Putting this out there, again:
I was thinking about all the details I have to get done for the organization I am working for at the moment. It is a big list of everything that is involved with marketing a season. It includes all the planning for audience development, marketing direction for the season, advertising, social media, printing, public relations (including writing all the releases), and more.
When looking at a big (bigger) organization, the marketing department has many people doing all of these different tasks to get the job done. This means that a particular person has a more specialized job. Their job may be just to work on the social media or broader digital marketing. You would have another person doing the advertising plans. And so on.
At a conference, many times representatives from bigger organizations are chosen. However, the advice and inspiration can fall flat for the small to mid-sized organizations because they probably have only one person doing all of the jobs that it takes to have a full marketing program. This means that there are limits to capacity to launch some of the major projects that are mentioned at a conference, and not to mention, the small to mid-sized organizations may not have the budget to undertake the project.
I agree that “if there is a will there is a way,” yet we have to consider the “wringing blood from a turnip” as well.
I have no idea why this is not considered when a conference is planned. It is rare to see advice that is specifically for the time crunched, shoe-string budgeted arts administrator.
There is a major difference in mentality for running the small to mid-sized organizations. The people at small to mid-sized have to wear many hats, and they have to come up with some pretty interesting ideas to make their budgets work for them. I do think it is time to open the podiums to experts that can help these kinds of organizations as well. Or, at the very least, get a translator to find ways for the solutions to work for all types of organizations.
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences (and happy arts administrators),
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS
