An Insight Sets the Stage

Here are a couple of quick updates on work I've been doing: The Audience Development Strategy's implementation by the NAC Orchestra continues to deliver excellent business results: In 2007 (year 1 of the strategy), we delivered the best campaign results in 19 years and exceeded several key targets. The 2008 campaign delivered the best results in 20 years.

The true test of a strategy cannot be merely success in its first year, when everyone is engaged, learning and changing. Keeping the momentum up to deliver to the increasingly ambitious targets in year 2 and looking toward the ever higher goals in each of the next 3 years is where the strategy and its implementation are tested. Especially important - as much of the media promotes a foreboding sense of apprehension about the unfolding global and Canadian recession - this strategy is built on the kind of deep audience insights that will help the Orchestra meet the challenges ahead.

On a similar note, I have been working with the NAC team on building a marketing strategy for the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards gala. Again, the rigorous, multi-faceted analysis phase which leveraged what we have learned about local audiences and expanded on that knowledge through additional research, is yielding the building blocks for an effective, multi-year, audience-centred strategy.

This latest project has been leading me to deepen the work on an insight about the tension between familiarity and discovery in buying decisions. It says that in order to buy performing arts experiences, the audience looks for things they are familiar with, but these are not necessarily the elements that will make the event memorable -which looks to be important to the repeat purchase decision. To be memorable, it has to deliver enough surprise and discovery. That means, if the marketing (or possibly the art) neglects the need for familiar touchpoints for a local audience, it can become exceedingly difficult to succeed in terms of marketing and sales.

The recent literature on neuroscience research has been interesting and may turn out to be enlightening - possibly helping to resolve this tension. In future posts I intent to explore these concepts further as I believe they are at the core of the marketing challenges faced in a world where the means of production and distribution are not only readily available but also cheap and global for all to use. Competition has to be thought of far more broadly now.