The Romantic Lie of Arts Marketing: Why the Customer Isn't Always Right
Psych 🧠 - 412/500
Hello Reader,
Doesn’t it feel like the year’s moving in fast-forward?
In all the chaos, mental health often gets put on hold.
But this May, for Mental Health Awareness Month, you can give someone a reason to pause, reflect, and start healing—with a gift that truly matters.
What is it?
The paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of arts marketing.
It argues that arts marketing theory has been shaped by Romantic ideals about art and the artist's role, which often conflicts with the customer-centric approach of traditional marketing.
The author explores the ways in which arts marketing has attempted to reconcile these conflicting perspectives.
Key Findings:
Early arts marketing (1970s-80s) focused on techniques to increase audience size and ticket sales, while still prioritizing the autonomy of artists.
More recently, arts marketing has embraced customer orientation, but struggles with the idea of modifying the "core product" (the art itself) to meet customer needs.
Arts marketing literature often attempts to balance artistic integrity with customer preferences, or even reduces marketing to a mere functional role within the arts organization.
This inherent conflict makes a perfect circle, arts organisations trying to profit of a consumer driven approach which conflicts with the belief that art's autonomy is a necessity.
Support this newsletter by buying the psychology handbook!👇
This Handbook explains 150+ biases & fallacies in simple language with emojis.
Or the Amazon Kindle copy from here.
What do I need to know:
Arts marketing is complex and constantly evolving because of its deep association to arts.
The tension between artistic vision and audience needs is a central challenge in arts management.
Marketing is not some clear cut field that is ready for all industries and sectors.
Source:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2555291