Category Archives: customer insight

A bold, new arts brand: Ottawa Storytellers

We recently did some research and strategy work with Ottawa Storytellers (OST). Their goal was to further build on their existing audience with a focus on cultivating a younger, more culturally diverse audience.

With storytelling the challenge is two-fold: 1) many people do not think of storytelling as a professional, adult performing art; and 2) event promotion has not built broad-based trust and credibility in organizations producing or presenting storytelling events.

The challenge we faced was that OST needed to build much greater recognition for itself as a credible and trustworthy source of quality performing arts/ storytelling events and for storytelling as a bona fide professional art form with every communication touch point. At the same time, it needed to “sell” storytelling series or individual performances, without being encumbered by organization-level messaging.

Often in event-based marketing – and when marketing budgets are relatively small – there is little leverage or recognition accruing back to the arts presenter, except among the most committed audiences. That in turn creates long-term liabilities like needing to continually invest in one-off marketing of events, rather than being able to benefit over time from a mother brand approach where recognition, trust and credibility reside with the presenter, not only a specific artist/event. Such an approach creates all kinds of benefits such as more easily presenting new artists through reducing box office risk and more effective marketing. It was also important to understand that when growing an audience is the central goal then the strategy cannot rely on largely list-based marketing efforts alone.

Central Strategy: Mother Brand

That is why a central part of our strategy called for a new branding approach that would be cohesive, bold, contemporary, intelligent, easily structured and flexible in application, welcoming and inviting to audiences, and give weight to OST (this is where the relationship with the audience gets built) while also giving strong presence to show-specific information (which is where OST fulfills its artistic mission).

In short, OST needed to take its place at the heart of its marketing. It would be the mother brand from which all series and events would flow.

In our analysis, we had found the OST logo and tagline were already strong and we recommended keeping both. We found that many of their marketing and communications tactics including much of their online efforts were well conceived and executed. The visual branding, on the other hand, was less effective, too complex and hard to adapt. Similarly, there was, at times, no clear hierarchy of messages evident in marketing materials and the oft-observed “too much text, which ends up saying very little to anyone” was also sometimes an issue.

Creative Brief: Define Audience Using Psychographics

By defining the audience, we were able to create a target that felt real. We used a psychographic composite (values, beliefs, generation-based experiences), rather than just relying on demographic elements (age, income, etc) which are less meaningful, and certainly much less so in terms of creative direction.

OST has just launched its new web site which features its new branding approach. I think they did an excellent job translating the strategic direction into an effective brand architecture.

What do you think?

Thank you to OST for agreeing to share the back story on its new strategy initiatives.

Encourage or stifling Audience participation

I stumbled upon this worthwhile blog post musing by a mid-western orchestra musician – via Orchestra Canada’s Facebook presence. The discussion in the symphonic world continues unresolved.

For some time I have wondered about the desire for audience participation, audience loyalty, audience engagement that does not go beyond what an orchestra/ music director/ musician might want from that audience. That is that it appears as though the concepts of participation, engagement, loyalty are great as long as they are delivered on the orchestra’s terms rather than on a give a take between audience and orchestra.

I suspect that the habits, the deference, the stifling of the audience’s participation that classical music performance has earned a reputation for are difficult to sell to a savvy, media-enriched and fully empowered, performing arts attending audience of Gen Xers (the oldest Gen Xers are about 45 now). This is an independent generation; they create and engage but not in one-way sort of set up. They are sophisticated consumers as consumers; whether they know much about the classics is not what it’s about.

A line from a piece I wrote 5 years ago while assembling generational profiles to inform marketing decisions jumped out at me again: “Gen Xers tend to look to be entertained in a friendly atmosphere rather than simply accepting others authority and doing as they are told without understanding why.”

They know they can spend their 24 hours every day in ways they find highly rewarding and appealing without being told when to clap, when to be quiet, when to be in awe, when to engage. What will it take for classical music to break through its well-earned reputation that somehow places the service to the music above the service to the audience?

Do you pay someone so you can buy from them?

Click to enlarge view.

I just bought some tickets to a Melissa Etheridge concert. It should be great – we are excited about seeing here live again.

Because the online ticket seller adds fees like a “convenience fee” – basically a charge for the privilege of buying the tickets – I went to the box office in person.

For me all the “convenience” of buying online disappears when it adds $20 to the ticket price. And that’s not all. If I were to buy them online I’d have to choose the delivery method: If I want to be sure to get them delivered, it’s another $14.

Sure, I can pick them up at the venue or I can get them by regular mail (i.e. no guaranteed delivery) without additional  charge.  But here the “convenience” of buying online falls apart: I still need to leave my house and walk into a physical venue. Today, there should be a free option to download and print the e-ticket, just like with airlines, and some other ticket sellers.

My actual purchase cost me $197.00. Buying it online would have cost $231.00
(Well, arguably only $217 if I pick them up in person; so I went to buy them and pick them up in person at the same time and leave $20 – or $34 depending how you look at it – in my pocket for another performance.)

