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Audiences North East’s most popular workshop has always been its New Developments in Marketing event, which was delivered this year by myself and ANE’s Marketing Manager Caroline Greener. ‘Starter for Ten’, is the first part of a 2 part blog and is my overview of the marketing trends affecting the cultural sector and provides cultural marketers with shortcuts to the tools for engaging audiences more effectively.  Next week you can read Caroline’s ‘Play Mobile’, a whistle-stop tour of smartphones, which investigates the possibilities for cultural marketers to capitalise from the opportunities presented by this increasingly important communications method.

STARTER FOR TEN

1.            The Lip Balm Effect

In 2009 at our first new developments in marketing workshop we talked about ‘the lipstick effect’, with consumers treating themselves to small luxuries. This subsequently became ‘the lip gloss effect’ the following year and by 2012 ‘the lip balm effect’ as consumers have less and less money to spend on discretionary items. The economic downturn has driven cultural organisations to make a step-change in two income generation areas – pricing strategies and philanthropy. For pricing novices I recommend Arts Council England’s ‘Call it a Tenner‘, now a few years old but still a really good introduction to pricing methodologies. To progress onto a more sophisticated understanding of pricing strategies investigate Tim Baker’s The Pricing Institute www.baker-richards.com and for those who really want to be challenged invest in Nagle and Holden’s ‘Strategy and Tactics of Pricing’. There’s no doubt also that philanthropy is this year’s hot topic and coming from someone who has had to learn the basics very quickly, Michael Kaiser’s ‘25 Rules for Fundraising’ available from www.artscouncil.org.uk is an excellent starting point. I recommend also that you join www.artsmanager.org for access to a mixed bag of free resources on philanthropy.

2.            Join the Crowd

A gold star to Adam Lopardo of The Sponsors Club www.sponsorsclub.org.uk for providing facts and figures on my next trend, Crowd Funding. Adam identified the need to find out about crowd funding’s track record and was able to glean information direct from wedidthis.org, wefund.com, crowdfunder.co.uk and sponsume.com. Whilst still in its infancy, Crowd Funding has made a creditable start with each site on average raising £120k each year. Basic stats included: projects put on the sites needed money ranging from £60 to £150k; 75% of all the projects got some pledges; 27% of projects were fully funded; pledges ranged from £1 to £3k; the mean pledge was £47 and the modal was £20. His top tips were: rewards matter in ‘tipping’ donors to pledge more; set achievable goals – projects with large totals rarely get off the ground; allocate time to get the message out; get ‘friends’ on board first, others will follow; money isn’t everything… successful projects realised marketing is the most valuable benefit as it engaged ‘friends’, spread the word and built advocates.

3.            Spamming the World

My third trend emphasises the need for cultural marketers to take stock and get back to basics. The explosion of digital communication methods complicates an already crowded market place of offline methods. How do cultural marketers use the vast array of both online and offline channels in a cost effective manner to produce personalised messages that lead to engagement? That tried and tested marketing method integrated marketing communications is as relevant now as it was years ago when it was first mooted. The approach ensures that marketing communications work together as a unified force rather than against each other, and wastage is minimised from ever-decreasing marketing budgets.

4.            The (not so) Big Society

The RSA’s Georgina Chatfield gave a fascinating presentation at last week’s Knowledge Exchange Network at Newcastle University’s Culture Lab. Her outline of Peterborough’s Citizen Power project www.citizenpower.co.uk for the first time showed me how The Big Society concept could mobilise people to improve their lives and their local community. The collaboration between the citizens of Peterborough, the RSA, Arts Council England and Peterborough City Council involves six interconnected projects, each of which addresses priorities identified by the local authority and Peterborough residents. The marketing challenges presented by the project included: getting people to engage (addressed by targeting key community groups and community leaders); realising that social media is not the only way to engage; some nervousness initially about whether to moderate social media/blogs/content; capacity to engage with social media with the best times to engage being in the evenings; the value of social media was in supporting and encouraging face-to-face engagement - it is a means to an end not the end itself; setting up robust evaluation methods both online and offline; the different scales and target audiences of projects – some projects targeted a number of segments, some at closely defined segments; coping with the range of people involved – volunteers, local councillors, artist and arts organisations and community leaders.

