ALO: final round up (complete presentation)

May 4, 2012 By 2 Comments
ALO: A new website and digital strategy (complete)
View more presentations from Marc van Bree

This concludes a brief overview of what went into a new website and new digital strategy for a performing arts organization. At the start of the season, the opera was in a precarious position. I had to work with a 35% overall marketing budget cut, so I knew I had to be more efficient with the marketing dollars I had to my disposal.

Because many parts of the digital strategy were outsourced, the opera had spent a little more than $40,000 on all things online in the previous season. This season, the number barely reached $15,000, yet we were able to significantly increase the effectiveness.

Aided by a new ticketing solution launched simultaneously, we increased online single ticket sales from 28% to 55% of total single ticket sales while delivering a greater ability to analyze patron behaviors, track conversions and account for advertising spending.

Going into the future, the next steps should include eliminating those points that skew data in Google Analytics. In the course of the season, I identified a handful of these issues and we need to find fixes so that the data is more accurate. You won’t want to make decisions on flawed or incomplete data. So even though certain banner ads didn’t seem to perform very well, I wouldn’t want to make radical decisions just yet.

Furthermore, we only started collecting e-commerce and conversion data for one production. As all arts marketers know, no opera or symphony concert or ballet sells in the same manner. What are the noticeable differences we can detect in the conversion data and what can we learn from these differences?

In addition to making the data stream more accurate by eliminating points that skew data, we should make sure we add certain elements in the strategy. We started testing this in Google AdWords already, and we can apply what we learn there in other areas. How does different marketing content perform in identical groups? Next steps must definitely include small scale A/B testing, in either email messages or landing pages, where one (random) half of the gets one message and the other (random) half gets another message.

But what becomes very clear is that if you have the human resources, and a knowledgeable staff, you can bring much of your digital strategy in-house. A company like Venture and tools like Google Analytics and Google Grants offer free or low-cost alternatives to expensive agencies.

Outsourcing can typically get you all the fish you want, at a cost. It’s much better, however, to teach yourself, or even have someone teach you, how to fish.

I am proud to have built a strong digital foundation and by collecting and analyzing data we will be able to fine-tune this foundation to become ever more efficient.

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ALO: Mobile site

May 3, 2012 By 2 Comments

Approximately 20% of the traffic to the ALO website comes from mobile devices. This has been steadily on the increase and will continue to increase into the future. The new website displays well on mobile devices and touch screen devices.

What we wanted to build then was something to complement, not replace the new website. There is no auto detect for mobile browsers on the main institutional site, to redirect mobile device users to a mobile site. In the future, if the mobile site proves more effective in delivering mobile sales, auto detect can be enabled.

The core concept for a complementary mobile site was easily accessible program notes and pertinent event information readily available for patrons on the go. This is how the idea for ALOontheGo.org was born. There are no extra costs and no considerable extra work involved; it’s a simple, straightforward WordPress installation with mobile specific content.

Traffic is directed specifically to mobile site where deemed appropriate: a Facebook post for production notes on the go; or promote accessibility and information at your fingertips in email marketing.

While mobile traffic accounts for 20% of total traffic, it only delivers less than 10% of the revenue. As mobile traffic will become more and more important, we need to bridge this gap in conversions. We will need to monitor how ALO on the Go converts to sales compared to the main institutional site. What can we learn?

Paciolan recently launched mobile specific box office sites. Auto detect for mobile browsers is enabled. So no matter how you arrive to the ticketing site, via ALO on the Go or the main site, if you arrive on a mobile device, you will see the mobile box office site. Will this mobile specific site improve conversion rates? As the site just launched, it is too early to tell at this point.

ALO: Mobile site

 

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ALO: Social media

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In my 2010 TAFTO contribution, this is what I wrote:

Over the past decade, the Internet has moved toward becoming a social medium with more participation (encouraging contributions), openness (no barriers to content and feedback), connectedness (networked relationships and sharing content), community (gathering around a common interest), and, of course, conversation (a two-way street).

The Cluetrain Manifesto, still pertinent after more than 10 years, tells us that “conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.” And that means being authentic.

