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Building Arts Audiences Through Dynamic Subscription Promotion

Danny Newman

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 1981
• ISBN:
  9781559367066
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts & Business

"Buy it, borrow it, steal it, but get your hands on it! If you follow Danny's advice on how to sell tickets, you won't have an unsold seat in the house all season long!"--Ralph Black, American Symphony League

	1
	My Unabashed Enthusiasm for Subscription

I am and have been an unabashed enthusiast for the concept of subscription to the performing arts since I first entered the theatrical world when I was 14 years old. For it was then that I sold my first subscription—to the Mummers of Chicago, a civic theatre group—by going from house to house, apartment to apartment, ringing doorbells and convincing those who dwelled therein to sign up for my season. Perhaps they bought the subscription because they were touched by the zeal of a spindly lad who seemed obsessed with his mission. For I was the child prodigy press agent of the company and, as such, I saw my role in quite romantic terms.

I thought of myself as the brave knight fighting the battle for the lady fair, with the artists I represented in the latter category. Poor, dear, helpless artists—they could create their wonderful art, but they were impractical and certainly incapable of buttonholing people or grabbing them by their lapels, while shouting at them, “I’m great, see, great! Y’gotta come to see me perform tonight!” And would we ask this of the artists? No, but the press agent could do it, the manager could, the board people could. And it was our obligation to do so, the way I looked at it. After all, wasn’t that “paying our dues”? On what other basis could we justify our continued association with the project? If the artists couldn’t do these things and we didn’t do them, why were we hanging around?

In the mid-1930’s, as an emergent press agent, I was constantly troubled by the early demise of legitimate plays I “handled,” despite my newspaper-space-grabbing talents. Why did the patient die so many times on the Saturday night after opening? Why didn’t the single-ticket buyers buy? I became fascinated with the brilliant subscription ideology of the visionaries who founded the Theatre Guild, which had come onto the scene a decade earlier with a Eugene O’Neill, a John Galsworthy, a George Bernard Shaw up their sleeves. They had intelligently concluded that they would, in short order, be “murdered mallards” if, with their plans for a better repertoire in the commercial New York theatrical climate of the 1920’s, they were to submit themselves to the vagaries of the box office, to the tender mercies of single-ticket buyers. So they organized a subscription audience in New York, and began an historic, successful revolution in the aspirations and achievements of its legitimate stage. Then they toured their superior plays to the superior audiences which they organized to receive them in many other American cities.

During that same era, Columbia Concerts, through its Community Concerts Division, was bringing professional classical music to hundreds, and then thousands, of communities in an allied field of the arts. It is interesting that these two organizations, the Theatre Guild and Columbia Concerts, were both commercial entities. Their stunning demonstration of the efficacy and power of subscription in building new audiences, the creation of new employment opportunities for artists, the generating of activity where there had been a void, seemed to make little impression on the nonprofit sector which, in the main, continued to operate on a basically nonsubscription economy, through the 1920’s, ’30’s, ’40’s and ’50’s.

The main exceptions were the symphony orchestras, which were the oldest subscription practitioners of our arts society; but they had not, except in a very few instances, attempted to increase the size of their subscription audiences so as to bring about more performances and longer seasons. Not until pressures from the musicians for longer seasons and fuller employment forced the hand of orchestra managers, did it become important to boards and managements to create additional series and seek additional subscribers.

It is what I have called the “congealed” series-ticket audiences of the old, established symphony orchestras (and they are almost always the oldest, most established of the arts organizations in a given community) that have sometimes given a bad reputation to subscription. I will explain. An orchestra was founded in 1883 in a medium-size city, with 2,000 subscribers. By 1933, a half-century later, it had held its own and still had 2,000 subscribed seats (1,000 husbands and wives). By 1973, it had 1,912, a net loss of 88 subscribers after 90 years of promotional inertia. However, since its hall seats 3,000 and single-ticket sales practically never happen, there remain about 1,000 unsold seats for the average concert. And, the actual attendance is nowhere near the 2,000 that the records show, since at least half of the 1,912 season-ticket holders are the third-generation heirs of the original 1883 subscriber complement. Their seats have been handed down to them by inheritance. They send in their checks for renewal annually, in the family tradition, but they (the grandchildren) just don’t go to the concerts. The grandparents liked music and were devout followers, but the grandchildren have no such tradition. To compound the problem for this orchestra, these subscribers simply ignore all pleadings to get them to send in their tickets so that they can at least be given to impecunious students. Thus, we have the demoralizing embarrassment of whole sections of the best seats empty at concert after concert.

