Lessons in the art of getting the word out

Erin Bacon, marketing and communications coordinator of the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts in Calgary, Canada, flew in to get tips on landing corporate sponsorships.

Tom Kaiden, chief operating officer of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, brought about 30 people from his 300 nonprofit member organizations because “it’s cheaper and more cost-efficient for us to bring 30 people to Los Angeles than to bring all the speakers to Philadelphia.”

Elizabeth Champion and Wallace Farrelly drove up from Cal State Fullerton. “We have the new Meng Concert Hall, and I have seats to fill,” Champion said.

All four were among nearly 500 participants -- representing theater companies, music groups, dance troupes, museums, foundations and others -- who converged over the weekend at the downtown Millennium Biltmore for the four-day National Arts Marketing Project Conference, an event presented by the Arts and Business Council of Americans for the Arts and underwritten by American Express.

The conference, which ends today, brings U.S. arts administrators and marketing specialists together every 18 months to discuss such common concerns as declining or stagnant government support and how to build audiences.

“Every 18 months is ideal,” said Kaiden. “We convene often enough to stay current with trends in the field, but not so often that the conference becomes routine.”

In the event, this fourth such gathering split into two broad tracks -- corporate sponsorship and new technologies. And organizers said about 55% of the attendees favored the technology sessions.

“Electronic marketing is still the buzz for everyone,” Kaiden said. “It’s an efficient way to get information to targeted audiences, and so lots of cultural marketers are looking at e-mail and RSS [really simple syndication] websites.”

For Vinod Hopson, PR and marketing director for the nonprofit Houston arts center Diverseworks, mastering the new technologies is crucial.

“Because of the size of the organization I work for, I have to play a lot of roles, and there are a lot of challenges in the Houston market,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of traditional outlets. It’s a one-newspaper town, with one alternative weekly, and that’s really it.

“E-mail is a huge thing. It’s changed the industry for us. But there’s a list as long as my arm of things that don’t work. The audience in Houston is very fickle. Sometimes something works, then six months later it doesn’t.

“Just three years ago, we were able to send an e-mail that was text-based -- basically, a listing of upcoming events. Increasingly, we’ve been forced to make those e-mails more sophisticated to stand out from the mass. People might want to see a gimmick or a trick. They’re interested in that process even though it’s just as easy to hit the reply button.”

“Nonprofits are getting more sophisticated in how they market themselves,” agreed James Boyle, director of marketing for the Detroit Institute of Arts. “Museums have struggled a little bit with technology. We’ve tended to be a little bit behind the curve on that, probably due to budget.

“Conferences like this are likely to stop people making the same mistakes others have made, so you don’t have to go through the same pitfalls.”

JD Hixson, an executive with the New York firm Patron Technology and a speaker at Saturday morning’s “E-marketing on a Shoestring” session, also concurred.

“New technology levels the playing field for artists and organizations,” he said. “It offers an amazing ROI [return on investment] on marketing efforts.”

Hixson’s session focused on 10 beginning tips for e-mail marketing, including making “opt-ins” -- or voluntary sign-ups -- “your No. 1 objective” and “measuring and learning your response rate.”

More advanced topics included a dizzying Saturday afternoon session titled “Next Generation E-marketing: The Whiz-Bang Stuff.”

Here Eugene Carr, president of Patron Technology, teamed with Gregory G. Curtin of the L.A.-based Civic Resource Group to discuss how arts organizations can use blogs, podcasts, streaming media and newer forms of distribution, including RSS and mobile phone technology, to get their message out.

One example can be found at www.experienceLA.com, the city’s official cultural calendar and trip planner, which was launched by the Civic Resource Group and sponsored by the city of Los Angeles and a consortium of other organizations.

Incidental information gleaned along the way:

* Newspapers are still the dominant source of information about arts events, but e-mail is becoming increasingly important.

* About $30 billion was spent online in the 2005 holiday season, an increase of 30% over 2004.

* The average age of online users is 49, but all age groups are users.

* Sixty-five percent of users are women, and of them, 47% have postgraduate degrees.

* Household incomes of those using the Internet average $75,000.

If all this seems too skewed toward the bottom line, Judy Berk, executive director of the Cultural Access Consortium in Boston, provided a reminder of the human element. She founded the consortium in 1999, she said, as a matter of “social justice” -- to extend cultural opportunities to people with disabilities.

“There are 44,000 blind people in Massachusetts,” said Berk, a first-time attendee. “How do I reach out to those people? What can be done so that they could take advantage of the cultural opportunities that are available?”

For the blind, she said, the primary issue is not so much ticket prices, “it’s the transportation to get there. Once you get out of a bus or a train, what direction do you go -- right, left, straight? There are different reasons for different communities why people are not going.”

Berk has worked with Boston transit authorities to help solve such problems. But she continues to look for other means.

“I need to figure out ways I can reach out, whether through e-technology or Web technology, and help find the sponsorships to help me continue the program,” she said.

As an individual without disabilities, she said, “I can go to anything and do anything I want. People who are not able to see, not able to hear or not able to walk don’t have the same options I do.

“It’s very important that everybody has equal access and equal quality of enjoyment.”