The Offstage Mic

Talent acquisition and the state of the workforce in arts and culture is shifting. More Baby Boomers are nearing retirement, more Gen-Z workers are entering the labor force, the Millennials and Gen-Xers are changing their relationship with work and their thoughts around remote or flexible work options.

National research from Advisory Board for the Arts shows the top driver of employee satisfaction and talent retention in the arts is no longer reputation for artistic excellence, but a strong and healthy company culture.

Karen Freeman, who has a background as a player, as well as degrees from Harvard and MIT, and later at McKinsey as global head of digital & analytics learning for generalist consultants, joins Aubrey to share the findings of this research.

And as mentioned at the top of the episode, if you want some ideas for your summer reading list, here are Aubrey’s book reviews: business books as seen through the lens of an arts manager.

This is the penultimate episode in season two—enjoy!

You no longer need a label to release digital recordings for streaming. Today, any ensemble of any size can take advantage of the way recording and distribution has changed and release directly to streaming platforms.

In this episode, Aubrey is joined by two experts — Mike Warner, Head of Editorial Marketing Partnerships - North America at Believe, and Jamie Freedman, Head of Classical Programming at Pandora — to talk through the play by play (stream by stream?!)

They cover topics including how an ensemble can self-release, how an organization can be empowered to do yourself things a label historically or traditionally would have done and have more control because of it, how the artistic, production, and marketing teams will need to work together, and the nuts and bolts of releasing digital music directly vs going with a distributor.

And if you don't know what all that means or looks like, that's ok too — the whole point of this episode is to learn so you walk away educated and informed. And therefore confident and ready to tackle your next recording project knowing exactly how you'll get maximum ears to listen to it.

Tell the stories of your arts organization and artists with tips and techniques from former Pixar Hollywood producer. Marcia Gwendolyn Jones, the producing force behind blockbuster animated films Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and PAW Patrol: The Movie.

Aubrey and Marcia cover what bringing a script to the screen has in common with bringing performances to the stage, expert storytelling tips to apply to your own stories at arts organizations, and the highs and lows of storytelling: what are the best things about storytelling? What’s the biggest challenge?

Pretty much any brand that’s thriving and growing its customer base is good at storytelling, and this episode shares from one of the best storytellers around, so that we can feel empowered to bring our organization’s own stories to life.

The influencer industry is worth billions of dollars and growing because consumers trust people more than brands these days. Arts organizations have a built-in influencer army—our artists—and we can train them on digital content and social media.

In this episode, Aubrey brings in David Taylor, who worked with the Philharmonia in London to do just this. We'll hear the case study of what they did, what worked and what didn't, and some unexpected results they saw.

Get David’s book, The Future of Classical Music - Part 1: A collection of articles, talks, and ideas

Slover Linett research on classical music radio listenership discussed in the opening remarks here.

How to update the organization structure of your arts organizations to be more productive, break down silos, and better do the work.

Hear from Julian Chender, an expert in organization design through his work at Accenture as well as his own company he founded. Together, Aubrey and Julian look at the challenges with the existing structure that's been in place at most arts organizations for the last 40+ years, and how to design the organization for goals that affect everyone going forward.

Links

·     Organization design article Julian and Aubrey co-authored.

·     See Julian’s slides on YouTube.

How to monetize streaming performances for new and alternate revenue streams for your arts organization well beyond the pandemic. In a world where many arts organization have struggled to make money with streaming and digital content, or stopped streaming altogether, here’s one organization still streaming and making lots of money from it—and growing their audience, too.

Learn more about Dallas Black Dance Theatre.

Drew's article for the Wallace Foundation: Can Pandemic Be Catalyst for New Global Arts Ecology?

For development folks in the arts who want to increase fundraising revenue and reverse the trends of declining donor households.

As more organizations are facing the national trend of donor households down, dollar goals up, Louis Diez is a thought leader with results to back it up across both higher education and classical music.

Learn more about the Donor Participation Project Louis founded: JoinDPP.org

Follow Louis on LinkedIn for great fundraising thought leadership and ideas.

Why is the subscription model thriving in just about every consumer-facing sector yet in the arts is on the decline? Aubrey takes this question to Robbie Kellman Baxter, the world’s leading expert on subscription models.

Aubrey and Robbie explore four areas where the arts are doing it differently, and what we can do to update our own practices to maximize the important revenue streams we need: subscriptions, memberships, and donations.

Resources:

The Forever Transaction

The Membership Economy

Marketing that focuses on the art or artists is no longer effective for sales. Instead, marketing that focuses on the customer grows sales revenue.

That's because today, audiences “hire” organizations to solve a problem, meet a need, or do a job they need done in their life. This is the premise of Jobs to Be Done Theory, developed by Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen.

In this episode, Clayton Christensen Institute Chief of Staff Ruth Hartt joins Aubrey to talk about the Jobs to Be Done framework through an arts marketing lens.

Ruth also shares examples from the wild — real classical music ads done right and wrong — as she unpacks Jobs to Be Done Theory. If you want to see the visuals Ruth talks about, you can watch that part of the conversation here.

See Ruth’s website and subscribe to her arts marketing hall of fame.

Learn the top findings from one of the largest studies ever conducted on company culture and how it applies to the arts.

Best-selling author Kevin Oakes is the CEO and founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the leading human capital research company in the world, and he shares how high-performance organizations we’ve all heard of have successfully changed organizational culture.

We don’t have to be giant behemoth orgs or flush with cash to make inroads on culture. A point Kevin emphasizes with actionable advice on how we can keep pushing forward to make our workplace culture better for all of us.

His book: Culture Renovation