And that sentiment has been the driving force in the social media efforts of the Austin Lyric Opera: messaging for engagement in status updates and tweets; no barriers to behind-the-scenes content; sharing content across channels; fostering an opera fan community; and not shying away from conversations and responding to customer service issues rapidly and personally.

In just one season, we increased the number of Facebook fans by more than 60%, but more importantly, we increased engagement and viral reach. Facebook is now the second largest referral source to the ALO website. By integrating YouTube into other marketing channels, such as event landing pages and email campaigns, we increased channel views by 60%.

Perhaps my proudest social media moment was turning a negative customer experience into a positive outcome by transparently responding and following up and following through with customer service. This patron now regularly “likes” and positively comments on the opera’s status updates.

ALO: Social media

 

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ALO: Online advertising

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One of the first things I did was to pull our online advertising in-house. Previously, it was not uncommon to spend $8,000 per production on an agency booking interactive banner ads and placing search engine ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

First, I applied for Google Grants. It’s a simple process for nonprofits, but it took a couple of months to be approved. Google Grants allows nonprofits to set up Google AdWords campaigns at no cost. It’s all in-kind advertising. There are a few limiting factors, but the biggest is perhaps the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of $1.00, which makes you miss out on some popular keywords. Monthly “ad spend” will be capped at $10,000, but that won’t be a problem for 99% of the nonprofits.

Pulling Google AdWords in-house through Google Grants obviously saved money. But the biggest benefit is that you can use it as your own testing playground for ad content, especially if you can tie it in with Google Analytics e-commerce tracking. It was certainly interesting to see some ad content delivering more traffic than other ad content. But delivering more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean the ads are more effective, as you can see in the slides below.

Retargeting was introduced to me via our ticketing solution Paciolan. They helped set up a campaign for Turandot where we targeted consumers based on their previous Internet actions, in situations where these actions did not result in a sale or conversion. Basically, you visit the ALO website but don’t buy a ticket? Next time you visit Time magazine online, or any other media outlet in the network, and you might get served a Turandot ad. Compared to banner ads on local media websites, retargeting seemed to do much better. Paciolan reported a ROAS of $16 (the slides below only report what can be learned from Google Analytics, hence the significantly lower ROAS).

Facebook Ads are an interesting story. The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is impressive for the campaign we ran. However, I didn’t see a positive return for advertising spending as reported in Google Analytics. This is somewhat understandable when you realize none of the ads drove traffic directly to the ALO website. Facebook ads seem to work best with a higher social reach (delivering the ad content to the social circles of your Page’s fans). Advertising is about frequency and reach and Facebook certainly delivers on that at a low cost. I certainly see value in that.

If we should believe Google Analytics, banner ads in local media seemed to perform far below the other channels. However, there are two reasons for not completely discarding them: 1) they are part of a print and online package negotiation; and 2) they do deliver a decent reach with prominent placement in media outlets that are frequented by the opera’s patrons (and Google Analytics will not have measured all the impact of that).

ALO: Online advertising

 

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ALO: Tracking conversions

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Data collection, measurement and analysis are of the utmost importance for any marketer. Arts organizations across the country are dealing with budget cutbacks, so it becomes increasingly important to put your marketing dollars in the most effective channels and efforts. Without data, you simply can’t do your job as a marketer.

After launching the website, we started collecting Google Analytics data. Both from the institutional site as well as the third party ticketing solution hosted on another server. The problem was the traffic between the institutional site and the ticketing site; we could track conversions, but they were always sourced from the institutional site. We needed cross-domain tracking to really get into the roots of conversion traffic. This is somewhat complicated and tricky to set up, but Paciolan, the ticketing solution, was helpful and knowledgeable. The client services team set up the appropriate code on the ticketing site and delivered documentation for the institutional site.

E-commerce, cross-domain tracking was now enabled. Just in time for bulk of the single ticket sales would come in for the final performance of the season. What follows here is a look inside a specific one-time offer delivered via email marketing.

All links in the email were tagged with campaign parameters through Google’s URL Builder tool. This enables a marketer to see in one glance how an email performed. What was the conversion rate and how does it compare to another email? Is there a bigger story to tell? As you will see below, an email can do much more than simply deliver a certain number of discounted ticket sales.

