The Mission Paradox Blog

Welcome to Paradox

This is the Mission Paradox Blog. I'm your friendly host, Adam Thurman

Since 2007 this has been a place where artists and those who work within artistic organizations get insight on marketing, leadership, diversity and other topics.

The main source of that insight are the blog posts that appear right below this one. Typically you'll get a new one every week. 

You want more? I got more.

My e-book Authentic Arts Marketing is available as a free download.  All you need to do is join my email list by clicking this link.  You'll also get all my blog posts sent directly to your email.

Want to work with me directly? I do arts marketing consulting, presentations and workshops.  My client list includes a variety of performing organizations, arts service groups and individual artists.  You can see a partial list of them by clicking here

Testimonials are here.

Like Ted Talks?  I've got one from TedxBroadway here and one from TedxMichiganAve here.

I'm also a proud participant in the AltMBA program.  The AltMBA is a four week program for those who want to level up and lead.  Want to be a part of the experience?  Learn more by clicking this link.

I hope you find this place a helpful resource as you go about the hard work of connecting your art to an audience. Feel free to drop me a line at mission.paradox(at)yahoo.com.

You can also get some useful arts marketing tweets by following me on Twitter @missionparadox

Remember, new blog posts appear below.

 

More Powerful and More Complicated

The good part about working in live entertainment or arts marketing is that life tends to move in seasons  The break, however brief, in between those seasons creates an opportunity to reflect.   

For me that reflection involves look back on 15 years in the artistic world.  It involves me look back on the season just completed at my home theatre.

That just completed year included the highest grossing individual show in the theatre's history and I'm proud to say it was the highest grossing overall season as well.

What I've learned both this year and over the past 15 is how powerful a force marketing can be.  You can use those powers for good or ill but what's undeniable is that all of us are in some way influenced by the things we see and the messages we hear repeatedly.  

Good marketing - the type of marketing that attracts attention and can spread from person to person - is a mandatory element of success.  The beauty of it is that good marketing can take many forms.

It can be a great social media campaign.

It can be stellar customer service.

It can be funny, serious or anything in between.

It can happen in a second or take decades.

It can cost a few hundred dollars or millions.

Anything can work.

The only thing that doesn't work is acting like it doesn't matter.  You aren't above it all.  Your organization isn't above it all.  No matter how big or small you are marketing matters.

The flip side of all that is that you have to be comfortable with the complication and uncertainty that comes with modern marketing.  When I started 15 years ago marketing was simple.  It was never easy, but it was simple.  You had a defined number of national and local marketing vehicles.  You could reach audience in a fairly standard way.

Now the battle for attention has gone from the TV and the newspaper to the phone.  There really isn't a mass audience.  It's all various niche audiences that can communicate to each other and lock advertisers out if they choose.  Success can happen quickly and fade even quicker.  After 15 years I can say with the confidence that any marketer who swears they know what's going to happen a year for now, six months from now, or even 30 days from now is lying.  It's all about anticipating (guessing), what the road ahead is but being more then willing to adjust to reality and admit when you are wrong.  

To be a good marketer now you have to be willing to live in this complicated space of power, complication and uncertainty.   

 

Knowing versus Seeing

Marketing can make you humble.  That's one of the most interesting things about life in the field.  If you've done this work for any meaningful length of time you have experienced failures that can cause you to rethink things.  One of the lessons that I have learned from doing arts marketing for well over a decade is that two of the most dangerous words in this work are:

"I know."

You see these words, in various forms, present themselves very often.  I can understand why.  Knowing, or least the appearance of knowing, is very comforting.  In a world where many organizations are in the constant pursuit of revenue and relevance that comfort can be very seductive.

But of course, when you are taking an artistic product and presenting it to hundreds . . . 

Or Thousands

Or Tens of Thousands of people

You can never really know.  Surprise, both positive and negative, is inevitable.

So maybe you should replace the desire to "know" with the desire to "see".

Great marketing starts with the ability to look at a situation, see it clearly as possible and then react to what you are seeing without judgment. 

