California Symphony goers know her as the sharply dressed orchestra executive who addresses the audience before every concert. To peers in the field, she is a thought leader and sought-after speaker, with a reputation for challenging traditional thinking and established practices in orchestra management. Since becoming Executive Director in 2014, the California Symphony has been Aubrey’s proving ground to try new patron loyalty and marketing strategies—and with audiences growing, performances added to satisfy demand, and a growing family of donors at all levels of support, we think she may be onto something.
Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer. Clockwise from left: Playing tuba at Rice University, TX; practicing in sixth grade (sitting on a pile of books so she could reach the mouthpiece!); with Music Director Donato Cabrera; presenting at a League of American Orchestras conference in July.
We talked with Aubrey about her experience in arts management, her pathway to the California Symphony, and why she believes so passionately in changing the narrative for symphony orchestras.
California Symphony Orchestra: We hear you decided you wanted to be an Executive Director when you were in high school, which is pretty unusual since most people don’t even know this is a profession until much later in life. Tell us more.
Aubrey Bergauer: I was 16 years old. I grew up in Houston playing tuba in the youth orchestra there, after winning an audition for it in eighth grade. Two years later when I was a sophomore in high school, the orchestra went through an executive director change. I remember at the start of rehearsal one day, the new ED was introduced, and they said maybe one sentence about what that role was.
For me that was the lightbulb moment: “There is a job managing this entire operation,” I realized, “and that’s the job I want.”
CSO: Having identified that goal, how did you plot your career to achieve that end?
AB: My background has always been in the arts — from playing an instrument very seriously growing up, to graduating with degrees in music performance and business from Rice University, to my first job out of college at Seattle Symphony. I started there in the development (fundraising) department planning all the donor stewardship activities for individuals of all giving levels, foundations and corporations, and planned giving/bequest donors.
Then one day, Seattle Opera called and wanted me to bring my event planning experience to oversee their young patrons club for attendees in their 20s and 30s, called the BRAVO! Club (originally modeled after San Francisco Opera’s club of the same name). Around that time, digital marketing and social media were emerging marketing tactics, and I became fascinated with them. I so clearly remember being the kid in the office pushing for us to be one of the first major arts organizations to set up a Facebook page and Twitter account, and diving into the data that came from digital advertising — and using that information to inform what worked. Suddenly, things that used to be subjective choices (What color should this ad be? Should the ad have this headline or that one?) became testable, measurable, and completely data-driven objective decisions. That rocked my world and completely changed how I viewed marketing because it took a lot of the guesswork out of it.
After nearly six years at Seattle Opera, my role had expanded to lots of different single ticket initiatives, audience development work, the digital and social media growth and tracking, several technology projects (website content, videos, live streaming, mobile development, among others) funded by a major grant award from the Wallace Foundation, and filling in on managing part of the subscription campaign (a big portion of the company’s $10 Million earned revenue goal) while two senior colleagues were on leave at the same time.
In early 2012, the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival — the nation’s largest urban arts festival which draws 120,000+ people to Seattle Center (think where the Space Needle is) each year — brought me on as their marketing director. At the time, I was so nervous to step outside of classical music, and quickly came to love it because of how it opened my eyes to a broader world view, from the genres of music to the types of marketing tactics I was employing, to the organizational culture. During my time there, revenue grew by 43% — a stat I thought I’d never see again in my career because that’s some serious growth — and little did I know that in 2014 a small symphony orchestra in Walnut Creek, California was ripe for that kind of growth and more.
That year, the California Symphony brought me on as Executive Director, my first time at the helm of an organization, and now I’m in my fifth season here. This was the place I decided to come to put together everything I had learned from my previous jobs, where I had developed a lot of ideas and opinions on strategies for marketing, fundraising, programming, and how to grow and retain a loyal audience. At the time, the orchestra was on the verge of collapse, but I saw the fundamentals were there: a fantastic artistic product, an amazing social justice El Sistema-based education program, and a composer-in-residence program that was nationally known for launching the careers of several of today’s most prominent living composers. “This is a mission I can get behind,” I remember thinking, “one I can raise money for and build a following for.”
Four years later, we have nearly doubled the audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base. Almost every season has ended with a surplus, so we’ve nearly eliminated the past debt the organization had accumulated, and now we’re growing the endowment in addition to continuing expanding our programs and number of people served. I am so proud of all we have achieved here — what a ride it has been!
CSO: You often talk about how we like to do things a little different at the California Symphony. What does that mean to you in practice?
AB: It means a lot of things! Sometimes this means a fairly significant departure from the traditional schools of thought for orchestra management, such as how we are dogmatic about not soliciting someone for a donation [via direct mail and telephone] until they are a second-year season ticket holder. (The standard approach for most arts organizations is to start soliciting for donations and subscriptions after someone’s first visit.)
Usually though, “doing things a little different” means we’ve made many small changes — from trying to eliminate technical musical language or jargon in our materials, to swapping long, effusive marketing copy for bullet points on “what’s interesting about this concert,” to printing in the program book that people can clap when they like what they hear and keep their phones on (and silent) — and all of that adds up to a full approach to serving our patrons differently.
Industry colleagues ask me all the time if we’ve alienated our core concertgoers, i.e. loyal, longtime patrons, by doing these things, and the answer is that the response has been emphatically positive because everyone sees that the concert hall used to be half full and now it’s packed. Everyone, whether that’s new attendees or longtime attendees or the musicians on stage, feels the energy from a full house, and it’s just so much more FUN that way. And our season ticket renewal rates support that sentiment.
Doing things differently: How the California Symphony’s performance stacks up against national averages in recent years.
CSO: You’ve been writing a blog since 2016. What do you write about and why?
AB: I write about all the things in the answer above, meaning I write about the need to put our customers first, the deep need for a focus on patron retention/loyalty in this industry, and how the music itself is not the source of any of those problems.
Yes, I believe that really traditional orchestral programming of all the same old music needs a refresh (and I write about that too), but it doesn’t matter how much we tinker with the product when there are many elements of the concert experience that are unwelcoming, intimidating, or just confusing to a lot of people who don’t have a lot of prior knowledge of the art form (which, because of the declines in music education, is a lot of the population). So I write to help us all collectively as arts administrators put some intention behind what is often unintentionally happening at our organizations.
Lastly, when I started this blog and still true a few years later is that I write to not just talk about the challenges our organizations face, but rather, what we’ve actually done to try to address them. And the hope is that others reading find it helpful in their work too.