ALO: Tracking conversions

 
Next steps include eliminating those points that skew data, such as bit.ly links on the institutional site that caused a distorted number of referrals from “austinlyricopera.org.” In addition, small scale A/B testing should be done in landing pages and/or email messages. And this also includes using the “campaign content” field in Google’s URL Builder to differentiate between several links in an email message that point to the same page (what button or link in the email was most effective driving conversion traffic? Use this to determine the best placement for these links and buttons!)

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A new website and digital strategy for the opera

April 27, 2012 By 1 Comment

When I started my job as marketing director for Austin Lyric Opera, I knew I wanted to put my stamp on its digital marketing efforts. I wanted to put all that I have written about and all that I have learned over the past years to action. What follows is a brief overview of what I did and how I did it:

A new website
Tracking conversions
Online advertising
Social media
Mobile site
Final round up

A new website

Coming in, the opera was stuck with an all Flash-based website: it was complicated and time consuming to make even the smallest of updates; mobile devices could not load the site; and no data could be collected. The first priority was to change this. You simply cannot build a working digital strategy without the foundation of a solid institutional website that can drive ticket sales.

In redesigning the website, from architecture to graphic design, these were the four key development concepts:

Driving conversions

  • All roads should lead to a conversion. The ticket buying process needs to be straightforward, simple and seamless; from campaign source to order confirmation.

Data collection

  • How do patrons get to our website? What do they do when they arrive? We need to track the entirety of the sales funnel.

Highly customizable

  • A responsive website that can handle breaking news, custom landing pages and continuously revolving sales and institutional messages.

Easily manageable

  • Staff with little technology skills should be able to make basic website updates and embed multimedia elements.

I knew I wanted a website built on WordPress and having watched the development of Venture Industries by Drew McManus, I was surely impressed by the proprietary elements on top of the standard WordPress installation that Venture offers. Doing due diligence, I talked to and received several proposals from other web development agencies. One proposed Drupal despite my insistence on WordPress, and all proposed a budget in the $15,000-20,000 range. I knew I could do better. I went with Venture and I set a $10,000 budget.

Drew McManus’ Venture brought together the opera’s in-house strengths and Drew’s strengths in the performing arts and online user experiences. The work broke down like this:

In-House Resources (Client)

  • Planning: entirely redesigned site architecture and navigation
  • Content: content migration, creation and population; and integration with third party box office
  • Design: custom graphic design template along with home page and interior page layouts.
  • Development: basic custom CSS changes.

Custom Work (Venture)

  • Adapt client’s graphic design into custom PHP templates.
  • Designed custom admin interface.
  • Designed custom search bar that appears in the top, right hand corner of every page.
  • Removed slider overlay for unobstructed full width image while maintaining use of standard action button.

Work was completed in a 3 month time frame. That’s fast. The actual money spent came in far under budget, totaling $6,500, and broke down in two components: $1,500 for the custom work; $4,000 for the annual Venture license.

A quick note about the $4,000 annual license fee. This includes hosting, support, updates and a myriad of other benefits and services. In a way, Venture is like purchasing a Photoshop license for your organization. Having Photoshop doesn’t automatically guarantee you beautiful design; you have the best tool at your disposal, but you still need a graphic designer. Having Venture doesn’t automatically guarantee you a great website; you still need someone in-house.

However, the support and the best practice / brainstorming you get with Venture are superb. Other agencies would bill hourly. Furthermore, if your in-house resources are not as strong, you can outsource more of the work. I was impressed by the custom work we received for the money we spent. You can do as much or as little custom work as you’d like or as your budget allows.

The end result was a beautiful, highly effective new website that met all the criteria outlined in the four key development concepts: driving conversions; data collection; highly customizable; and easily manageable.

Aided by a new ticketing solution launched simultaneously, and a new digital strategy, we increased online single ticket sales from 28% to 55% of total single ticket sales while delivering a greater ability to analyze patron behaviors, track conversions and account for advertising spending.

ALO: New website

 

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Golden Ages and Unsustainability

August 17, 2010 By

There was a minor storm in the classical music blogosphere in the last two weeks or so. What started it was Heather Mac Donald’s article Classical Music’s New Golden Age and Greg Sandow’s massive, blunt, multiple post response, which was then again countered by Mac Donald.

