Beyond branding : contemporary marketing challenges for arts organizations

While the arts field is more vital and dynamic now than ever before, arts organizations are enjoying various degrees of success in the consumer market as well as in the markets for sponsorships/donations and government support. The era of worldwide growth in these three sources of revenue has come to an end, yet the number of organizations competing for support continues to rise. The life cycle of the arts sector has not only come to maturity but is saturated, with supply exceeding demand by a wide margin. Arts organizations are now faced with three challenges: the positioning of their brand, the quality of their customer service and the information technology that is expected by savvy consumers. While the diagnosis is poor, all is by no means lost. By making some adjustments to their marketing strategy, suppliers can cope with the situation without compromising their artistic integrity. Demand, market, marketing strategy VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1 • FALL 2009 This content downloaded from 207.46. 13.51 on Tue, 21 Jun 2016 05:29:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms was much talk about the poverty of artists and their essential role in society, nothing was done. Things seemed to be at an impasse. But were they? Profile of the Cultural Consumer Before addressing this question, let us stop for a mom nt and consider another one. Who is the cultural consumer and what market offerings is he or she interested in? It should be kept in mind that the cultural market is not a monolith. It comprises a wide variety of consumers with a broad range of tastes and preferences. In the field of marketing, a particular market is perceived as divided into subgroups of consumers sharing similar characteristics. These are called "market segments. " The market for cultural goods comprises two distinct groups of products: what has come to be called "popular art," and, for want of a better term, "high art" or "learned culture. " The findings of 40 years of research across the industrialized world all point to the same conclusion: Consumers of art can be seen as on a continuum, with high art at one end and popular art at the other. The two extremes can be distinguished by the sociodemographic characteristics of their clientele. In the case of high art the clientele is well educated, while at the other extreme the audiences possess almost exactly the same characteristics as the general population, with 20% to 25% holding a university degree and 50% a high-school diploma. Contemporary art institutions have the most educated patrons, with 85% to 90% of visitors holding a university degree; by comparison, for theatres and symphony orchestras the figure is around 65% (Colbert, 2003). For the past four decades various culture ministries and arts councils around the world have sought to make culture more accessible, having taken their cue from Andre Malraux, France's first culture minister. Yet the characteristics of the different arts audiences have not changed. Further, the percentage of the population that consumes high art is almost the same across countries, which is not surprising given comparable education levels and customer mixes. In absolute terms, however, the number of high art consumers has increased since the overall population has also increased. Moreover, women make up two thirds of the market for both high art and popular art; not surprisingly, this proportion is reversed for sports events, where the audience is two thirds male. Thus, while popular art attracts people from all levels of society, cultural organizations must compete amongst themselves to attract a welleducated (and female) customer base that represents no more than 50% of the population and that is also interested in popular art and sports events. Competition in the Cultural Market determine whether a market is saturated, marketing experts pose two questions: (1) Does the market already have its quota of consumers? In other words, is it possible to attract new consumers by increasing market segmentation or by appealing to the needs of those who stay away? (2) Is it possible to con-