Needless to say, this orchestra has enjoyed no expansion and is still playing a series of 11 individual concert performances per season, just as it did in 1883. What I have just described is certainly grim and depressing. This utter stagnation is unfairly blamed on subscription by some unthinking people. There is nothing wrong with subscription, but there was a lot wrong with the orchestra’s promotional philosophy, which had neglected subscription’s tremendous potential. They did nothing to increase its audience for 90 years, remaining content to have and to hold their orchestra, even if hardly anybody came to hear it. Perhaps snobbism came to be synonymous with their kind of subscription, for I sometimes suspected that the audience was purposely being kept small and select. Had big audience development drives been entered into, others besides the old-line, blue-blooded patrons might have started attending concerts.

Prominently displayed in public places, in parks and squares and in plazas, in so many towns and cities throughout the United States, are impressive equestrian statues of long gone Civil War military leaders—the General Jubilation T. Cornpone Memorials of Al Capp’s comic cartoons. These statues have been there since before any of us was born. We pass them every day of our lives, but we don’t really see them any more, and if a visitor were to ask us the name of the memoralized bronze horseman up there, we’d probably have difficulty recalling it. And what is the fate of such statues? Pigeons roost on them. Well, that was the situation of so many symphony orchestras in American communities. They are the oldest of our performing arts organizations. Often, they’ve been in their communities for generations (I recently met with the board of one which had been established for 116 years). Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the population would pass them by daily and never attend their concerts. The community, at best, was only subliminally aware of their existence. One had the feeling that there were heavy, moldering drapes on the great windows of their concert halls, deeply impregnated with the dust of long ago, and one felt the urge to tear them down, to wash the glass, to let in the promotional light—to shoo away the roosting pigeons and start great subscription drives that would fill those halls to overflowing with new audiences!

And that is just what has happened in the many subscription-oriented organizations with which I have been meeting and working. Some of them were, not many years ago, in that grim and depressing category, but they have since seen the light, have campaigned hard for good results, and are now benefiting in many ways.

I am very often told by staff executives that it is their artistic leaders’ lack of charisma and poor judgment in programming that are the causes of the public’s apathy in the face of subscription offers. However, in many such instances, upon close inspection, it turns out that the fault really lies with the complaining administrators, whose failure in promotional initiatives is a far greater factor in creating the problems they decried than were the alleged deficiencies of their artistic leaders. At a certain symphony orchestra that comes to mind, the music director, a most distinguished conductor, was being blamed for the organization’s inability to replace what I would consider to be the normal annual attrition of its subscribership. Each season, the subscription audience was shrinking, as an insufficient number of new people were entering the committed audience bloodstream. When the administrators were convinced to make what was, for them, an unprecedented major promotional effort, there was an immediate, dramatic response from the public and, overnight, new sales increased more than 500% over the previous season. The orchestra entered into a new era of sellout seasons. The music director was the same man as before. The programming was of the same character. The difference was unquestionably the changed attitude toward the promotion of subscription on the part of the management, and the actions that resulted.

In the many years that have passed since I began proselytizing for Dynamic Subscription Promotion and working in close association with hundreds of performing arts projects, I have had cause to reflect all too often upon the parasitism that plagues our field, which by its authentic glamour draws “dilettantish” types, inevitably and inexorably, as moths to the flame—often pleasant persons who have little or nothing to contribute to these arts, although they want to be around them with all their hearts and souls. But they simply haven’t the will to undertake the “dirty work,” the mundane, very unglamorous and difficult tasks the performance of which is so desperately needed by so many organizations. Such unworthy practitioners are not beyond redemption, however. I have seen cases where these indolent “administrationis personae” have come to life and given up long discussions about art in cafes and endless hours of lolling at rehearsals. (Who needs them at rehearsals when they should be out beating the bushes to get an audience for the actors, singers, dancers or instrumentalists, come performance time?) They have found pride in giving an honest 15-hour day’s work for their pay, satisfaction in bringing audiences to the artists they represent and revenues to the projects that have depended upon them. To be fair, many of these people had not understood or appreciated how important their roles could be, and once they did, their attitudes underwent great changes for the better.

Theatrical publicists come in all sizes and shapes, of course, and are varied in the range and level of their abilities and modes of operation. However, one attribute which I believe is all-important for those in our profession is a genuine, affirmative, even loving feeling for the art and for artists. Only in that spirit of involvement can we truly represent the interests of both. Albert Camus said it beautifully: “... the only people who can help the artist are those who love him.” That brings to mind a sour, older colleague of my theatrical “advance agent” days, who was fond of belligerently proclaiming, “Actors? I hate ’em. They put paint on their faces, don’t they?” I wonder how he would have felt about Camus’ sentiments.

I have occasionally found an organization’s own administrative employees talking down its productions or programs outside the confines of the offices, thus gratuitously assuming the role of quasi-critics, and using what they claim are the deficiencies of the artistic product as justification for their failure to better promote its interests. Whether you call this crutch seeking, copping out or just plain treason, it isn’t right and is not going to help either the renewal or sale of new subscriptions.

