Traditional Marketing
Continued from Arts and Marketing….
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. Due to this distinctiveness, traditional marketing cannot simply be implemented in arts organisations using toolkits.
The customer/audience is an intrinsic part of the arts. Art performances, whether they are cinema, theatre, orchestras create a temporary relationship with the audience. My point is that the two are inseparable, you cannot have a performance without an audience and the audience does not exist without a performance. However, the literature emphasises a relationship that seems to be very one sided with the arts simply generating material in an almost trial and error manner, where the successful products are popular with the masses and therefore become estranged from high culture and where the unpopular either disappear or become supported by high culture enthusiasts.
Overall the Scheff and Kotler (1996) article outlines that when artists have the authority to run their own operations and produce the material they wish to perform without considering the audience is how problems occur. The authors then go on to argue that a greater integration of artists, management and marketers, with greater emphasises on marketing issues will go far in solving much of the ‘art crisis’ The authors neatly describe this as instead of artists selling the idea that this is “good for you”, marketers should be integrated in translating the message so that the public receives this message as, “this is good”
Although, how much does this article contribute to the arts marketing debate? Well, the conclusion offers a neat summary of the argument, however does not really offer an answer. There are no outlined aims or objectives at the beginning of the article, so it is difficult to understand the contribution and merit of this article in terms of its use to arts organisations, the authors provide partial observational answers, but most are vague and have been previously stated much more comprehensively in other sources. This article serves as a useful summary of the problems and issues concerning the arts organisations, in relation to historical context and case study evidence, however its applications are limited outside of this.
Butler (2000) takes a different perspective on the overall critical thought into arts marketing, compared with other academics in this field. This presents a few implications, Butler’s article is relatively original in content, meaning that previous literature on arts marketing is not considered as accurate or valid, or alternatively Butler’s perspective is considered by other academics to be divorced from the more traditional mainstream thought. Personally, I believe that Butler’s explanation of the distinctive characteristics of the arts is much more realistic and useful for the arts industry organisations, in order understand and benefit from theoretical proposals to improve marketing and management practices in arts organisations.
In general the chapter extract by Fraser et al (2004) in my opinion has little to offer the arts marketing debate, useful contributions are rare and often end in a tangent to an peripheral subject.
For example parts of the extract and vague and make weak criticisms, such as the use of credit cards to purchase multiple tickets is criticised because it does not allow marketers to reach customers who have tickets bought for them. This is a unconvincing criticism, as surely a medium which can improve the accessibility to the arts, which is mentioned as a critical factor by Butler (2000) and a medium that can provide a facility to increase audience numbers and sales revenue, these benefits must outweigh the issues in promotion, which arguably need to be addressed if they are already attending the events.
So Arts marketing, what is it? And what should organisations do to improve it? Well the answer is unclear at best, although we can make a few observations. Much of the literature tends to agree that traditional marketing concepts and “toolkits” cannot simply be implemented to arts organisations without some sort of modification to account for the distinctive industry variables, described by academics such as Butler.
Another common theme is that the arts needs to professionalise. This refers to the increased integration of artists, management and marketing representatives to make key decisions. Although it is difficult to determine how much art should be compromised to meet customers needs and therefore improve profits. For example a more compromised approach towards that of film shows there is room for much profit which could in the long-term improve facilities and resources allowing greater innovation and freedom for creativity. However, the uncompromised areas of the arts such as Opera and theatre which are produced in terms of artistic expression may not be the most profitable areas for arts organisations, however the day that we pursue profits over advances in expression, creativity and culture will be a sad day for humanity.
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