5.            Retro Revival

From afternoon teas to gooey cupcakes, 1970s plastic cassettes to cassette skinned iPhones, knitting circles to Kirsty Allsopp’s Handmade Britain, from the 1927 Metropolis to this year’s The Artist – all these point to a retro revival trend. Who’s going to become the next Cath Kidston of the cultural sector and pull off a retro revival? The North East’s very own Tyneside Cinema www.tynesidecinema.co.uk is a retro revival success story with its knitting club ‘A Good Yarn’ enticing this crafty community with the allure of comfy sofas, a private bar and an in-house knitting queen. For a more techie update on a bygone era, social bookmarking site Pinterest taps into the scrapbook phenomenon and is now the fastest growing referrer to retail websites www.pinterest.com

6.            A Shedload of Toolkits

The past year has seen a flurry of activity in toolkit development and resources with my top nine being: Arts Council England’s updated Arts audiences: insight aka The Blue Book www.artscouncil.org.uk; Dinner and a Show and Family and Community Focused Toolkits written by All About Audiences and Audiences North East based on work carried out by themselves and &Co (available from Arts Council England later this month); Festivalslab’s DNA Toolkit www.festivalslab.com; Audiences London’s Researching audiences at outdoor events and Cultural Tourism resources www.audienceslondon.org; See a voice www.see-a-voice.org; Kids in Museums manifesto www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk and AMA Arts Marketing Standards www.a-m-a.co.uk

7.            Experience Design

Whilst not a new concept, Experience Design has been gaining momentum in the cultural sector. Cultural consultant Lisa Baxter tapped into this trend with her new business www.theexperiencebusiness.co.uk and Edinburgh’s Festivalslab www.festivalslab.com has catapulted this approach way up the audience focus agenda. Festivalslab’s work aims to identify and develop Edinburgh – for audiences, artists, partners and for the festivals. The resulting Festivals Design DNA is a superb resource - packed full of qualitative, low cost techniques, which could be used across the wider cultural sector.

8.            Aging Hipsters aka Baby Boomers

I was horrified to discover recently that I’m within the tail end of the baby boomer cohort. This demographic bulge of a higher birth rate between 1946 and 1964 has a marked effect on the rest of the population – their accumulation of the nation’s wealth and housing stock coupled with their consumer spending power means they are a force to be reckoned with. More recent social changes to their lifestyle such as boomerang children, childcare duties as grandparents and, for the younger ones(!), our pensions slipping through our fingers have complicated the picture though. The implications for engaging with this segment crosses all areas of cultural marketing from preferred communication channels, addressing accessibility issues, providing intergenerational activities to targeting them as a potential pool of donors.

9.            Avoid Green Washing

Consumers are becoming increasingly eco-savvy and cynical about sweeping, ‘green washing’ claims by organisations regarding their environmental efforts. The point here is to be specific about initiatives such as package reduction, ethical sourcing and reduction in food miles. Julie’s Bicycle www.juliesbicycle.com champions environmental concerns amongst the cultural sector and I view them as a ‘green barometer’ of where the cultural sector should be heading. Its initiatives such as 100 Green Riders and Better Batteries Campaign are simple ideas which could have massive impact.

10.          Brief Encounter

There are a growing number of laws, regulations and codes affecting the marketing profession – both within national boundaries and laws passed elsewhere. The Chartered Institute of Marketing www.cim.co.uk publishes its latest Shape the Agenda paper this month on marketing and the law, but in the meantime the two hot topics for cultural marketers are this year’s biggest events – the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic Games. Both of these events have regulations for use of words and phrases associated with them. There’s blanket approval for the phrases ‘Diamond Jubilee’ and ‘Jubilee’ providing they are used for non-commercial purposes. However, phrases such as ‘Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee’ or ‘The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee’ need permission (visit www.royal.gov.uk for details). LOCOG has special statutory powers and legal rights to prevent ambush marketing and to ensure that only official sponsors of the Olympic Games are able to use the various Olympic marks including use of the Olympic Rings, torch, flame, colour combinations, mottos, specific words or combinations of words (visit www.london2012.com for details).

