Rethinking Relevance: Unlocking Growth by Centering the Customer with Ruth Hartt

The recording for this event is now available in the Recordings Library. In today’s global, digital world, with nearly everything available instantly at the click of a button, the competition for consumer attention is enormous.  Thanks to technology (and Google), consumers are more savvy, more powerful, and more informed than ever before. To get their attention, cultural organizations can no longer rely on the traditional product-centric approach, where the features of the product are presumably enough to captivate the consumer. If you’re not answering the question “What’s in it for me?” you risk being drowned out by, well, everything else. In this session, former opera singer @Ruth Hartt will share a powerful framework from the late Harvard Business School professor and renowned business thinker Clayton Christensen.  You’ll learn how this framework, which illuminates why people buy things (including tickets to cultural events), is a gamechanger for cultural organizations when it comes to branding and marketing. Hone your ability to recognize product-centric tactics in Ruth’s lightning round exercise and start applying the principles of customer-centric marketing at your cultural organization right away. About RuthRuth Hartt leverages interdisciplinary insights to champion the arts, foster inclusivity, and drive change. Currently serving as Chief of Staff at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, Ruth previously spent nearly two decades in the arts sector as an opera singer, choral director, and music educator. Merging 23 years of experience in the cultural and nonprofit sectors, including six years’ immersion in innovation frameworks, Ruth helps arts organizations rethink audience development and arts marketing through a customer-centric lens. Ruth’s perspective as a relevance strategist has been shaped by her unique journey: growing up in blue-collar Maine, convincing teenagers to love choral music, training and performing as an opera singer, engaging with donors and opera patrons, and supporting the research of a Harvard Business School professor.  This diverse range of experience provides Ruth with a distinctly empathetic and inclusive viewpoint, enabling her to connect with and advocate for a wide range of stakeholders in the arts industry.