This is the fourth article in a series about why the strategies that used to work don’t work the same way anymore—and what that means for every decision you’re making right now. If you missed the previous articles about the impossible equations leaders face, the effort that isn’t translating to results, and the gap between what we send and what people receive, you can find them here.
Your organization answers certain questions beautifully.
What are you performing this season? Here’s the lineup. When are the shows? Here’s the calendar. How much do tickets cost? Here’s the pricing grid. Who’s performing? Here are their credentials—their degrees, their awards, their previous engagements at prestigious venues you should recognize.
You answer these questions with precision and professional design.
And these questions matter. People need this information eventually.
But eventually isn’t the same as first. And information isn’t the same as invitation.
The Opera Brochure
I once helped create what I thought was a groundbreaking subscription brochure for an opera company.
We had a pro bono relationship with an award-winning advertising firm—the kind of creative talent most arts organizations can only dream of accessing. Together, we crafted something I was genuinely proud of. Our challenge was to demystify opera, to make it feel approachable and relevant to people who’d never considered attending.
So we photographed actual audience members dressed as opera characters. We superimposed speech bubbles over their images sharing information about each production in the season. The creative was colorful, nontraditional, a little bit like organized graffiti on a high-quality brochure. It felt fresh. It felt different. It felt like exactly the kind of innovative marketing that would break through.
We invested a significant portion of our marketing budget to print and mail this beautiful, creative piece to thousands of potential subscribers.
The results were less than stellar. Not catastrophic. Just… disappointing. Fewer new subscribers than we’d hoped. Response rates that suggested most recipients glanced at it and moved on.
Here’s what I didn’t understand then—what I wouldn’t understand for years: The problem wasn’t that the brochure was too creative or unconventional. The problem was that everyone involved in creating and approving it—from the award-winning ad agency to me to the executive leadership—was answering questions the audience wasn’t asking.
We were having a conversation with ourselves.
The Conversation We Keep Having
Think about what that opera brochure communicated, even in its unconventional format. It told people what was being performed. It shared production details. It presented the season.
But what was the person holding that brochure actually wondering?
Not “What operas are you doing this year?” They hadn’t gotten that far yet. They were somewhere much more fundamental.
This is the gap we explored in the last article—the space between what gets sent and what gets received. But now I want to look at what’s actually happening inside that gap. Because there’s a pattern hiding in it.
When someone who doesn’t already know and love your art form encounters your marketing, they aren’t evaluating your season or weighing your credentials. They’re asking themselves something much more personal.
What People Actually Wonder
I’ve spent years paying attention to what audiences say when they talk honestly about their hesitations and decisions. Not what they say in focus groups or post-show surveys—those tend to reflect what people think they should say. I mean what comes out in genuine, unguarded conversation.
And what I keep hearing, underneath all the specific comments about parking and pricing and start times, are variations of the same few questions.
Will I belong here? Not “Is this organization prestigious?” but “Is this for someone like me? Will I feel welcome, or will I feel like I wandered into someone else’s club?” This is the question your regular subscribers never have to ask anymore—they already know they belong. But for everyone else, it’s the first and most urgent question, and almost nothing in your marketing answers it.
Will I understand what’s happening? Not “Tell me about the artistic pedigree of your guest conductor.” But “Will I be lost? Will everyone around me know things I don’t know? Will I sit there feeling stupid?” For someone who didn’t grow up attending your art form, this fear is real and paralyzing—and your marketing usually makes it worse by assuming a level of familiarity the recipient doesn’t have.
Will I feel something meaningful? Not “How technically accomplished is this production?” but “Will this be worth it? Will something happen to me—emotionally, viscerally—that I couldn’t get from staying home?” People don’t spend money and arrange babysitters and fight traffic for information. They do it for feeling. But we keep selling information.
Will this change me in some way? This one is harder to articulate, and most people wouldn’t use these words. But underneath the decision to leave your house and sit in a room with strangers and give your attention to something live—there’s a hope that you might see yourself or your world a little differently afterward. That something might shift. We almost never speak to this.
Will I see something I can’t see anywhere else? Not your production’s technical specs. Something closer to: “Will this show me a world I can’t access on my own? Will it take me somewhere I can’t go by myself?” In a world saturated with on-demand content available from your couch, this is the question that justifies the effort of showing up. And it’s the question we answer least.
What the Data Says
In a recent round of audience research I conducted with WolfBrown for a client, we explored what actually motivates people to attend performances.
The results were striking. Thematic messaging—telling people what they’ll experience and how they’ll feel—outperformed lists of credentials across every type of audience member. When asked what would motivate attendance, 62-68% selected “concert theme appealing even if I don’t know the music.” Meanwhile, “prestigious awards” and “recognized guest artists”—the credentials we love featuring prominently—showed only 9-16% selection.
Audiences want to know what they’ll experience and how they’ll feel more than they want to review credentials and organizational excellence.
They’re not asking “Is this excellent art?” They’re asking “Is this for me?”
The Mismatch
And yet. Think about how most arts marketing reads. The credentials of the guest artist when the audience wants to know what they’ll feel. The playwright’s previous productions when the person holding the brochure wants to know if they’ll belong. The historical significance of the work when the potential attendee wants to know if they’ll understand what’s happening.
The logistical questions—dates, times, prices, bios—matter. But they matter after someone has already decided they might want to come. They’re second-order questions. The ones people ask once the first-order questions have been answered.
The first-order questions—the human ones, the ones that actually determine whether someone engages or scrolls past—those are the ones that mostly go unanswered.
We’re fluent in a language our existing audience already speaks. And then we wonder why new audiences don’t respond.
Audiences want to know what they’ll experience and how they’ll feel more than they want to review credentials and organizational excellence.
What We’re Measuring, and What We’re Missing
The pattern extends beyond marketing content. Most board reports measure ticket sales volume, email open rates, social media reach, cost per acquisition. Most mission statements promise transformation, community impact, human connection, changing lives through art.
The gap between those two lists is the same gap. We’ve been measuring our answers to the logistical questions—how many, how fast, how cheaply—while the human questions go unmeasured. Not because anyone decided they don’t matter, but because we never built the habit of asking them.
Not an Accusation
I want to be clear about something. This isn’t about blame.
Every arts organization I’ve ever worked with is staffed by people who care deeply about their art form and their community. This pattern isn’t a failure of effort or talent. It developed over decades, when the old approaches worked well enough that we never had to examine it. When your subscriber base was growing and your traditional audience was responding to traditional messaging, the gap between the questions you were answering and the questions people were actually asking didn’t matter as much.
It matters now. Because the audience that already speaks your language is shrinking, and the audience you need to reach is asking questions you haven’t learned to answer yet.
Once you see this pattern, you start to see it everywhere—in brochures, emails, websites, board reports, season announcements. Not because anyone is doing anything wrong, but because we’ve been oriented toward the wrong conversation for so long that it feels like the only conversation there is.
Next in this series: We’ll look at what happens when an organization markets to the audience it already has while hoping a different audience shows up. Because the language of expertise—the language we’ve perfected—might be the very thing that keeps new audiences at a distance.
Most communications answer the second-order questions well. The Audience First Campaign Assessment shows you whether yours answer the first-order ones. I review every piece from one recent campaign against the five audience needs. Within five business days, you’ll get a report showing which questions your materials answered, which they skipped, and what to change, plus a 30-minute call to walk through it. It’s $99.
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