PREVIOUS FEATURED ARTICLES 
5/5/2011
"I don’t have a short attention span . . . oh look, a kitty.” – popular t-shirt saying
People are busy. We have about one minute, max, to get their interest. If we don't quickly prove we're worth their valuable time and mind, they’ll mentally move on.
What do you care about?
Whether that's getting funded, getting hired or getting a yes; you'll be able to win buy-in and motivate decision-makers to care about what you care about if you use this...
4/11/2011
As a social experiential agency, we at iStrategyLabs get to play with all sorts of emerging platforms and methodologies for promoting our clients’ brands and events. The following concepts are ones we’ve tested, and which show great promise in being applicable for arts organizations that are looking to market their venues and performances in new ways. These approaches are meant to be inexpensive and lightweight to produce, yet have impact that can be felt at the box office...
3/16/2011
Six years after YouTube launched, many marketing professionals are still grappling with how to use online video. Social media experts promise a global audience of millions and the potential of viral marketing … it is all very enticing. Yet, many organizations that have eagerly posted videos have met with disappointment instead of Internet fame. Something isn’t working. Despite all the excitement about online video as a marketing tool, a key detail has been conspicuously absent...
3/2/2011
As an industry, the arts suffers from a value problem.This was thrown into sharp relief for me in an interview I had with an artistic leader from rural Wisconsin, who pointed out, “We’re all bean counters because the people we deal with, what they count is beans.” In almost everything we do to advocate for the arts, we place financial worth front and center, and in so doing we allow, even encourage, the people we’re trying to convince of art’s value to forget...
2/16/2011
I recently had the privilege of facilitating a roundtable discussion in New York City focusing on issues related to data sharing among arts organizations. As Tiffany Bradley, Development and Marketing Specialist for Fractured Atlas, recently wrote:
As more organizations lead collaborative efforts, the implications of sharing data come to the forefront. Data sharing – whether for marketing, ticketing, fundraising purposes – raises a host of issues. Does pooling information...
1/31/2011
If we can’t make our existing patrons happy, we might shortly find ourselves with a more urgent need to find new ones.
Not long ago, while working in an interim capacity for an arts organization, I was handed a letter.In it a patron complained that she, a subscriber, had 1) not been notified in advance when a new event was added to the season, and 2) been charged a transaction fee when purchasing a ticket to that event. Her point, that she wouldn’t have had to pay the transaction...
1/19/2011
QR codes are fast becoming more and more common and they are a perfect (and FREE) tool for arts organizations to engage audiences.
QR codes (the QR stands for "quick response") are bar codes that allow you to link them to an event, website URL, bit of text, or virtual business card. Scanners for these codes are free and can be downloaded to any smartphone. (I use one called NeoReader but a simple web search will reveal tons of others that are good as well.)
QR...
1/5/2011
In this tough economy, most of us have encouraged ourselves and others to look ahead to brighter times. But, what exactly lies ahead in the next year for us? How can we make the most of our future?
In 2010, technology influenced our field tremendously. Some predicted trends, like Google Wave and Google Buzz, failed to take off, and many unexpected trends, like group-manipulated pricing and Ask a Curator , flourished. The following are some major trends that have gathered momentum in the...
11/30/2010
Recently I converged with more than 600 other arts marketers in San Jose during the National Arts Marketing Project Conference. We arrived eager to share with one another examples of how we are engaging our audiences, how we are communicating our messages, how we are raising money, and how we are using technology to do it. With YouTube currently ranking as the #2 search engine in the world, this means many of us are using online video as a tool.
Option A. I complain like a sourpuss that...
10/12/2010
Artist portfolios are an integral method of displaying an artist’s spectrum of visual work. Your portfolio contains important information that is instrumental in the evaluations and reviews given by art professionals, such as art dealers and institutional curators to name a few. It is through these portfolios that future projects and opportunities will be granted based on the artist’s skills and their appropriate placement to specific standards associated with particular venues...
