Ideas

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas at your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What advice would you give to a fellow arts marketer before embarking on a website redesign project?" 

Jonathan Carpenter and Jack Wright (Celebrity Series of Boston), Nora Brady (Los Angeles Philharmonic), and Rosemary Devine and Tori Harvey (People's Light) highlight their most recent website redesigns, and answer everything from choosing a project manager, to their biggest successes and most valuable learnings. 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is confusing to marketers. Of course it is! GDPR is a legal issue and we are not lawyers. At CI we want to be helpful so what we can provide is what our lawyer sent to us and other resources we have found useful in facing GDPR for our business. This is the first post we’re publicly releasing with another specifically about Google Analytics to follow. CI clients will be hearing more from us individually.

At Capacity Interactive, we work with nearly two hundred arts and cultural organizations and have the privilege of tackling challenges in the digital marketing realm with them every day.

Certain questions come up again and again across all organization shapes and sizes, and that inspired us to retool our benchmark. Some of the toughest questions for organizations involve where to put their money, how to staff their teams, and how to set priorities when there is always more to do.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas at your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What are some unique ways to highlight the benefits of becoming a subscriber or member?" 

Kerry Ingram (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Karina Kacala (Opera Philadelphia), Jackie Ortiz (Pasadena Playhouse), and Vanessa Ramirez-Sparrow (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) answer everything from creating unique content for different audiences to keeping subscription and membership campaigns fresh each year. 

At the end of 2017, we published the Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study, a collaboration with WolfBrown where we surveyed nearly 27,000 people who purchased a performing arts ticket within the prior two years at one of the 58 organizations that partnered with us on this study. We wanted to take a bird's eye view of what types of media arts buyers were consuming most often, and where they are getting their information about cultural events.

Ask the Industry features arts marketing practitioners from organizations across genres and budget sizes. This is advice from arts marketers in their own words - we hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas at your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What tools do you use to manage a centralized calendar (for content and/or project management)?”

Ashley Haraburda (National Ballet of Canada), Aly Michaud (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), and Lee Bowen, Jennifer Rensenbrink, Isaac Risseeuw, and Marsha Walker from the Minnesota Orchestra answer everything from choosing the right software for your organization to making the case for them in a world of tight budgets.

The Census tells us that, by 2050, Latin Americans will make up the majority of the United States population, and in 2015, they made up almost 20%. On the flip side, the National Endowment of the Arts survey in 2015 showed that 80% of arts patrons will continue to be white in the years to come. The disconnect between the advancement of the arts and the advancement of the world around us is painfully evident. Not just in racial issues, but in gender equality issues as well. As an industry, we pride ourselves on our forward thinking, and yet, Artnet News asked 20 women if the arts world was biased. Their responses included:

One thing we love about working with the arts community is the field’s willingness to share successes, challenges, and learnings. Most often, this happens at conferences. Instead of only connecting at sporadic events throughout the year, we decided to create a year-round forum where we can learn from practitioners. This forum will provide insight into commonly asked questions and give an opportunity to share learnings and best practices. Enter: Ask the Industry.

The end of the year is a contemplative time for me. While 2017 was a tough year in the broader context, it was a year of immense growth for me personally and professionally.