Creating Experiences in Closure That Build Long-Term Audience Loyalty
Week 3 Q&A Session Recap and Recording
After spending last week focused on how to identify and articulate the shared value for your organization, this week we turned to bringing your shared value to life in everything that you’re doing right now.
To start this discussion, we looked at how Patagonia lives their shared value. Patagonia has a clear message around living sustainably and encouraging that even when it conflicts with near-term revenue goals. For example, they encourage people to repair their existing Patagonia products or buy refurbished ones rather than buying new. That clear and consistent commitment comes with a lot of benefits for the brand, but also some risks. On the plus side, Patagonia has received additional loyalty from people who appreciate the values-led approach. It has also allowed the company to attract the right partners and ultimately advance their mission in the world. In terms of the risks, there are, of course, going to be some people who aren’t interested in sustainability and may even be turned off by it. Such a clear commitment to a value also raises expectations that they will live those values and may face backlash if they have a misstep. Finally, there’s the issue of stakeholders, who may balk at decisions made based purely on those values – particularly those that go against short-term revenue gains. We believe the benefits of a shared values approach far outweigh the risks, but also want our members to embark on this journey with an understanding of the risk-reward tradeoff.
What Gets in the Way of a Shared Values Approach?
As we’ve observed organizations work toward a shared values approach in other industries, we’ve seen a common set of objections. Many of you have raised some of these hesitations as well over the past couple of weeks:
Not sure I can get to single shared value
Not sure I should get to a shared value even if I could
Not sure I should undertake an initiative like this right now
I want to do this, but I’m not sure how
We have addressed a couple of these issues in our sessions thus far, but we can sum up the remaining obstacles in a few questions that we worked to address in session 3:
How can I serve multiple audiences with one shared value?
Will my resonant shared value turn away crucial stakeholders?
How do I bring our shared values to life?
Appealing to Everyone Means You Don’t Appeal to Anyone
Let’s start with those first two concerns around serving multiple audiences with a single shared value and the risk of turning certain people away. Nike is a great example of a brand that uses an umbrella shared value to serve multiple constituents. A few years ago, they came out with an ad in which the fundamental idea was “if you have a body, then you are an athlete”. The value of ‘pursuit of excellence’ was unifying to all their constituents, although it spoke particularly to the growth segment of casual athletes/athleisure. They have since taken an edgier stance with ads featuring Colin Kaepernick with the tag line, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything”. However, rest assured that taking such a risky stance is not required from the start or even at all.
American Express is an example of a company who has taken a strong stance, without generating any controversy. Their support of small businesses through the development of “Small Business Saturday” and “Thinking Small” tag line offers clear support for small businesses without demonizing the Amazons of the world.
Many people still may be left with the question of “Is it worth it?” At a time when arts organizations desperately need every supporter they have, do they really want to risk turning anyone away. Our answer to that comes with bit of tough love. A vast majority of arts organizations have faced declining audiences for years. The “appealing to everyone” strategy has not been working. If this trend continues on the back end of the pandemic, it could be a real challenge for the arts and culture industry as a whole. However, we have seen how other industries have emerged from crises stronger, and we firmly believe arts organizations have an opportunity to strengthen their position through this crisis by appealing to emotions through a shared values approach.
Bringing Shared Values to Life
The last question we focused on during Session 3 was around how to bring shared values to life. And we spent our time specifically looking at how to demonstrate your shared value through your digital and community engagement efforts.
We started by reminding our participants that this is a journey – not something that happens overnight. However, there are things you can start doing today to take those first steps. Initially, you can begin with using emotional marketing as a tactic – communicating what you do in education and community engagement to your audiences, for example, or organizing your digital in emotional themes. As your organization understands its shared values, you can make a commitment to a single ‘umbrella’ shared value message in your marketing. Once that is cemented, you are able to align the organization around the strategy of shared values, leading to consistency in focus across marketing, development, community engagement, and internally.
Demonstrating Shared Values through Digital
During our session, we put up a slide with a set of seemingly random objects (a single ski, a pill bottle, a pair of used fish net stockings) and asked if anyone knew what connected them. Not surprisingly, none of our attendees knew the answer. They were all Marilyn Monroe memorabilia—memorabilia that sold for quite a high price. The point of that exercise was to show that the context provides the meaning – the value of these items is in connection with each other and the theme they fall under.
