To Thine Own Sell Be True: or, Why Arts Marketing Isn't Going Far Enough

When I was about fourteen years old, I saw an actor named Samuel West perform Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company. If you'll permit me a bit of hyperbole, seeing this production at London's Barbican Centre kind of changed my life.

For the first time, I understood why this 'stuff' (Shakespeare, theatre, poetry, performance, everything) mattered, and how it could make my life better. It set me on a path in which the arts became my passion, my study -- and finally what I'm privileged to call my career.

The reason I am telling you this story is that over a decade later, I am following Samuel West on Twitter for old times' sake, and because he's funny. This, in particular, made me laugh a little while ago:

Lovely young wife falls for hard-drinking doctor; they plan woodland sex. Last two weeks of #UncleVanya. Tickets: bit.ly/WE6IZs
— Samuel West (@exitthelemming) January 14, 2013

It made me laugh because it's Uncle Vanya, silly -- how funny to sum up Chekov thus, and in a tweet, too! Just imagine if theatres really did promote their productions with this kind of campaign!

And then I stopped laughing and thought: if this type of approach were to get people through the doors, who cares?



A few months ago Brian Miller of Sense Worldwide wrote this phenomenal blogpost about everything that's wrong and safe and ineffective with arts branding today, and I can't recommend it highly enough. This part in particular deserves sticking on the wall:

Selling isn't selling out

Great arts marketing makes more than money. Performers and creators live for full houses. An excited audience makes a show magical. Queues turn an exhibition into a blockbuster. Word of mouth turns an unknown genius into a star. The world is full of advertising claiming that a product will change your life. Great art is the product that really can, if only it’s sold right. [Italics mine]

And there is no italic button powerful enough to satisfy me on this one. Just get them through the door.

Too often people say that they fear a 'dumbing-down' in arts marketing, when what they're actually worried about is 'making something sound sufficiently interesting enough to make someone want to experience it'.

People also say that they're concerned about the possibilities for 'misrepresenting' what's on offer in your exhibition, or your play, or your ballet -- or as I like to call it, 'lying'. An easy solution, this one: don't lie about your product!

Most importantly of all: making the sell persuasive does not actually affect, interfere with or lessen the quality of the product itself. Of course, whether or not artistic directors and curators should be striving to make their output more accessible is a whole other issue -- but that aside, the fact remains that making your marketing more appealing does not suddenly rewrite your play, or reconfigure your exhibition. It serves the art, rather than stripping it.

This is why arts marketing needs people with passion, creativity and great judgement. The passion is so they care enough about the art to want to find a way to sell it. The creativity is to come up with imaginative, unexpected methods of doing that. And the judgement? That's to know what is right for the organization in question -- and how far is far enough.  Because honestly, I feel like we've all got to go even further to go to sell the arts as the unmissable ticket they really are; and getting them through the door is the reward.