Mac Donald claims classical music has entered a new golden age and her central thesis is basically this:

It is indisputable that classical-music lovers have never enjoyed such an abundance of great music, performed at levels of consummate artistry.

Indeed, this is indisputable. There are some good arguments to back up her thesis too, and she lists some of them: more orchestras now than in 1937; more and higher quality recordings; more and higher quality musicians through conservatories.

By all means, it looks like Mac Donald is right. However, as Michael Bruce writes in one of the comments underneath one of Sandow’s posts: “Golden ages, by definition, do not last.”

And that’s perhaps Sandow’s central thesis: the classical music environment, such as it is, is unsustainable.

At the onset of writing this article, I thought I was going to stand somewhere in the middle. No golden age, but rather strike the golden mean between Mac Donald and Sandow. But then I realized they’re both arguing quite different things.

Mac Donald argues that sheer quality and quantity of performances must mean we’re in a golden age and Sandow argues that audience trends indicate that the current structure is not sustainable. So Mac Donald is arguing from the viewpoint of performances, whereas Sandow is arguing from the standpoint of audiences.

And that’s precisely why this matter is such a delicate issue. In business everything revolves around the customer (the audience); however, in the arts, things really revolve around the product (the performance). But of course, this doesn’t preclude the need for an audience in the arts (otherwise, what’s the point), and more specifically an audience that can sustain the art.

So where Mac Donald argues that the product is experiencing a golden age, Sandow argues that the audience for the product is declining. These two are mutually exclusive if you take a snapshot in time: one is an observation in a specific moment in time; the other is a trend over time and a prediction for the future. So it’s only when you start looking into the future, you see that the two will affect each other. This qualitative and quantitative golden age of classical music cannot be sustained if the audience keeps declining.

So, the fact that there are now more orchestras than in 1937 is a good thing in Mac Donald’s snapshot view, but it is not necessarily a good thing for long term sustainability considering the audience that can sustain this number of orchestras is trending downwards.

I’ve compared the classical music dilemma to print media many times. Despite the availability of an abundance of great journalism, written at levels of consummate literacy, one would hardly call this the golden age for print journalism. There really is an uncanny comparison in many aspects. The big difference, however, is that print media had considerably less time to react to the external environment that made it irrelevant (i.e. the Internet).

  • Growth of news organizations: organizations became bigger, more complex, more expensive, and harder to manage and sustain. These organizations could not react to the changing external environment fast enough.
  • Number of organizations: up until the recent quick crash-and-burn of print media, the number of magazines and newspapers was growing. This fragmentation looked good for the industry on the surface—more journalism, more niche journalism—but paired with a decline in audience, you are faced with less and less costumers for more and more news.
  • Number of students: what about the number of journalism students enrolled in college? Surely, this says something about the level of training and preparation for the journalistic workforce. The number of students is steadily rising, despite the industry caving. This means quality goes up, but sustainability of this quality goes down.

So what’s happening next?

  • Deprofessionalization: journalism, like classical music, will never die. But what are the trends we have seen in journalism? Citizen journalism and blogs. These are a thread to the quality of journalism (and the quantity of quality); when there is no money to support journalism, you cannot expect the same level of reporting.
  • New business models: on the other hand, there will be a handful of journalists and publishers finding new ways to sustain professional journalism.

At the core, print media, or classical music, if you will, serves the community and will always serve the community. It just won’t go away. Their original missions and purposes are still relevant and true. Who am I to define art, or to define classical music? Who am I to dictate how orchestras should bring classical music to communities?

Curt Long, in a guest post for Adaptistration, wrote a fantastic article inspired by this year’s “Orchestra Revolution” discussion at the League’s conference: Changes In The Model…Do We Need Revolution Or Evolution? He ends with:

On balance, I would suggest that

      1) in many ways the traditional model focuses on the right things, and that
      2) there are still basic building blocks which an orchestra can implement which will help to address those things effectively, but that
      3) the environment in which we operate has become sufficiently dynamic and complicated that we should abandon the idea that there is any “simple” model which captures what an orchestra needs to do to thrive, and that
      4) every community is different, and every orchestra needs to make its case for community support within the context of the resources, aspirations, and priorities of its own community.

