Comments on the Cowardly Beige

Mark Stevens, in his incredible book, “Your Marketing Sucks,” argues that if your marketing is not returning $1 for every $1 you spend, then your marketing sucks.  It’s a brilliant lesson we all need to learn.

That said, those of us involved in South Bay theatre need to quickly come to grips with the fact that we have an additional problem.  Yes, our marketing sucks, but not just because we rarely even pretend to understand what ROI really means (and it’s not engagement or clicks).

Our marketing sucks because it’s boring AF.

We represent the vibrancy of our work in the performing arts with the emotional warmth and sophistication of the institutional beige of waiting room walls of corporate cubicles.

Show descriptions have become exercises in careful neutrality, written with all the passion of Ikea’s Scandinavian instructions.

How the hell are we going to convince potential patrons of the transformative nature of our work when all we offer are banalities with all the visceral excitement of oatmeal?

Our most provocative, boundary-pushing productions are wrapped in marketing language so safe it could be used to advertise both "Waiting for Godot" or a middle school production of "Annie" without changing a word.

Our artistic vision for seasons now arrive in identical digital packages: clean, minimalist designs that speak in the same measured tone as a wellness app. 

Our photography is interchangeable: actors in contemplative poses, staring into middle distance, bathed in lighting that suggests depth without committing to any particular emotion.

Fucking boring!

This pandemic of beige has, for 20 years, infected our web presence as well.  Distinctive artistic voices are filtered through homogenizing template-driven sameness. Navigation menus read like they were generated by an AI trained on a database of "professional web presence best practices." 

You know what “best practices” get you?  Not a goddamn thing!  A lack of distinction, unique voice or any reason whatsoever to engage.

More boring!

Tragically, our “About Us” pages blend together in a cacophony of mission statements that could be shuffled like playing cards at a Las Vegas blackjack table without anyone noticing the difference. Does anyone even read that crap?

I actually do and it’s universally god awful.

You social media specialists are not off the hook either.  You have taken what might be the perfect platform for unique artistic expression and, with your adoration of “best practices,” turned it into the same beige banalities presented with the same carefully curated enthusiasm of a corporate team-building exercise.

The irony is palpable: theatre, an art form built on bold choices and creative risk-taking, is being marketed with all the daring and enthusiasm of a municipal bond offering. 

Again, there are 1.9 million people living in Santa Clara County (the South Bay).  If you offend or turn off 1 million people, there are still 900,000 others.  If you turn off 90% of the county and only attract 10%, you still have an audience of 190,000 people.  If you turn off 5% of the county and only attract 10%, you still have an audience of 80,000 people. If you turn off 99% of the county and only attract 1%, you still have an audience of 19,000 people. What would 19,000 paying patrons mean for YOUR theatre company?  

The math works, but we’re spending all our time running around like scared little beige mice being insufferably boring.

Theater as art is meant to provoke!  

To surprise!!  

To transform!!!

Why the HELL are we working so hard to keep this a secret???

So why the hell are we striving with the commitment of a religious zealot toward inoffensive professionalism?

We were not meant to splash about in a uniform pool of safe choices that turn each company into another indistinguishable voice in a chorus of highly cultivated mediocrity.

Until we get off our asses and live up to the promise of our art form, South Bay theatre marketing will continue to be the equivalent of theatrical elevator music: present, polished, and entirely forgettable.  As will we all … very soon.

Bonkers: south bay theater bathed in beige

It appears to me there are two ways to build and maintain a theatrical audience in the South Bay.

The first way is lean on the white Eurocentric canon. This is where companies stick with what’s worked since the 1950s and pretend that audiences will keep coming back. Stick with dead white male authors and homogenized musical theatre that’s worked for 70 years. Why? Because cultural hegemony is fun.

The second way to build an audience is to produce work that no one else is doing. Producing work that fails to adhere to the white patriarchal artistic colonialism that pervades the South Bay appeals to an extraordinarily wide cultural and age demographic which should be the magic key to audience growth. This is especially the case when partnering with organizations who can amplify audience outreach.

What troubles me most about these two choices is that I usually can't tell them apart from their marketing. Obviously, I have a preference as to the work I am personally interested in, but that’s personal taste. Not everyone enjoys the same thing.

It feels like there’s conspiracy to make sure marketing for South Bay theatre is largely indistinguishable among the various theater companies. When I look at what South Bay theatre companies are doing to market their work, I am finding it harder and hard to see any difference in organizational voice; there’s no visual indication that separates them from one another either. They all look and read the same. It feels like marketing oatmeal in the key of beige flat minor.

This is a theme with me when thinking about South Bay arts in general. We are all nervous church mice fighting for table scraps.

We are all afraid of offending anyone. We are so risk averse that we're majoring in the banalities one might expect from AI driven marketing apps.

If the world is a doughnut, we are all happy living in the empty space in the center. Lots of space, but no calories.

There’s no courage.

There’s no creativity.

There’s no realization that Santa Clara County is home to about 1.9 million people. This means you can offend 1.8 million people - you can drive them away permanently - and still have an audience of 100,000 people.

