All Change? What do Arts Marketers need to succeed in today’s turbulent environment?

Julie Alridge, Executive Director, AMA

A guest blog by Julie Aldridge, Executive Director of AMA.

If you’re working in the arts and cultural sector today you will no doubt be only too aware of the rapid pace of change in which we’re now working. The word ‘change’ was mentioned over 100 times in the AMA (Arts Marketing Association) conference report this year. Keeping up-to-date on latest thinking and best practice has therefore become more and more important for those seeking to bring art and audiences together.

Change is not only going on with regard to technology. While social and digital media are certainly transforming the way we work – anyone remember a time before the trend watchers were predicting that this is the ‘year of mobile’?! – There are many other external changes affecting our ability to reach and engage audiences.

Audience and visitor behaviour, patterns of demand, and visitor profiles are changing. The increasing diversity of artistic practice and the extent to which people expect the experience to be participatory or customised, has introduced a whole new approach to working with the public. New ways of generating data and insights have arisen improving our ability to understand audiences, but also adding to our workload and to the list of things we need to share with others in the organisation.

The impact of changing politics and the current depressing economic situation has also led to many arts organisations changing core elements such as business models, income streams, staffing structures and budgets. And many have revisited the company culture and the way in which they innovate and experiment.

These changes have proved incredibly positive for some arts organisations. For those where there is a culture that is able to respond, adapt and capitalise on emerging opportunities. Arts marketers across the UK have reimagined the very way they engage and interact with audiences and visitors – see the AMA blog for a range of examples, including the National Theatre of Wales working with citizen journalists, and The Lowry integrating Facebook ticketing in order to reap benefits for the organisation.

For others though, the pace of change has just proved to be pretty exhausting! As the very rules of the game are shifting this has resulted in an unsettled and disconcerting environment for those working in arts marketing, making long term planning challenging at just the time when raising earned income has become even more crucial.

At an AMA discussion forum with a group of heads of marketing from arts organisations across the UK last December, there were a number of key ‘tensions’ identified, things such as:

On the one hand there is a need to …
1) Predict and forecast accurately to plan the best use of minimal resources
2) Develop the arts marketing team as the knowledge base for an organisation, providing insight and forecasts to inform decisions
3) Ensure continuity – to stick to our mission and purpose and not make knee-jerk reactions
4) Do more with less
5) Really understand and focus on analytics and ROI – what works, what doesn’t – to define what to do more of and decide what we can do without
6) Consolidate, to focus on earned income, on retention and repeat audiences

Vs. a requirement to …
1) Just ‘get the work done’ in order to keep up with the current pace of things
2) Break down silos and involve the whole company in thinking about the audience
3) Ensure we keep adapting to remain relevant and meaningful in a brave new world
4) Do less, better
5) Innovate, to develop a transformative culture able to inspire new ideas and find new, creative solutions
6) Explore new income streams and reach out to engage new audiences and visitors

Dazed and confused? You’re not the only one! The group at the discussion forum agreed that a careful balancing act was required to deliver on all of these things. It is vital that arts organisations adopt a culture of shared purpose. That everyone within the organisation understands what it means for them to be mission-led and audience focused. And that the marketing team uses this understanding in order to decide the degree to which they lean towards focusing on tried and tested strategies that are most likely to have a high return on their investment, and the degree to which they focus on new innovative ideas.

In order to do this it is of course essential that those working in arts marketing and audience development can feel confident that they have developed the right mix of skills and knowledge to take informed decisions that make a real difference to their organisation and their audiences. That they are capable of forecasting and predicting audience and visitor behaviour; that they are skilled at adapting their marketing strategies to benefit from emerging opportunities; and are able to effectively blend digital tools and channels into their marketing toolkit in order to remain relevant and meaningful in todays connected, networked world.

The AMA is committed to helping to raise the standards of arts marketing across the sector. To support and develop arts marketers to enable them to improve their practice, to keep-up-to-date and, in turn, improve their ability to bring art and audiences together.

The AMA has just finished a process of contextualising the marketing National Occupational Standards (NOS) for the arts and cultural sector. NOS are statements of the standards of performance individuals must achieve when carrying out functions in the workplace, together with specifications of the underpinning knowledge and understanding required. The marketing NOS were designed to cover all sectors, but needed quite a bit of ‘tweaking’ by the AMA to fully represent the arts sector. In particular to reflect our objectives – obviously not just financial, but also artistic and social – and the role that marketing has to play in delivering on these. You can check out the standards on our website.

This means that for the first time the industry will have a set of standards which explains what skills and knowledge marketers should have at each stage of their marketing career.

The AMA has also created an online suite of training needs analysis tools. These are intended as a tool for the arts sector, providing marketers with personal development plans which help them to build an understanding of where their current strengths and skills are and gain a clearer insight into their skills gaps. So if you’re feeling confused and disorientated by the current pace of change, do take a few minutes out to take stock of your current approach and priorities. Try out the training needs questionnaires and reassure yourself about the areas of marketing where you already have great strengths. But also use these to highlight areas of knowledge gaps that are important to help you excel in your current role. Perhaps complete a module or two of the training needs analysis before your next appraisal to help demonstrate areas of potential development to your line manager?

For employers of arts marketers, the standards are accompanied by tools such as job description templates designed to help you to plan the scope of your marketing team, the individual role/s and job descriptions needed in your organisation. They will also help with planning for appraisals, building understanding of where the current strengths and skills are within your marketing team and gaining a clearer insight into skills gaps within the organisation.

Pam Pfrommer , Course Director, MA Arts Management, Anglia Ruskin University, talks about the importance of the arts marketing standards for those working as trainers in the sector, providing consistency and benchmarks for performance, as well as checking your own professional development needs. See her interview clip for the AMA.

So let’s grab the opportunities that change is presenting to those working in arts marketing and audience development. Now is the ideal time for arts marketers to take stronger leadership roles within their organisations, becoming the person or department that the company turns to for accurate information on how audience and visitor behaviour will change over the coming months to inform future strategic direction for the organisation.

The AMA will be working with arts organisations, trainers, employers, consultants and funders across the sector to ensure consistent use of the marketing standards to increase confidence, skill, and knowledge in our ability to bring art and audiences together in today’s turbulent environment.

We hope that you’ll find the resources useful – do let me know what you think!

Julie Aldridge, Executive Director, AMA
julie@a-m-a.co.uk

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