From Vertical Integration to Equitable Hiring, These Performing Arts Organizations Are Leading the Way

I want to spotlight the work of other cultural organizations that are leading the way in these key areas. Will you share your stories with me?

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People generally hate United Airlines and love Costco. Ask folks to tell you their worst flight stories and they’ll light up with tales of the not-so-friendly-skies. Ask a person why they’re obsessed with the wholesale warehouse and hear them rave about everything from clothes to rotisserie chicken, free samples to the food court (I mean, they’re not wrong.) But ask people what they think about an orchestra or museum or any cultural institution, and…it’s a mixed bag.

I’m working on a project that interrogates this topic and others, and I’m hoping you can help.

If we haven’t met, I’m most known in the classical music world for being customer-centric, data-obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I want to see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high-performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.

I hear regularly from folks outside of the performing arts who tell me something I've said or written has applied or been helpful, and I'm on a quest to learn more about this. The topics below are top areas where I’m sourcing examples from non-performance-based institutions, and Kyle at MAP said you’re the group to know.

If any of these topics/strategies below bring to mind stories or examples from your own organization or others who are implementing them, we’d love to hear from you. I may be able to use it in this project I'm working on as a case study to highlight. (I will reach out directly to share details and confirm permission if so).

Customer Experience: It’s Not the Product, It’s the Packaging

Research shows that 90% of new attendees at arts organizations never return. Read that again. In an industry whose unofficial rallying cry is “We need new audiences!” a statistic that nine out of ten new buyers never return shows that we’ve got it all backwards.

The issue isn’t getting people to come; it’s getting people to come back.

User experience research shows a big reason why this churn is occurring is because we’re pretty bad at welcoming newcomers — resulting in an experience that’s often offputting and intimidating...so they understandably don’t really want to come back.

To address this, I work with organizations on the three F’s of the Newcomer Experience: newcomer facing marketing, newcomer focus on the website, and newcomer friendly in the venue.

For example, Ballet Austin’s ticket scanners make a different sound when a new patron is scanned so the ushers and front-of-house staff know how to greet them and send them to the welcome desk for a first-timer gift. Opera Australia once had a homepage hero image that never mentioned the words “music” or “opera”—and it worked to sell not an experience about art or a performance, but an experience that helped you escape the mundane.

Vertical Integration: We Have a Lot to Offer Besides the Art

Vertical what?! Hang with me if you like making money. Vertical integration is the idea of a company owning more of its supply chain, and examples range from Carnegie Steel (he owned not just the steel mills, but eventually the mines to extract the ore, and the trains to transport the ore to the mills), to Amazon (Amazon Web Services, Amazon Basics, and Amazon Marketplace all came from this idea).

In the arts, one part of the supply chain institutions can grab hold of is adult education — almost every cultural organization offers some sort of childhood education program, yet almost none offer any type of education for adults unless it’s designed for aficionados. (This is at least true for classical music, and I suspect visitor-based institutions might be ahead here).

Examples of artists and organizations doing this well include:

• studying with artists (an LA Philharmonic violinist made $100,000 in the first six months of lockdown by offering 20 people the chance to study with him, whereas normally only students have this type of access through a university or conservatory);

• arts management training (New York-based Beth Morrison Projects made bank by creating a course on what it takes to commission a new work and bring it to stage—curriculum usually almost exclusively available through graduate programs);

• art appreciation (Dallas Black Dance Theatre now offers a full slate of 101-style, beginner-level classes with information typically only available through the pre-performance talk or an outside continuing education program).

Hiring Fairly & Equitably: Heidi vs. Howard

Once upon a time, there was an Amazon hiring manager who weeded out engineering candidates with college degrees from all-female schools…except this grossly biased employee wasn’t human; it was a machine. Whether led by humans or robots, research demonstrates that hiring processes inside and outside the arts are rife with bias, sexism, and racism. And despite more women than men working in lower ranking arts administrative functions, the data show it’s the men — specifically the white men — who are disproportionately getting hired and promoted into top leadership roles.

