Who Are You, Anyway?

This Chapter . . .

••Provides•an•overview•of•Positioning•or•Branding,••continuing•to•answer•the•first•marketing•planning•question,••“Where•are•we?”•by•focusing•on•“Who•are•we?”;•and•

••Provides•an•outline•and•arts-specific•questions•to•streamline•the•three•key•components•of•Positioning•or•Branding:•Targeting,•Competitive•Analysis•and•Finding•Your•Uniqueness.

Chapter author Julie Peeler is an expert on organizational and product positioning and is

Vice President of Private Sector Initiatives at Americans for the Arts.

Chapter 4

PART 1: Overview of Positioning To begin answering the question, “Who are we?”, most arts organizations would first

look at their mission. And, while a mission statement is a good starting place for writ-

ing an organization-wide strategic plan, that same mission statement isn’t necessarily

the best foundation for building a marketing strategy.

To be sure, missions have their place in arts organizations. First, a mission is required

to qualify for 501(c)3 status.

The Problem With Mission Statements A mission statement reflects the purposes and values of the group of artists making up

the organization, and defines what drives the artistic product. But the problem with us-

ing missions as a starting points for marketing strategies is that they lead to marketing

programs that aren’t consumer focused.

Mission statements also can become out of date. Artists grow over the course of their

careers, making noticeable evolutions about every three to five years, yet the mission

statement often gets left in a drawer to gather dust. Missions should be revisited every

three to five years to ensure that they remain living documents. They set organization-

wide direction and they’re a great way to ensure job candidates understand the total

organization‘s direction.

As funders and marketing consultants, we see hundreds of mission statements every

year. What’s wrong with most mission statements? We’ve seen them too broad or too

narrow, and too philosophical or abstract, using verbose, obtuse and vague language.

Most are too category-focused in that they describe the organization’s art form, but

not their unique perspective on that art form. Thus they’re not distinctive. When read

along with ten others, they don’t describe the organization’s uniqueness.

What can be improved in this example? We produce plays that span the full spectrum of theatrical genres but share a

common impulse: to celebrate the human spirit’s endurance and capacity.

Why can’t a sound new audience development strategy be built from here? This mis-

sion is vague in that it defines theatre. It’s too broad in that they say they “produce

plays that span the full spectrum of theatrical genres,” but a look at their past ten sea-

sons tells us something different. It includes insider language—most consumers don’t

know what “the full spectrum of theatrical genres” are. And most people we share

this mission with ask the question, “the human spirit’s capacity for what?”

COMMON PROBLEMS WITH MISSION STATEMENTS Vague and obtuse

Verbose

Too philosophical or abstract

Too broad or narrow

Too category - focused (describes dance, theater or music, etc.)

Not unique or distinctive

Insider-focused

Who Are You, Anyway?

4.2

Let’s look at a few more examples, beginning with the dance organization that wants

to be everything to everybody.

Dance Company Y’s mission is to produce and present high quality concerts

of dance, music and theatre to diverse audiences.

Or these three theatre companies, all from the same city, whose missions are fact-based.

We produce premier and seldom-produced plays.

We’re the only theatre to produce premier works of local playwrights.

We produce Midwest and World premieres offering new voices to our town.

Finally, one way to judge whether your mission is as unique as it could be is to state it

in the opposite. For example:

Dance Company Y’s mission is to be dedicated to excellence in the perfor-

mance of classical ballet.

Obviously, this mission could fit any ballet company anywhere. But ask yourself this:

Does anyone start a ballet company in order to dedicate themselves to mediocrity?

4.3

While mission statements have their place in arts organizations, there are problems with using your mission to create your Mar-keting strategy: Mission statements are focused on the organization, but successful Marketing pro-

grams are always focused on the consumer. Using your mission as a starting point

for your Marketing strategies can lead to Marketing programs that aren’t consumer-

focused, and therefore aren’t effective.

MISSION STATEMENT EXERCISE 1: Print out the mission statements of ten other

arts organizations. Get them from playbills, annual reports, your local arts service orga-

nization, or ask your colleagues for them. Read each mission statement out loud. Now

read your organization’s mission statement. Ask yourself: Does your mission stand out?

Does your mission describe your organization’s uniqueness?

Mission statements also can become out of date. Arts organizations grow over

the course of their careers, making noticeable evolutions about every three to five

years. However, the mission statement often gets left in a drawer to gather dust. Mis-

sions should be revisited every three to five years to ensure that they are living docu-

ments. Remember: Mission statements set organization-wide direction. When you’re

hiring new staff members, your mission statement can make sure that job candidates

understand the organization’s big picture.

MISSION STATEMENT EXERCISE 2: Ask your board members and staff people to

define your organization’s mission. How close is each definition to the real mission?

