How We Can Support New Work (an addendum)

My latest blog post entitled How Marketing Directors Kill New Work caused quite the stir among my colleagues. For those that know me, I have never been one to shy away from controversial issues, especially if I have a strong position on the subject. With that being said, I stand by what I wrote, but decided that I should probably add an addendum as several good points were raised by my readers.

I was challenged by some to address the steps that marketing directors can take to help support new work. I must admit after rereading my post, I found myself to be a little more critical than helpful, which wasn't my intent. So below are some suggestions, ideas and responses to comments:

• Seek the help of the playwrights. In promoting new work, particularly if a new work speaks to an audience unfamiliar to you, seek the help and advice of the playwright. You know your organization's audience, and they know the target audience of the play. Combined, you should be able to find ways to attract your traditional audiences to the work and develop methods to entice new audiences into your doors. In my couple of years at Arena Stage, playwrights like Lisa Kron (Well), Daniel Beaty (Resurrection), Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), and Matthew Lombardo (Looped) have been incredibly helpful in developing marketing strategies. Still to this day, I find that playwrights are surprised when I ask for their input on marketing strategy, messaging, artwork creation and outreach events.
• Budgeting. Several colleagues lamented that executive leadership forced them to set earned revenue goals too high on a new work knowing full well that they would not be able to achieve them. My advice is to develop earned revenue projection tools that are accurate and stick to your guns. In the past two years, our earned revenue projections at Arena Stage have been off by less than 1%. We have developed a sophisticated system that has been proven to work in even some of the most difficult economic circumstances. Although the entire senior staff discusses the assumptions and logic behind the forecasts, ultimately we support our revenue forecasts as a team. The surest way to ensure failure for a new work is to set an unattainable goal, for when you miss the goal by a wide margin, it can cause leadership to shy away from new work, when in reality it was a forecasting issue, not a programmatic issue.
• Start early. Every arts administrator has to deal with issues of capacity, particularly in an economic climate where many companies have had to reduce the size of their already overtaxed staff. In taking on new work, we should remember that audience development is a slow and time consuming process. It can take a year or more of intense, dedicated work to make inroads into an untapped community. All too often, due to the typical planning cycles of regional theaters, marketers are not given enough time to develop and execute an effective strategy. Artistic directors can help marketers by lengthening their planning cycle for new work, so that marketing staff have ample time to develop an audience.
• Don't Over Do It. Ask any marketing director, and they will tell you that acquisition campaigns are much more costly than retention campaigns. When looking at audience development, we are dealing with large acquisition campaigns. These campaigns take a significant investment not only in terms of money, but also in terms of staff time. Unless a marketing team is exceptionally large, I would advise tackling only one or two projects per year that focus on new audience markets. Any more, and you run the risk of not being able to provide the support these projects need.

The entire team ensures the success or failure of a new work. It is important to note, as I was reminded several times in the past couple of weeks, that a marketing director is only one member of the team. However, I can only control the actions of one person -- myself -- and that is why I focus on what we as marketing professionals can do to increase the success of new work.

How Marketing Directors Kill New Work

As I only post when something catches my attention, my posting habits are a little sporadic. Sometimes I will write a couple of posts in a week, and other times I will only post once a month. I have been feeling pretty guilty lately about not posting more, but nothing really jumped out at me until very recently.

In the past couple of weeks, two things have impacted my work as a marketer--I was extraordinarily fortunate to attend a convening of Black playwrights as part of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, and I finally got around to reading Outrageous Fortune, the new report put out by TDF about new play development. Via both contexts, I heard numerous complaints about how institutional theaters market new work.

It became clear to me that marketing directors, in some cases, have the ability to kill new work. In Outrageous Fortune, one playwright contends that institutional theaters are "about a certain kind of system...when plays come in, they want to systematically find a way to market them." Another playwright states that new play production "comes down to marketing. Some say we love this play; we can't find the audience for it. It pisses me off, because a lot of people in marketing don't know how to find new audiences." It is easy for marketers to take offense, however we should admit that at too many institutions, this is the case. Marketing directors are like anyone else; we are creatures of habit. If we have been in the job for awhile, we start to develop systems for marketing products. We know how to market musicals, new plays, African-American work, political satire, etc. But what happens when the Artistic Director brings us something that we can't pigeon hole? Well, I guess that depends on the person sitting in the marketing director's chair. Some of us get excited as it presents an opportunity to learn and grow, and a chance to build our audience base. Others might be daunted, and instead of facing the challenge, they retreat to the comfort of the known. But let's be clear--whether we accept the responsibility or not, it is our job to find an audience. The audience for more challenging, esoteric work might be smaller than a crowd-pleaser, but either way it is our duty to go into the community and find those people to support the work. In thinking about this issue, I am reminded of a piece of advice my mentor gave me in graduate school. She said a producer's job is to find ways to say yes.

