This post is from an email from Mike Wein of Wien & Associates regarding ideas for collaboration within the Atlanta arts community. Click here to read my reply.
----------------------
Good afternoon,
I am writing you because I am not sure who I should be writing and hope you will review my comments, give me your thoughts and pass it on to the appropriate people.
I attended the ASAP meeting on Friday. I am not sure why I was invited or who invited me, but I was there and glad to be there. I learned a lot about the arts in Atlanta and found the information to be very informative.
As I have no idea, why I was invited, I also have no idea of what the expectations were. So, in the spirit of community involvement, I am going to assume I was there to help the different organizations think strategically about collaboration. So here are some semi-random, semi-organized thoughts that I hope will encourage more thinking and discussion on the subject.
Ken Bernhardt opened the marketing session by making an important point from the world of retail. Retail stores have learned that by working together, a group of stores can attract more business than individual stores promoting independently. And he suggested that we should provide the same concept to the Arts. I agree.
We also learned that while Atlanta has attracted a large and diverse number of organizations in the Arts world, that awareness for the variety of outlets is not very high. That sounds to me like an important call to action. So here are some thoughts that will hopefully stimulate some additional conversation within the Arts Community of Atlanta.
First, most of the Arts organizations in Atlanta have similar objectives:
- Attract more people to their venue ("butts in seats.")
- Build their base of members/subscribers
- Nurture potential donors/financial supports
Second, I believe for the sake of simplicity, we can divide the market into five market segments:
- Existing members/subscribers on at least on organization
- Young professionals who are not currently member/subscribers
- Other residents who are none of the above
- Visitors who have come to Atlanta to attend a meeting or convention
- Visitors who are tourists in Atlanta
Third, the area of greatest need within most Arts organizations is to build higher levels of awareness for their organization and thereby expand their audience. To develop effective ways to reach out to people who are currently not connected. To motivate people to become connect, to participate, to be inspired, to celebrate, and to enjoy what the artistic community has to offer. While there might be some hesitancy from the more mature organizations to share their customer base with others who may be competing for the same share of the wallet, there should not be any concern for joining together with "competitors" to try and attract new supporters and increase the overall universe for everyone.
This leads me to believe that community wide non-threatening collaboration could take place in three areas; attracting young professionals currently not associated with an arts organization, attracting visitors on business and attracting tourists. Since developing programs for the visitors is pretty straightforward and easy, let me focus my thoughts on young professionals. Specifically how does the Atlanta Arts Community inspire the young professionals to become more passionate, active, and involved in supporting the Arts? The answer is by coming together with this common bound to build this new audience and enrich the lives of so many.
Let's consider joining forces and developing programs or promotions that appeal to this new audience on a number of different fronts:
- Social - meeting people
- Education - exposure to new venues
- Community Involvement - volunteer opportunities
- Value - "Trial Size" offer to reduce first time risk
- Networking - meeting potential clients or referral sources
To give this concept more focus, let's pick a very specific target to start with - young professionals (Single and couples) between the ages of 30 and 40. We can reach many of them by starting with the human resources directors at the major law firms, accounting firms, commercial real estate companies, consulting firms and major corporations. They all have a vested interest in improving the quality of life in Atlanta and making this city a great place to work. With an attractive program and a core base of participants, we can encourage this group to help spread the word and attract a larger audience.
While I am not presumptuous enough to suggest the offer to attract and inspire this new group of future patrons, I am willing to suggest some ideas to further discussion
- Develop a combined menu that promotes each venue. This could be in the form of a printed brochure or a web site. It should also include special offer to encourage trail.
- Offer a number of sample packages that provide a significant discount for trying at least three new venues.
- Host a joint event at one location that features samples from five to 10 different venues. The samples might be short segments from performances, a discussion of an up coming play by the director or writer, or an exhibit of some of the works of art.
- Promote a "club night" exclusively for "members" of this target group that is not promoted to the public, is discounted and includes a back stage tour or a cocktail reception, or a guest lecture about the performance or works.
- Launch a formal organization that encourages young professionals to become active in the arts. Membership would require paying dues, participation in fund raising events to raise money for the arts, volunteering as man power to help some of the benefiting arts organizations. In return the Art organizations would annually provide one free event to educate and inspire members to become more involved. This might be a performance and reception days before the show opens to the public. This is not an original idea. It was a successful program in Dallas, Texas 30 years ago. The name was The 500 Club I believe.
As I said at the beginning of this message, I hope these random thoughts help to stimulate more creative ways for the community to come together to help each organization build new audiences, subscribers and passionate donors. If we can do that, we will all be enriched.
Mike Wien
Wien & Associates LLC
Fresh Perspectives for Profitable Growth
Office: (770) 518-0711
Cell: (404) 232-0058
E-mail: mike.wien@wien-associates.com
Web Site: www.wien-associates.com