Keep track of the answers. This exercise has two purposes. First, it will help you ferret

out misunderstandings regarding your organization’s mission. Second, for board devel-

opment, it can help you understand where various board members’ interests lie among

your organization’s programs.

Most mission statements are too category-focused, yet at the same time

they’re not distinctive. They describe the organization’s art form, but not the orga-

nization’s unique perspective on that art form. Mission statements are often too broad

or too narrow, too philosophical, and they use lengthy, wordy, language that is hard to

understand.

Who Are You, Anyway?

4.4

A good mission statement should answer three questions for your organization:

1. What are we here to do? (Statement of Purpose)

2. Where is the organization heading? (Statement of Ambition)

3. What values do we hold dear? (Statement of Values)

Answering these questions will help your organization create a precise, unique and

visionary mission statement.

Finally, here’s a mission statement that works. “Black Storytelling embodies the history, heritage and culture of African Americans. It

preserves, perpetuates and passes-along the folklore, legends, myths, fables and mores

of Africans, their descendents, and ancestors. Our mission is to establish and maintain

a network of individuals and groups to preserve the African Diaspora Oral Tradition.”

(Source: Black Storyteller’s Association of San Diego)

See Worksheet 4.1 to evaluate your mission statement.

4.5

4.64.6

What’s a Positioning Statement?

•• Represents•a•trusted•promise•to•the•consumer•that•encapsulates•a•big•idea•••• Defines•you•relative•to•the•competition,•providing•potential•custom-ers•with•a•frame•of•reference•for•making•a•buying•decision•••• Is•an•objective•perspective•from•the•outside•looking•into•the•orga-nization•••• Depends•on•an•understanding•of•the•needs•and•motivations•of•the•customer•or•potential•new•customers••

•• Is•highly•focused••

•• And•answers•the•question,•“What•do•I•have•that’s•worth•custom-ers’•time,•effort•and•money?”••

Why You Need a Positioning Statement This is why organizations need a positioning statement to develop marketing plans

that are consumer-focused, simple, motivating and persuasive. It’s called a position-

ing statement because it asks you to help define what unique position you hold in the

consumer’s mind. It is also referred to as your brand.

Having a more focused, consumer-based place to begin marketing provides an express-

way into the consumer’s mind, leads you to more focused and efficient messages, and

puts you on the target’s mental ladder when they’re bombarded with thousands of

messages daily. Positioning is also the key to a distinct visual identity.

Who Are You, Anyway?

4.7

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF A POSITIONING STATEMENT

1. Who is Your Target? 2. What are Their Other Entertainment Options? 3. What are Your Unique Benefits?

1. Who is Your Target? The previous chapter focused on choosing a target. You should have consciously

selected a target or targets on which to focus your growth goals. You know their arts-

related behavior. You can describe them demographically. You know what they like to

do in their free time. You know their attitudes and beliefs toward your organization.

What more do you need to develop a positioning?

First, you need to know what they value in a leisure-time activity. You need to know

what you’re competing against for their time, attention and money.

2. What are Their Other Entertainment Options? Competition is an interesting subject in the arts. Most times when we ask our clients

about their competition, they name other arts organizations. But, people don’t sit up

in bed in the morning and shout, “I’m a member of the chamber music audience!”

The chapter on targeting showed that customers are more complex than can solely be

described by their arts behavior. Remember, to grow audiences, we must look beyond

people who eat, sleep, live, breathe and die for the arts. We are looking at people who

have a variety of leisure favorites and we need to understand how the arts can fit their

needs, wants and desires. So when thinking about competition, we have to understand

our target’s leisure-time priorities, and how and where we fit into them. This can be

done by adding a few simple questions to audience surveys, including:

• What are your three favorite leisure-time activities?

• Give us three adjectives that describe why you like your favorite activity.

“Most times when we ask our clients about their competition, they name other arts organizations. But, people don’t sit up in bed in the morning and shout, ‘I’m a member of the chamber music audience!’ ”

—Julie Peeler

Who Are You, Anyway?

PART II: The Mechanics of Positioning

4.8

Positioning Island Moving Company.

The Island Moving Company is a small contemporary ballet com-

pany based in Newport, RI with a 25+ year history of providing high

quality dance performances to a small but loyal audience base in

a variety of traditional and non-traditional venues. In preparing to

become the resident dance company of the soon-to-open Newport

Performing Arts Center in a renovated, historic movie palace befit-

ting Newport’s focus on historic properties, while still planning to

perform site-specific works, they sought to more clearly define their

brand. Recognizing that their “place” played as important a role

as their product, they developed the following branding statement:

“For people who love Newport, Island Moving Company is the arts

experience where every encounter is up close and personal, whatev-

er the venue; where audiences can see the dancers’ passion, feel

the energy, and experience the joy.” The result has brought new

power to all their communications.

Give them only three spaces to fill in for the answers. If you give them room for an

essay, they’ll write nothing. If you give them three spaces, they’re more likely to give

you an answer.