For example, a lot of organizations do some version of subscription or membership campaign.  Often those campaign last several months.  Therefore the planning at the top requires you to predict/guess in July what the situation is going to be in mid February.  There is nothing wrong with the planning but it's important that organizations don't become attached to what they thought they would happen and ignore what actually is happening.  

Data, benchmarks and other metrics can - when appropriately and accurately used - help you to see things clearly.  But a good marketer is always on guard for things like confirmation bias, the recency effect, and anything else that can lead to a flawed or fear based decision.  So don't be afraid to silence that voice in your head that wants to scream out, "I know."  Instead take a little time to look at the situation.  I mean really look at it.  

What do you see?

Are you sure?

Are you really sure?

Good.  Now it's time to act.   

 

Is this thing still on?

Hello?

Anybody still out there?

Anybody still listening?

Guess there is only one way to find out.

My name is Adam Thurman.  This is the Mission Paradox Blog.  And this is my first meaningful blog post in <checks calendar> six months.  When I left you guys I was busy settling into my new job as the director of marketing for one of the largest nonprofit theatres in the US.  This has ended up being the third stage of a journey that stated with me running a theatre with about a $450,000 overall budget, to handling the marketing for a theatre with a $4 million budget to now running the marketing for a theatre with a budget of well over $14 million. 

As I have moved through each level I have found myself relying less and less on my marketing instincts.

When I started running a theatre I was very confident that I "knew" things.  But as I have progressed it becomes clear that the old cliché is true:

Nobody knows anything.  

Thus I have become much more of an investigator and tester then I ever anticipated being.  I've gone from someone who thinks he "knows" what is going to happen to someone who is much more comfortable trying things, learning from them and then adjusting.  

I've gone from someone who is far less interested in the right answer to someone who is mostly concerned about the pathway of questions that lead to the answers.

In some ways it's like going back to my distant past in law school.  In the best classes I took the professor never approached a student as someone who had all the answers.  The best professors understand that they were as capable of being wrong, biased or judgmental as anyone else.  All they ever wanted was for a student to be able to explain the reasoning and understand the assumption they were making.

So a good professor would give you an "A" for an argument that they personally disagreed with entirely because your thinking was sound.

I'm mentioning all of this because the world of modern marketing, in the arts or any other field, is complicated.  It's a world where the options for how to get attention are endless but the attention itself is very scarce.  It's also a world where all of us have experienced marketing happen to us so it's very easy to confuse the experience of being marketed to with understanding what good marketing actually is.

And understanding what good marketing is really starts with your ability to think clearly while limiting the number of preconceived notions you go into a process with.

All the marketing tools in the world will not help you if you can't focus, understand the many ways you could be wrong, allow others to weigh in and the REALLY listen to what they say.

If you do that, then you'll discover that great marketing can come in 1,000 different styles.  That's the beauty of it.

But a closed minded marketer will inevitably become a failed one.

Because no one knows anything.

 

 

 

 

Summer Sabatical

Take a blogging break.  Will be back in September.  Until then feel free to journey around and check out the archives.

Always Up and Down

For a while I was a "semi pro" poker player.  That means I was taking the game very seriously but wasn't willing to make it my sole career.

I remember this tournament I played online.  I played horribly.  I made thoughtless errors.  I lost focus too many times.  I forgot my training.

I won the tournament. 

So, the only one that knew I played poorly was me.  Someone just watching me play, or my bank account after the win, would have thought everything was going great.

Of course the opposite is true.  I can remember numerous times when I played really solid poker.  I made sound decisions.  I used high level deductive reasoning.  I was in the zone.

I got crushed.  Why?  Poker players call it variance.  You may recognize it by it's more common phrasing, good and bad luck.  Or it's even more common phrasing, stuff happens.

That training, as much as anything I learned at any school in the world, prepared me for a life in arts marketing.  It gave me the ability to stay level when the natural ups and downs of life in the art begin.

In the world of arts marketing the most powerful word is steady.

Steady when it's going great.

Steady when it isn't.

Steady when the team struggles and steady when they are crushing it.

Because if you are steady enough, long enough, then the consistent wins we all desire are pretty much inevitable. 