“I keep your blog posts printed out on my desk, as a mini-bible of creativity / fantastic outside-of-the-box thinking.”—An Arts Manager fan of Aubrey’s blog
CSO: What is your vision for the future of the California Symphony?
AB: I love that the name of this orchestra is so big. A name like that means we can vision and grow to be almost anything: we can serve more people, expand our geographic presence, and continue to be a leader for our peers across the nation.
CSO: What is the proudest achievement in your career to date?
AB: On a project level, it’s the Orchestra X project hands down, because of the way it so radically changed my own views of the patron experience.
On a larger scale, the turnaround of the California Symphony will always be one my proudest achievements. Five years ago, it almost closed the doors, had massive debt relative to the size of operating budget, and almost no cash to continue. Bringing this organization back from the brink and using all the research, retention efforts, and patron focus I’ve mentioned above to do that has forever changed my approach to orchestra management. I talk a lot about changing the narrative for symphony orchestras, and this organization is proof that it absolutely can be done.
Be a part of the success! Support the California Symphony’s Crescendo Your Impact fall fundraising campaign and when you give by Oct. 31, 2018, your gift is matched dollar-for-dollar and your impact is DOUBLED.Orc
Your donation supports:
A season of exciting concerts featuring amazing professional musicians and stellar guest artists — all right here in Walnut Creek
Sound Minds — providing intensive music training and transforming the lives and futures of local children in one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the state
Emerging composer talent through the highly-regarded Young American Composer-in-Residence program
Inquiring minds check out our instrument petting zoo at the Chevron Family Theatre Day in Walnut Creek, July 15 2017.
Princesses, pirates, and patient parents, flocked to the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek to bring smiles to children’s faces at the Chevron Family Theatre Festival one sunny Saturday in July. Costumed characters, including Darth Vader, ewoks, Stormtroopers, classic Disney princesses, Disney villains paraded and performed at the cornered off block outside the Lesher Center.
The California Symphony was also there with a booth that included an instrument petting zoo, consisting of a 1/16 size violin for the little ones, flutes, assortment of other violins, a clarinet, percussion instruments, and more! We had a story-telling area to tell the mystery, TheComposer is Dead by Lemony Snicket, which features music by Bay-Area composer, Nathaniel Stookey. It’s a piece in the same vein as Peter and the Wolf that’s intended to introduce the different parts of the orchestra to children, and it’s also the star of our super fun, family-friendly holiday concerts in December. We also handed out magnifying glasses to help children eager solve the case.
But amidst all the excitement of their favorite costumed characters, kids still wanted to discover where the magic of music comes from. While pulling their parents arms, children jumped at the opportunity to try out the musical instruments. And the best part, the parents were happy to support their children in developing an appreciation for the arts.
Over a thousand people came by the booth in the blazing 96-degree heat that day — not sure how the Stormtroopers and Darth Vader survived — but a huge thank you to our volunteers, including members of the Alliance! They brought smiles and specialized attention to hundreds of kids that day. Through story-telling and mini music lessons, they sparked a musical interest that could last for years and potentially a lifetime. Thanks again to everybody who came by!
ABOUT CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY
The California Symphony, now in its fifth season under the leadership of Music Director Donato Cabrera, is a world-class, professional orchestra based in Walnut Creek, in the heart of the San Francisco East Bay since 1990. Our vibrant concert series is renowned for featuring classics alongside American repertoire and works by living composers. The Orchestra is comprised of musicians who have performed with the orchestras of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and others, and many of its musicians have been performing with the California Symphony for nearly all its existence.
Outside of the concert hall, the symphony actively supports music education for social change through its El Sistema-inspired program at Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, CA, which brings intensive music instruction and academic enrichment to Contra Costa County schoolchildren for free, in an area where 94% of students qualify for the federal free or reduced price lunch program.
We also host the highly competitive Young American Composer-in-Residence program, which this year welcomes its first female composer, Katherine Balch.
Hello and welcome to the first post on the all-new California Symphony blog!
Music Director Donato Cabrera and the California Symphony perform at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek.
We should probably stop right there and explain that while this is a new blog account, the symphony has had a blog presence for just over a year. That content still exists and you’ll find links to the old posts on our new profile, however going forward, it will now be badged under its rightful owner, Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer.
Why the switch?
Previously, the blog was focused on the business of running an orchestra and efforts by the California Symphony to buck the trends impacting orchestras and many other arts organizations across the country. — Challenges like how to appeal to a younger demographic, and how to program concerts in a way that is appealing to audiences, that maintains artistic integrity, but which is also rooted in commercial reality. As such, it has been a staple among industry peers and occasionally garnered the interest of local and national media — including the Wall Street Journal.
We still believe in the value of these posts and we’ll continue to share them. However, the vision for this newly relaunched blog is that it should cater to our patrons. We have an active presence on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) — which will also be revamped as we roll out our new content strategy — but there are times when you simply can’t adequately tell a story through a photograph or using 140 characters. The new blog will therefore enable us to go deeper into the work we do and the lives we touch, and to share behind the scenes insights that no one outside the staff usually gets to hear about.
And we really do have some wonderful stories to share! Like the time that a fifth grade student from Downer Elementary School got to be Assistant Orchestra Manager for the day; the exciting and energizing side-by-side rehearsal that our San Pablo Sound Minds kids did with their Dougherty Valley high school mentors and pen pals; the time that one high school senior and aspiring composer was invited to shadow Composer-in-Residence Dan Visconti for the world premiere of Tangle Eye, and so much more…
These and other stories will be coming to the blog soon, so don’t forget to follow California Symphony so you don’t miss a post. We hope to see you back here again soon!
ABOUT CALIFORNIA SYMPHONY
The California Symphony, now in its fifth season under the leadership of Music Director Donato Cabrera, is a world-class, professional orchestra based in Walnut Creek, in the heart of the San Francisco East Bay since 1990. Our vibrant concert series is renowned for featuring classics alongside American repertoire and works by living composers. The Orchestra is comprised of musicians who have performed with the orchestras of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and others, and many of its musicians have been performing with the California Symphony for nearly all its existence.
Outside of the concert hall, the symphony actively supports music education for social change through its El Sistema-inspired program at Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, CA, which brings intensive music instruction and academic enrichment to Contra Costa County schoolchildren for free, in an area where 94% of students qualify for the federal free or reduced price lunch program.
We also host the highly competitive Young American Composer-in-Residence program, which this year welcomes its first female composer, Katherine Balch.
If our job as administrators is to help audiences love our art form, why do we silo our programming and further create barriers to accessing different types of composers and music?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been to an orchestra concert with John Williams and Beethoven on the same program.