I think this perfectly echoes what I’ve been writing: that orchestras need a structure that facilitates a purpose defined by those who use it.

So although I won’t argue against calling this a golden age for the quality and quantity of classical music performances, we must realize that, golden age or not, classical music in its massiveness and complexity cannot be sustained into the future by a declining audience.

We have more time to react than those unfortunates in print media, but react we must. Not through revolution, but through building a good structure that will facilitate a purpose specific for each unique organization.

Classical music organizations of the future will be simple: they will be a catalyst for musicians to come together and make music for the community. Just as they’ve always been at their core. But on the way to this simplification, there will likely be casualties, big and small. On the other hand, new organizations, capitalizing on the changes in the external environment, will sprout and become successful. Such is the world.

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A review of The Networked Nonprofit

July 13, 2010 By

I’ve been an avid fan of Beth Kanter’s blog for the past few years. It might come as no surprise that I pre-ordered her, and co-author Allison Fine’s, book The Networked Nonprofit. And if you’re a reader of their blogs, it might also come as no surprise that the book fully lived up to its great expectations.

My first reaction, on Twitter no less, was telling Beth that I liked the tone of the book. It doesn’t have the common “social media hippie” talk. You know, the long-haired, world-peace-wishing, tree-hugging, social-media-is-going-to-solve-all-your-problems-and-here-are-the-tools-to-do-it talk.

Good social media books talk less about the tools and more about the concepts and frameworks. That’s what I loved about Flip the Funnel, and that’s what I loved about The Networked Nonprofit. Both define and lay out a framework in which you can apply your own strategy. We all know I’m a big fan of such frameworks.

Sometimes it looks as if the authors are treading the hippie-talk territory. I think this is unavoidable. It’s because nonprofits have been used to doing things in a particular way and a different approach might seem like a fairy tale at times. But the authors never end up actually sounding like our long-haired friends. Many positive, world-peace-wishing, elements are backed up with organizational structure research outside, and predating, the social media realm, and they are often balanced with real-world pitfalls to look out for.

Although the authors provide a core framework, the book is chock full of examples and practical, how-to information. Reading the book will help you answer all those “I’m scared of social media” questions. The reflection questions at the end of each chapter are particularly helpful for a nonprofit manager building a social media strategy.

As the authors write, the book is built on a simple equation: “Social Media Powers Social Networks for Social Change.” The book sets the stage with the rise of Millennials who no longer owe allegiance to any particular organizations, but rather pick out particular causes. Thus, the Networked Nonprofit will engage these “free agents” and leverage their social networks.

As we move through microplanning, crowdsourcing cautions, creating social culture, and making nonprofits simpler, we end up in the final chapter, one of the strongest chapters of the book: Governing Through Networks. It takes a critical look at governance at nonprofits. Again, the directive here is not “they should use social media and all will change for the better,” the concept is working as a Networked Nonprofit in a broad, on as well as offline, sense.

The book is a fast read, but you’ll keep it as source to reference. In that sense, it’s a perfect (hand)book for nonprofit managers that are looking to increase the impact of their organization’s mission statement in a connected world. I am going to be rereading it, and using it, in the months ahead.

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A look at NEA’s Audience 2.0 report: technology and arts participation

June 30, 2010 By

Just published: an interesting study from the National Endowment for the Arts called “Audience 2.0: how Technology Influences Arts Participation.” I wanted to give a quick, initial overview with some quick, initial comments.

One would think that with the opening up of the Internet, with the increased accessibility, arts participation through electronic media has risen significantly. But unfortunately, we can’t find that out through this report. It does note that arts participation through electronic media declined by almost 20 percent from 1992 to 2002.

But first, let’s see what the NEA defines as electronic media: radio, audio recordings, television, video recordings, Internet, and portable media. Only the first three media were polled in 1982, video recordings were added in 1992, the Internet in 2002, and portable media in 2008.

So when we see this decline in participation rate in electronic media arts participation, we probably have to take into account that this was before the Internet truly provided more access and this was while radio and television stations were cutting arts performances and CD sales were going down.

