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One of the most common challenges in running non-profit arts is that marketing executives frequently arrive at the job through development or the arts, said Jim Newcomb, senior manager of corporate identity and sponsorship for The Boeing Company, a sponsor of Joffrey Ballet. “They aren’t necessarily strategic marketers,” Newcomb told students during an event hosted by the student-led Net Impact group at Hyde Park Center on November 4. “It creates a problem when you’re trying to develop a long-term strategy.”
Newcomb suggested Joffrey hire marketing consultants. “One of the best-known ballet companies in the world had declining subscriptions, declining single tickets,” he said. After conducting marketing research of its audience two years ago, in one year Joffrey increased its ticket revenue by 38 percent, subscribers 15 percent, subscription renewals 39 percent, single ticket sales 15 percent, and donations 14 percent, Newcomb said. So far this year subscriptions are up 15 percent, he said.
Previously, Joffrey’s ad hoc committee of artistic directors and board members came up with marketing suggestions. “They were not marketers. They’d say, ‘We’re not getting enough men. Let’s try doing something sexier and we’ll get more men,’” he said.
After surveying some 2,200 subscribers, Joffrey targeted a narrow demographic of childhood ballet students who want to see “something beautiful, sophisticated or artistic” and found ballet “inspirational and emotionally powerful,” Newcomb said. The resulting marketing focused on the “inner ballerina” in the company’s target audience. When Newcomb came home from work one day, his 3-year-old daughter was sitting in their living room fascinated with the first mailing, he said.
Two weeks later, Newcomb’s family received the second mailing, with a cover of infant ballerinas labeled “Beginners” and an inside photo of Joffrey dancers proclaimed “Experts.” “The realization of the dream,” he said. “See, they nail it, don’t they? That’s one of the best marketing implementations I’ve ever seen in my life. They got the concept and they drilled it. I don’t think you can do it better.”
—Phil Rockrohr