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{crickets}
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This is because generally Beethoven and John Williams are never programmed together. Beethoven is defined as core classical or masterwork repertoire and Williams is considered film music or pops. And there is some sort of unspoken rule that those two types of music are never to be on the same concert program, which is kind of crazy that they are so segregated, because at the end of the day, both composers wrote for an orchestra. Some would say that Williams (and other pops repertoire) is categorized separately because his music is not composed in the European tradition, following established principals or forms, but the same can be said of music by John Adams, Aaron Copland, Anton Webern, Leonard Bernstein, and others, and yet somehow those composers’ pieces are programmed with the masterworks. The point of this post isn’t so much to say that the way we categorize music is broken (i.e. it’s totally fine to label pieces as pops, or film scores, or light classics, or symphonic masterworks, or new music, or whatever the appropriate descriptor is), it’s to say that using those categories as sacred siloes in our programming is a disservice to our cause. In a time when a lot of orchestras, or at least a lot of music directors and artistic personnel, argue that pops (or film concerts or collaborations with Ben Folds or whatever) is the “money maker that detracts from the real music” or from “the mission,” it is possible that we as administrators are in fact creating this dichotomy, this tension, and this disparate taste in our own audiences. Because we program this way.
Music Director Donato Cabrera and I have talks about developing an audience that likes music. Not talks about one kind of audience that likes the standard repertoire and then separate conversations about new or younger audiences that like something “more accessible” or “more familiar,” but talks about developing one holistic audience that generally likes classical music and all the various and versatile forms it can take. We talk about our job being one to develop an audience that likes music, period. Following are a few examples where we have blurred the lines and broken down the typical repertoire siloes, accompanied by the results of each undertaking.
All of the following programs were part of the California Symphony’s subscription series or special event fundraisers over the last two seasons.
An All-Jazz Subscription Concert (January 2016) The infrequently performed original jazz band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue headlined the program, along with Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs and the jazz version of Stravinsky’s Scherzo à la Russe, plus some heavy-hitting 20th century works in Milhaud’s La création du monde (Creation of the World) and Weill’s Little Three Penny Music. On this subscription program packed with modern music (read: traditionally not a big seller at the box office) and a stage filled with the banjo, electric guitar, and saxophones in addition to the rest of the orchestra, the house was full at 96% sold capacity. Side note #1: This concert provided a fantastic opportunity for a focused effort to invite our previous summer’s special event attendees to return, the fans of Postmodern Jukebox’s vintage, jazzy sound who had first been introduced to the California Symphony through our collaboration with the band six months prior. Side note #2: Notice the absence of the typical concert format of overture, concerto, symphonic work. We had never had so many core, traditional patrons and subscribers tell us they had no idea they could be so genuinely entertained at an orchestra concert…until we decided to break the mold again.
One digital ad size for an all-jazz program on the California Symphony’s subscription series that both longtime and new patrons embraced with a nearly sold-out performance.
Pops and Light Classics Special Event Program (June 2016) Shostakovich + Bizet + John Williams + Brahms + Rodgers and Hammerstein + Copland + Debussy + others = an offering of good music by good composers. Afterall, “pops” means “popular,” and there are good reasons why the works on this program are crowd pleasers. Selections from Carmen followed by the Superman theme made not for any cranky, nose thumbing stalwarts, but rather for a seriously happy group of people comprised of about half long-time, core supporters of the orchestra (read: traditional audience) and half newcomers experiencing us for the first time (people who had no preconceived notions of what an orchestra concert “should” entail). Across the board, people loved it, and we made our fundraising goals that night.
A goal to offer good music by good composers made for an intentionally mixed bag program ranging from John Williams to Johannes Brahms, and the audience loved it.
A Holiday Program with a Recent Commission (December 2016) Say what?! A new work on a holiday program?! This past season as the California Symphony celebrated its 30th anniversary, Music Director Donato Cabrera programmed a work by a past composer-in-residence on every concert. For the holiday set, this included Bright Sky by Kevin Beavers, written in 2011, at the top of the show. The piece was preceded by a video introduction sent in by Beavers from Germany where he now resides, edited to include sound clips and visuals from the score. By adding this piece to our most popular concerts of the year — the concerts that bring in more new patrons than any other — we were able to showcase our premier training program for young composers to all in attendance, giving them insight into the process for creating new work and into our mission, and setting them up to enjoy this modern piece. The program continued with Prokofiev, followed by an audience sing-along of holiday songs and Sleigh Ride. Never before have I seen an orchestra combine all these works into one program, and every performance completely sold out. Plus, almost 10% of those single ticket buyers came back to one of the next three concert sets in the season (a very solid return rate in a very short time period). Those repeat buyers are now our in our top prospect pool for new subscription sales, and that’s just from this one particular concert program.
Composer Kevin Beavers introducing his work and the poem on which it was based to the California Symphony audience. Including a recent commission on the holiday program did not alienate audiences, but rather brought them into the process of creating new music.
Fundraiser with New Music and Film (June 2017) This last example features another unlikely programming pair. For our recent special event fundraiser — the culmination of our 30th anniversary season — we booked Anne Akiko Meyers to perform the “Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso (among other pops and film tunes), and we wanted to continue the idea of including a work by a past composer-in-residence on every program in the season. We didn’t shy away from programming new music on the biggest fundraiser of the year, and instead embraced it, putting program alumnus Mason Bates’ Attack Decay Sustain Release at the top of the show, trusting it to set the tone for the entire evening, also with a video message by Bates introducing the piece and talking about how our program helped his career. Later in the evening, when we moved into the live auction and raise-the-paddle portion of the event, we auctioned off a dinner with Bates, which sold for over $4000. Then when Anne Akiko Meyers made remarks to set up our fund-a-need appeal, she was able to talk about working with Bates on his violin concerto (also new/modern music, of course), and how that collaboration was so important to the art form and to her personally. Paired with pops, we used new music and turned into a fundraising gold mine. How many orchestras are doing that? Not enough.
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers speaking to California Symphony event attendees about her time performing with the California Symphony as a young artist, and about her work with composer-in-residence program alumnus Mason Bates.
All of these concerts were incredibly well received, and not one patron said, “Why did you program the pops with the classical?”