Unfortunately, as the authors write in a note “the format of the questions in the 2008 SPPA having to do with arts participation through media differed substantially from those in the 1982, 1992, and 2002 SPPAs, making it difficult to compare arts participation rates between the 2008 SPPA and prior years.”

In the current report, however, the findings “suggest that adults who have access to the Internet are substantially more likely than those without Internet access to participate in the arts through any form of electronic media.”

I would love to see a report focused primarily on the Internet and portable media, without the effects of CDs and DVDs, radio broadcasts and television programs.

But there are some things we can learn from the new report, especially when compared to the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts:

The Internet audience and age

  • Around 75% of those who saw an arts performance online, or those who created art online, were ages 18-44; however, people who look up art information tend to be a little older, only 63% were 18-44. In the arts participation survey of 2008, 50% of those attending the arts were ages 18-44.

The Internet audience and education

  • Nearly 38% of those who saw an arts performance online, and nearly 44% of those who create art online, were at least a college graduate. In the arts participation survey of 2008, 48% of those attending the arts were at least a college graduate.

The Internet audience and income

  • 33% of those who saw an arts performance online, or those who create art online, made less than $50K. In the arts participation survey of 2008, 30% of those attending the arts made less than $50K.

So we can clearly see that the age of those who experience art online is much younger than those who attend live art. A higher education, perhaps connected to younger age, is not as important for Internet participation as for attending live performances. And income seems not to be a major factor in difference, perhaps due to a higher distribution of Internet access among more wealthy families.

Another interesting finding from the Audience 2.0 report is that nearly twice as many respondents reported having participated in classical music through electronic media than through live attendance (18% versus 9%). The smaller sample of opera sees the same story with 5% versus 2%. This is perhaps not entirely surprising, as listening to a recording of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is easier, in many aspects, than attending it in performance.

Causation and correlation

But the question on everyone’s mind, of course, is if participation in the arts through electronic media leads to participation through other means, or in other words, live performances?

Interestingly, the report used some statistical models that predicted frequency and breadth of live arts attendance from arts participation through electronic media. Participation through electronic media was related to an increase in both frequency and breadth, second only to higher education levels.

But just like a recent study by a marketing agency, “Facebook Fans Spend More Money,” which found that a fan of a brand on Facebook spends more money on that brand than non-fans, was seen by many as causation, rather than correlation, we have to be careful with electronic media leading to other participation, vice versa, or the two even reinforcing each other. The NEA study states that “determining the causal nature of those relationships requires more research.”

The good news is that the study suggests that “using electronic media to view or listen to the arts does not ‘replace’ live arts attendance” and seeing the clear relationship between participating in the arts through electronic media and participating in the arts through attendance, performance, and creation, “encouraging arts participation through electronic media may lead to greater interest in the arts overall.”

What to do with this information?

Sure, more research is needed to determine the causal nature, but there is much useful information in just the fact that people who participate in arts online, are much more likely to go to a performance or create art themselves. The study found that the likelihood for media arts participants to attend a live performance was nearly 30% greater than non-participants and the likelihood to create art was 27% greater.

As an arts organization, you can find the places where people participate in arts online. Better yet, you can create such a place. You can gather and collect their demographic information, of course, and base your marketing and your outreach on education and income statistics, but what is perhaps more important is their behavior and the subsequent financial value of that behavior.

In the general population, half of the people do not attend live performances nor participate in art through media. About 13% of the people only attend live performances and a slightly larger number, 15%, only participates through media. But 22% both attend live performances and participate.

One question undeniably is why do those who only participate through media not attend live performances? It seems that education and income are related factors. It’s perhaps quite logical: media consumption has fewer barriers than live consumption.

Another point, seeing that participation through electronic media was related to an increase in both frequency and breadth of live attendance, is how can we persuade those who only attend live performances to participate through media?

So arts organizations should provide the opportunities for their attendees to keep being engaged with the art through media consumption: 1) it provides fewer barriers, increasing the diversity of the audience (age, economical, education, ethnicity) and fulfilling part of your mission statement of bringing art to the community (because who says it can only happen through live performances?); and 2) it echoes my Take A Friend To the Orchestra contribution on flipping the traditional marketing funnel: keep them more engaged and they will attend more.