 

 

The end of fire stopping

My very first job in the arts, which was well over a decade ago, made me an expert in putting out fires.  Most days were an exercise in solving one very urgent problem and then running to the next.

I took pride in my ability to do that.  But in hindsight, I realized that it is not something you want to be good at.

One of the most crucial things to realize in any organization, but particularly an artistic one, is that dealing with urgent matters and making progress are two very separate things.  You can do stuff all day but accomplish very little.

What makes it challenging is that all that "doing stuff", all that "fire stopping" can feel like real work.  It can feel like progress.  That's because it appeals to the part of our brain that loves touching things and then seeing a quick response.  It's almost like a slot machine.  Seeing something urgent and then quickly fixing it can feel very satisfying. 

Then, inevitably, you start to encounter those things that can't be solved quickly.  You face the sort of problems that you can't get through with a few emails and meetings.  It's at that point that you realize how unequipped you are to create real change and progress.

When that moment hit me I made a few promises to myself:

1.  Some fires I would just let burn - If people know that you are just going to jump from one urgent thing to the other then everything becomes urgent.  Sometimes you have to see the problem, know it is a problem, but just let it go for now and deal with it later.

2.  I would give the people I work with as many long term challenges to grapple with as possible - I think it's a leaders job to keep people focused on the long term.

3.  I wouldn't praise myself for fire stopping - Yes, sometimes you have to deal with a fire.  But after I did I would immediately check that little part of my brain that screams "Yeah, you did something" and remind it that fire stopping isn't progress.

Those three steps help me stay focused.  You may come up with better ones.  Either way it's important that you have some system, even a small one, to not allow yourself to get distracted by the small fires and stay focused on the big picture.

 

 

 

Winning the game on Thursday

A major golf tournament runs four days, Thursday thru Sunday.  The winning golfer is the one who has the best cumulative score over those four days, thus every day should be treated equally.

At least in theory.

In reality, the amount of media and public attention rises each day.  Only the most hardcore golf fan is paying attention on Thursday.  On Sunday, particularly during Tiger Woods peak, the entire world may be watching.

Now remember, logically this doesn't make sense.  Day 1 counts as much as Day 4.  Why isn't the level of attention the same?

Because we are human beings and one of our natural tendencies is to pay more attention as a crucial date, like the end of the golf tournament, gets closer and closer.

This is true for the players as well.  On the final day people make mistakes they would have never made on Day 1 or 2.  What changed?  Same course.  Same player.  But they let the pressure get to them.

Legendary players, like Woods, would use this to their advantage.  How?  They would put in extra effort to stay mentally and physically steady over those four days.  They treated Thursday just like Sunday.  In fact, some of the great players would be able to put in such sizable leads on Thursday that by Sunday no one could catch them.

Think about that for a second, the great players would win when hardly anyone was paying attention.

I think a similar opportunity exists for most arts marketing projects.  When you talk to successful arts marketer you'll learn that one thing many of them have in common is the ability to stay steady.  They understand that they have 365 days to work with in a year and Day 3 matters as much as Day 266. 

Arts marketers who struggle tend to get caught up in the big moment.  They sweat the Opening Night or the reviews.  They sweat the launch of a campaign and then lose focus in the middle of it.  They get worked up during the creative process and tune out during the "boring" execution stage.

Great marketers love all those "in between" moments because they understand that if they execute well during those times they will not need to sweat out the ending.  The game can be won on Thursday.

In my own little world we are working on a major subscription campaign.  We started working on it in January.  It launched in February.  It has a function ending in August.

So this is an "in between" moment.  This is the part of love.  Because now I get to gradually, week by week, see how things are working and fine tune things.  If we do it properly then we will feel the benefits of things we do this week for literally months.

The quiet times, the early times, the planning times, the thinking times, that is when the winning happens.

Use those times wisely. 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Rules For Data and Arts Marketing

1.  Numbers are not neutral.  I know this goes contrary to what you may have heard.  You may have been told that "numbers never lie".  But they do.  They do all the time.  This is because all numbers are subject to some level of interpretation and since it is human beings doing the interpretation they are subject to all the things that make us human, including confirmation biases, overly skeptical or optimistic thinking, etc.