I once heard a very successful marketing consultant say "there are two kinds of people in the world; those who like my writing and those who don't. To hell with the people who don't, I am writing for the people who like my writing!"

Reach out to your people!

Be bonkers!

Be creative!

Cultivate a goddamn unique voice!!!

One does not need to be particularly insightful to see that South Bay theatre is in serious trouble. If we are not courageous and a bit bonkers, if we do not cultivate a unique voice and audience, we probably deserve to just fade away.

Founders mistake: Step away sooner than later

I think those of us who have founded nonprofit organizations have a fundamental challenge with how we conceptualize the nature of our organizations. My feeling is that this comes from the capitalistic notion of ownership. It is hard to escape the paradigmatic problem that comes with being the founder of something; in this case a nonprofit organization or company.

In California, our nonprofit organizations are "public benefit corporations." Part of what this means is that there are no actual owners. There are people who are trustees of that organization on behalf of California.

The organization that I founded, The Audacity Performing Arts Project, Inc., when I filed the incorporation documentation, became part of California. Those of us who run the organization are doing so on behalf of California. The idea for the company, the vision and the mission were all originally mine. When Audacity became a "public benefit corporations", everything about Audacity ceased being mine.

What happens as founders is that we pour so much of ourselves into these passion projects. We give our entire beings into these project. We are rarely able to separate ourselves and our identity from the organizations we bring to life. Most of the time we never make the connection that our ideas are now held in trust for the community that is California; they have ceased to be our ideas. This is where our notions of ownership fail us.

I think this is why so many leaders cling to their leadership long after it is time to transition to new leadership. We are so emotionally committed to our work that recognizing that new leadership and new energy is what keeps these organizations thriving and growing.

In the arts space in which I have operated since 2006, I see leaders clinging to their organizations for decades while entirely losing track of their legacy. We forget that we are no longer the owners of our ideas; we are trustees responsible for ensuring that our organizations are able to manifest an enduring legacy on behalf of California.

This is why I believe so many organizations fail after their founding leaders step down. This is why transitioning from founding leadership is often followed by organizational crisis.

From my experiences, founding leaders should build into their founding documents that the founder is required to transition organizational leadership within 10 years of the founding date.

This has two significant benefits:

1) It forces founders to focus on empowering leadership that will continue the legacy of the organization. The founders focus should always be on legacy and not ownership wrapped up in the emotional entanglements of identity.

2) If frees up these social entrepreneurs to start more such organizations. The world needs more entrepreneurs with a social justice/community focus. This experience is so important and hiding away in a single organization is taking away from so much more important work our communities desperately need.

The Medium is the Massage: McLuhan Was Right

In the classic text by McLuhan we are introduced to the idea that the medium with which we chose to communicate limits what can be communicated. In the same way your method of transportation limits where you can travel and how long it takes to get there, your method of communication limits what you can say and how long it takes to communicate the idea.

Children require performing arts education is that it teaches different kids of communication skills.

Ken Robinson argues that the arts are just as important as math and English because the arts speak to aspects of a child’s being that are “otherwise left untouched.”

Truth.

I will add that arts education is important because it teaches aspects of communication that are otherwise neglected.

Not every aspect of being a human being can be expressed in mathematics or a spoken/written language.

There are aspects of our being, of our imagination that can only be expressed or developed through the language of imagination. Through the language of acting, singing, dance, music; through these art forms one learns to explore the language of imagination.

Well, that’s great, Louis, but so what?

Good question!

When we look at the “real world” — that world that we will pretend exists outside of the arts — we see any number of places where the language imagination is critical.

Here are two examples:

Medicine

The language of science and imagination come together regularly in the field of medicine. In discovering a new cure for a deadly disease, in discovering a new procedure that gives comfort or saves lives; in the creation of new methods of treatments — all great break throughs in medicine represent a discovery that begin within the language of imagination before they were translated and expanded upon within the language of science. They began as an abstract idea that did not exist but in the imagination.

Inventor/Start-up/Founder

People who invent new technology, write new software or found new companies, all exist within the language of imagination. When one first conceives of something that does not currently exist, this idea is existing fully in imagination. It is through the creation of stories that one brings their idea into the world of physical reality. Whether one is translating the language of imagination into computer code, a mechanical devices or a business plan, one begins in imagination.

What about a stock broker?

What about a physicist?

What about a lawyer?

What about a teacher?

What about a realtor?

What about a military service person?

How many more examples can you think of where the language of imagination is important?

Without a consistant practice in the language of imagination, we are no where as human beings. Arts eduction is not fundamental because it is good for the soul; that’s just lazy liberalism. Arts education is fundamental because it’s core to how we grow as intellectual beings; it’s the key to our future.

Think of it this way. Children entering kindergarten in fall 2023 will graduate from college in 2040 and will retire around 2085/90. Now tell me what the world will be like for these young people. Tell me what careers that will be available. Tell me what the future holds. We are educating young people for a future we cannot imagine and we are educating them to solve problems we cannot fathom. How are they to do this if they’re simply taught to take tests, memorize factoids and follow rules?

It is only through powerfully dynamic and creative thinking that our young people will take us into the future.

And, that requires imagination.

Louis Stone-Collonge

Performing Arts Guru