If you don’t have time for an audience survey, develop a written description of your

target audience using the information you do have. Lead your staff and your board

through a brainstorming session on what they would guess are the top four or five

leisure-time activities of the target. Put each activity at the top of large sheets of paper

tacked to the wall. Then, have the board and staff walk around the room and list the

10–12 adjectives that describe what your target audience gets out of each activity,

i.e. how does it benefit them? Finally, look at the 50–60 adjectives on the wall. What

similarities are there? Can the adjectives be grouped? Can you begin to see what the

target is looking for in a leisure-time activity. . .what they value? Use Worksheet 4.2 to

record your findings.

Finally, you need to understand what makes you unique.

4.9

4.10

The true test of a uniqueness is its relevance, meaningfulness and uniqueness in the eyes of the potential customer.

TECHNIQUES FOR FINDING YOUR UNIQUENESS

• List 10 things only you do

• Write an obituary for you and your • closest competitors

• Pretend you’re moving to another city—why should they fear your arrival?

3. What are Your Unique Benefits? Uniqueness is another interesting topic in the arts. Most people working in this busi-

ness will answer the question about their organization‘s uniqueness by citing several

“arts technical” aspects. But the true test of a uniqueness that can be leveraged for au-

dience development is its relevance, meaningfulness and uniqueness in the eyes of the

potential customer. And, a true uniqueness is described using benefits, not facts. Your

group may be organized as an ensemble of artists, which is unique in your locale, but

what meaning does that have for Joe Consumer? It is a fact that you’re organized as an

ensemble; what’s the benefit to the consumer? What problem will that solve for them?

Try these projective techniques, again, using your whole staff and your board to brain-

storm. List 10 things you and only you do. Challenge yourself to come up with things

that are truly unduplicated in the industry. In developing this list, you may need a few

brainstorming tools to get you going. Have the members of your group, each working

alone, write an obituary for your arts organization and your closest competitors (one

arts, one non-arts). Or, have them pretend the organization is moving to another city

similar to your own. Other arts groups in that city are very worried about your arrival

because they fear you’ll steal their audience members. Why are they so scared? What

do you have that’s so enticing to their audiences?

Wrapping it up Now you know who you’re targeting, you know what they value in a leisure-time activity,

you know what two or three other activities you’re competing with for that target’s time,

money and attention, and you know what’s unique about your organization. You can use

work worksheet 4.3 to determine your target, competition and uniqueness.

The final step is to pull it together into a statement that encapsulates the direction the orga-

nization will take with its marketing programs—your positioning statement. Use work-

sheet 4.4 to develop a positioning statement for your new audience development plan.

4.11

Real Life Example:

Tampa Theatre

Tampa Theatre is a historic old movie house and one of the few old structures in

Tampa. It is vibrant and colorful, and by the Millennium, it was in need of an infusion

of new audiences. The theatre management had worked hard to raise millions of dol-

lars to restore the theatre and re-open, and was so accustomed to talking about historic

preservation and the value of the restoration, that they were having a hard time

shifting into an operations mode. They were marketing the theatre’s artistic offerings to a

narrow audience of historic preservation enthusiasts and needed to segment their market,

and target additional segments, as well as rebrand the theatre for public consumption.

After attending the NAMP Advanced Training Program, they landed on a list of con-

sumer insights that led to the rebranding of Tampa Theatre…well, more like a return

to a previous brand.

••People•come•for•a•variety•reasons;•their•reasons•for•coming•as•and•audience•mem-

ber•are•different•than•mine•as•a•staff•person

••Generally•they•come•for•the•building•and•are•surprised•by•the•variety•of•quality•

programming,•or•they•come•for•one•program•and•are•beguiled•by•the•building•

and•surprised•by•the•variety•of•quality•programming

••Tampa•Theatre•is•the•frame,•not•the•picture;•it•is•a•magical•environment•that•

showcases•each•offering

••People•go•where•people•like•them•are;•show•the•variety•of•people•who•come•here

••People•desire•a•sense•of•belonging

••All•I•need•to•do•it•get•them•here•once•and•they•have•a•high•likelihood•of•return-

ing,•so•tell•them•what•to•do•by•cross•selling•our•offerings

When digging through the archives, the marketing director ran across some advertis-

ing from the 1927 opening of the theatre and hit upon their “new” brand: The Popular

Palace of the People. Tampa Theatre rebranded themselves as “The Timeless Popular

Palace” with the additional tagline, “It Never Gets Old”.

They began to show people enjoying the building as much as they were highlighting

the building in their materials, and also began to actively cross sell their offerings from

silent movies to indie premiers, from film summer camp to pop concerts.

Who Are You, Anyway?

Tampa Theatre’s Myspace page shows off their revitalized brand

http://www.myspace.com/tampatheatre

4.12

4.13

4.144.14