ARTSblog

Hello, I am Julianne Brienza Executive Director/Founding Member of Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC. This is my first post from my first NAMP conference. I should also say this is my first conference.

The day started off with a wonderful welcome by Houston’s mayor Bill White. He was pretty cool and well spoken. The thing that stuck with me from his welcome was “we do not have an inherited culture we have inherited cultures.”

After Bill’s welcome we were greeted by Ed Keller. Who apparently is very familiar to the audience here at the conference. I had not heard of him. He spoke about and his business deals with word of mouth research. This is of a lot of interest to me…because 58 percent of Capital Fringes audience learns about us by word of mouth. He did have some good language that he used—like find the influencers in your community and get them to spread the word for you. During his talk a man stood up and gave some great advice…he said to add to every page of your website “ forward to a friend.”  This really hit—I am thing to make our website more like a blog. That it is always active and has voice. We do not have a traditional blog…as I have found no real reason or time for us to being one yet. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday was my first day at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Houston. I opted to come in a day early to participate in the pricing institute, which supplied me with a couple of good insights and an excellent reminder.

The insight: at the pricing institute, we discussed values based pricing. What value do you bring to your customer, and the importance of comprehending, creating and communicating your value. However, Tim Baker (one of the presenters) said something that really resonated with me about organizations that do a lot of new work. He said “if the customer doesn’t know the play they are going to see, it is extremely difficult for them to evaluate value, so the value equation must rest on the reputation of the institution.” I took that sentence to read that if you want to do a substantial amount of new work, you must increase your institutional marketing to brand the institution because the customer cannot make a values based decision on a product that is unknown to them. This coincides with a main argument that Michael Kaiser makes in his new book The Art of the Turnaround. Mr. Kaiser’s main mantra: good art, marketed well. And he says one of the major mistakes we make as arts marketers is concentrating too much on product marketing and not enough on institutional marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

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A number of folks attending the National Arts Marketing Project Conference this week in Houston are blogging about their experience on their personal blogs. I have linked two of them below.

• Chad Bauman, on his Arts Marketing blog
• John Weeden, on his Weeden Arts Watch blog

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An Obama Administration will Advance Bold, New Leadership for the Arts in America

WASHINGTON, DC — November 5, 2008 — Americans for the Arts Action Fund President and CEO Robert L. Lynch gave the following statement on the results of Election Day:

“The historic election of Sen. Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States will have tremendous impact on the nation’s arts community, public schools, and creative workforce. His commitment to arts and arts education on the campaign trail is just a preview of what his administration can accomplish. President-elect Obama demonstrates the leadership and vision to advance the arts in America through investing in more arts education in public schools, increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, promoting cultural diplomacy, and supporting artists rights. Read the rest of this entry »

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