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 looked at the impact of pre-performances talks on audiences’ enjoyment and their confidence in interpreting the dancework. The only difference between audience members who had been to the pre-show talk and those who had not was that their interpretation of the piece more closely matched the intentions of the choreographer. They didn’t feel any more confident and rated their enjoyment in a similar way. So, pre-show talks are not an effective tool for audience development unless our goal is to ensure the audience thinks like us. What made the difference was the time spent after the performance thinking about and discussing what they had seen as part of the research methodology. The researchers suggest that post-performance discussions where the audience gets to do the talking rather than listens to an expert would work much better…

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Customer experience

Heather Maitland warns about making assumptions when researching your customers’ experience

Researching how satisfied people are with the experience your organisation offers is not straightforward. It is all too easy to research the things that your colleagues think are important rather than what really matters to your customers.

Ellen Garbarino and Mark Thompson analysed the experiences of audiences at an off-Broadway repertory theatre to try and identify the factors that create customer satisfaction and loyalty.

They concluded that, for frequent attenders, satisfaction with the quality of the acting was the main factor driving trust and the preference for familiar actors drove commitment. The quality of the physical facilities affected their satisfaction but not their levels of trust, commitment or their future intention to return.

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Open to Persuasion

Getting the message across

When First Sport say they are ‘First for replica shirts’, we know instantly what they are offering and to whom.

When 20th Century Fox ask ‘If you had the opportunity, would you?’, we know what Unfaithful is about.

A single minded offer is essential when you have so little time to get your message across. Your advertisement has to stop readers in their tracks but, having got their attention, you need to tell them instantly what you are offering. If you don’t, they will turn the page.

The National Gallery tells us exactly what’s in the tin: ‘Golden Opportunity – free events to celebrate the Golden Jubilee’. The Theatre Museum, however, have so many different things to tell us about that the overall message is one of confusion (particularly because the ad has a subheading ‘Free entry’ above some ticket prices). This advertisement doesn’t tell readers what they need to know – what The Theatre Museum is about and what kind of experience they might expect. The Natural History Museum’s ad certainly catches the eye as it hoovers up the text on the page. But the copy line that makes the all important offer, ‘Play with the forces of nature’, is tucked away in tiny type at the foot of the page…

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