We’ve all heard that stat: “90% of first-time orchestra attendees don’t return the next season.” But there’s something buried in that study that most people missed.

Only 9% of people are brand loyal. So why are we still building arts models that depend so heavily on loyalty?

Ask any arts leader how to fix audience decline, and you’ll hear a familiar answer: "We need to innovate." They’re not wrong. But they're innovating in the wrong places.

Business models are designed to defend the assumptions they were built on—even when external realities shift.

If you're only segmenting your audience by purchase behaviors or demographics, you're overlooking a massive opportunity for radical growth.

This seeming existential crisis is actually a moment of huge opportunity. You just need to rethink the decades-old audience development playbook—and find your Blue Ocean.

Last January, I set a SMART goal of reaching 5,000 LinkedIn followers (nearly twice what I was starting with) and doubling my LinkedIn reach by the end of the year. Here’s what happened…

What do an opera company, a ballet organization, a university concert series, and a library have in common? They’ve all harnessed the power of customer-centric strategies to redefine their relevance and thrive in today’s rapidly changing cultural landscape.

If you’ve hesitated to post on social media, thinking it’s “not your role” or that your organization’s branded accounts are enough, it’s time to rethink.

New logos, sleek designs, clever taglines—rebrands are exciting to watch. Until I take a closer look and realize it’s all surface and no substance.

For arts organizations faced with audience declines, there's a lot of pressure to recalibrate. But how ready is your organization for change? And how long will that change take?

Opera Philadelphia’s recent decision to introduce a pay-what-you-can model, with tickets starting as low as $11, has generated considerable buzz over the past week. Is the move revolutionary or risky?

There’s a persistent contingent in the arts who believe that calls for change are unwarranted.

“We’ve been told for years that arts patrons are disappearing,” they say, “but they never really do.”

Here are four reasons why now is different.

Deeply understanding the customer by regularly gathering customer insights has become a high-stakes game. And it’s a game that the for-profit sector is currently winning. How does the arts and culture sector compare?

Leadership buy-in is crucial before real change can occur at any arts organization. On your quest to shift hearts and minds, here are six tactics to consider.

"People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." This adage is often employed to illustrate a foundational concept in sales and marketing. But if you’re trying to sell a drill, knowing your customer wants to achieve a hole won’t get you very far.

In the arts and culture sector reclaiming relevance and unlocking audience growth means crafting compelling narratives that resonate with your target audience's aspirations and motivations.

It’s no secret—the arts sector struggles to reflect the diversity of the real world. And the NEA’s most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts has the hard numbers to prove it.