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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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Budweiser #BestBuds

The Campaign

One of my favorite campaigns that I have seen within this year is the Budweiser “Best Buds” series of commercials.  These commercials have run on television, but were cleverly designed and promoted over social media.  The campaign has been running for quite some time now, and ads have been shown on both the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowl.  This campaign is not only a different taste of beer advertising but it taps into the emotion of a man and his best friend.  The one below is one of my favorites from the series, since the message is clear and makes me tear up. Every. Single. Time.

If you go to the YouTube link, you find that it has been watched over 23 million times, and liked over 60 thousand times. If that isn’t social engagement, I don’t really know what is.

In this particular advertisement, it evokes an emotion that is hard to come by in today’s era.  If an ad makes me tear up, I always consider it a good one – because I hardly tear up for anything.  The thought of a loved one dying is one thing that is hard to evoke, but instead of making it about humans, Budweiser decided to make it about the dog.  Not only is it a perfect twist, but it makes viewers realize what effect it has on our favorite four legged friends.  I think this advertisement really resonates with a lot of people – and that’s why this campaign did so well.

One of my favorite parts of this commercial and campaign is that it promotes safe drinking and driving.  I think everyone this day in age has known someone who has been in a car accident, and furthermore, I’m sure many of those people know someone who has gotten into a drunk driving accident. With the upcoming generation of millennials entering the legal drinking age, we have been taught that drinking and driving is something you should never do.  It’s very encouraging to see a beer company promoting the same thing in a way that reminds you in a lesson that isn’t a high school teacher telling you what not to do.

 

The Target

This Anheuser-Busch campaign, is targeted towards people of the legal drinking age.  However, it is more specifically targeted towards drinkers between the ages of 21-27.  Anheuser-Busch wanted to specifically capture the 21-27 target because this demographic consumes and shares content via the internet; mainly though social sites and news sources.  According to the Anheuser-Busch article, the main purpose of the campaign was to promote responsible drinking and driving.  The campaign voices that it is super important not to drink and drive, but is even more important to have a safe place to stay.  From the YouTube video that was shown, it is clear that that message has been obtained.  From other commercials, like the one below, it is a little harder to tell – but none the less, the campaign is still a strong one.

This YouTube advertisement above generated close to 59 million views and has over 246 thousand likes.  This “Puppy Love” commercial was aired during the Super Bowl XLVIII, which is why it has more views than the other ads.  This last advertisement I will show below, was aired during the Super Bowl XLIX.

“Lost Dog” commercial generated 29 million views with 120 thousand likes. This ad was as a result of the campaign’s success from the prior year.

 

The Strategy

As seen by the ads that I have posted in this article, the strategy of this campaign was to promote safe driving to all alcohol consumers.  The importance of safe drinking is one that has always been promoted by the alcohol industry, but Budweiser took it to a whole new level. Alcohol advertising is actually self-regulated, and no advertising focuses on partying or getting drunk.  Rather, alcohol advertisements focus on the taste and or social aspects of enjoying a beer with friends.

The strategy of this campaign was very smart and well thought out.  As noted before, Anheuser-Busch wanted to advertise to all alcohol consumers, and advertising online was a great way to do so because viewers would tend to see the post during the day and notice it was posted and shared by a friend.  For a discussion that is centered on safe drinking and driving, it is almost better to have a friend share the information, since its saying to a friend “hey, don’t let this happen to you, because if it does, I will be crushed.”  Budweiser, in my eyes, did everything right, they had a goal, they achieved it, and they gained a lot of earned media.  News sources listed Budweiser as having one of the best commercials on the Super Bowl – always something people talk about after the football game. Huffington Post, WGNTV, and AdWeek all promoted Budweiser through earned media.  The advertisement that ran during Super Bowl XLIX had the highest ranking by increase in positive comments according to Venture Beat.

Besides the sharing of the YouTube videos via social media, Budweiser also promoted their brand through other vehicles.  In this tweet below, you can see that Budweiser ran a sweepstakes.

This Tweet alone, which was sent on the 23rd of January 2015, generated 4,373 retweets and 2,950 favorites.

Twitter was not the source Budweiser used, they also got the Vine community involved by getting famous viner Vincent Marcus to create an ad.

Vincent Marcus made this content exclusively for Budweiser, and you know it’s an ad with “#BestBuds Budweiser #ad.”

 

Conclusion

The Budweiser brand went ahead to create content in a way that would engage users – which I think is one of the most important things to do in this time period.  If a brand doesn’t create conversation, how do you really know if you are truly reaching consumers? Budweiser understood their target and they realized how important social media is for promoting their brand.

Budweiser, I think did a phenomenal job with the #BestBuds campaign and while I would love for Budweiser to do another commercial for the 2016 Super Bowl, I doubt it will happen, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

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