Measuring engagement pt II...

Arts Professional: Essential Audiences 30 June 2008 More about measuring engagement I have found myself thinking a lot recently about how cultural organisations can measure the way that audiences, visitors and participants experience what they have to offer. It all started when I discovered that Scottish arts organisations had asked a session on measuring public engagement at the Scottish Cultural Forum in February. We’re clearly interested but, as I said in my article in March, what we tend to measure is what we think they ought to be doing and feeling. Researchers in Australia...

Public engagement...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 30 – June 2008 How do the public engage with culture? Heather Maitland explores what we know about the way people experience the arts and what we are learning from this … Research into public engagement with cultural activities divides into four areas: · What kind of people visit, attend and participate in culture and who is missing? · What types of activity do they engage with and what is the crossover between them? · What motivates people to engage, and what prevents them? · How do people actually experience a particular cultural...

Design and the brain...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 29 – April 2008 Killer communication Heather Maitland looks at using design to make your marketing communications more effective Our potential customers need to understand our marketing communications and remember them positively when they make a decision about how to spend their leisure time. So how can we increase understanding and positive recall? Both depend on how much attention our potential customer focuses on the communication, subconscious as well as conscious Everyone subconsciously scans their environment all the time. When...

Measuring engagement...

Arts Professional: Essential Audiences article 24 March 2008 Measuring engagement For decades, marketers have been trying to understand their customers’ experiences. Mason Haire first talked about ‘selling the sizzle not the steak’ way back in 1950. And it’s not just marketers. Retailers worry about their customers’ emotional experiences when shopping because they know that improving the ambience of the shop means people buy more. Designers worry about how people feel when they use their products because they want to create things that work. There’s a whole research...

Branding 2008...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 28 – January 2008 Complex relationships abound Heather Maitland discovers that most research into brands is case-study based and here she explains why Branding is well researched: Google Scholar comes up with over 6,000 books and articles published in academic journals with ‘brand’ in the title. Mark J Kay1 points out, though, that much of the research into successful brands is based on case studies. These case studies have shaped the way that brands are managed, emphasising the importance of differentiation and consistency. In effect,...

Partnerships with community groups...

Arts Professional: Essential Audiences 19 November 2007 The art of collaboration Heather Maitland considers the sometimes tricky relationships between arts practitioners and their partners, and offers some tips for keeping professional relationships on the right track When did you last check the health of your relationship? Here’s a litmus test, Cosmo quiz style: You like Top Gear and your partner likes cookery programmes. What do you do? a) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – it’s more peaceful that way b) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – they’ll...

Email campaigns...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 27 – October 2007 Let’s walk before we run Heather Maitland investigates how we are getting on with our e-mailing campaigns Last autumn, my colleague, Beth Aplin, joined 13 venues’ email lists to see what happened. Although she was playing the role of a dance enthusiast, just five venues sent her relevant emails at an appropriate frequency. She got nothing at all from five venues and one venue sent her an average of two emails a week about everything from kids’ shows to musicals. We hear a lot about the excellent results achieved...

Reaching the hard to reach...

Arts Professional: Essential Audiences 16 July 2007 Reaching the unreachable Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable? Heather Maitland makes some suggestions. Some arts organisations exist to reach people no-one else engages with. Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable? The government has set its agencies working with young people the target of reducing the proportion of 16 to 18 year-olds...

Sources of information...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 26 – July 2007 In the know Heather Maitland advises you to think about what you want to know – it may be that someone already knows the answer The point of marketing planning is to make informed decisions about what will get your organisation from where it is now to where it wants to go. So where can you get the information to support those decisions? Wait before you reach for that questionnaire, because someone has probably done the work for you. There is such a lot of readily available information about audiences (by audiences, I mean...

Cultural diversity statistics...

Journal of Arts Marketing Issue 31 – July 2008 What do we know about our culturally diverse population? Heather Maitland on Britain’s increasingly multicultural society Hardish Virk, this issue’s guest editor, asked me to research the answers to three simple questions: • How have the UK’s demographics changed? • What will be the impact of recent immigration trends? • What is the impact of recent immigration from Eastern Europe? I wish the answers were as straightforward as the questions. How have the UK’s demographics changed? In the simplest terms, we need...