HOW THE IDEA THAT THE ARTS COULD AND SHOULD BE MARKETED CAME ABOUT AND MY PART IN IT

There was a time when the staff of the places where the performing and visual arts were presented did not use the term ‘arts marketing’ – nor did they consciously practise it - yet they frequently achieved very high levels of attendance. If they did use a term to describe how audiences were achieved it was probably the word ‘Publicity’ and this usually meant little more than following a well trodden path of producing and distributing specified numbers of pieces of printed paper, large and small. They also relied on the co-operation of newspapers who would, through articles, complement what was being presented and would do so with increased enthusiasm if the presenting bodies spent money to advertise with them. Publicity really meant little more than the presentation of information.

These organisations wanted Full Houses and to get them they had to present

Stars. Stars were (and still are) famous for what they did, people who carried Fame around with them; they were well known, they were popular, one did not have to work hard to find audiences for them. The only disadvantage of presenting Stars was that they were in demand and so they commanded high fees. So success meant achieving Full Houses yielding income high enough to pay the fees of Stars plus some profit.

These circumstances meant that as the popularity and cost of Stars grew so the capacities of the venues had to rise – hence the relatively large theatres built before the second world war, the Number One Touring Houses as they were known.  There was, and still is, a loose relationship between the fees demanded by Stars and their popularity as measured through the box-office. A skilful promoter might identify a rising star and book them before their fee had increased. Similarly, falling stars might, in the face of falling demand from promoters, reduce their fees without realising that in certain parts of the country they were still stars: in both cases increased income from audiences might be the result. This added a germ of excitement to what was almost always something of a gamble.

At this early stage it should be noted that the financial basis for the presentation of stars (and ‘star attractions’ which would include touring dance and opera companies) was almost entirely founded on the intention and the ability to make profit. In, say, the Victorian and Edwardian periods, philanthropists might have made possible the building of theatres, museums, arts galleries and so on (where their names could live on as part of their legacies) but there was no system of underwriting loss making events. Indeed, the very notion of presenting something that would almost certainly run at a loss would have been anathema to presenters in those days.

Inevitably this system, based on stars of which there was not a limitless supply, based on the high capacity of auditoria, based on the willingness of people to pay enough to make it function, peaked and during and after WW2 lost some of its impact.

Running alongside the star based promotions there were the nation’s music clubs and repertory theatres that did not need highly paid stars for them to operate. To the arts marketer of today these organisations should be of particular interest. If they did not seek to present very famous stars, how did they survive? Their audience capacities were small and the prices they could successfully charge were low. How did they do it?

They were, the organisations themselves, to their communities, the stars. Their fame was restricted to quite a limited catchment area but often they were ‘the only game in town’. Theatrical repertory companies, with resident companies, would often present a different play each week and some of their actors would become local celebrities – or ‘mini-stars’ but it was the reputation of the local ‘Rep’ that pulled in the crowds.

Music Clubs, presenting classical music often played by well-known performers, famous within the relatively small world of those players and lovers of serious music, would present, say, one concert per month from September through to June or July. They would often try to include in their programmes performers who were stars in the eyes of their particular public; this would add a certain sparkle to the proceedings but they also included less well-known musicians who were, nevertheless, of high quality – and whose fees were much less. Music Clubs, because of their success, frequently found themselves in a ‘seller’s market’ with waiting lists of would-be subscribers; they too were stars.  

During WW2 the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) was formed and after the war this became the Arts Council of Great Britain. From an arts marketing viewpoint the most important thing to grow from this development was the introduction of extra money, into the arena of the public artistic entertainment that existed then. Essentially the message that Government was sending out was that there should be more arts activities and that money was the means of achieving this. This had implications for the whole scene as it was then.

At this point one unintended consequence of this was to create a need for a more effective way of attracting audiences. Over the next twenty years and onwards there would grow up organisations which would present to their publics artists – and art forms – that were relatively unknown: they were not Stars. The buildings in which these ‘not Stars’ were presented were quite small – school halls, town halls, in one small Midlands town the swimming pool was covered with planks to make an ad hoc auditorium. At the same time more theatres and arts centres were being built: their capacities were nothing like as great as the old Number One Touring Houses.

So, what was growing was another tier of presenting bodies and presenting venues that were of relatively small capacity; their artistic aims and financial bases effectively excluding Stars from their programmes but there was no shortage of talented artists, expecting lower fees than did the Stars, who were eager to appear before audiences. If only potential audiences could be persuaded that what was being offered to them was good and well worth the cost of a ticket – then income might have a chance of equalling expenditure! If it did not then money must be found from other sources.

By sheer fluke of fate I started to develop an interest in the promotion of jazz events almost at the very beginning of this new phase. It was the mid-Nineteen Sixties. The Arts Council, with its remit of encouraging the provision of music and the arts, had only just decided to achieve its ambition by encouraging the formation of Regional Arts Associations that would operate as mini-Arts Councils, but even those that had been formed were at that time only embryonic. There was one for Lincolnshire, there was one for the Midlands that was in the process of being split into East and West Midlands, one for the South West and one for the North. I had not even heard of them when I presented my first jazz concert in the hall of Corby Grammar School in Northamptonshire, where I was working as a teacher of mathematics. I presented the Monty Sunshine Jazz Band and I had chosen well. The band was as well-known as any British jazz band could have been, the fee (£100) was not too high although about twice my net monthly salary. Sums on the back of an envelope showed that profit was possible if I could attract enough people. I did.

I then presented a more expensive but more exciting modern jazz group headed by Tubby Hayes. It did a lot for the reputation of the little jazz club I had founded and it sold out. It lost a little money but I had a small sum in hand from the Monty Sunshine event and that was all it needed.

