A House of Creativity

November 4th, 2007 at 07:28pm Rebecca Borden

Over lunch today, Elena Park, from the Metropolitan Opera, gave a richly textured case study of how an organization, steeped in tradition with a deeply loyal constituency, innovated over a 2 year period without sacrificing its values or standards. The Metropolitan Opera is not your average venue it is one of the largest opera companies in the world, yet it has been artistically and socially isolated. Since 2001, the Met experienced an audience decline from 90.8% box office sales to 76.8% box office sales in 2005. Through a major re-visioning of its visual image and its institutional culture, the Met turned things around and operated at 84% capacity last season and this year looks even better. How did they do it? What can be learned from their story?
First, they addressed the design of their marketing materials, from their logos, to brochures and the visual aesthetic of all their print media. One interesting trick they used was contracting fashion and portrait photographers to create studio images for new productions. While not everyone can afford commissioning Annie Leibovitz to do a stock-photo shoot, marketing directors can get creative and use free tickets and photo credit placement as contract incentives. The Met wisely focused on retooling these foundational products before shifting their attention to their outreach.

Peter Gelb, the new director, wants to lift the veil of formality of the Met. And he has done so by offering more engagement experiences to the audience through multiple platforms of delivery and content. They developed collateral resources like video clips, behind-the-scenes docu-portraits, and blogging 3-weeks leading up to a performance and then funneled these new media through different editorial avenues. They approached their website more as a magazine than a static online presence. They held open houses for the new season and people camped out overnight to get the first tickets. They streamed performances live in Times Square and in movie theatres around the country. Met LIVE HD shows operated in conjunction with local radio stations, which in turn offered call-ins, critiques and promotions around the opera experience. They also have a channel on Sirius satellite radio.

The Met brought the opera to the people, to the masses in ways opera has never been delivered before. Now, that is “zing” with content.

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