Certainly we want the highest level of artistic excellence at all times for our various operatic, dramatic, balletic and symphonic projects. But, if there should come a time when this quality is not achieved, I would no more run all around town talking about it than I would if my child had failed to pass his school examinations. Certainly, if there should be a pattern of recurring failure on the part of the artistic department, the board of directors should deal with the situation. However, managers, publicists, box office employees and office personnel are not critics-at-large, and they should be both sensitive and circumspect in any statements they make outside the organization’s immediate family circle. Particularly unethical and destructive are employees, anxious to demonstrate their own superior and sophisticated taste to friends they may have in the communications media, who find themselves slipping into negative statements about the very cause they represent. As an attitude for all of us who work in support of the art and artists, I recommend wholeheartedly the classic press agent’s stance, “If it’s my show, it’s great. If they’re my artists, they’re the greatest!”

While not every resident professional theatre which has sprung into being through the 1960’s and ’70’s is now operating on the level of the British National Theatre or the Comédie-Française, remember that, nursed through their difficult periods, young, fragile artistic institutions can become rooted and successful, providing the possibilities of employment and artistic development to large numbers of creative people in all the fields. Think of how many actors and actresses, directors, designers, choreographers, dancers, singers, conductors and instrumentalists have found not only careers through subscription-supported arts institutions, but have been able to hammer out the kinks in their talent on the anvil of the audiences which subscription has brought them. Thus, we now have a constant enrichment in terms of professionalism in the performing arts picture, made possible by permanent institutions which would almost certainly have collapsed in their early stages, had not the people to whom they were dear fought for their interests at every step, and had they not built subscriberships large enough to achieve their stability, viability and longevity. Only in such a context can the arts flourish.

I am often impressed by some of the promotional methods which I find in operation upon my initial visits to performing arts groups, and I advise that these sound activities be continued. If there are efforts in progress by which subscriptions are being sold, I consider them sacred, and I would bite off my tongue before I suggested changing them. But I try to get the scale of these activities considerably increased and to introduce additional components which may have been omitted entirely, often for no reason except their having been overlooked despite their use by so many other organizations in the same field. In many cases, no more encouragement is needed than the pointing out of what is happening in those other places. I always seek to instill confidence in those who will most likely have to do the job. I try to induce their belief in the enormous importance of successful subscription campaigning to their projects and to their own careers. I want them to allocate the proper value to the wonderful contribution which non-artists who are associated with artistic causes can make. For only when they—the promoters—succeed, can the artists attain the conditions in which to flourish.

The idea of subscription seems to rouse the hackles of many people and to evoke all sorts of unfounded arguments as to why this method of arranging attendance of the performing arts will not be accepted in this or that community. I think a perfect example was the oft-repeated assurance I was given about the futility of attempting to introduce subscription attendance at the theatre in predominantly French-speaking Montreal. I was told that despite the stunning successes of our subscription campaigns in English-speaking communities throughout Canada, the Francophone playgoer was simply too individualistic, too nonconformist, too selective in his tastes, to submit to the advance planning and the discipline which organized attendance imposes on subscribers. In every way, I was discouraged from beginning such efforts in New France. Once, when I participated in an arts seminar in Quebec City, a charming functionary in the employ of the province’s cultural ministry explained to me in great detail the reasons the French-speaking theatre buff would never submit to the regimentation of subscription. Then, one day the visionary artistic leader of French Canada’s leading theatre company, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Jean-Louis Roux, and his administrator, Lucien Allen, informed me that they were ready to try; from a standing start (not one subscriber), we immediately sold 8,300 subscriptions, achieving percentage results from brochure distributions which were higher than we were obtaining in the same period in the English-speaking sectors of the country or in the U.S. (As I write this, I believe that TNM has over 14,500 subscribers.) The subscription fever spread to the English-speaking minority’s theatre companies there and the two leading ones, the Centaur and the Bronfman, now have about 19,000 subscribers between them. And the Montreal Symphony, which did have a subscribership, has now increased it by over 150%. So, I have learned to take with the proverbial grain of salt the protestations which I so often hear along the lines of, “You see, Mr. Newman, our town is different....”

A retarding factor in the audience development of some companies is the infinite capacity of their artistic directors and their managerial personnel for self-deception and their resulting indulgence in fatuous generalities which tell anything but the truth to themselves and others, whenever the issue of “people paucity out in the house” comes up for discussion. In that connection, I relate the following:

I had just returned to the hotel after my first meeting with the board leaders and staff of a small but fairly well-known nonprofit performing arts enterprise which was surviving only because of its heavy subsidy from a funding agency that apparently never looked at its attendance figures. For I had that day been surprised to learn that, despite the very limited number of performances given in a very small auditorium, they had been regularly playing to 45% unsold seats. I turned on the TV set hoping to catch the late newscast and, suddenly, there appeared on the screen the face of the artistic director of this project which I had been sent to assist. He was being interviewed. Because there had recently been a remarkable and considerably publicized audience-building success by another arts organization in a nearby community, the interviewer asked our man if his group were takin...