An increasingly technologically-minded audience is not a threat to the arts but an opportunity. Hannah Rudman explains.
The mobile phone could be forgiven for feeling unwanted in the arts sector. It is blamed for audiences? ?bad? behaviour ? beeping and buzzing through stage performances and gallery meanderings ? and signs all over arts venues demand ?Please switch your mobile phone off?. However, we need to realise that it?s now the 21st century and the world has changed. New social behaviour patterns are emerging as technology offers alternative ways of communicating, shopping and gathering information. Arts and cultural audiences are not exempt from these emerging behaviour patterns. The Internet Omnibus Survey (Office for National Statistics, July 2003) showed that apart from purchasing travel (59%), the second most popular item to buy online was tickets to events.
The phantom menace
In 2002, Screen Digest made a series of projections about people?s use of their leisure time. The findings (above) indicate an increasing amount of time will be devoted to gathering digital content. This year?s BBC Online Review, carried out by Spectrum Consulting, (below) makes interesting reading. We?re already seeing the beginnings of the convergence of Internet and mobile, leading to the evolution of the mobile as a device for receiving, storing and playing rich multimedia content. According to a recent report in New Media Age, 27% of online shoppers have also used mobile phones to access or download mobile content.
This change is significant, and it gives audiences a very different identity. In three years? time, we can expect audiences to be looking for digital content via their mobile phones. Already, new media is overtaking traditional media for new and young audiences. So, the arts world faces many opportunities, but also the challenge of how to approach these opportunities with the relevant technology and skills.
Attack of the phones
Audiences are using their new devices to interact with organisations differently, and herein lies an opportunity for better customer relationship management. A common mistake is to see a mobile phone-using audience as a homogeneous lump to be communicated with via new technology. It would be a mistake to assume that because they all have mobiles, they should all get the same SMS message! There is the opportunity to reach a more tech-savvy audience with more specific messages.
Cornerhouse, Manchester?s international centre for contemporary visual arts and film, has embraced new ways of understanding its audience by currently profiling their audience using Experian Micromarketing?s Touchpoints segmentation. Dave Moutrey, Director of Cornerhouse, said, ?Last year we noticed a significant change in the way people find out about what we do. Traffic on our website increased by 230% to 2.5 million hits per year.? Cornerhouse will be able to segment its audience pinpointing those who use technology along with the type of technology, and how it is used. Cornerhouse?s next challenge is to think about how to disseminate appropriate messages to the newly defined sectors, via their preferred digital device. Perhaps the dream of personalised marketing strategies for individuals isn?t too far away.
Mobile technology also offers opportunities to reach those parts traditional methods don?t reach! New and young audiences are intrigued by their cutting-edge digital communication devices. This can be used as a hook to draw their interest into the arts. Being able to offer new and young audiences digital content that is interactive and demands them to do something with their mobile is inspiring ? what better way to challenge the ?it?s boring!?/?it?s got nothing to do with me!? attitude? Imagine drama lessons where children are told to turn their mobile phone ON to gather resources from a local theatre ? not only does that improve the street cred of the theatre, it also empowers the students (and they?ll like being able to show teacher how to get hold of the content!).
A new hope
This puts the onus on arts organisations and artists to make new digital content appropriate for mobile phones ? and there are companies that can help. One such is the-phone-book Ltd, a creative media agency that is working to involve the arts in creating and providing innovative, bespoke, digital content to consumers via their mobile phones, with profit shares for the creator. Arts Magnet is another digital development agency, which facilitates arts organisations? development by providing easy to use digital ?publishing? technology. This is used by arts organisations and artists to create rich digital arts content. By collaborating with the-phone-book Ltd, Arts Magnet plans to create and publish content for mobile phones.
The final opportunity is in being prepared to deal with the creativity and dialogues that audiences will want to engage in with you, once you start communicating with them via a two-way device. The business models and infrastructure technologies are there to enable this, but the methods that will increase arts audiences? That?ll be down to your creativity! The mobile phone is a much loved communication and interaction device. It?s time the arts and cultural sector embraced it as such, seeing it as an opportunity (not as a much loathed nuisance), to communicate and interact with audiences.
Hannah Rudman is Director of Arts Magnet. e: director@arts-mag.net; w: http://www.arts-mag.net. Andrew McIntyre of Morris Hargreaves McIntyre offered input and assisted with research for this article. w: http://www.lateralthinkers.com