Nonetheless, this made me ponder other industries where the customer has to first pay for the pleasure of buying something.  I’ve come up with:

  • Credit cards – even though everyone has a “no fees” option these days, cards with fees are also still very common.
  • CostCo membership – the annual membership fee gives customers access to amazingly low prices on all kinds of goods.
  • Investing in mutual funds. The transaction fees are usually well hidden – OK, there’s a total lack of transparency. And there is a thing called MERs and they do cost you, also quite hidden from view.

Consumers pushed the credit card industry to include no-fee-cards in their portfolios. Given that many credit cards continue to charge around 20% interest on any balance, you’d think that’s plenty to profit from.

CostCo on the other hand appears to have found a working formula where the value proposition works really well. The fee represents a fair exchange, and might well keep CostCo in business. The whole business model is fascinating and it has made CostCo one of the largest retailers in the world.

As for mutual fund transaction fees, front-loads, no-loads and MERs – my feeling is transparency should be a given in all financial transactions – and I am amazed this has not been assured as yet.

Where else do you pay in order to make a purchase? And what’s the experience like? Does it alienate or bring you closer to the company?

Anti-marketing? Real estate issues in Bolivia

To North-American eyes this was a thoroughly surprising message:

“Esta casa NO está en vente” (This house is not for sale.)

Anti-marketing? Why write that on a building?

Turns out the anti-message is rooted in changes taking place in Bolivia under the government of Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, even though the majority of Bolivians are indigenous.

Speaking with some of the property-owning locals we learned that it has become increasingly difficult to maintain ownership of anything other than the house they live in. It appears it has become relatively easy for squatters to gain title to unoccupied properties. One person we spoke with, told us they were paying someone to live in a second house they own, in order to protect their ownership. Yes, you read that right. They are paying someone so when they want to use the house in another way in the future they are able to because it is still theirs.

This also explains some of the other unusual notes scrawled in large letters in properties that weren’t in use, such as land without buildings. That message was usually something like “This property belongs to [insert name] and it is not for sale. [phone number]”

This was a good reminder to never assume that our own economic, social or cultural context is some kind of gold standard for how things “should” be and what we expect of others.

Who answers phone surveys anyhow?

The answer should come on May 13! At the next MRIA Ottawa speaker’s event:

“We’ve seen the evidence of declining response rates – the focus of discussion at our April 15 panel discussion – and we’re troubled or at least challenged. We’ve seen evidence that suggests lower response rates may not necessarily have a clear negative impact on the quality of the data gathered. Yet, we worry that it may just be a matter of time before response rates and other challenges conspire to change that.

We know that certain segments of society are less accessible: they may be less willing to do surveys, they may be less accessible because of schedules or how they use communications tools. There may be other unrecognized factors at play, or it may be some combination of issues.”

Social Marketing Or What it Takes to Change Behaviour

This is the first in a series of posts I will write on social marketing over the next few days. 

Recent research on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns has demonstrated that some campaigns aimed at changing behaviour produce superior results while others based on the same message premise fail to meet objectives. Steering people toward healthy choices, it appears, has to go beyond the typical methods of raising awareness of an issue and highlighting rational strategies for changing behaviours. This may well be of particular importance in activities that are essential to human survival, such as sexual reproduction or food consumption, yet also hold significant health and social risks.

Therefore, it may not a matter of categorical change, but of discriminating change. A level of emotional intelligence should be appealed to and fostered through a variety of methods in order to achieve the desired behavioural changes. Research suggests that a large number of decisions are made every day in an instinctive, automatic manner, learned over time and reinforced in many subtle and explicit ways. Advances in neuroscience, in particular the ability to examine information processing and decision-making through brain scans, have enabled more clarity in how these processes might work. 

SEO – keyword thinking

No doubt, the most important part of your web site is what it says to the human visitor. However, when you write your site with SEO in mind you should evolve a keyword mindset: Humans categorize and we use keyword concepts to make sense of the world and the web.

Keywords are also the driving force in search engines. That’s why in addition to weaving these important words and phrases throughout your web site, you need to ensure that the coding aspects of the site are considered.

Here’s the source code view of my web site (if you click on the image you can see it larger)  at www.strategicmoves.ca. Note the underlined elements:
– Description and Keyword meta tags
– Title tag
– Image alt tags
These tags exist in code only and should support your actual content. They are useful in ensuring search engines interpret your site correctly.

Consider this question: how do you make keyword thinking an integral part of web development?

For instance, do you task your creative writing team and technical web team with creating these tags as each new page is written? Who writes your description, keyword, image tags- your writer or the developer? Who determines the title tag – and are they in tune with your brand strategy?

I always recommend that the writing and web teams work closely together from the outset and involve the client to ensure the best results for the users. I say for the user because SEO is about users and positioning yourself effectively in the content of search engines.