A lot of us have seen (or even participated in) the viral google docs of self-reported arts employee wages which showcase the paltry salaries we ask our entry level employees to “live on” (fact: $30k a year in New York City is unequivocally not livable). And some organizations are finally stepping up to adress these issues, like Ma-Yi, an NYC Asian American focused theatre company. They announced last summer that everyone on staff would be paid at least $58k a year (even more significant since their budget is a fraction of the larger institutions in that market). The Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts revamped their entire hiring procedure, instilling research-based best practices for a fair and equitable process from writing the job description to diverse candidate recruitment to the interview stages.

Company Culture: We’re Not a Family, We’re a Team

“I’m so over pissing people off,” I said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in May 2019. I was salty that day. What I meant was that when making change, there’s always a vocal few who complain, satisfied with the old way.

Similarly, as many arts executives are confronting their internal entrenched, homogenous, patriarchal company cultures, studies reveal five exigent areas in which to create change — no matter how much it pisses off the status quo: 1) Core values and the behaviors that support those values. 2) Establishing psychological safety. 3) Decolonizing power (aka building cultures where everyone feels empowered in their role). 4) Modeling courage and vulnerability. and 5) Investing in talent development.

There’s a lot to be said about company culture overhaul, and a lot of traditional organizations are finding their way, sometimes pretty not pretty — but are there examples in any of these areas where your org has made strides?

Organizational Structure: The 40-Year-Old Silo

Silos: they’re good for grain, bad for business. Yet cultural institutions are built on department silos across marketing, fundraising, education, curation or programming, operations, and finance — a staff structure developed nearly a half-century ago that’s no longer helping us. As management consulting firm McKinsey reports, silos are ultimately a hindrance to our bottom line: “As siloed mindsets and behavior increase, economic performance decreases.”

Dayton Performing Arts Alliance is revamping its entire structure, moving from marketing and fundraising teams to redrawing department lines of mass communication vs 1:1 relationships. This means ticket sales and low-level annual fund are under the same umbrella of a full-time director position now over "patron engagement,” who oversees the patron journey from their second purchase to subscriber to annual fund donor.

Are any of your orgs doing anything with organizational structure? Breaking down silos, redrawing department lines, creating new positions?

Advocacy: Call Me Maybe?

“Talk less, smile more” sings Aaron Burr in the musical Hamilton. “Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for,” he croons to his friend-turned-archrival Alexander Hamilton. Too often, organizations mimic Burr, whose vanilla, milquetoast reticence to take a firm stand on anything ultimately led to his political defeat.

Today, politics extends to brand management, and as the twin pandemics of coronavirus and systemic racism made clear, organizational statements alone are not enough. Not only do consumers expect brands to take action in support of their positions, research from Georgetown University shows that nonprofits actually generate more revenue when they advocate for their beliefs.

I’ve heard of things like #museumsnotneutral and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program to advocate for sustainable fishing practices, and I’m looking for more examples of how cultural institutions have taken public stances on big issues.

Pillars of Relevance: The Art is Not the Problem

At the top of global consultancy Prophet’s list of most relevant brands are the usual suspects: Apple (I typed this on a MacBook), Pinterest (the number one tool I used when I remodeled my bathroom last year), Netflix (shoutout to everyone who binged Bridgerton), and onwards it goes. At the end of the day, relevance is the most reliable indicator of a brand’s long-term success — and at arts organizations, we don’t get to decide if we are relevant or not. The customer decides that with their wallet.

According to Prophet, the pillars of brand relevance include being customer-obsessed, ruthlessly pragmatic (data-driven), focused on a larger purpose, and pervasively innovative. For example, CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education) is exceptionally data-driven; they can prove that artists coming into schools increase test scores (most if not all of us in the arts believe this, but they have sliced and diced the data to an astonishing level of demonstrable clarity).

Do you have other examples from your organization or others who run experiments or pilot tests, or who have established a larger purpose for the organization beyond a typical mission statement? I’m dying to hear about it.

Can I spotlight your organization or an organization you’ve worked with?

I would love to shine the spotlight on your work to a large, broad audience. As I mentioned above, for any stories/examples/case studies I use, I’ll first confirm permission as well as share more details on the project.

You can respond to any of the questions above or send an email to hello@aubreybergauer.com with a few lines you’d like to share, and I’ll follow up to learn more if I think it might fit the project.

In an industry in need of change, sometimes the biggest motivator is social proof (i.e. what others are doing as examples of what works). I sincerely hope to hear from you, as I’m cheering you on all the way.

— Aubrey

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