Find Your Blue Ocean: Create New Markets Instead of Fighting for Old Ones
For decades, arts organizations have relied on a shrinking, oversaturated audience pool.
In short, we’ve been losing traditional audiences faster than we’re gaining new ones. Colleen Dilenschneider calls it ‘negative substitution.’ I call it a slow-motion crisis.
It’s time to face the truth: Competing harder for the same patrons won’t drive growth.
But this seeming existential crisis is actually a moment of huge opportunity. You just need to rethink the decades-old audience development playbook—and find your Blue Ocean.
New to the Blue Ocean concept? Here’s a quick primer.
Winning By Ignoring the Wine Snobs
In 2001, a small Australian wine company made what seemed like a reckless move: entering the brutally competitive U.S. wine market with yet another budget wine.
Industry experts predicted failure. After all, the market was already drowning in choices, from two-buck Chuck to premium Napa Valley wines. But Yellow Tail didn't just survive—it exploded, becoming America's #1 imported wine by 2005. How?
They didn't try to beat the competition. Instead, they looked where no one else was looking: to the millions of Americans who found wine intimidating, pretentious, and confusing.
This is what business strategists call creating a "blue ocean"—finding uncontested market space where traditional competition fades into the background.
While others fight in bloody "red oceans" of competition, innovative organizations create blue ones by serving new markets in new ways.
Nintendo faced a similar challenge: a saturated, competitive market and an audience that was aging out. Instead of competing for the same hardcore gamers, they found an untapped market.
How Nintendo Won by Thinking Beyond Gamers
In the early 2000s, a struggling Nintendo wanted to retake its “top dog” status. Instead of fighting Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 over hardcore gamers, they set their sights on people who weren’t buying video game consoles.
Their strategy? Interview the people who hate video games. Here’s what the haters told Nintendo: Games were too complicated and controllers too hard to use.
So, in 2006, Nintendo launched Wii, using simplified graphics and a controller that mimicked real-life motions.
The results speak for themselves:
The Wii outsold the Xbox 360 before the year was out. Four years later, it had become Nintendo’s best-selling console ever.
Ultimately, Nintendo changed the entire industry by expanding the market and grabbing a whole new segment of customers.
Creating Your Blue Ocean
The common thread among these success stories isn't just innovation—it's a fundamental shift in thinking about markets and value. These companies succeeded not by competing better, but by tapping into hidden demand.
And it works for the arts, too. George Fergus, Director of Music at Christ Church Episcopal in Savannah, recently emailed me with this update:
“Your approach COMPLETELY changed the way we talked about our concert series. By implementing the customer-centric model, we more than doubled our attendance at a recent concert compared to our past season’s average!”
Yellow Tail didn’t try to win over wine snobs—they found a way to reach people who thought wine wasn’t for them.
Nintendo didn’t try to win over the hardcore gamers—they found a way to reach people who thought gaming wasn’t for them.
In the same way, George Fergus implemented Audience Alchemy principles to reach entirely new markets: Instead of trying to win over more church choir fans, he reframed his approach—unlocking a whole new audience that hadn’t considered attending before.
That's the power of blue ocean strategy in the arts: Instead of fighting harder for the same patrons, you create radical growth by redefining your market entirely.
Don’t discount your non-consumers. They might just be
your very own Blue Ocean.
What does this mean for your organization? Stop fighting harder for the same patrons. Start questioning industry assumptions about who your target audiences should be. How?
Look beyond demographics and psychographics to circumstances and unmet needs.
Analyze the market potential of these new audiences in your region. Start with the most viable option.
Adjust your messaging and value proposition to connect with this new market authentically.
Once you've unlocked one new audience, test, refine, and scale the approach.
The audiences who need what you offer are out there—they just don't know it yet. Your challenge isn't to make them appreciate your art form as it exists today, but to communicate how your art can serve them in ways they haven't yet imagined.
The future of the arts won’t be won by competing for the same shrinking audience. It will be built by those bold enough to create new ones.
