Comments on: Theater and Brand Stewardship

By: David J. Loehr

David J. Loehr — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Glad you loved the post!

Excerpts would be fine, with elaboration on how this might apply to your readers and community, but we’d prefer people come here to read the full post. We’d also be happy to include your blog on our blogroll to send people over there as well.

Thanks!

By: Robyn Linden

Robyn Linden — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:40:00 +0000

This is a terrific post. Thank you so much for the expansive thoughts on this important topic. I’d really love to repost it on my new Arts Marketing blog, http://robynlinden.wordpress.com, with all attributional credit to you and 2AMt. Would that be ok with you? Feel free to reply to me via email at robyn.linden@gmail.com

By: plainkate

plainkate — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:59:56 +0000

I love that you are so brilliant! Your company is going to be even more amazing with you at the helm!
I am always surprised by how few people at a given company know what the mission is, or why that matters. But it is inextricably tied to the question of brand and core essence, methinks.

By: plainkate

plainkate — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:52:25 +0000

Gwydion, I love your notion of 'core essence' in relation to brand. RE: individual artists, I once heard someone say that if you do not brand yourself, someone else will do it for you; that one had best identify her brand or risk having it done for her. Thanks for this!

By: Amy Wratchford

Amy Wratchford — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:43:49 +0000

Excellent piece, Gwydion! I would take it even further and say that brand perception and definition does not begin and end in the marketing department (or even artistic and marketing) but goes throughout the entire organization. How the box office staff communicates on the phone and in person, how the development department reaches out (or doesn't) to current and future donors, how the education department runs a workshop, these all have direct impact on our brand. I think that many theatres get so caught up with the day-to-day work of this business that a unified brand message gets completely lost. I also think that discussions like the ones happening on this blog are exactly the reminders we need to bring our organizations back into full focus.

By: Gwydion Suilebhan

Gwydion Suilebhan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:03:02 +0000

“It takes less marketing budget to be honest than to lie convincingly.” Truer words about brand have never been written, though I think it's actually impossible to lie convincingly and get away with it. When it comes to brand, you have to walk the walk — an individual theater-goer may not see through the sham, but the crowd eventually will.

Sounds like Woolly's on the right path, unsurprisingly. You guys do so many things right. That bell curve is evident, by the way — I'm thinking, just for example, of the work you did surrounding the Mike Daisey/Theatre Failed show. You should be proud.

By: Pete Miller

Pete Miller — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:45:48 +0000

I've been involved in Woolly Mammoth's efforts over the last two years to reinvent how we market and engage with the audience. An important concept that has been emerging there is that we want to share with audience members a bell curve of communication experiences around each production ramping up with marketing materials and background reading opportunities and tailing off with audience members participating in post show discussions and online discussions. On this curve, attendance of a performance just represents the crescendo of the whole experience. I've found this to be a useful perspective.

Marketing IS a crass endeavor to lure people in to see (and in many cases pay for) a performance, but at the same time it IS an artistic opportunity to prepare audience members for the performance experience and to accurately describe the experience so that people who are most likely to engage with it in a valuable way are those who choose to attend.

Post show discussions, whether in person or in other forms ARE a desperate struggle to draw people closer to the presenting company to secure their love and support, but at the same time ARE a sincere effort to share with audience members the excitement and artistic impulse that inspired the production in the first place and to learn from them what the production has become as it reaches its only long term existence - memories in the minds of audience members.

We've also just gone through a branding study with assistance from a group of volunteer marketing professionals. They told us some great stuff about how we are seen, which fortunately largely maps onto how we would like to be seen. Now we're going through their findings to choose a few key words that are already out there in public perception of us that we want to push more forcefully in our messaging. The aim is to find the intersection between what people already believe to be true about us and what we want to be true about us and to push in that direction both in our communications and in our behavior.

It's still early days for us on all of this, but I believe we're going to succeed, mostly because we are committed to only choose brand positions that we already have or are actively striving to build. It takes less marketing budget to be honest than to lie convincingly.