NHsmtp Blog Post 1

Uses and Grats for Classical Music

Classical music has a branding problem.

For those of us who’ve grown up with Brahms, Bach, Ravel and Strauss, the thought of life without them makes us feel like sad Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton. Photo Credit: We Had Faces Then (click image for link)

How regrettable that millions of millennials weren’t introduced to classical music as a child, whether because of school budget cuts or symphony bankruptcies or any other symptom of the decline of our institutional and cultural appreciation for the arts.

American orchestras receive a pittance of federal funding through the National Endowment for the Arts. They’re not publicly funded like the dozens of orchestras of Germany, including the Bamberg Symphony, the Freiburger Barockorchester and the iconic Berlin Philharmonic.

Here’s an illustration.

In 2013, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall received $50,000 from the NEA out of $25.8 million awarded nationally. That year, the DSO ran a $31 million budget with nearly $3 million in deficits. That NEA grant amounts to just 0.02 percent of their deficit spending.  

In 2010 and 2011, respectively, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and Syracuse Symphony Orchestra both filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Since then, they’ve regrouped and renamed themselves as the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and Symphoria. But the struggle isn’t over.

Philip Kennicott of New Republic explains:

“For decades, orchestras operated on a subscription model, a kind of artistic socialism that spread the costs and risks of programming among a broad base of listeners. Audiences subscribed to a block of concerts throughout the season, choosing a night of the week that was convenient, or a series that generally appealed to their musical interests. . .The benefits of this system were myriad: advanced ticket sales stabilized orchestra budgets and made planning easier; the programming was diversified and refreshed, and the musicians were consistently challenged; and listeners formed communities, socializing with each other at intermission.”

While the subscription model is in vogue for music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify (which has a truly Byzantine system of artist reimbursement), it just doesn’t jive with current classical audiences, particularly the young.

As 20th century subscription supporters of the arts die out, the only hope for sustaining the symphony orchestra is to build a young, loyal and consistent audience.

Social media could make it happen.

The Uses and Gratifications Theory says that people use and choose media in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. The job of any organization looking to reach their target audience is to figure out how that audience likes their media. Are they snail mail junkies? Instagram photographers? Digital immigrants who are still figuring out Facebook?

Public relations and development specialists ask these questions every day. Orchestras would do well to follow their lead.

Let’s take an example from Syracuse.

Symphoria is almost 2 years old. In order to avoid a double feature of the 2011 fiasco, they need to harness every tool in their arsenal. A starting goal would be to increase regular attendance among millennials. This is where social media comes in, and these are the two steps I would take.

Get on the Twitter Horse

Symphoria is on Twitter, but they’ve got one foot in the stirrups and the other on the ground. As of today (Oct. 17), they’ve posted only one original tweet and two retweets since Oct. 9. That’s okay for a Luddite dabbler who occasionally shares a cosmic cat photo or a trendy #FeelTheBern.

Laser Kitty in Space
Photo Credit: My God It’s Full of Cats (click image for link)

It’s not so great when you have a product to sell and salaries to pay. (Also, sharing the genius-written, shake-up-your-soul music that will die away if people don’t start buying tickets. That’s important, too.)

Symphoria needs a designated social media monitor, someone to regularly create new content, interact with followers and consistently—as well as correctly—utilize hashtags, memes, trending topics and other such interweb features.

They can take their cues from Classic FM, whose Twitter presence is active, to say the least. In the last 16 hours, they’ve shared 11 original tweets and three retweets, with information about programs, audience-oriented articles and the musician-humor that rarely comes through to general audiences.

 

On Nov. 1, the great Itzhak Perlman is playing with Symphoria. This is a big deal. Why is there only one tweet about him? Also, why are they not promoting their Perlman Pumpkin photo contest? Come on, guys—that’d make a great hashtag.

Board the Periscope Train

Apparently I’m riding the transportation-metaphor bus today. Can anyone say meta-metaphor? (Insert rimshot.)

Live-streaming is it right now. We want to experience things together at the same time across the world or down the street. We want a sneak peek into a moment. Arts organizations, including Symphoria, would do well to embrace the reality that millennial audiences want to be behind-the-scenes.

Seattle Opera is doing a fantastic job with this. For the last several years, using grant money from the Wallace Foundation, the opera company has strategically and intentionally tested new forms of audience building, including social media. Their original content is killer. Take a look at this backstage peek into the costume design of their current production of Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers.

Periscope Pre-Broadcast
Photo Credit: Periscope Press

That’s not Periscope, but it’s the essence of what viewers are looking for.

With periscope, a Symphoria social media manager could live-stream rehearsal segments, conversations or Q&A with orchestra members and special guests or mini live-tours of the Crouse-Hinds Theatre.

Classical music orgs aren’t used to sharing the inner workings of their practice, but if they want to connect with the audience that will pay their bills (and possibly change the world after being inspired by Mahler’s Symphony No. 2), they’ll have to get over that. Wouldn’t it be fun for the young, classical music audience in Syracuse to see a 30-second Periscope conversation with Itzhak? I think so.