So how do you build an audience that likes (all) classical music? Be strategic about why, how, and when you program:
Be strategic about WHY you program. If you want to develop an audience that likes a variety of good music, then program a variety of good music. It’s not rocket science really, and there are simply people out there who like Beethoven and John Williams. A lot of them in fact. Also, people don’t always know what they like. They certainly think they do oftentimes, but consider the story of when the iPhone first came out: no one in focus groups thought they wanted, much less needed, this newfangled device. Or until Henry Ford created the automobile, people thought they wanted faster horses. People don’t always know what they like or want, and part of the why we program is to be tastemakers. A few months back, California Symphony Music Director Donato Cabrera said it best on Facebook (shared here with permission), “My long held belief is that it’s impossible and pointless to program a concert or a season based on what one thinks an audience might like. Be a cultural contributor (leader), rather than a cultural follower!” So to all the music directors and artistic personnel reading this, fulfill your artistic goals! Program multiple styles and multiple composers! Schedule works that haven’t been done (a lot or at all)! Do this not as the Lone Ranger though, but in strong partnership with the executive director. Which leads to the next point.
Be strategic about HOW you program. Our job as administrators is to proliferate and propagate the art form, so let’s be smart about this. We’re not putting the all-Schoenberg concert on our season anytime soon, because how we program matters. Research shows that people like what’s familiar to them, which is why the masterworks of the repertoire — and music from our favorite films — are well loved. We have a duty to help people enjoy those works that are so adored, in addition to a duty to help those same people understand and appreciate, if not love just as much, other types of classical music too. So mix it up, put varying degrees of familiarity together, but also do those introductory videos, and/or write really interesting (not boring) program notes, and/or have maestro speak from the podium. One of my favorite moments this season was when Donato introduced from the stage a work by Christopher Theofanidis by simply stating that the piece was based on a C-Major scale, “the white keys on the piano,” as he put it. Pretty much everyone, even if they had no musical training whatsoever, knows what a piano or keyboard looks like and knows what the white keys are. And even for me, with a degree in music performance from a top school, that made an impact…I knew exactly for what I was supposed to listen, and it significantly improved all of our collective experience and enjoyment of the piece. Our job is to help the audience go on the journey, and we must be thoughtful and strategic about how we do that.
Be strategic about WHEN you program. There are times when it’s better to break the mold than others. Sales data supports this, and when all is said and done, sales are, like, really important to our bottom line. So often though, it’s our focus on sales that leads to siloed programming in the first place, and the whole point of this post is to contend that we need to get away from that and instead use sales data to enhance — not play at odds with — artistic decisions. For example, it is no coincidence that next season, the program scheduled immediately before subscription renewals drop is Mozart’s Requiem. It’s totally safe, timeless, and probably going to sell out. And that’s exactly what we want before announcing a new season. So when Donato first brought up that he wanted to do this seminal work with a big chorus (read: expensive!!!), we had a conversation about when on the season best maximized this opportunity for us. On the other hand, when he wanted to program the California premiere of living composer Nathaniel Stookey’s YTTE (Yield to Total Elation), which is not exactly a box office home run (at least not yet!), he talked about pairing that with a Mahler symphony, and we agreed this could be a strong opening to the season. No subscription sales are hinging on the performance, except for the choose-your-own packages we’ll be pushing by the time August/September marketing rolls around, and this is one of those concerts that some people will be happy to choose and some not so much. If we had scheduled this program for say, January, by that time in the season, this program would have had to be on all our small packages because we won’t have as many concerts left to offer, and that simply isn’t the most strategic approach to maximizing those sales. In the end, the music director was able to program the repertoire he wanted and our marketing plan is set up for success. When you program makes a difference.
We live in a time where the value of classical music is not intrinsic to everyone, and in response to that our industry tends to overly focus on concert formats (shorter concerts, rush hour start times, new lighting and projections) and other programming (movie concerts, semi-staged musicals and operas, video game music, pop/rock/hip-hop star collaborations) as a means to draw in those that are unfamiliar with or new to the art form. To a degree this works, and to a degree this does translate to sales. It’s just that we submit to these programming siloes like we’re embarrassed of our core product or something, or like we believe that new audiences won’t see the value in or enjoy “traditional” music. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and we think our traditional audiences won’t see the value in or enjoy the new formats or programming. It’s all good, important, and entertaining though, and all a part of our living, evolving art form. An artistic vision (and a marketing plan) can live in harmony with John Williams and Beethoven, and we do ourselves and our audience a disservice when we as administrators treat them as two composers — or two types of composers — who can’t share the stage. Developing people who love music, period, is achievable.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-averse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
Over the last three seasons, the California Symphony has nearly quadrupled its number of donor households, increased the total dollars raised from individuals by 51%, increased subscriber households by 21%, and increased single ticket buyers by 33%. This love affair isn’t a one-night stand.
We love our patrons. Seriously. Patrons are the lifeblood of any arts organization. Without them, our art has no audience, and yet so often arts organizations don’t keep the patron at the center. Or we focus on always getting new patrons at the expense of developing deep, meaningful, long-lasting relationships with the ones we have. And that might be because relationships are a lot of work. That’s true in romance, and it’s true for orchestras. We already wrote a post about why chasing new audiences is not the right answer where we shared why we don’t focus on new patrons despite that being the war cry of virtually all arts organizations, and there we shared why and how we focus on wooing first time attendees to come back again and again. On the audience development spectrum, that post covered first-time buyers, multi-buyers (i.e. repeat attendees over the course of a year), and getting those repeat buyers to become season subscribers — and how we’ve made thousands of dollars of incremental revenue through a very targeted retention plan. Now, in time for the month of love, the patron courtship continues here, where we share our approach to loving forever and ever our first time subscribers, renewing subscribers, and first time donors.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: no matter who you are, from a first timer just checking us out, to a season ticket holder, to a long time donor, the California Symphony has a thoughtful and strategic plan for you. In an industry that often compares patron cultivation with romance/dating/courtship, some of these tactics are things other orchestras are doing. Some are not, and even at the nation’s largest performing arts institutions, rarely are the marketing and development departments working together and taking all of these steps.
Definition: People who bought season tickets for the first time, no matter what size package.
Some research shows that new subscribers make the decision on whether or not to renew next season within something like the first 30 minutes of their time with you. This means they’ve been fighting traffic to get to the venue, searching for parking, trying to find their seat, and maybe waiting in line at the bar — all before a single note is ever played. We try to mitigate these factors that we have very little control over by greeting our new subscribers with a welcome gift: in our case a CD recording of the orchestra that’s not commercially available. It’s an exclusive gift only available to donors at a certain level and these brand new season ticket holders. “I want to thank you,” wrote one new subscriber this year, “for an enriching concert and for the CD you prepared which I was not expecting and was thoroughly pleased by your gracious gift.” Another said, “OH! By the way, I was SO SURPRISED by the CD that was on my seat at my first concert — that was my first real orchestra concert ever!”
