How do we grow audiences today?
The Matter More Framework
Where this framework came from
After close to 20 years working in and consulting within cultural organizations of all sizes and disciplines, I felt burnt out and frustrated.
Growing audiences was hard – and was getting harder.
Hard-fought wins seemed fragile. Expectations rose every year.
And for all that we claimed about the “power of the arts”, we seemed to impact a vanishingly small portion of our communities.
So for the past two years, I worked to find the best of what works inside our sector – and added to that key insights from outside the sector: I’ve interviewed leaders in other sectors including experience design, sports, entertainment, content creation, and more.
A special thank you to Hanaah Bates and Matthew Principe for serving as advisors in the development of this framework.
What makes this framework different
True audience growth is not best achieved through best-practice campaigns, messaging, communications strategies, rebrands, retention strategies, social engagement, and so on.
These help. But they’re not the solution to the big, strategic problem (if they were, we wouldn’t be seeing the nearly half-century of decline we’ve seen across the sector).
My framework is less about convincing people to try performances – and instead, becoming an institution they can’t help but want to try.
Relevant products sell far easier, and great experiences retain far better, than anything we could invent.
The Framework
The Matter More framework posits that performing arts organizations that want to grow need to do these four things:
01
LEAN INTO RELEVANCE
Show people how we fit into their world and align with their values. Brands (and mission-driven cultural organizations) that can be successful at this generally outperform those that don’t.
Achieved through...
Purpose: The visible pursuit of a cause relevant to our target audience that goes beyond what we sell.
Presence: how we interact with audience members outside of our usual context (i.e. performances).
02
BUILD FANS FIRST
Help to create and cultivate love for what we do, before we sell to them – and give them ways to express and identify with that love.
Achieved through...
PLATFORM: how we engage a wider following of our subject matter as an end in itself via "content".
PARTICIPATION: how we invite fans and amateurs to engage with us, upending traditional rules around who's creating the art.
03
FOCUS ON THE (RIGHT) EXPERIENCES
Ensure the total experience – on and especially off the stage – stands out in today’s highly competitive experiential landscape, and is designed for distinct audience groups.
Achieved through...
PRODUCT LINES: Achieve both wider and deeper engagement through utilizing our assets in new ways (scaled to demand).
EXPERIENCE DESIGN: Enhancing the entirety of the customer’s interactions with us, on and offstage.
04
FACILITATE COMMUNITY
Building loyalty (through attendance frequency) and creating belonging (through facilitated interaction) is how we create the long-term supporters our businesses are built on.
Achieved through...
LOYALTY: Increasing frequency of attendance through mechanisms designed to reward and retain.
BELONGING: Creating self-reinforcing stickiness between both the institution and other audience members.
*
While these the principles may not be controversial, the pathway to achieving them may force hard and sometimes uncomfortable questions about the way our organizations do things.
How I can help....
LAB Notes Newsletter
An email newsletter, designed around this framework, that's aimed to break you out of the industry bubble and help you move the needle at your organization.
​
Join the LAB Notes Newsletter >
Dive deeper into the framework
I'm running sessions where I walk through the framework in detail, with practical examples and ​actionable next steps. Subject to qualification.
​
Request a Matter More Briefing >
Strategic Audience Growth Plans
I help organizations build audiences for the future through shorter-term Opportunity Identification Sprints, and more comprehensive Master Plans. Actionable and practical.
​
Interested? Send me a note >