And how do we keep attendees more engaged through media? Well, social media anyone?

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On purpose, change, structure and relevance

June 22, 2010 By

An interesting question from the League of American Orchestra, which had its annual conference just last week. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go, but that doesn’t preclude me from chiming in (I did here, here and here). In addition, the opening session was broadcasted and recorded. Find it here.

The question was “what is the most important question to discuss?” and the audience, both on- and offline was to pick from the following options:

Purpose: What makes an orchestra matter in the 21st century?

Change: If we “let go of the past” and “embrace the future,” what should we retain, release, and go for?

Structure: How should an orchestra be structured, organized, and behave to be successful?

Relevance: What does the artistically vibrant orchestra need to look like to be essential for its community?

Relevance won by a mile, followed by purpose, change and lastly structure. Those first three questions, to me, indicate that orchestras, or at least their managers, don’t quite know what they are. Ian David Moss at Createquity writes: “My sense is that the orchestra field is facing something of an existential crisis right now. Why else would it so openly welcome questions of its relevance to audiences and communities in the 21st century?”

Are we really in some kind of existential crisis? I’m not so sure. Each arts organization, each orchestra is of course unique, but they all have a broad purpose in common: art. In whatever shape or form and to be determined by more creative types. And artistic vibrancy creates relevancy. Sure, change is needed to let go of the past and embrace the future, but we’ve been talking about this for years and we’ve seen some answers: engagement. Ben Cameron, in his key note address, talked about a market less defined by consumption, but more and more by participation.

To me, it all boils down to the question: How are you going to change, how are you going to be relevant, how are you going to fulfill your purpose without the necessary structure?

Jesse Rosen, president of the League, in an online conversation with Doug McLennan, seemed to agree: “I couldn’t help but notice the lowest scoring question […] was the question about structure. […] It may be one of the elephants in the room, because it is one of the harder problems to solve.”

Although it’s perhaps something that can’t be discussed in snippets of 140 characters, on Twitter, I received some push back. Ian David Moss wrote in response to my tweet that the purpose is art: “Whenever anyone pushed the ‘what is the purpose of the orchestra’ or ‘what excites you,’ nobody took bait.” Conductor Stephen Brown wrote: “how do we know what structure is necessary?” and “an orchestra with a great structure will still die if it supports an irrelevant ‘experience/product.’”

My problem with discussions about purpose, relevance is that they are too abstract to facilitate real change. And purpose and relevance do not come in a one-size-fits-all package. What the field needs is a real, hands-on discussion about how to facilitate change and how to practically prepare for the future. The field needs a new structure in a new environment.

In this changing environment the structure would need to follow a couple of rules:

* Creativity nowadays means setting up a framework in which creativity can happen
Ben Cameron suggested in his key note that an orchestra’s role is maybe “an orchestration of social interaction.” Jesse Rosen even questioned “are we more about reenactment than creation?” Creativity not just stems from the organization anymore. The structure needs to provide a framework of resources for creativity and allow and set the stage for people, inside or outside, to become creators.

* The structure needs an organizational culture that supports it
As Joseph Jaffe writes in Flip the Funnel: “…without cultural buy-in, organizational resource allocation, system integration, and best practices are like a transplanted organ rejected by its host body.” In an older book, Strategy: Core Concepts, the authors explain how a mismatch in culture and strategy occurs. I wrote about that in an earlier blog post on organizational culture and change. I have also used the very same book to look at a decentralized organization versus a centralized organization. And for the Orchestra R/Evolution blog, I wrote about Google’s 20%-time rule, which is one idea to allow creativity to come back into the organizational culture.

In short, the new structure needs to reflect the new environment. The often heard words transparency, authenticity and sincerity are not just buzz words. Eric Booth mentioned that “anytime you engage workers in conversation about their work, productivity goes up.”

The purpose is art; vibrant art breeds relevancy; the change that’s needed is engagement; now let’s build the structure to support it.

* Update: there has been more discussion on the topic. Find it here:
Drew McManus | Adaptistration | Look Before You Leap
Stephen P Brown’s Blog | An Orchestra’s Relevance Isn’t Relevant?
Andrew Adler | Louisville Courier-Journal | Orchestra Leaders Only Talk of Change

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