How will cultural organizations survive the next big disruption? Neuroscience and Amazon have the answer.
These are daunting times for the cultural sector. Performing arts organizations who were already struggling with a decline in audiences before the pandemic are reeling from the financial impact of a forced 15-month shutdown. It seems that everything has changed, and nothing is certain. What’s the right way forward for the industry? Neuroscience and Amazon may have the answer.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore, but it has since become so much more. In 2020, Amazon reached a market value of $1 trillion—a stunning achievement and one that took Steve Jobs’s Apple twice as many years to reach. How did Amazon destroy its competitors and become an online shopping behemoth almost overnight? Hint: It wasn’t expensive marketing campaigns or whiz-bang technologies.
Bezos attributes his company’s success to a simple question: “What’s not going to change in the next ten years?” Unlike so many companies which spent their time fretting over an ever-evolving industry landscape and scrambling to incorporate the next great innovation, Bezos has kept a laser focus on building a strategy around customer needs that remain constant over time.
For Amazon, that means prioritizing low prices, vast selection, and rapid delivery. As Bezos put it, “It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff, I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher.’ ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.’” Bezos is confident that Amazon’s investment in these three basic customer needs will pay dividends for years to come. “When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.” This approach has more than paid off for Bezos, who is currently at the top of Forbes’ world-wide ranking of billionaires.
Amazon’s strategy offers leaders a model for growing a successful business in times of uncertainty or rapid change. As cultural organizations resume the pre-covid work of rejuvenating their declining ticket sales in the face of the longest-running disruption in history while simultaneously grappling with the changes that covid has wrought, it’s worth asking: What audience needs will never change, no matter what disruption comes along?
As Opera Australia determined, consumers will always be looking for ways to celebrate special occasions. Consumers will never stop looking for gift ideas. Consumers (especially tourists) will always be looking to experience the best a particular city has to offer. But are there even deeper motivations to be tapped?
David Rock, an expert on the neuroscience of leadership, writes that certain social drivers strongly influence human behavior. “The brain equates social needs with survival; for example, being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses.” This insight aligns wonderfully with Jobs to Be Done theory, which posits that a customer’s “job to be done” invariably includes social and emotional components that must be addressed.
What are the motivators of human behavior that stem from this mechanism? Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF), says David Rock. Can cultural organizations innovate around these motivators in ways that will successfully attract and retain their target audiences? Jobs to Be Done theory says, emphatically, yes.
Harnessing the desire for status
Studies show that humans are constantly assessing their status in relation to others, says David Rock. Researchers have found that “when people realize that they might compare unfavorably to someone else, the threat response kicks in, releasing cortisol and other stress-related hormones.” And Seth Godin tells us that people signal their desired status through their purchases. This is good news for the classical music industry, which has traditionally been regarded as the domain of the elite.
Although, Georgia Rivers points out, “Pitching the right status level is tricky. For some, attending the performing arts signals high status, for others pop culture is cooler.” For other consumers, issues around racial justice or environmental conservation may hold top priority—increasingly so for millennials.
Seeking ways for your audience to “rub shoulders” with influencers or to “be seen” in society can drive a number of innovations:
Invite celebrities, politicians, and/or business leaders to attend, and feature their presence on social media and/or news media
Hire a professional photographer to take photos of audience members and make them shareable on social media and/or in the society section of the local newspaper
Focus marketing efforts on building celebrity or buzz around guest artists or conductors—get them featured on national talk shows
Invite celebrities, politicians, and/or business leaders to serve on the board
Ask local radio/tv hosts to talk up your events on their shows
These strategies might seem shallow or frivolous. But studies have shown that the status-assessing neural process occurs even when the stakes are meaningless (think winning a board game or being the first through a green light.)
Harnessing the desire for certainty
When a person experiences ambiguity or confusion, writes David Rock, their brain triggers the threat response. In essence, uncertainty can be paralyzing. Cultural organizations can benefit from exploring the uncertainties that their target audiences harbor about them.
Helping target audiences achieve a sense of certainty requires the systematic elimination of any anxieties or perceived barriers that prevent target audiences from engaging with your organization. In Demand Side Sales 101, Bob Moesta writes “Value is created and money is made by solving the anxiety side of the equation.” Aubrey Bergauer tackled this issue brilliantly at the California Symphony, where she interviewed target audiences, identified aspects of the audience experience that were off-putting or anxiety-inducing, and implemented a number of unconventional changes.