When we interviewed audience members about their digital consumption of the arts back in May, most couldn’t remember which organization sponsored a particular piece of content. Our scan of arts organizations’ digital consumption also found that most audience members don’t finish a piece of digital content, no matter the length. What this tells us is that digital work has much more value as signal than as content—which leaves the question, what context are arts organizations providing for our content? This is where shared values come in. You may create amazing digital content but to a large segment of the population it may be the equivalent to the single ski mentioned above, unless you can connect it to something people really care about.
We believe arts organizations should think of each piece of digital content as a part of their shared value puzzle. Organizing your content under a single theme can make it emotionally captivating. We brought up Ballet Austin in an earlier session and revisited their approach in session 3. After looking at hundreds of arts organization’s websites, Ballet Austin stood out as one of the few who clearly expressed what they are about through their digital content. Their digital content is framed under the tagline “Be well”, stemming from their shared value of encouraging health and well-being in the community--not just through ballet, but in general. They have introduced several sub themes of Be Well – for example, be generous, be creative, be happy, be curious – that are all nested under the theme of wellness, giving them flexibility to appeal to multiple audience and the ability to increase the likelihood that they will be remembered. It’s that clear through line that we believe is critical to memorability.
There are five shifts to make to boost the signal value of your digital work in a shared-values strategy.
Rather than considering your digital as a place to provide content to loyal audiences, shift to also attract non- “arts lovers.” An emotional message and broader shared value will help attract these casual consumers.
Organize and communicate digital efforts under a common theme related to your shared value. Even if you can’t get to a single shared value, organize content thematically under something that matters to you that is above the level of the art genre you’re in.
Increase your curation capability. Make sure that some of the content you create is related to your shared value, not (just) your genre. This will build up your authenticity if not all the values-related content on your site is plucked from somewhere else.
Enhance the genre specific content on your site by annotating it to draw the connection to your shared value. This means focusing on emotional resonance against the theme as a content ‘filter’ and communicating each content item against the theme.
Most importantly, rather than just telling supporters what you need, you want to tell the community what you stand for in digital.
Demonstrating Shared Values through Community Engagement and Partnerships
The importance of that unified theme in digital is true for your community engagement strategy as well: there should be a through line that connects all your work to your shared value. Let’s consider an example of an orchestra whose shared value is around connection to roots. If the orchestra were thinking about starting a movement, they would want to pick partners that can help them make headway, and if they are just starting on the journey, they would want to support established players who can confer legitimacy. They might reach out to museums or cultural groups or religious societies, even genealogical organizations. Partnerships with these types of organizations confer legitimacy to the organization’s authentic association with the shared value, and it has the additional benefit of being true. And because it’s true, they can now take success stories back to their digital channels and broadcast them to their audience, strengthening their audience’s understanding of what they care about—what they stand for.
Woolly Mammoth, a theatre in Washington, DC is a great example of an organization that demonstrates a clear through line with their partnerships. Each partnership supports their stated values of inclusion, anti-racism, social justice and the power of art. To be clear, we don’t believe that every arts organization could or should actually start a movement as part of its shared values partnership strategy. The takeaway we want to leave you is that, if you think about how to choose partners and places to deploy resources in the community, make your decisions like you are trying to start a movement to advance the good that your shared value can do in the world.
What You Can Do Next Week
Living your shared values can sound daunting, for sure. But there are some straightforward things you can do right away to get going. You can see them cataloged in the slide below, and want to point out three of the most important:
Package your digital efforts in a wrapper of emotional benefits.
Tell your audiences what you are doing on the community engagement front and do it in the form of stories. Surely, your community engagement is an expression of your values, and it will be powerful for audiences to know the transformation you are bringing to peoples’ lives beyond the stage.
Encourage storytelling among your staff of where they have seen your purpose brought to life. You may even want to share those stories externally – consider your staff authentic purpose-ambassadors.
We look forward to supporting each of your organization’s as you embark on the journey to articulate in demonstrate your shared values.