2.  Trends matter more then the moment does.  Any particular sales day can be noise.  It can be driven by a wide variety of factors that you barely control.  So I always try to add the necessary element of time to my data analysis.  A week is good.  A month is better.  If you have the luxury of several months that is even better.

3.  Going into the data with a question that needs answering.  When I'm look at a report I'm looking for answers to specific question.  That question is almost never "what did we sell today" because that answer is obvious.  I want to know if a particular strategy "moved the needle" or if it is even possible to tie a particular sales strategy to a specific outcome.

4.  Remember that we are selling art.  If PepsiCo called me tomorrow and asked me to be their Chief Marketing Officer I would be nothing but a data driven marker.  That's because a Pepsi sold in Maine, Moscow or Minneapolis is fundamentally the same.  When you have a similar product then numbers and trends can be very predictive of future outcomes.  But I don't work at PepsiCo.  I work in the arts.  One play isn't the next.  Purchases of one set of books doesn't necessary tell you what the next round will be.  You can have all the data in the world and still be surprised at what happens when the curtain goes up.  So use your data but don't fall in love with it.  It isn't a crystal ball into the future.

 

The stoic and arts marketing

A stoic is defined as someone who endures hardship without complaint.

Such a heavy concept may seem strange when applied to the world of arts marketing but I believe being a little bit of a stoic is a crucial element of success.

Marketing is hard.  Arts marketing is even harder.  This isn't because people hate you or your work, its just a function of the tremendous competition and choice available in the world.

Now don't get me wrong.  Some people make marketing much harder than it should be.  They don't have a vision.  They execute poorly.  They don't have capable or empowered personnel.

Any or all of those things can make the climb up the mountain harder, but even if you have great strategy, execution and people it is still a climb.

To me being a marketing stoic means not complaining about those things that are universal parts of the jobs.  Things such as:

1. Ever increasing sales goals.
2. Difficulty getting people to hear your PR pitch
3. Tensions between a marketing vision and an artistic vision for a project
4. Relatively limited resources, particularly money, people and time
5. The unpredictable nature of art, which means that any plan can fall apart when the curtain rises, the book is published or the exhibition opens

Every arts marketing job, large or small, has these challenges.  These are the challenges you must endure to be successful.

So how do you endure?  I think there are a few keys:

1.  Enjoy the process.  You can't be a good marketer if you don't enjoy the good days and the bad days.
2. Expect obstacles.  Your plans will not work out.  People will disagree with your vision.  That is a part of your job.
3. Stay optimistic.  You have to belive that even in your worse days your plans will work out,.
4. Hire those people who have those traits

In marketing, attitude is everything,  Culture is even more.  Ultimately it is the stoic who will succeed.

Always On Time

There was this weird moment right after the election where I didn't want to do my job.

I was days away from heading to Austin to present a workshop at the national arts marketing conference.  The workshop was mostly my baby.  People had paid extra money and come to town early to participate in the event.

And I didn't want to do it.

You've got understand how rare that is for me.  I've done workshops all over the country.  I've flown halfway around the world to have the privilege of helping people become better marketers.

I'm always excited to do the work . . . except for this particular moment.

Fate intervened, like it often does.  In this case it came in the form of a performance report from my theater's performance of Cinderella.  The play is pretty interactive and there are moments where people in the audience are highlighted.  On this particular night a child with a lot of physical challenges got to have this small, nice, moment in the show.  The child also got to meet the cast after.

And I thought about that moment, and all the other moments those of us in the arts get to have.

The people we get to meet.

The audience moved by our songs, books, speeches and paintings.

The memories we create.

Being a good arts marketer is important because marketing is the vehicle to that outcome.  Yes it also generates money, support and other tangible/intangible outcomes . . . but none of that is really the point.

The point is that moment.  That rare moment where art touches someone and changes them.  You never know when that moment comes but for the person that receives it, that moment is always on time.

I remembered that and got back to work.

You should do the same.