it is time to concentrate on acquisition. Here are a couple of thoughts...

Programming. If you are looking to acquire new audiences, either you can dig a little deeper in your current well, or you can dig a new well altogether. If untapped audiences remain within your core programming, then continuing to dig deeper in your current well probably makes the most sense. If however, you find that your current programming has tapped out its audience base, digging a new well with expanded programming might be the key to acquiring new audiences. Digging a new well requires developing mission driven programming focused on an unmet need within your community. New programming initiatives are usually costly, and often times are prematurely abandoned when they don't hit a desired net revenue goal in a short period of time. Arts organizations need to view new programming initiatives as an investment in future audiences which will pay out over years instead of months. While digging new wells, it is important to maintain and cultivate your current well. Don't abandon the old for the new--let the returns from the old provide the investment capital for the new. Often times marketers are afraid of new programming because they don't want to risk offending current subscription audiences, but if you maintain a base level of traditional programming while offering an opportunity or two to test drive new programming, you will mitigate your risk of subscriber attrition. And for those who have highly subscribed houses, new programming might be the only opportunity that you have to get new audiences into your theaters which would otherwise be mostly sold out on subscription. During my final week at Arena Stage, I had to chuckle when a reporter asked me if we increased our number of musicals in the upcoming season because they were "cash cows." If only he knew that most musicals we produced actually lost money. Aside from artistic reasons, from a marketing perspective, we increased the number of musicals to attract more first time audiences, which we will then try to convert into lifetime patrons.

Direct Marketing. During the last year, I have heard of several companies eliminating acquisition efforts entirely due to budget cuts, thinking that investing exclusively in retention campaigns would result in higher returns over time because the ROI was better than comparable acquisition campaigns. Unless you are in desperate shape, please do not kill your acquisition efforts entirely. And here's why--if you currently have a healthy 80% renewal rate for your members/subscribers, it means every year you will lose 20% of your base. Statistics show that even if you have a flawless renewal campaign, you will still lose 10% due to changes in lifestyle or death. To replace those lost, you must invest in acquisition or budget for a reduced base each year that you don't. If you cut acquisition entirely, with an 80% renewal rate, you will lose half of your entire base in three years. And getting them back is going to be incredibly expensive! When looking at acquisition costs, often times it will take two to three years for a new member/subscriber to produce a net positive result, but over a lifetime, these new acquisitions will be responsible for years of renewal revenue.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. When the economy took a nosedive in 2008, marketers responded by looking for places to cut by thoroughly monitoring the cost of sale for individual campaigns. Normally, I would encourage such behavior. But I believe it has resulted in a zero sum game of gains and losses among the various theaters in the Washington, DC area. Studies show that even as venues have dramatically increased their capacities, theater audiences in our nation's capital have not grown. And as we all looked for opportunities to reduce our marketing expenses, we refocused our acquisition campaigns to aggressively target the list segments that performed the best, which frequently were qualified leads of theatergoers from other companies. The most cost effective means of acquiring "new" audiences was soliciting patrons from other theaters. Acquiring "new" audiences didn't actually mean developing new theatergoers as much as it meant marketing to previous theatergoers who had never visited your theater before. This wasn't dirty pool. It is standard operating procedure in any highly competitive marketplace. But as I left Arena Stage, being incredibly proud that we had almost doubled our subscriber base in three years, I found myself being more interested in the number of none theatergoers we were able to convert into theater patrons. And the truth is I don't know because we never tracked it. As a community, the greatest challenge we have is developing truly "new" audiences in Washington, DC. If we are using each other as a primary source for our "new" audiences, then we aren't creating a healthier community as our individual successes come at the expense of others. Therefore I encourage marketers to look at acquisition in terms of developing completely new audiences for the community as well as acquiring new audiences for your organization. The latter will improve your individual health, while the former the health of the artistic ecosystem.