Welcome gift for first-time subscribers one their seats at the first concert in their package. First year renewal rates jumped by 10% last year.
Next year, we’re going to take this one step further and also include an insert of all the subscriber benefits (such as free ticket exchanges, discounts off extra tickets, first right of refusal to keep their seat next year for full season subscribers, etc.). In theory, these patrons have seen all those benefits before and hopefully they were part of the reason they chose to subscribe in the first place, but it’s an opportunity for us to remind that subscribing is awesome, and that we try very hard to make it worth their while. Also, it’s worth mentioning that we’re lucky that a CD format is still preferred by most of our subscribers in a world that’s increasingly moving to digital downloads and streaming, but that’s not going to last much longer, so we are also looking into ways we can include a note with instructions to “Download or stream this recording at…” There are certain orchestra union rules around this, so we have a few things to work out here.
Lastly, just as important as what we do for new season ticket holders is what we don’t do. Arts administrators, get ready for this: we do not solicit first year subscribers for a donation. Ever. The only next step we want this group to take is to renew their subscription as that is so critical to the lifetime value of those patrons, and data upon data shows that this group is the most difficult to renew. So why muddy the waters? Why try to move too fast? Well, the reason for most of us is that we’re desperate suitors — we all have big fundraising goals that only get bigger every year — so we ask what seems like a great prospect, a subscriber. And then it works, kind of, because some first year subscribers do donate in response to those solicitations, but we’ve gained that short-term revenue at the cost of the long-term game. It doesn’t help the subscription renewal rates for this very important segment, so stop doing it. We will agree that the first time you pull a mailing list and specifically suppress/exclude this group, it feels unintuitive, wrong even, because we’d done it the other way for so long, but it worked, and our first year renewal rates skyrocketed because of it.
The final thing we don’t do for our first year season ticket holders is try to renew them info a full season package, even if they came in as a full season package. We definitely offer plenty of incentives to renew into the larger package, but we don’t make it the only option. Renewing into any number of concerts > not renewing at all.
Definition: People who have subscribed for two consecutive years or more.
Once our dearly beloveds are a renewing season ticket holder, the romance is heating up, and it’s time for a DTR. This group has a lot of sub-segments: full season subscribers, small package subscribers, subscribers who also donate, and subscribers who have not yet donated. Everything we do with this group is targeted to each of those sub-segments just described, with the one exception being Subscriber Appreciation Day mid-season, which is for all season ticket holders. On that concert series, every subscriber (including the first years) gets a thank you love note signed by members of the orchestra on their seat waiting for them when they arrive. We make a big deal of Subscriber Appreciation on stage in our pre-concert curtain remarks, there’s a full page dedicated to it in the program book, and patrons love it. This definitely falls into the category of “a lot of orchestras already do this,” but here’s a fun tip if you are not already doing this: make sure you have the musicians sign their name AND instrument on the cards; we had so many super zealous subscribers approaching staff the first year we tried this, excitedly proclaiming, “WHO IS ALAN?!” among other musician names, “I LOVE ALAN BECAUSE HE SIGNED MY CARD, AND I NEED TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR HIM IN THE ORCHESTRA!!” We had to tell a lot of people that first time that Alan plays timpani. We love that patrons cared about these notes and the players that signed them that much; we’d say that’s the home run equivalent of a dozen roses from tú amor on Valentine’s Day. Finally, it is no coincidence that Subscriber Appreciation Day takes place right before we announce next season and start the renewal campaign. Also not a coincidence that we program that concert to be a blockbuster.
Example of subscriber appreciation cards, signed by members of the orchestra and placed on every season ticket holder’s seat. The message is always, “You are our favorite. You get special treatment, the best seats, the best price, the whole enchilada because you are our bread and butter.”
Back to the DTR. This renewing subscriber group is now in various fundraising appeals throughout the year with tailored asks based on their individual donor history, and their subscription renewal forms are just as customized. At this point in the relationship, we want to tell this group that we know them; we’ve been taking the time and care to know what to offer them. No one-size-fits-all promise ring here (and yes, that’s definitely where we want the relationship to be headed). In every case, we want to renew the subscription with an upgrade offer, whether that’s upgrading to a larger package or upgrading their donation. Here’s a little chart we follow for who gets what offer:
Yes, this is a lot of work. Yes, this means marketing and development staff spend a lot of time together to make every patron’s renewal form specifically customized to them. Yes, it’s working. Last year our subscription renewal rate was 80%, and we increased our subscription donation campaign revenue by an outstanding 50% over the year prior.
Definition: People who are brand new donors.
Once a week, we prepare gift acknowledgements, the thank you letter and tax receipt each donor receives for making a contribution, for all donations received during the last seven days. Simultaneously, we run a report for who in this group of donors is a first-time donor, and we specifically call this out in their acknowledgement, saying how we noticed they are new to the family and we are so happy to welcome them.
Example of new donor thank you letter, sent along with a new donor welcome brochure detailing all the ways in which their gift supports the Symphony. The message is that we noticed they are new, are incredibly grateful, and that we’ve wasted no time putting their gift to work.
Then, a musician in the orchestra writes a personal thank you note to the new donor (we also do this for renewing donors at a certain level, and we decided it was worth including the new donor love birds in with this benefit/stewardship activity). As an aside on how this musician note process works, at the beginning of each season we put the call out to musicians who would be willing to help us with this task throughout the year. We tell them up front we’d love their help thanking donors and that we’ll provide everything they need: California Symphony stationery, a few donor names and addresses, talking points and examples of what they can say, and stamps. We try to make this as easy as possible for the musicians to help with this activity, and they are incredible — each year we have several players offering to help out, and they are generally more than happy to do so because they know much of those donations are going to support the work they’re doing. Before each concert set, we give the orchestra members who have volunteered to help with the thank you love notes a packet of all the materials and names and addresses assigned to them. It usually amounts to about 3–4 notes per musician. On the receiving end, donors go crazy for this. Almost every time a round of notes gets mailed, we get calls a few days later from donors thanking us for the wonderful notes they received from the musicians. Donors calling to thank us for thanking them…what a big love fest we’ve developed, or should we say, requited love!
First time donors also receive a New Donor Welcome Brochure that contains information about the organization, our programs, maestro, and upcoming events. We explicitly say we want them to know what their gift is supporting. This group also gets invited to donor events throughout the year according to their giving level. If they’ve given $1,000 or more, they also get a thank you call from a board member (all donors who give this amount or more receive the call, regardless of if they are new or not), because a study showed that a board member thank you call to a donor within 24 hours of making the gift resulted in a 39% increase in giving the next time they were solicited compared to a control group that did not receive a call, and another study showed that a thank you call from a board member led to 25% increase in donor retention versus 10% when the call came from a staff person (Source: Penelope Burk, Cygnus Applied Research). If any board members at any arts organizations are reading this, please make those thank you calls!
