Built For a Different World: The Arts Business Model Problem

Most popular content

Blog

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. It’s not.

Beyond Demographics: Unlocking the Core Drivers of Engagement

Arts orgs have long relied on demographic and transactional data to segment their audiences—age, income, ticket history, and zip code serving as proxies for interest and intent. But these traditional models have lost their predictive power.

Churn Isn’t Failure. It’s Our New Reality.

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

Not All Innovation Sparks Growth

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.

Arts Organizations Aren’t Failing. Their Outdated Models Are.

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

How I 16X’d engagement and 6X’d reach in 2024 (plus 1.8X’d my email list)

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…

$11 tix at Opera Philadelphia: Revolutionary or risky?

Opera Philadelphia’s recent decision to introduce a pay-what-you-can model, with tickets starting as low as $11, has generated considerable buzz.

Most recent content

Blog

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. It’s not.

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.

Your audience survey is broken.

Post-event surveys that ask “How satisfied are you?” or “How did it make you feel?” miss the point entirely.

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.

When personalization backfires

Personalization is billed as marketing’s holy grail. But most of what the industry calls “personalization” isn’t personal at all — it’s shallow behavioral tailoring, and consumers know it.

Universal design: How to grow audiences by centering the outsider

Forward-thinking organizations are applying universal design principles to their entire organizational structure, recognizing that inclusive design fosters innovation that benefits everyone.

The blind spot in arts audience research

For decades, arts leaders have been told to focus on people who already love the arts. Here's why that advice is limiting growth.

Burying the Lede: When Arts Recovery Headlines Reinforce Inertia

The headlines are exciting. "Arts sector grew at twice the rate of the total economy!" "We contributed $1.2 trillion to the GDP in 2023!" Here's what's actually happening.

The Classical Music Attendance Paradox: Why 11M Listeners Don't Fill Concert Halls

If listening were a pipeline to attendance, our concert halls would be packed. They're not. Here’s why.

The golf industry has reversed decades of decline. Can classical music do the same?

Golf didn't just stabilize a declining industry—they sparked record-breaking growth by making the sport accessible to people who never would have engaged before.

The secret to your next grant win

Most grant applications follow the same tired formula: Here's who we are, here's what we do, here's why we're great, here's why you should fund us.

Beyond Demographics: Unlocking the Core Drivers of Engagement

This is NOT a driver of engagement

Arts organizations too often focus their sales pitches on “cultural enrichment”, citing industry reports or in-house surveys that say it’s a primary driver of engagement. But those studies asked the wrong question.

4 Surprising Studies Shaping Audience Behavior

Now is the perfect time to step back, clear your head, and scan the bigger forces shaping audience behavior. These aren’t arts-specific reports—but that’s exactly the point.

Ruth Hartt 1/14/22 Ruth Hartt 1/14/22

What’s NOT trending in 2022? The ivory tower.

This is how you build brand loyalty, and The Philadelphia Orchestra is nailing it.

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

6 assumptions arts organizations are getting wrong across the industry

It’s time to reconsider the traditional assumptions on which the majority of arts organizations base their marketing and strategy.

Ruth Hartt 11/22/21 Ruth Hartt 11/22/21

What does Spirit Airlines have to do with arts marketing?

Make it easier for your target audiences to make a purchasing decision by clearly framing the tradeoffs.

Ruth Hartt 10/16/21 Ruth Hartt 10/16/21

Does your video marketing ignore the reality of your target audiences?

Think about the last orchestra/opera/ballet commercial you watched, whether on TV or social media. Was there anything familiar or relevant for the Outsiders in that video?

Ruth Hartt 10/4/21 Ruth Hartt 10/4/21

Revlon sells hope. What does your cultural organization sell?

The founder of Revlon once said, "In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the drugstore, we sell hope." It’s a framework that’s key to relevant, empathetic marketing.

Ruth Hartt 9/29/21 Ruth Hartt 9/29/21

A soccer mom walks into a lumber yard: Developing empathy for your outsiders

Consumers simply don’t seek out experiences that cause stress, effort, or uncertainty. Which means that your Outsiders won’t be convinced to partake of your offerings—unless you deliberately shape the whole experience from marketing to ticket purchase to the event itself to be more familiar, more comfortable for them.

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.