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Audience Development for Jazz: 7 Steps to Heaven
- 1. Audience Development NorVolJazz Sunday 28th July 2013
- 2. 1. A few principles
- 3. “The term Audience Development describes activity which is undertaken specifically to meet the needs of existing and potential audiences and to help arts [and cultural] organisations to develop on-going relationships with audiences. It can include aspects of marketing, commissioning, programming, education, customer care and distribution.” What is Audience Development?
- 4. Audience development can focus on finding audiences outside the mainstream –i.e. “new audiences” or “audiences from socially excluded groups”. Audience development also reflects the relationship with audiences that develops over time with a focus on the long term.
- 5. As a process, audience development employs a range of marketing tools such as research, publicity, communication and customer relationship management. As an ethos, audience development places the audience at the heart of everything the organisation does. (source: Wikipedia / Arts Council England)
- 6. 2. The audience journey
- 7. You and your audience(s) • What are your objectives? • Who is your existing audience? • Who are your potential audiences?
- 8. Bridges and barriers • Identify bridges – Links with other genres or activities – Ways into the experience • Identify barriers – What could prevent people from coming, staying or returning?
- 9. Make them come • Outreach & promotion • Existing audience as Ambassadors • Assess your results
- 10. Make them stay • Warm welcome • Show your house rules • Work with the venue • Make it memorable
- 11. Make them come back • Keep in touch • Be relevant (and not too frequent) • Create rewards and incentives • Listen to feedback
- 13. Example: new audience (x) • Audiences that are new to you could be new to… – Jazz! – Your jazz! – The area
- 14. • New to the area – Identify their needs: • Address and directions • Type of venue: cost, dress code, food, „house rules‟… – Make it easy: • Website and Facebook „about‟ section • Photos, audience quote…
- 15. • New to your music – Identify their needs: • Descriptions, reviews • Audio & video • Full line-up, links – Make it easy: • Website/blog and Facebook page • Twitter feed
- 16. • New to jazz – Identify their needs: • Context, tradition and departure – Make it easy: • Programme, links, audio… • Facilitate interactions
- 17. 7 Steps to Audience Heaven • Avoid (too many) jazz references! • Set objectives and evaluate your success • Check out the competition and copy what works • Get involved in local networks • Try out one thing at a time • Carve a name for yourself (not the venue) • Follow the plan
Editor's Notes
- - It’s safe to assume that programming is already what you’re doing very well – so audience development is about turning your attention to your audience, and to their experience. We’ll see that it’s important to think of audiences – plural - so not just one group of people but several. And I said groups – again, you’ll go further if you think ‘group’ rather than individuals, because if you manage to craft a message or run a campaign that attracts several people, and continues to do so even when you’re not necessarily actively working on it, then you’ll save time and money. In brief, Audience Development is about expanding your audience range, not just by numbers, but in terms of their diversity. It’s also about nurturing relationships: creating audience journey paths, building or highlighting bridges, removing barriers or perceived barriers.
- Questions you have to ask yourself and take time to get right. Round the room: so what are your objectives? (more people – younger people – people who come more often – more people who come infrequently – people who love jazz – people who hate jazz…) In resources that you’ll get after workshop, you’ll get links to audience segmentation studies in the arts, research on audience behaviour… something that I encourage you to keep reading and researching. You can check out the Audience Agency and Audience Finder for case studies. You can also – if that’s your thing – join discussion groups on LinkedIn or follow people who deal with that sort of thing on Twitter. A word on Audience Segments: even though they’re deemed comprehensive and universal, there’s no such thing, and for example a Canadian arts marketing research agency would come up with different categories. So make up your own – think of groups of people in terms of what they share in common. E.g. “silver surfers” = people with white hair who use the internet. Make up your own categories to describe your existing or potential audiences – taking into account where they live (close / far), maybe their age, their “engagement” with jazz and with live music in general (e.g. The Jazz Freaks / The Anti-Jazz Musicophile…). You can evenget to think about the concept of audience – from theories of relation from spectator to art as a “disinterested interest” (Kant) – purely contemplative – to 20th century explorations of Art as Experience (John Dewey) – where the spectator is in fact an actor, art happens in him and by him – you can refer to the theory of reception, for example Umberto Eco – the Open Work. Also modern conceptions of “engagement” and “participation” – you must have heard this countless times – but thankfully you don’t need to use these ubiquitous terms outside your grant applications.