If you’re thinking all of this is a lot of work, it is. Few organizations coordinate marketing and development efforts in this way, and we get why. There are easier, less thorough/customized/high-touch ways to manage our subscribers and donors. For almost all of us, we take the easier routes not because we don’t care, but because we are overworked and underpaid and have a million other things to do, AND because it used to work to a certain degree. That is, when every subscriber gets a generic renewal invoice, or every direct mail appeal looks the same for each patron, or there’s no welcome gift or appreciation days or love notes or phone calls, we still make money. But the days of low hanging fruit, or loyal subscribers and donors who care about the arts because its intrinsic value, or people who renew and give and increase those gifts every year because of a sense of civic duty are over. We know all this as administrators, and if we want to be good at our jobs, we need to accept that the work is harder than ever. Just like every successful relationship, right? And like those successful relationships, so worth it:
In the last 18 months, the California Symphony grew active accounts (i.e. accounts with any ticket purchase or donation activity) by 35%.
Over the last year alone, we increased new subscriber households by 29% and increased first year renewal rates by 10%, all in addition to an overall renewal rate of 80%.
Our number of donor households has nearly quadrupled in the last two seasons; individual giving revenue has increased by 51%.
Concert hall paid capacity now averages 90% this season, up from 78% three seasons ago. Plus, this increase is while adding more concerts (i.e. more sales inventory).
In the first year of implementing these patron loyalty steps, we have increased first time attendee retention to 22%, meaning that 22% of new attendees who came in the 2014–15 season returned within 12 months of their first purchase. More on this here.
The subscription donation campaign (i.e. for all those segments that do receive a donation ask during the season ticket renewal period) resulted in a 50% increase in total money raised this season over last season.
We repeat: the work is worth it. So use this Valentine’s Day month to start thinking about the ways you can love, court, woo, and wow your patrons. We hope this post helps you do just that.
Later this year we’ll conclude our audience development series with a post on the less fun segments of lapsed donors, unrenewed subscribers, and lapsed ticket buyers. In other words, what’s plan B when plan A doesn’t work.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-adverse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
The Orchestra X discussion about newcomers’ experiences at the California Symphony lasted 1 hour 20 minutes. They had a lot to say.
Back in August, we rolled out a new program called Orchestra X with the idea that arts organizations must change the way we think about new audiences, and specifically, must change our willingness to have hard conversations about the things newcomers hate, are turned off by, or are just uninformed about. We decided if we at the California Symphony are serious about cultivating new audiences, we better stop talking about how much we care about this elusive group like so many organizations do and actually take an interest in what this group has to say. So we put out the call for people who should go to orchestra concerts — millennials and gen-xers that are smart, have expendable income for entertainment options, and are generally culturally aware — but for whatever reason don’t attend. The set up was simple: come to a few California Symphony concerts and then tell us about it, and we promise to 1) listen only and not jump to defense (an exercise that proved tremendously difficult), and 2) share our findings with the rest of the world. This is that post about sharing our findings with the rest of the world. Get ready, arts administrators.
First, it’s worth pointing out that we held the discussion group at a local craft brewery and served pizza and beer. No wine. No hors d’oeuvres. No pretense. After dinner, we jumped into a facilitated discussion. Some of what we heard was expected and some was not. Sometimes the group agreed on certain elements of the experience, and sometimes they did not — proof that all millennials are not alike, and we should stop lumping them all together every time we talk about them. That’s lesson number one, and below is rest of the feedback we heard, organized by general topic.
“It seemed a little like ‘inside baseball;’ insiders would know these things, but seems like you might be able to engage people with more layman terms.”
“Every time you [change domains, as when buying a ticket], it makes the overall event seem like less of a professional operation if it’s not as seamless.”
“Is this piece going to be more fast paced? Is this one going to be more romantic?” “We can’t tell from the composer…It’s almost like ‘is this a romantic comedy or is it a tragedy?’”
Smart people want information. Some smart people are willing to take extra steps to find it, such as in the case of one Orchestra X participant who manually looked up every piece on the program on Wikipedia before selecting the concert he wanted to attend, but most people aren’t willing to make the extra effort all on their own. This is not lazy when you consider that they’ve already taken the steps to 1) decide that coming to hear an orchestra is something they might enjoy versus other entertainment options (a huge marketing victory — yay brand awareness!) 2) come to our website (a huge marketing victory — go-go gadget remarketing campaigns!), and 3) browse around to find the concert(s) they are moderately interested in attending (a huge marketing victory — a navigable website!). Then, they get to step 4): make a decision on why they want to attend a specific concert, and our response is essentially “WHY CAN’T YOU FIGURE OUT WHY RACHMANINOFF’S SECOND SYMPHONY IS A BIG DEAL? LOOK IT UP IF YOU WANT TO KNOW!” (marketing failboat — why do we set up our sites this way, and then wonder why the sales funnel is getting choked up at the add-to-cart step?).
Through the discussion, it became clear to us that we buried way too much information in paragraph or sentence form. “Some information was in the paragraph language,” said a participant, “but when you don’t go to these things regularly, that made it harder to know what makes going to this concert special.” We’ve since updated all our concert landing pages (examples here and here) to have bullet point content, use less technical language or jargon (or explain those terms when we do use them), and in a time where, as one participant put it, “You’re competing with 140 characters on Twitter about Trump and Hillary,” we made these bullet points much more casual. For the arts administrators reading this thinking that swinging the copywriting pendulum too far could alienate your core concertgoers, consider that your most traditional attendees — your subscribers — aren’t the ones looking at single ticket pages. These pages are (or at least should be) specifically designed for single ticket buyers, who generally know less about the art form, hence why they’re less connected to the organization in the first place. Plus, we can be informative to smart, curious people who want to learn and want to know very much why each concert is special without dumbing it down. Casual and approachable does not equal dumb.
We also decided to link every piece to its Wikipedia article (opening in a new window so people aren’t navigated away from our site). There are several more ideas that emerged that we’d still like to implement, and we’ve included the full list at the end of this post.
“It’s really hard to find a seat next to a friend that’s already bought their ticket. And it’s hard to figure out what is a ‘good’ seat.”
