Art and Marketing
Continued from Arts Marketing….
The arts seem to exist on a continuum, with mass production at one end, such as cinemas and TV programmes to niche production, fine art and high culture at the other end. A key point to make is that unlike traditional marketing focus, the customer is only an element in the production of these arts, not the primary factor.
Although failing to define concepts, Scheff & Kotler (1996) do leave clues in the article as to their opinions on the arts. They state that ‘Art is a pure expression. it is visionary and when successful, it leads an audience on a journey that for many is a previously unimagined experience.” This statement gives clues to the authors perspective, as clearly been positive about the arts, which may bias the conclusions of the articles.discussion.
Scheff and Kotler are very descriptive in setting the scene of the ‘arts crisis’ however, the authors fail to comment upon the poor management of the situation, it seems almost common sense to suggest that if resources and funding is declining, to scale down operations and sell off assets in order to rebalance costs and revenues to a position so the arts groups would not become bankrupt. It is understandable that there is a limit to how much operations can be scaled down, in terms of a set number of musicians in an orchestra and their wages etc. however good management should be able to compromise to meet the needs of the situation, and with much of the arts being managed by arts professionals or enthusiasts, the priorities of arts organisations were simply not matched to the external environment.
Also we must be aware of some subtle literary issues in this article. Scheff and Kotler’s ongoing example of symphony orchestras in the article clearly mentions that the productivity of musicians does not increase, however their wages do by 4% per year. They compare this to the labour industry in which productivity has doubled every 29 years, however they do not mention that these industries have also experience continuous wage increases, which affects their cash flows. Subtle gaps in the arguments occur throughout this article and seem to guide and persuade the reader into the authors line of reasoning, instead of presenting an objective and unbiased argument.
Despite, criticisms Scheff and Kotler’s article has some astute observations. It makes sense that arts managers must reach outward to making art part of people’s everyday lives, as well as professionalising their management and marketing to approach tasks strategically. Also the marketing response interpretation of the main elements of the marketing strategy in relation to focus on the mission, core competencies and quality are logically sound, despite offering no examples or suggestions in relation to the case study.
Butler (2000) examines arts marketing from a European perspective, he sees traditional marketers as arrogant, by attempting to take a set of marketing tools and techniques and generically applying them to arts organisations. He describes what he says is a ‘gap in the literature’ before 2000, where arts marketing articles tend to describe the problem and prescribe a solution with “toolkits”.
Butler states that the arts industry is particularly distinctive, as unlike many traditional industries, successful products do not undergo modifications to extend their product life cycle. Instead successful shows or performances will simply be stopped after a certain time period to make room for new material. This increases the need for the Arts to professionalise, in terms of acquiring more efficient and effective management techniques, however Butler is quite vague in his suggestions as to how to more effectively market the arts to counter these distinctive industry qualities.
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