- Bridges: hooks, links, ways into the experience. E.g. someone who’s into non-jazz guitar music: could be interested in a jazz guitarist. Someone who is looking for social activities in their neighbourhood: could be interested in being part of a “friends of” scheme, helping out on the door… Barriers: they can be multiple and hidden. We talk a lot about barriers when we talk about accessibility – but it is worth saying that it can be physical barriers (e.g. steps) or barriers in communication (e.g. a very small font, bad contrast on website or font), and it can also be attitudinal barriers (e.g. if you get massive attitude at the door making you feel like you’re not welcome).
- Outreach and promotion: Have a plan; target groups rather than individuals; make it easy. See handout for links and tips, on media relations, social media etc. Existing audience as ambassadors: see handout too for reference (practical guide from ACE, 2003); existing audience can have a stake in the night, they don’t want it to disappear, and they can be pleased to be put to work for the good cause. Could use them as volunteers e.g. for ticket table, help with promotion, help with setting up… Also can brief them on objectives, e.g. try to understand why people come casually (to get more of them to come – because that could be an audience that won’t increase its visit frequency) Assess your results: e.g. retweets, number of followers, clicks, campaign success, promotional offer redeemed, feedback… Don’t waste your energy on what doesn’t work! We all make huge judgment mistakes on what works and what doesn’t…
- A Warm Welcome goes a long way! And thanking people for being there. And checking if they’re enjoying themselves. Not about being in their face but about genuinely caring for the quality of their experience, and not assuming that just because you think the music is great, people will have a good time – there are many other factors that could come into play. Show your house rules: it’s nice when you “get” whether it’s ok to chat or not, ok to get up and get a drink or not, in brief when you “get” the house rules. Sometimes it seems obvious, and that’s obviously a great success and it really helps people to feel part of a collective experience – sometimes it’s not so obvious, or maybe it’s safer anyway to assume that newcomers could do with a little bit of guidance, or maybe you might even want to change the atmosphere! This is something that could can express in different ways: things you could say at the door; on your website; on stage – photos perhaps of the audience, if they’re dancing, well, it’s one type of night, if they’re sitting down 2 meters apart from each other with little candles on their individual tables, well, that’s another type of night; this is about having, creating, enforcing an “atmosphere”, beyond what happens on the confines of the stage. Work with the venue: this helps actually in creating this atmosphere, it could be, make sure the service is pleasant, and sometimes venue staff are unpleasant with patrons because there’s some tension between the promoter and the venue management; it could also be, make sure the staff is well informed, you could be there for the staff briefing if they have one and present the line-up yourself, if that’s possible in your setting then that could be a very nice thing to do in terms of venue liaison; if there’s not staff briefing or you can’t attend, pass on this info to the manager so they can brief the staff. It should be a mutual relationship, although I should say now that ideally you should try not to be too closely associated with a venue – unless you are a venue – because if they shut or if you have to move for any reason or if you do something different somewhere else, you want your audience to know YOU, not the VENUE-where-there’s-some-jazz-on-Monday-nights. Make it memorable: this could take many forms so I leave it to your imagination, but in general, try to treat each single night like something that can resonate for a long time for everyone in the room.
- Keep in touch: collect names and emails for newsletter; make your presence on Twitter and Facebook known (flyer, poster, programme…). Be relevant (and not too frequent): newsletter no more than once a month; create content that responds to needs; monitor open rate and clicks; offer more than the website. Create rewards and incentives: optional! can be intangible! Or ticket offer, insider scoop, opportunities to meet artists… membership & subscriptions. Listen to feedback: if you don’t change, you’re not removing barriers or building bridges. Could be small things, but try to acknowledge them all and assess whether it would work for the rest of the audience. E.g. accessibility, which means physical access but also access to information.
- So chances are that what you want – in terms of audience development – is a new audience, or new audiences. So what exactly is a new audience? What are they new to? We’re going to take these examples – very much simplified and generic, but hopefully they work for everyone here – to demonstrate how to approach audience development planning. I talked before about audience segmentation – and you’ll have links to some studies in your handout, for example the Arts Council’s 13 segments – they’re useful in the way they detail the behaviour, needs, recommended type of approach for each type of audience, so it’s a good read for inspiration.
- Reduce risk! Make it easy to take the plunge and try out your night.