We expect better

We usually keep the focus positive here at LF, but every once in a while we stumble across an idea so bad or misguided that we feel the need to comment.  In this case it's "Unexpect yourself," the Philadelphia Orchestra's new marketing campaign.  Philadelphia Inquirer collumnist Karen Heller does a pretty good job illustrating the shortcomings of this slogan in her op-ed piece; here are some highlights.

"To stay relevant, you must embrace new ideas and new things," reads the copy about the 110-year-old orchestra at unexpectyourself.com. "You need a spark - a new place to visit. There is one place that will always remain timeless. . . . One of the most unexpected experiences in Philadelphia is located in Center City just steps from Broad Street and a world away from the ordinary - The Philadelphia Orchestra."  

There's little mention of music.

And further down . . .

On the unexpect site, there are images of happy, toothy people in convertibles, with a rose. There's streaming audio of "the orchestra's unexpected sounds," snippets of Beethoven's Fifth, Brahms' Fourth, the very music you would expect even with only a K-tel level of knowledge.

Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky are your "unexpected" sounds?  Really?  What this ad campaign is saying is that we're going to try and lure you in here with the promise of new and unexpected things, but what you're really going to get  is the exact same concert experience as before - and we think you'll fall for it. As if to underscore this, the campaign's website has no new content whatsoever, and only links to the box office.

What many orchestra administrators still - amazingly - fail to realize is that the main element of the concert experience (i.e. the product they are selling) is the music performed.  Marketing campaigns, pre- and post-concert events, and other details affect that experience in small ways, but in the end everyone's still sitting around listening to music, and I don't believe that new audiences are going to return again and again if they're  not being engaged by the music itself.

Comments

[Scott Harrison]

I'm curious about the genesis of the campaign and the logistics of the launch. Philly has been without a Chief Marketing Officer for a few months now, and their new CEO just started, so I wonder when and how the decision for a major campaign with a new website was launched. Perhaps much of the campaign was left to an ad agency without much input from Philly senior staff?

It looks like there are some strong concepts in the messaging. The idea of promoting the orchestra as the perfect place to step outside of daily life and experience something special can be a powerful motivator. But it rings hollow once when, as you point out, it tries to say that Beethoven 5 (the first example in the sound player) is unexpected.

And from a technological standpoint, there's nothing unexpected about an audio player with two samples! This web page certainly stands it contrast to the beautifully constructed and thoroughly designed 2010-11 site for the LA Phil.

Ultimately, however, the strength of the campaign won't be in the cleverness of the slogan. No matter what catchphrase they chose, we'd be debating it. But the real strength is in what sort of effort is behind this campaign - what target audience has been identified and what tactics are being pushed out to reach that audience.

And, who knows? Perhaps the new slogan and look was thoroughly focus grouped. And maybe the Philly audience loves this new phrase, and if they do, and if it gets people into the hall, then whatever one reporter or some bloggers (or blog commenters) think is irrelevant!

[Stuart Sims]

Very true, if the marketing works then it works, the proof is always in the pudding. What's more worrisome than the campaign itself, as Dustin points out, is the thinking it belies. Too many orchestras still have not realized that they may just have to actually change their product, the music that they play, to gain a larger, more consistent audience. If people loved the product better, the marketing would be much less relevant, or necessary.

If the Philadelphia Orchestra is really mostly only about historical preservation, as their continued programming suggests, I am afraid that I will tell my children or grandchildren about a great American orchestra that used to exist in Philadelphia.

(This month, for instance, their programming includes the composers Mendelssohn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin, Stravinsky, Barber, Rachmaninov, Brahms, Shostakovich, Mozart, and Hindemith. There are only two short pieces by living composers in the entire month--Giya Kancheli and Richard Danielpour--and not a single event that departs from a traditional concert format. There is no marketing in the world that could make that interesting to most American listeners, this conductor included.)

[Scott Harrison]

Good points about designing a more compelling product, because whatever Philly is programming, their Fall was one of their lowest selling periods in recent history. It seems they should be putting marketing resources into determining what their audience wants, what drives them to concerts, rather than into microsites to engage poorly defined new customers. Then they can work to create the programs that will attract that audience.

By the way, an outside firm was hired to create the Unexpect campaign.

[Stuart Sims]

Hm, perhaps. But that kind of market research-based perspective seems to create a false dilemma: that either the orchestra plays the music it wants to and hopes that some way to convince people to start coming again can be found; or that it only plays what people want to hear, because after all it's America and that's how the free market works. There are definitely third ways (and I'm especially enamored of ones that embrace listeners as collaborators).

Now that I think about it, that false dilemma certainly does seem to be conceptually in play in a lot of places, leading to milquetoast compromises in programming that leave most parties unsatisfied. I would hope that any performing arts organization would view itself as a member of its community, and as such would honestly engage with it rather than try to either convince or capitulate. There are places where this has been done very successfully, the model that jumps to mind is Rattle's tenure with the CBSO, which was a fantastic partnership among musicians and community.

A basic question for most of these ensembles, I think, is what kind of ensemble is the American orchestra? Is it a performance practice based primarily upon conservation, or is it based in the continued creation of new musical art? It has become clear that solid fealty to the former is not sustainable in practical terms (recordings no longer wear out, format upgrades won't come along every decade, the canon cannot be reissued and re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-recorded indefinitely, and Americans clearly do not enjoy traditional concert presentations like we used to), but most ensembles and institutions (schools of music & conservatories included) are having a very hard time accepting this reality.

Right now the balance is tipped way over towards conservation, which is not sustainable. And orchestras are really stuck because the inertia keeping it focused on conservation is both internal (this is Great Music and we only play Great Music) and external (well, I like classical music OK, but not all that weird stuff--play something I know!). Which means, ironically, that a century-long commitment to The Canon has resulted in audiences that view the orchestra as only that, an ensemble that plays old, nice music. Quite the pickle.