“It wasn’t clear where the stage was until you looked a little closer. Had to assume that ‘A’ was the first row, but it never actually says…”
In general, this group is doing is what every ticket buyer always does: trying to weigh how much they want to spend versus how much value they receive in return. They were incredibly thoughtful about where was the right place to sit, and they admitted to what they called “being spoiled because of the seating apps for sports and concerts” that let you see where your friends are sitting and the view from every seat. Some arts organizations have fairly robust select-a-seat features, but for us, this was one of those areas where we had to just listen instead of jump in with the limitations of our venue managing this part of the sales path. Nonetheless, when LiveNation is the competitor for a lot of high-end events where the ticket prices are on par with ours, the standard is an easy login-with-Facebook feature where you can see which of your friends have already purchased and where they’re sitting, easy see-the-view from any seat in the venue, and easy checkout process that’s finished in 30 seconds. Oh, and then an easy email confirmation that adds the event to your calendar on desktop, phone, iCal, Outlook, or Gmail. Be honest: arts organizations of all sizes generally make it a lot more difficult than that to purchase a ticket.
This is a tough one for us. We have tried working with our venue to move ticketing in-house so we can fully control the purchase path, and we have come to a compromise that we fully manage the process for season subscribers during the renewal period. While this is a big step critical to serving our most loyal patrons, it’s not serving single ticket buyers — which now amount to more ticket revenue per year than subscribers in the latest nationwide data — so we have some work to do. Our venue’s website does have views from the various seating sections, albeit apparently not obvious at all as not one person in the discussion group realized this feature did exist, so we’ve identified this as a feature we can better promote. Additionally, we have made our website match the sales domain as much as possible, and we’ve sent the venue images to use in the sales path that match the style guide of the rest of the images on our own site. We have also added basic pricing info (a comment that came up multiple times: they had to get pretty deep in the purchase path before really knowing what a seat cost), and we took that as an opportunity to talk about dynamic pricing and why you can get a better deal when you don’t wait until the last minute to buy. Again, more ideas on what we’d like to do are at the end of the post.
“I wore my ‘Mr. Rogers’ sweater.”
“You hear ‘symphony’ and you think ‘oh my god that’s so expensive.’ Just the word ‘symphony’…knowing the pricing options that are available would probably aid or dismay my willingness to go.”
“I wanna pluck an oboe…do you pluck an oboe?”
The conundrum of what to wear brought about more drama and stress than we ever imagined. We never knew that attendees were that worried about how to dress for the symphony, especially in cool and casual California. And while we could laugh it off, we shouldn’t, because for multiple people, this really was an issue causing stress and concern, two negative emotions related to the experience we’re trying sell before the experience ever began. Additionally, we wrongly expected people to have a basic understanding of all the instruments in the orchestra, or at least what they’re named. Why, we realized, as arts administrators, do we preach that the decline in music education in this country over the last several decades is one cause of the decline in attendance, and at the same time, do nothing to help grown adults — the products of this lack of education — know “basic” information such as the names of the instruments. It’s not basic if it wasn’t ever taught in the first place.
One participant asked if there is “a separate webpage for younger people we could make?” What was so interesting about that comment is that this person assumed that they were in the minority as far as understanding answers to these types of questions. The assumption was that other, older people are much more familiar with the symphony when in reality, there is no magical age at which one suddenly becomes an aficionado. Yes, there are people who know a lot about the symphony, and many of that kind of person are already subscribers, so when we’re thinking about our single ticket sales (this conversation, this type of page on the website), maybe nobody (or very few) really have any sort of foundational understanding of the symphony concert experience? It’s our job to fix that.
We made a Newcomer’s Guide on our website. Plenty of other arts organizations have first timer pages, so there’s nothing revolutionary here, except that every question on it came from this group. That helped us write answers that are less stale and more honest; we felt like we were talking to a real person on the other end, and we were. We also reexamined our pre-concert emails (i.e. Your Upcoming Concert This Weekend). This is another area of working in partnership with our venue that needs more attention on our part. Currently, our venue sends final courtesy reminders to ticket buyers, but those reminders, we learned, don’t even include the California Symphony by name (!!!), or include other FAQs such as how to pre-order drinks or how you can listen to the music in advance on Spotify. Funny enough, we used to send our own in-house version of the performance reminder email but then stopped last season thinking it wasn’t a helpful service to attendees. We learned that couldn’t be farther from the truth when all these questions came up in the group discussion. Needless to say, our in-house performance reminder customer service emails are back in play now.
“It [program notes] sounds like a wine description.”
“It was so impressive — I didn’t expect it to feel THAT different than Spotify.”
“You go to a place to experience culture, but the lack of diversity made it feel un-cultured.”
“I was in awe. I felt awe.”
In an era where symphony orchestras keep trying to think about how to improve the concert experience (shorter programs! new formats! non-traditional programming!), we were blown away that this — the musical presentation — might be the last “problem” we as arts administrators need to be spending our limited time on solving. Almost every single comment about the performance itself was very positive:
“The music was GREAT.”
“It was so impressive to see it in person. The musicians are so good.”
“I liked the splendor of how it all comes together to make music.”
“I liked the slow build to the full orchestra playing. That was a nice ‘wow’ moment.”
“Live music — it was so good to see it.”
“Seeing it live was so different.”
“I enjoyed the performers performing and the complexity and passion about what they are doing.”
“It was nice to see the passion of the musicians and how much they were into what they were doing.”
“It was weirdly cool to not have to focus on other things.”
“[The composer] thought of all of this in his head so many years ago…that’s amazing that we are hearing this now, today.”
“Complete awe.”
The sentiment of complete awe was echoed by almost every person at the table. We were reminded that symphony orchestras do something that almost no other entertainment option can hold a candle to: be an immersive engine, this incredibly passionate (to use their word) force of sound and emotion, and this music — whether written hundreds of years ago or newly written — is hypnotic yet energizing, and untouchably beautiful when performed at the highest levels as our musicians so often deliver. The programming itself is not the problem.
Diversity is a problem though. So much so that it was the topic at last summer’s League of American Orchestras annual conference. It’s a problem in our audiences and on stage. The comments on this for us were validation. Not that we really needed it, but it hit home that all of us in this industry talk about how white we are, and yes, a first time attendee at our orchestra picked up on that right away, and yes, it did impact that person’s experience.
