From Roger Tomlinson, ACT Consultant Services
Heather Newill?s argument that arts leaders should be learning more lessons from the business world and budgeting for higher salaries to recruit commercially experienced staff (ArtsProfessional, issue 72, April 19), was breathtakingly broad brush. It is always dangerous to generalise about any industry, arts or otherwise, particularly in relation to marketing and such complex issues as branding.
Coca Cola have just shown themselves spectacularly incompetent with Dasani in the UK. In the days of ?No Logo? and key consumers as ?the new Puritans? perhaps the arts understand customer values better than most.
Indeed just reading the columns of ArtsProfessional would show it is wrong to say ?tools such as information and accounting systems, market research and consumer knowledge, target setting, appraisals and training for employees, or articulating brand values, have largely been ignored?. The Chartered Institute of Marketing pointed out a few years ago ? and Experian has endorsed this ? that arts marketers employ the most advanced marketing techniques and analyse their consumer data more than most other sectors, and are particularly successful at direct marketing.
The argument in recent years I have heard from Cranfield University and others is that business should learn from the arts ? lean and mean organisations, constantly creating new products delivered right first time and just in time, flexible staff adopting and adapting new technology in highly pressurised under-staffed and under-resourced organisations, multi-skilled staff and leaders working across a series of disciplines to achieve demanding outcomes.
Of course there remain problems about some leaders and the effectiveness of some managers, but isn?t that true of all industries?