I had a great time at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference (a.k.a. NAMPC) in Portland, OR, a conference of the Americans for the Arts.  This year was all about “Powered by Community.” To read my individual experience, you can click on this Storify I created.

As with many conferences, themes start to appear.  I saw some very encouraging themes this year since many are audience development related.  The following are a few I personally feel compelled to share with you:

• It’s not just about selling the tickets. People don’t want to just buy, they want to join.  This is audience development! The building of the relationships to get them more involved is what matters.  Treating people like people again and having them excited to join in a community you have created, with interesting offerings that are relevant to them, will get people more involved in the arts again.  I was particularly enthusiastic about the EMBRACING TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IN THE ARTS session which provided case studies of building their audiences through community engagement programs and new ways to function as an arts organization.  It’s not about us and them, it’s about building a team of community for the organization both from within and without.

  The last keynote session CLOSING KEYNOTE WITH PAM MOORE, fit into this theme in regard to how you use social media.  Using your feeds to spam marketing messages to purchase art and tickets is not going to engage people and want them to join, but having meaningful conversations and building relationships will.

• Experiment and don’t be afraid to fail.  There were a few sessions that had this theme running through them.  One session I was sorry to miss was Activating Spaces: Using Your Venue to Promote Engagement and Drive Arts Businesses Forward. From the tweets that were coming out of this session, it seemed to be all about experimenting with new ways to use your space to engage more with your audiences.  Projects like projecting your social media feeds onto an outside wall and using the space for community projects to get people having hands-on arts experiences were highlighted.

  My session also talked about experimenting with A/V content:

  CONQUERING THE FEAR FACTOR: CREATING AND PROMOTING GREAT A/V CONTENT ON A SHOESTRING.  We specifically made a point to tell people that it is okay to fail and that trying something new is hard, but through the experiments, knowledge will be the outcome to keep getting better and better.
  
  I also attended THE SUBSCRIPTION ALTERNATIVE, which was all about experimenting with different memberships and alternatives to our traditional subscriptions.  The good news is that these experiments were very successful and offered not only new ways to become more involved with the arts organizations, but had some great community elements that connected them back to the community.  There was a Netflix-like membership program, a program specifically for Millennials, and an all access pass program.  You never know what is going to work unless you try it, and it was encouraging to see the amount of research and planning that went into each of these programs before they implemented.
• One theme that is near and dear to my heart – know your audiences!  Know where they are at online and in your community.  Know their preferences and what is relevant to them.  Know how they like to engage and how they consume information.  Know what types of programs and projects would get them excited to be involved.  Know your audiences beyond all the demographic data.  Learn their psychographics, their common behaviors.  Get to know them as people (not just a number).  Of course I said this at my session, but a particular session really brought this point home: THE PATRON LENS: USING DATA-DRIVEN TARGETED MESSAGING TO ENGAGE AUDIENCES.  This session emphasized that knowing the different types of members within your audience will allow you to create specific programs and offerings for these subsets.  The best example was from a newbie to the classical music world, David Dombrosky.  He is mainly a theatre goer, but decided to take in a concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his time meeting with them.  The concert was definitely an advanced concert.  It started out accessible with Mozart, but the second half was the  hour and 2o minute Bruckner 4!  Having performed Bruckner and being very familiar with this composer, a warning to newbies would have been a good thing.  Having a special section of program notes to clue newcomers into this marathon experience would have helped them to relax and feel more in the know.  One of the main reasons we are not attracting newcomers is because we are not speaking to them specifically.  This was a great case in point to show how much we really do need to get to know all our audiences and relate to them in specific ways.

  One of my favorite sessions, THE ARTS IN ACTION: EXPERIMENTING WITH CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY, taught us more about how humans think when purchasing and participating.  Getting to know people’s tendencies in general is both fascinating and very useful.  Tips such as people may be more inclined to purchase and join if the message is coming from a friend or trusted person were discussed.  This one in particular is audience development since the building of relationships will increase the likelihood of attending and supporting.  I have too many notes to post here.  I really hope Ron Evans from Group of Minds will write a book about these findings so everyone can learn, until then, I guess you had to be there or catch his next presentation.

• I attended the Crowdfunding session: THE DONOR CONNECTION: BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH CROWDFUNDING.  A few mentions caught my audience development attention.  Of course the “get to know your donors,” a similar message from the last main point, was made.  Know what your donors truly care about and produce benefits that they would want, or not.  They brought up that some people do not want the “swag,” but rather simply donate to the cause without wanting rewards.  They also made a point that smaller donations add up and treating the “little guy” with special respect is important.
• Evaluation is key!  We are not going to be able to stop the status quo cycle until we know what is working and what is not working.  Once we know, we can get rid of the dead weight programs and share with others our findings to create a stronger arts industry in general.
• Catching up with technology was another major theme.  We seem to be a little behind in offering and communicating about our arts through current technology.  Several sessions brought this point home.  I had missed the beginnings of
  WINNING WEBSITES: OPTIMIZING THE PATRON EXPERIENCE, but when I was able to join this session, they were discussing making websites work for cross platforms for online and mobile.   Consumers are using mobile more and more at an alarmingly  increasing rate.  If your website is not readable on mobile platforms, you may miss out on the next generations.  All of the sessions that talked about Millennial interaction stressed this theme as well.
• Diversity was a theme, although I wished it was more of one.  They had their main panel at 8 am in the morning after a late night of networking fun, so it was fairly empty.  I wanted to see that ballroom packed!  This is an issue that is only going to become more important as the years go on.  From the AFTA Conference in June, I learned that the minority will be the majority within the next decade!  We have to address this issue and put it more front and center in the future.  There were a few sessions that discussed diversity, but I hope to see it become more of a theme for a future conference.
• My absolute favorite of the entire conference was the very first keynote, OPENING KEYNOTE WITH KEVIN CARROLL.  OMG!  Not only was he a phenomenal speaker and storyteller, but he brought to life what it was like to be raised by community.  From a scarily meager background sprouted a confident, creative, and talented being through his use of community avenues.  His story about how he realized something big at the age of 6 was amazing, that play is important.  Later he came to communicate that play is important for business and in business, and since then, he has led a very charmed life to be able to implement this concept.  Did you know that 1 hour of play will help you to understand and get to know a person more than 1 year of business relations?  Go out and play!  I missed out on buying and getting my book signed, but hope you will consider buying his book Red Rubber Ball At Work: Elevate Your Game Through the Hidden Power of Play.

I might have missed a few themes, but in general, it was a very inspiring conference to help arts marketers and development staff to grow and move into the 21st Century.  I hope to see you at next year’s conference in Atlanta and am looking forward to finding out what will be unveiled as the main theme for the year. Until then, keep building relationships with your audiences and get to know them as people. An entire new world of community for your organization can result!

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,

Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Founder and Chief Audience Builder, Audience Development Specialists