Innovating around the customer’s desire for certainty might prompt the following:
Provide the concert running time early in the ticketing process and in the program notes
Make it clear in all marketing materials that audiences can wear whatever they want
Contract with local parking garages to provide free parking (or even valet parking) for attendees
Allow audiences to use their phones (on silent) during performances
Invite audiences to clap whenever they want
Add a newcomer’s guide to the website and program notes
Use concert titles that characterize the kind of musical experience to expect
Rope off a section in the lobby for lone attendees to mingle with others who came alone (and advertise this feature early in the ticketing process)
Harnessing the desire for autonomy
The desire for autonomy is universal, and powerful. A study of nursing home residents found that those who were given more control over decision making were healthier and lived longer than those who had everything selected for them. Fascinatingly, writes David Rock, the perception of autonomy mattered more than the significance of the choices in question. The takeaway? Even small choices offered to audiences could make a difference in their sense of autonomy.
Cultural organizations might address the consumer’s need for autonomy by allowing them to curate their own season subscription, rather than mandating which concerts will be included. Being able to select one’s seat in the concert hall, a fairly standard practice, is an example of a small choice that makes a difference. What if audiences were able to choose between sitting in a “family section” or a “quiet section”? What other small choices could we offer ticket buyers and donors? There’s definitely more room for innovation here.
Harnessing the desire for relatedness
David Rock writes that trust and empathy are important ingredients in the human desire for “relatedness” or belonging. When a person makes a strong social connection, their brains trigger the secretion of oxytocin, a hormone that disarms the threat response and promotes a feeling of connection. Amazingly, research has shown that a mere handshake can cause this positive neurological response.
A few years ago, the Seattle Symphony rolled out a successful initiative, at very little expense, for keeping new subscribers: Staff members were simply instructed to greet concert goers by name upon arrival—and to say that the Symphony was happy that they’d come. The patrons greeted in this manner renewed their subscription at a rate 12% higher than those who were not. Why does this work? Check out Shawn Achor’s research, especially his discussion of the Ritz Carlton’s 10/5 Way.
It’s clearly a worthwhile endeavor for cultural organizations to think about how they can foster connections between their staff and their audiences. Help your audiences feel like insiders! Provide what Mark Schaefer calls “intimate knowledge of the product” so they can develop a deeper sense of ownership and belonging.
But why stop there? Why not work to foster authentic relationships among audience members—and even between their artists and their audiences? There’s lots of room for innovation here as well.
Harnessing the desire for fairness
The innate desire for fairness, David Rock writes, is just as strong as the four other social drivers. The perception of unfairness can awaken the limbic system, triggering a cascade of chemicals that engender hostility and distrust.
What about audiences’ perceptions of cultural organizations? What effect does it have on audiences to read about how cultural organizations treat their musicians?
At the start of the pandemic, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra was furloughed with just two weeks’ pay. A year later, half of the orchestra had either retired or moved (with no income, they couldn’t afford to live in New York City anymore.) The ensemble, in a public statement, pointed out that “every other major orchestra has been compensated since the very beginning of the pandemic.” They claimed that the Met, in a bid to save money, was replacing them with non-union instrumentalists for digital offerings. Adam Krauthamer, president of the musicians union, wrote in a public statement:“Hiring non-Met musicians under the banner of the Metropolitan Opera and outsourcing the orchestra’s work is an attack on the Met as an artistic institution and an insult to the very artists who work there.”
It’s tough to imagine a donor or patron who could turn a blind eye to this situation. Here’s a comment on one of the orchestra’s Instagram posts: “I’m a Met donor and will not give one penny more until the musicians are treated equitably. Shame on Gelb and everyone else involved.” It appears that fairness matters for cultural patrons, too.
What about accessibility? Should more cultural organizations be seeking ways to make their art more accessible to those who can’t afford to purchase a ticket?
A cultural organization’s ‘fairness reputation’ can also be boosted or damaged by their hiring practices. The Boston Symphony first instituted the “blind audition” in the 1950s to combat the lack of diversity in orchestra personnel. But, writes the New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini, there’s much more work to be done on this front. While the blind auditions did improve gender diversity, “American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions.” Tommasini has also written recently about the need for diversity among conductors, citing “the jolt of the pandemic and the calls over the past year for greater racial and ethnic diversity.”
As Mark Schaefer writes in Marketing Rebellion, American consumers are rejecting big corporations more and more; opting for products from companies whose vision aligns with their own—and they’re willing to pay a premium for it:“the purpose behind the company and alignment with [their] personal values outweigh any need to economize.” (Just this week, on Amazon’s annual Prime Day, #boycottAmazon was trending on Twitter. Perhaps it’s time for Amazon to add “fairness” to its list of customer needs?)
Like our preferences for low prices and speedy delivery, our basic human desires for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness are never going away. By strategically innovating around these constants, cultural organizations may be able to strengthen their competitive advantage and maintain their vitality through any disruption that comes their way.