While reading Outrageous Fortune, I had an interesting interaction with a playwright. When questioned why a play hadn't made a commercial transfer despite being critically acclaimed, the playwright said the producer had a difficult time projecting revenue due to the late buying habits of the audience. To all those on the outside, it was almost impossible for us to understand why a commercial production would not be forthcoming. If it was indeed a case of projecting revenue, then the marketing director has failed this extraordinary new play. Just because our jobs become difficult doesn't mean we have the luxury of being able to choose to carry out our responsibilities. Revenue forecasting is incredibly difficult, especially in light of the current economic crisis. However, who better to forecast revenue than those with the tools to do so?

Are these cases of marketing directors behaving badly? It sure looks that way. We got into our jobs knowing the territory. We are tasked with developing new audiences, supporting the mission of the institution, forecasting revenue, promoting all types of work, etc. If you don't like any of those tasks, then you should move on. Maybe the job isn't for you. Don't jeopardize the livelihoods of playwrights, or the advancement of our craft, because you don't want to take on a tough task.

That being said, before I finish this post, I wanted to mention that there are two major sources of revenue at non-profit institutions--earned revenue and contributed revenue. If marketing objectives have the ability to sacrifice your institution's mission, then I would argue that you have become too reliant upon box office revenue. For-profit companies focus on one thing: building a product that has audience appeal sufficient enough to make the most possible profit. Non-profits as well have a singular focus: fulfilling their mission. At no point can marketing objectives jeopardize an organization's ability to fulfill its mission. If you get to that point, you might as well become a for-profit entity.

The Lure of Star Power

I just finished reading Playbill.com's Top Theatre Stories of the Year. The leading story discusses how stars sell tickets, and in a year with a down economy, it seems that the only thing that sells tickets are the stars. From this little story it seems clear that if you don't have an A-list star in your show, don't even try a Broadway transfer.

Arena Stage in the past few seasons has been lucky enough to host a few stars, most notably Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking and Valerie Harper in Looped (and not surprisingly, both productions found their way to Broadway). From a marketing perspective, nothing makes my job easier than a star, particularly stars that are lovely to work with as both Carrie and Valerie were. But let's be honest, it doesn't take a marketing genius to sell tickets to star powered vehicles. And it isn't just New York that has a taste for the stars. The Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Kennedy Center just presented two star productions that sold out immediately: Phedre with Helen Mirren and A Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett. It used to be that New York and Los Angeles were the cities that needed stars to sell, but it looks like DC might be going that way as well. Or maybe the entire country.

But there are problems with stars as well:

1. Star productions are a gamble, especially for regional theaters. Most Broadway productions can guarantee stars, but regional theaters for the most part cannot. Regional theaters tend to announce productions and casts several months before a show opens in time to sell subscriptions and advanced single tickets. However, during the time between the announcement and the opening, a star can get a better offer from a Broadway production, television series or movie which will lead them to pull out of the regional production, leaving audiences with an expectation that theaters can no longer fill.

2. Most times even with a guaranteed star appearance, run lengths have to be shortened as the schedules of most stars won't allow them to appear for a run length of several weeks, meaning that these productions will more than likely be off subscription. To capitalize on the star production, many theaters use them to boost subscription sales by only allowing subscribers to purchase the very limited quantity of single tickets to the star show. However, often times, patrons will purchase the cheapest subscription package available only for the opportunity to purchase the star production, and then won't attend the rest of the subscription shows leaving theaters with half empty audiences throughout the season.

3. Are regional theaters building an appetite for something they cannot always feed? If theaters have a couple of successful years of bringing in stars for productions, what happens when they can't find a star production for a year or two? In essence, they have built an event based audience that they can't always feed. And in this case, these types of patrons aren't loyal to the company, they are loyal to productions that feature stars. They are the most fickle of any audience segment. The first time you don't deliver, they will move on to somebody that is.

4. Are regional theaters teaching hoards of future patrons that only star vehicles deserve their patronage by filling their programming with stars if and when they get them? Or even a larger concern for me, what about those companies that regularly program poorly conceived productions that showcase a star over a brilliantly produced production without a star? The Playbill article focuses on this issue, citing several poorly reviewed, star centric productions on Broadway that financially recouped along with numerous well reviewed productions that lacked stars which struggled from day one.

There is no doubt about it--a star production can be fun. Your audiences will love them, you will sell plenty of tickets, and they will bring national attention to your part of the world. However, like anything else, maybe some moderation is in order?