Arts ambassadors hold the key to generating good word of mouth. Sarah Gee explains.
Id like to think that arts ambassadors have been around since the dawn of time or at least since the first artistic endeavor of prehistoric man generated an audience. Picture, if you will, a caveman dressed in bearskins telling his friends that the neighbours next-door-but-one have a wonderful array of cave paintings, which they should really pop in and see, and you have your first arts ambassador. The word ambassador comes from the diplomatic world and simply describes a representative who is a point of communication between two states. More recently, however, the arts community has adopted the term and many of us will think of ambassadors along the lines of Arts Council Englands definition of A community networker with the objective of spreading the word about arts and cultural events and/or representing the view and aspirations of a target community. Malcolm Gladwells book The Tipping Point (1) calls these Very Important People mavens, a group of individual opinion formers who are so impressed by a product or service that they are motivated to promote it by word of mouth or electronic means (email or texting) and often but not exclusively without any incentive other than a warm glow inside from sharing their discoveries with their friends. As such, ambassadors have been included in the arsenal of weapons at the disposal of audience development professionals for some years. And very useful theyve proved too. So where does one find these VIPs? Well, they say that charity begins at home&
Artistic advocacy
If arts company A has identified that a segment of society lets say retirees, for arguments sake are under-represented in their audiences, who better to ask for help than some of their existing customers who fall into that same market segment? These engaged individuals are already sold on your product, will understand some of the barriers to arts attendance which may be keeping new audiences from attending, and could help the company to find ways around the problems, whether they be real or perceived. Thats what the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) did when it founded its ambassador scheme in 1999. The Test Drive audience development model hadnt worked for the orchestra so a new scheme was devised with the aim of building a network of well-briefed voluntary supporters who would be willing to evangelise about the orchestra and its work, and who had a sufficiently diverse social network to encourage parties of their friends or colleagues to attend concerts. The CBSO simply wrote to frequent attenders, subscribers and members of its Friends organisation to ask them to consider attending an introductory evening when the scheme would be explained in greater detail.
The structure was very simple, offering 25% discount on parties of 10 or more new attenders, a free ticket for the ambassador, free programmes for everyone, and the opportunity to meet a member of the orchestra during the interval over pre-ordered drinks. Twenty ambassadors signed up on the night, secure in the knowledge that the CBSO would be holding their hands throughout the process.
A nominated member of staff was able to deal with any queries which arose (usually along the lines of recommending coach companies or replacing lost tickets at the last minute) and a sheet of frequently asked questions on the orchestra was circulated to the ambassadors - but in fact very few people needed our help at all, such was the enthusiasm once they got started. The CBSO welcomed over 440 new audience members that season and encouraged 60 lapsed attenders to return. In an ideal world, we would have recruited a new cohort of ambassadors in second and subsequent years, but resources did not permit and instead our ambassadors became part of our group booking scheme. Around half of our ambassadors are still supporting the orchestra and the lifetime value of these bookers must run into hundreds of thousands of pounds by now a pretty good return on investment for Arts Council England which funded the project to the tune of £7,000 through its New Audiences programme.
One potential pitfall with ambassador schemes is that time and resources must be invested to ensure that the individuals are well informed, and that the flow of communication between them and their arts hosts is well managed. Marketers could learn much in this area from fundraising colleagues who have been operating voluntary development committees or advisory councils for many years to great effect. The concept of a group of well-connected people encouraging their peers to support a given cause and providing feedback on public perceptions of their host organisation sounds very familiar there is no such thing as a new idea!
New audiences
But sometimes you may wish to target a segment of society which is not currently represented in your audience. How do you find ambassadors then? This neednt be expensive. Local radio stations and newspapers are often keen to provide a service to their community and by publicising the chance to see a show for free or to have an exclusive opportunity to view an exhibition in the company of a museum or gallerys curator, new people can be attracted. Sometimes it will be necessary to incentivise ambassadors, perhaps through a small stipend, but providing they are successful is likely to be a relatively small investment which could engender longer-term returns. And of course there are people out there who are natural ambassadors to a wider audience: taxi drivers or hairdressers spring to mind as individuals who might be happy to spread the word on a show in return for preview tickets for them and their families.
Although there are several models for arts ambassadors schemes, they fall broadly into two categories: ipso facto salesmen or legitimised informants. Ambassadors can be invaluable for general public relations and to act as remote sales reps or quasi-agents to encourage new attenders and repeat bookings. Alternatively, ambassadors can act as a link between communities and arts companies, offering genuinely helpful insights into the minds of potential customers and the barriers that stop them from attending. There is no value judgement being made on either model, as both have strong benefits, but it should be borne in mind that people involved in the latter can challenge assumptions and even make suggestions as to ways in which your product, promotion or packaging could be changed. To me, this dialogue is one of the positive benefits of an ambassador scheme, but you and your organisation must have the systems in place to manage their expectations: your ambassadors will not hang around for very long if they do not feel valued and appreciated.
Ive always worked on the basis that imagining yourself in your audiences shoes is one of the common sense basics of marketing, but consider how powerful it is to ask them how well their shoes are fitting, whether they need to be refitted and where their corns and bunions are. Yes, theres an Imelda Marcos in every audience.
Sarah Gee is Director of Communications for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Senior Consultant with DixonRaines.
w: http://www.dixonraines.com
t: 07703 257701
(1) Gladwell, M. (2002) The Tipping Point, Abacus