The ‘Starter for Ten’ presentation is available on Audiences North East’s slideshare.

Alison O’Hara

Chief Executive

Audiences North East

One of my new year’s resolutions was to have a good look at social media use, especially for our own business.  However, as a ‘fully-paid-up-card-carrying member of the dinosaur club’ irritated by the facile ramblings of angst ridden teenagers, or those who post their breakfast ingredients on Facebook I was hugely turned off by the thought.  Like many cultural organisations we don’t have a dedicated team of digital brains working beyond the speed of light. So, coffee in hand and grump factor high, I bit the bullet and I was blown away on the first baby steps of my journey into the ‘dark side’ where I thought teenagers just poked, hung out and fell out.  I started my journey with stats because that felt sensible and I asked myself ‘what?’ and ‘why?’.  You know that Audiences UK loves stats and data because, used and translated well, the knowledge gained informs really sound decisions and even Eureka moments.  I am now going to indulge...

You have to admit it, the stats are globally impressive, especially for a novice like me.  By 2014, 50% of corporate sales will be through social network presences and mobile apps.  90% of consumers trust peer to peer recommendations whereas trust in advertising is just 14%.  If Facebook were a country it would be the 3^rd largest in the world. If Wikipedia were a book it would be 2.25 million pages long and take over 123 years to read. You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world (source:Social Media Revolution 2011).  The average age for social media users is 37 years old and more than half of the pensioners in the UK are now on Facebook (source: Social Media Findings in the UK).  Facebook is tops where it comes to sharing press releases but Twitter is much more effective in generating traffic.  Add images, video or audio and you can generate 3.5 times more traffic (source: PRNewser). We have really social media savvy audiences out there, but as a ‘business’ does culture make best use of our creative skills set and corporate personalities to woo them?  I’ll let you into a secret – blogging is hard, very hard, some have a gift but most don’t.  But it’s no longer a question of whether we use social media but how well we craft the content to engage.

And it’s the engagement which really appeals.  Social media is instant and there’s a further guilty pleasure – it’s very voyeuristic.  You can get to know people really well (if they’re interesting) and while you’re at it also run a really quick competitor analysis – how many Flickr photos do they have, Facebook likes, Twitter followers, You Tube channel views?  How do you as a cheerleader for your organisation and your own organisation stack up?  Sadly, it’s not just a case of being out there for the sake of it, you have to create information which is meaningful to your audience, and before that it is essential to identify your social media objectives.  This could be a ‘Keep it Simple’ approach where you may have just 3 objectives, say to amplify your event, increase awareness and increase reach.  Then consider the social media platform and create your strategy appropriately.  There are so many tools out there to make you into a social media dj – have a look at Buffer, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Sprout Social – most of these tools give you analytics too so you can track click rates and increases in your cyber traffic.  But think on – you have just 144 characters to get your message across and here creativity (good grammar and spelling) rules - you have to be a Conversationalist not a Broadcaster.  This is where ‘blending’ your personal and business profiles are either flawed or a resounding success.  Hone your skills if you’re a reluctant tweeter like me and just have a go.  Perhaps use Social Media Week starting 13^th February as your foray into this strange new world?  Personally, I’m not renewing my membership to the dinosaur club this year, instead I’m watching trending, analysing traffic and trying to be engaging – for at least an hour a day.  #hardwork.

So, the truth is out there, but comes with a word of warning – what happens in Vegas stays on Flickr, Twitter, You Tube Facebook...

Gerry Wall, @audiencesgerry

General Manager, Audiences UK

Over the last few months, doing a mix of arts marketing lecturing and market research with arts organisations, one contrast in particular has struck me.