Mamdani and the Met

See audience strategy from the demand side

Your go-to source for audience insight, consumer trends, business model strategy, and fresh thinking on what drives relevance, demand, and growth in the arts.

Latest thinking

Blog

Audience Segmentation for Arts Organizations: A Complete Guide

Learn how arts organizations can use need-based audience segmentation to identify consumer demand, personalize marketing, and measure impact.

The wrong starting point

What if today’s arts sector is built on the wrong theory of demand?

Oracle saved the Nashville Symphony’s season. Now comes the harder part.

Oracle saved the Nashville Symphony’s season. Now comes the hard part: getting an organization full of people with different priorities, experiences, and beliefs to move forward together.

Mamdani and the Met: What the Metropolitan Opera Could Learn From Its Newest Patrons

By partnering with NYC, the Met gains access to a broad network already connected to millions of New Yorkers outside its normal customer base. But there's a second opportunity here, and it could matter more than access.

Can Gustavo Dudamel Save Classical Music?

The New York Times’ weekend episode of The Daily has a bold headline: Classical Music Is in Crisis. Gustavo Dudamel Is Here to Save It. That’s an enormous amount of pressure on one single person.

This is not a website redesign

At first glance, these two screenshots look like a before-and-after website redesign. But what you’re really seeing is a change in how an orchestra understands the value it creates.

How arts organizations win in a billion-dollar attention economy

We'll never win the fight for attention with budget or spectacle. But understanding the human experience? That's how we win against massive brands and big tech.

What Gartner just confirmed: active personalization beats passive.

Personalization without genuine customer understanding, says Gartner, can backfire. The solution? active personalization.

2.9x Ticket Conversions: When Marketing Starts with Patron Need

Can need-based intelligence increase engagement and drive higher ticket sales? A 16-week controlled test at the New Bedford Symphony.

Why Customer-Centered Thinking Keeps Getting Pulled Back Into the Status Quo

This happens a lot. A demand-side insight surfaces in the sector, and the product-centric model absorbs it back into the same logic it's always run on.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra's Real Crisis Has Nothing to Do with Andris Nelsons

BSO's 40% audience decline isn't a conductor problem or a financial problem. It's a business model problem. Here's what the data says—and why no conductor search fixes it.

The Wrong Trousers: What the Met Opera’s Crisis Reveals About Strategy in the Arts

The Met is in the New York Times again, searching for another solution to its financial crisis. This time, they brought in BCG.

Built for a Different World: The Arts Sector Business Model Problem

Arts organizations aren't naturally resistant to change. But it feels that way, right? And it’s all too easy to assume that it’s a leadership problem. But it’s the model that creates inertia.

The sentence that unlocks board engagement

The moment you frame the sector's problems as structural, your board stops offering tactical fixes and starts asking the right questions.

What if arts patrons aren’t “different”

What if arts patrons aren't inherently different? What if the traditional arts model makes them behave differently?

Zero-Party Data: How arts organizations win in a privacy-first world

We’re living through the biggest data shift in 20 years, and it's forcing a reckoning for arts leaders: know your audience deeply, or lose them to organizations that do.

Your stewardship strategy is killing your moment-based giving

CEO: Ok, our stewardship is dialed in. Appreciation events, welcome gifts, the works. But donations are stuck. What’s your take?

New CMO: Don’t kill the messenger, but we’re playing one giving game when there are actually two.

The Rise of Experiential Gifting: 5 Studies Arts Leaders Need to Know

It’s mid October. Your patrons are about to face one of their biggest holiday season frustrations: finding the perfect gift. Here are five consumer studies you need to know.

Ruth Hartt 9/14/21 Ruth Hartt 9/14/21

Do you REALLY know what your cultural audiences need? A deep dive and how-to guide.

Whether the your target audiences ultimately choose your arts event depends on how well you understand and respond to their needs, their emotional context, and their social circumstance.

Ruth Hartt 9/7/21 Ruth Hartt 9/7/21

Want to grow your audiences? Embrace the haters.

In the cultural sector, as we work to grow our audiences, are we trying to "shore up" the areas that don't need it, meanwhile ignoring the areas that do?

Ruth Hartt 8/29/21 Ruth Hartt 8/29/21

Lose the cookie cutters: A mission statement manifesto for cultural organizations

In Conductor as CEO, Tiffany Chang shares a fascinating analysis of the mission statements for 71 orchestras across the U.S. In a crowded market where ticket sales have declined by 50% over the past two decades, her insights provide some real motivation to step away from the standard formula and create something unique.

Ruth Hartt 8/17/21 Ruth Hartt 8/17/21

Apollinaire Theatre Company’s Romeo and Juliet: A study in community-growing, audience-building art

This is not your mother’s Romeo and Juliet. Let me count the ways.

Ruth Hartt 7/21/21 Ruth Hartt 7/21/21

Everybody hates marketing. But everyone loves a good story.

Traditional marketing is no longer serving today’s consumer.

Ruth Hartt 7/12/21 Ruth Hartt 7/12/21

Why digital content can never replace live performance

If we continue to provide digital programming, will it hasten the death knell for live performance?

Ruth Hartt 6/27/21 Ruth Hartt 6/27/21

How will cultural organizations survive the next big disruption? Neuroscience and Amazon have the answer.

These are daunting times for the cultural sector. What’s the right way forward for the industry?

Ruth Hartt 6/12/21 Ruth Hartt 6/12/21

Can arts organizations survive the longest-running disruption in history? Opera Australia has cracked the code

Opera Australia increased their sales revenue 28% in eight years and became the only major, year-round opera company whose ticket sales provide more than 50% of its income. How’d they do it?

Ruth Hartt 6/2/21 Ruth Hartt 6/2/21

Does your social media feed ignore your customer?

Here’s a hard truth: the average customer doesn’t care about you.

Ruth Hartt 5/26/21 Ruth Hartt 5/26/21

The California Symphony: Explaining Aubrey Bergauer’s extraordinary success through the lens of business theory

Aubrey brought the California Symphony back from the brink of financial ruin with jaw-dropping speed. The lens of business theory provides an explanation.

Ruth Hartt 5/21/21 Ruth Hartt 5/21/21

10 signs your cultural organization is egocentric

The egocentric perspective infiltrates everything from websites and social media to fundraising and marketing materials.

Ruth Hartt 5/7/21 Ruth Hartt 5/7/21

What opera singers share with marketers

Opera singers are trained to pursue their character’s deepest motivations. A marketer must be similarly equipped.