My progress from then on was to leapfrog from one event that made money to one that lost it – but was worthy in terms of artistic quality – and for one to balance the other: my salary as a teacher was pretty low. My sixth form pupils at Corby Grammar School would rave to the rocking music of the Apex Rhythm ‘n Blue All Stars and then sit to listen to Ronnie Scott’s quartet in rapt attention.

So, you see, the Corby Grammar School Jazz Club became the star! 

At the heart of this I was learning how to attract audiences. I was not part of the Arts Council funding system but I had created my own system of subsidy and to make it work I had to succeed in marketing both the popular and the less popular. Just as with arts events today I saw no point in arranging the public performance of music if the maximum number of people was not there to enjoy it or if I had not extracted the maximum amount of money from that group of people.

Another fluke of fate put my jazz promoting alongside the classical music ambitions of Neville Dilkes, the Head of Music of the school where I was working. He had formed a freelance professional chamber orchestra called Midland Sinfonia and it had given a small number of concerts in the same hall where my jazz concerts were taking place. His concerts were miserably attended and mine were not. We did a deal. I slowly eased out of the jazz promotions and eased into classical music, specifically the concerts of the Midland Sinfonia.

The East Midlands Arts Association was, at that time, neither ready nor willing to back this exciting project with money. In truth they did not back it with anything, not even the applause from a visiting officer. The Musicians’ Union spotted the benefits to their members if we could be encouraged to arrange more and more concerts which would employ them. A small grant, I think it was £500, made it possible for me to take on the work on a semi-professional basis and I ran the orchestra from my spare bedroom while continuing to teach.

I could see a way to find the money necessary to expand the geographical range of our work; the local authorities, which then were giving almost nothing to the arts in the region apart from support for the theatres that had been formed in Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, would be my target. I created what I termed the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire Plans. Within each of the counties I chose ‘concert centres’: towns that had relatively large populations and halls with sufficiently large capacities. I then offered every local authority within each county the opportunity of making a contribution, linked to the product of what was then called a ‘Penny Rate’ (the income derived from one penny from the local rate and was directly linked to the population and its relative wealth). The payback would be a concert, with orchestra of size appropriate to the money available, in one of their concert centres. The Plans worked pretty well, or at least well enough to give the orchestra a respectable programme of concerts and decent sized audiences. I fondly remember the Music Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain calling me to offer his congratulations on my scheme.

In a minor way, in the East Midlands, the Midland Sinfonia - soon to be re-named the English Sinfonia - became the star.
 

I went on from being an orchestral manager to becoming the first director of one of those regional arts associations; Merseyside Arts Association. My policy stood on two legs; one was to give financial support to arts organisations that were already in existence and the other was to promote arts events in areas of Merseyside that were deficient in this respect. This was still only the beginning of the process of ‘artification’ not only in Merseyside but also in the rest of the country and I was, I believe, the only RAA director to be choosing this labour intensive approach. Within a couple of years we were up to our ears in shows presented in small scale venues in the region centred upon Liverpool. I, we (we had staff at MAA), became proficient in the marketing of our shows.

May I tell you one story about how this RAA director was able to help a Liverpool theatre director who was in a jam? The new director of the Everyman Theatre had been in post for a few months. He came to see me and explained his frustration at presenting play after play that was, by any critical standard, more than just OK, but he was not getting audiences. He had a new play in rehearsal and it was going to be great but, on previous experience, it was not going to attract large audiences. What could he do? I told him to go away and write down on his typewriter a letter to the people of Liverpool telling them why this play was not to be missed – and then to sign it. We would enlarge the A4 sheet of paper covered with his typescript up to the size of a Double Crown poster and we would then plaster it all over every poster site in Liverpool including the stations on Liverpool’s underground railway that carried commuters from Birkenhead and the Wirral into the city and back again. Did the play sell? It sold out its three week run and then extended that run for another three weeks and still sold out. There is a creative element in marketing which I have never had the confidence to claim; I think this is a good example of what I am talking about.

On 3 June 1971 there was a meeting of all the directors of Regional Arts Associations held in Oxford. I presented a paper called ‘Marketing the Arts’. It was the first time that the topic had ever been raised in the UK. What I remember most of all is how the Deputy Director of the Arts Council, present for all the previous parts of the conference, made his excuses and left before I stood to present my paper.

I have deviated slightly from my intention of showing how the need to have some sort of working system for marketing the arts arose from the availability of money which increased the number of events which increased the need to attract audiences for those events. I have included part of my personal history in this account because I was in on the ground floor of this development and experienced it at first hand as it grew. As my experience grew I developed my own thoughts on how best to persuade people to join my audiences. I was the first person in the UK to argue that there needed to be a theoretical basis to how arts managers should approach marketing. I created the term ‘arts marketing’ to emphasise that the process of building arts audiences was different from the marketing process that is employed in the commercial sector. Why should it be different for the arts? It has always seemed obvious to me that where public funding is used to stimulate and support arts activities (a) the arts must be given special status and protected from pressure to conform to what public tastes are believed to be at the time and (b) the aim is to attract as many people as possible who are prepared to pay what they believe to be a reasonable sum of money, that is to say, it is not primarily aimed at making a financial profit but to achieve the most money possible from those people..

In those early days I defined the arts marketing function thusly:

The aim of arts marketing is to bring an appropriate number of people into an appropriate form of contact with the artist and, in so doing, to arrive at the best financial outcome that is compatible with the achievement of that aim.

And this was only the beginning.