Symphoria can do this. Other arts organizations have shown that. Now it’s up to them to execute. #PerlmanPumpkin

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Education and Social Media

As a Media & Education graduate student, I am always looking for the intersections between these two extremely broad fields of “media” and “education.” Through this post my goal is explore how two brands within these spheres can use social media to further their engagement with their audiences. The first brand is the Cook Honors […]

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Uses and Gratification Theory

The uses and gratification theory proclaims that the audience is primary and media is secondary. People use media to satisfy their own needs whether they are cognitive, social or emotional. Social media has given people the opportunity to identify their image according to what they take away from others online.

Brands that look to social media as a means of connecting to its audience must first identify the most popular channels used. By identifying the audience’s preferred channel, the brand can formulate messages using the restrictions of that channel. For example, Twitter has a 140 character limit for posts. To substitute the need for extra characters, brands can post images to convey the same idea. It is noted within the social media community that images create a higher level of engagement than regular text posts. For this reason, brands typically use Facebook and Twitter for interaction.

The next step is to meet the needs of an audience by identifying what the needs are and how the brand can help them. The Walt Disney Company exhibits a great example of separating its entities, therefore separating its audience’s needs.

Because Disney is such a large brand, it can be divided into many subcategories. The needs of its customers are met with specific social media accounts pertaining to the industry in which the audience needs attention. For this example we can divide the company into four main industries: consumer products, theme parks, media outlets and jobs.

Disney has a high entertainment focus overall. Consumers feel emotional connections from the past, current entertainment needs, and aspirations of pleasure for the future. These needs encompass all ages of Disney’s target audience.

 

For the four main industries, Disney has created specific Twitter accounts so that consumers can interact directly with the industry instead of the overall Disney brand. The specificity of the account creates a unique connection with the audience knowing that a big business brand can’t always reach individual users. Disney runs more than 15 verified Twitter accounts including @Disney, @WaltDisneyWorld, @DisneyLiving, @DisneyStudios, @TWDCjobs, and @radioDisney not to mention the hundreds of television network accounts they manage nationally and internationally like @ESPN and @ESPNArgentina.

What the audience wants from each account varies. The main @Disney account posts screenshots and quotes from Disney movies. This appeals to the audience’s nostalgia. They also release information they know appeals to the majority of the audience such as film franchise release dates.

The @Disney main account has less followers than @DisneyPixar. Although @DisneyPixar posts content in a similar style, the audience is engaged with the specific content, likely due to the fact that Disney Pixar films have come out within the past two decades, which has reached a younger, more active audience on social media.

Products that consumers are interested in purchasing are pushed by the @DisneyLiving account. By wearing the brand, they become representatives of the brand. They define their identity with merchandise pushed via social media, sometimes even by what others are saying through online word of mouth. Brands should keep in mind that they should push what they think audiences will like best and not just products that the brand wants to push to increase sales. Too many dissatisfied users will lead to the unfollowing of the brand on social media, limiting the amount of reach from the company.

It’s hard to determine the future but engaging with media that might shape that future is easy. Disney promotes lots of events and opportunities that consumers can visit to experience Disney “magic.” The Disney Parks are something you can’t just purchase over the Internet. In this way, Disney has to visually show what they offer to persuade consumers into making plans into reality.

Disney’s career accounts direct users who are thinking about applying for jobs to external websites where they can explain positions in more detail. A career is certainly part of an identity so making users connected to a brand in this way brings them as close to making the “magic” as possible.

In a way, media is not hard to push because the users already consume different types of Disney’s media. These users don’t need to be persuaded to engage with a show because they already are, hence they follow the account to keep informed. However, if a brand doesn’t already have a strong fan-base, this is where the crafting of messages becomes most important because your audience needs the gratification of identifying with it in any way possible.

This advice can be used on other social media like Facebook or Instagram keeping in mind the limitations associated with each. Others brands smaller than Disney stick to one or two main accounts to keep their audience all together.

What is popular nowadays is for the brand to have a main account and have an additional “help” account to discuss and solve problems associated with the brand. The only disadvantage to this is that when users want to be noticed by the brand, they will typically tag the main account. It is the responsibility of the “help” account to divert negative attention away from the positive content enjoyed by others.

Companies are not always similar in brand strength so it is important to understand that users are the ones making the distinctions between the engagement of the brand and their online identity. Most users don’t care about the number of followers a brand has, only that they feel like a brand cares about them, increasing their self-esteem.

In conclusion, it is important to know the brand’s audience and the reasons they seek content. Be specific when creating messages and post content an audience will like because they are the focus. A brand does not exist without followers.

 

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The power of Instagram in beauty & skincare product marketing

Beauty and skincare product marketers spend increasing amount of money and time on advertising their products through social media and engaging potential customers through interactions on social media. Social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have their uniqueness in terms of being venue of digital advertising and marketing. Facebook, with a […]

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