#NAMPC Takeaways

Shoshana Fanizza

I wanted to start out by giving you the link to my Storify—My #NAMPC experience via Twitter. I ended up winning the Most Tweets Award [at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference (NAMPC)] and I received a fun t-shirt!

I also won by connecting with more people on Twitter and getting to meet some of these people during the conference. It has been a fun and educational experience for me. If you had to miss the conference they promised to archive the keynote presentations soon.

NAMPC had its ups and downs, but mostly ups. However, through the entire conference, this year, like last year, there were some common themes running through most of the presentations.

Instead of a complete play-by-play like I did last year, I would like to leave you with the my most impressionable takeaways and some of my own thoughts (in no particular order):

• You gotta have passion—if you don’t, people will not be attracted to your mission, cause, project, program…Without passion, what is the point?
• Be weird and silly—or in other terms, be true to your own particular self. It’s not about being similar—it’s about standing out.
• Adding your own personality will increase your likeability.
• Have fun! What makes people want to join? Fun! If it is not enjoyable to you, it probably won’t be to your audiences.
• Everyone is diverse in one way or another. These are my personal thoughts: We can learn to reach out to others after we discover our own sense of diversity and understand personally what it feels like to be stereotyped and discounted.
• Keep ego out of the organization.
• Visual impact is necessary! There is so much blah, blah, blah, and not enough “language” of our arts. If you are a music organization, it would be good to have clips and videos of performances and music. If you are an artist, make viewing your art an experience. If you are theater and dance, videos are a must. How can people figure out if your art is for them if they can’t “see” it and feel it?
• The arts are powerful. The creative arts can differentiate a brand from a competitor. Unleash the power of the arts and start asking people, “what can arts do for you?”
• Start studying the psychology behind a purchase. We are humans with quirky human behavior, and the findings of this type of research can help steer us in the right direction.
• Give people the opportunity to share and create content that is extra fun to increase shareability.
• Create programs where the community buys into your art/organization. They may not know you exist because there is nothing in it for them personally.
• You can turn your customers into advocates. Make your mission and passions meaningful for them, and it is more likely they will automatically share with others.
• There is a paradox: Tension exists—how to relieve the tension? Find the common enemies, our monsters, and figure out how to solve the problems.
• If you do not have a social mission, there isn’t a point to social media.
• Content on social media can be attended to like a magazine—create information that people are interested in and analyze to see what content is relevant to your followers or not.
• “We are in this together—that’s what arts do—they bring us back to humanity.”  ~ Eric Ryan, author of The Method Method
• Get rid of “Yes, but” and instead use “Yes, and!”
• There is a difference between business thinking and design thinking. Personally, we need both.
• What would MacGyver do?
• Sometimes it is better to present the dessert instead of trying to spoon feed the veggies.
• Does your audience make up reflect who you are?
• Have more conversations with different people!
• Sometimes too many choices make people want to give up.
• A tangible voucher does better than an emailed discount. Direct mail can make this work!
• Giving choices subsequently instead of simultaneously can help people to slow down and make a better choice. This will turn into higher loyalty.
• On the flip side though, a quick choice can lead to spontaneous happiness such as the simultaneous choice between carrots and chocolate. Most people choose the chocolate and enjoy the chocolate.
• Big gaps between lower and higher ticket prices = more tickets purchased at lower price.
• Anchor and decoy pricing can lead the consumer to purchase the ticket price you desire.
• We have a primary error of choosing based on comparing the first item we see. Use this relational comparison wisely!
• If only one choice is offered, that also could lower purchases—use joint evaluation by adding at least one more choice.
• Customers also compare prices with their own experiences and memories of pricing.
• Rewards are better than punishment. Reward for purchasing early instead of punishing for purchasing later.
• Praise is considered a reward.
• “Benchmark before moving the needle.” ~ Ron Evans
• It takes 5 things of right to make up for 1 wrong.
• The build up stage before an event is super duper important!!!
• People interact in a variety of ways. Be sure to provide different avenues of engagement to accommodate.
• Be relevant to your community, the times, and the people you serve. Cat video festival was a huge success!
• “Our goal is to focus on the relevance part & the marketing part will take care of itself.” ~ David Tang
• Use a team-based approach.
• Outrageous discounts do not increase revenue or loyalty.
• Have fun with marketing and experiment!
• Be sure to have objects of social interaction: “Ever notice how dogs attract people to converse with each other? ”~ Nina Simon
• Dogs and cats rule!
• Funny, arts is a risky business. The arts risk every time art is created. Why are we not taking risks too?
• We all would do better if we get in touch with our inner artist and create marketing and audience development programs like an artist!
• Arts presentations need to be more artsy.
• You need to do more than just satisfy.
• Product may not be the most important factor—think of Beta vs VHS. Beta was the better product, but VHS won the competition.
• Be your quirky self and tell the truth by sharing your outtakes.
• Bottom line, we need to learn to take risks and then share with others.
• Personal last comment—share the passion and joy of the arts again and incorporate into all that you do. People will be able to relate to this.

(Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on Shoshana’s Audience Development Specialists blog.)