Other elements of the concert were a mixed bag. Program notes in particular had varying opinions (and a lot of discussion) from this group. While they all wanted more information in advance, some did not want to read the program book to find information once they were there, preferring to simply enjoy the experience and “take it all in.” Others did want to voraciously consume the information in the program book, but were universally quick to tell us how dry it can be. One program book success, we learned, was in storytelling. Almost everyone in the room remembered that Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony “should have never happened,” as one person said, “…it took a lot of gumption to write it.” We recognized the notes for that particular piece were largely focused on the narrative of Rachmaninoff’s life and that his first symphony was a disaster. One participant even said, “Whoever wrote that page should write them all!” To which we replied, “He did.” The fact was that the same person wrote all the program notes for every piece on the concert, and as the conversation unfolded, we realized they want to hear the story behind each piece, NOT the music theory behind it.
We’ve stopped stressing over the concert programming. We don’t have to do a movie concert, or ask if we need to do more pops, or wonder if we can get away with programming a lesser-known composer instead of Beethoven on every other concert. Not one person said, “I need a shorter concert.” Or “I don’t want to hear [insert any classical composer name here].” They do want to learn about all that though, and we as an industry don’t cater to that very well. As such, we have doubled down on our program book. We have already been in a transition over the last year and a half to make our book and the notes in it more accessible, and we have one of the greatest musical scholars who writes those notes; we’re now going to focus that writing on the juiciest parts of the stories behind the music (of which there are plenty of behind-the-scenes and salacious stories to tell in classical music!).
Lastly, we just completed a big push for diversity in the application pool for our composer-in-residence program, which will be its own topic in another blog post, and ideas for diversifying the audience through our marketing plans are in the still-want-to-do list at the end.
If you’re like us and totally geeking out over all the ways we can honestly listen to and act on the ideas from this audience segment we must grow, here’s the remainder of our to-do list.
Include pricing info on acquisition campaigns. We have gone back and forth internally on the right way to talk about price. On one hand, what we offer is not a cheap form of entertainment — as any arts administrator knows, ticket sales cover less than half of what it takes to produce a concert. And at the California Symphony we are staunch believers in the idea that people pay for what they value. Even the discussion group brought up (on their own, without any prompting) the idea that they’ll all shell out big bucks for Taylor Swift. So price alone is never an isolated issue; it’s all about the perceived value one is receiving in exchange for that price. What we did find interesting was the comment of, “I’m more likely to go to three $25 performances than I am one $75 or $100 performance.” Many others chimed in with agreement to that statement. So we’re trying to work through listing a starting price of $25 or thereabouts, or better promoting small package deals such as “Buy 3 concerts for $99.” In probing the group for thoughts on listing a price on marketing materials, we learned not to list the starting price if it’s in the $40s — that’s just too high and will not grab their attention, but in fact cause them to mentally move on as something not worth their consideration.
Include the running time on the program page of the program book. Approximate timing of each piece is ok, as is approximate intermission length. While regular symphony goers know that just about every concert is usually a predictable formula of ~10 minute overture, ~25 min concerto, intermission, ~45–60 min symphony, we realized new attendees have no idea. And why should they? In their quest to be informed and educated listeners, we can assist by including this info and helping them set their listening expectations.
For next season (and beyond) — the title of the concert matters; make it catchy and helpful at the same time. This goes back to comments we heard about participants wanting to know what made each concert special. Just calling it “Opening Night” helped nothing, except to further exacerbate the stress about what to wear!
Add something additional to the experience. Participants want a full evening experience and want social interaction. They don’t necessarily want to spend $200 to do that, but they do want to meet other people interested in the same thing. We asked the group if they would be willing to pay for this added experience, and the group said yes, and that it can be simple: “It’s fine to just say ‘We’re having drinks before hand here’ or ‘Afterwards we’re all going here.’” This matches research released about a year ago at the national level from the League of American Orchestras and Oliver Wyman stating that new audiences are indeed craving these types of supplemental activities and are willing to pay for them.
Fix seat selection so it’s easy and awesome. Could we do this like LiveNation where it connects to your Facebook account and you can see if your friends have purchased tickets and where they are sitting? Or you know how on TripAdvisor, it says next to every place or attraction which of your friends had been there? Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have this on ticket pages before the sales path, so people could see on the homepage, for example, that many of their friends had been to the Symphony before? And then on specific concert listings it would show if any friends were going to that particular event. Seat selection needs to be on par with any major sporting event or high-end entertainment experience; we are charging too much for our tickets to deliver anything less.
Make changing domains seamless. People can tell, period.
Add sound clips on every piece possible. Prospective buyers want it and need it; they simply do not recognize the piece by title or composer alone.
More info on each piece in advance: hover-over pop-ups or any way to deliver this information. What if we could implement a feature where each concert listing had a hover-over pop up of the Wikipedia summary (rather than our quick fix of directing people away from the website) — and call out that it’s Wikipedia too so people feel familiar with the source of the information (in other words, it’s not like program notes, it’s just Wikipedia which people use all the time, so there’s a comfort and trust level).
Event calendar is important — they look for this and want it to be user friendly and obvious.
Concert suggestions — “You might also like” feature.
Targeted marketing to different races. In the same way we target specific messages to acquisition versus repeat buyers versus donors, or target family ads versus the annual gala, we should do the same for different cultures and races if we truly care about attracting diverse audiences. For example, for our upcoming performance with Rita Moreno narrating Peter & the Wolf with the orchestra, we are running ads targeting families (“fun for the whole family; puppet making in the lobby”), targeting new attendees (“it’s the perfect introduction to the symphony because you learn about the different instruments”), and targeting pop culture aficionados (“Rita Moreno is only one of 12 Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony winners”). We could easily run a campaign to Latino audiences, for example, using the same ad as the pop culture group even; it’s just that we’re intentionally showing that message to people who look like her and might be interested in this performance if we spend some of marketing dollars making them aware of it.
Every performance must be great. While we said that the program itself is not really a problem we need to solve, whether a large or small organization, we do need to be cognizant that every performance needs to be good, “epic” even, as one participant articulated. We can never dial it in, as performers or as administrators. New attendees — heck, all attendees we’d venture to say — deeply want a full experience where they learn, feel inspired, and feel un-intimidated about it. As professional, top quality arts organizations, we need to deliver this every time.
So there you have it: an hour and twenty minute discussion which produced for the California Symphony 11 full typed pages of notes, 4 pages of direct action items, and this blog post we’re sharing with the world as promised. Oh, and tens of thousands of dollars saved over hiring a consultancy to tell us all these same things. We hope you enjoyed it, we hope you will share it, and we definitely hope that as a field, we will take more seriously and act on the feedback we’re hearing from the new audiences we so desperately need.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-adverse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
California Symphony Operations & Education Director Sunshine Deffner hosts the season opener live stream, a pilot project the organization executed on a shoestring budget.
“We just don’t have the resources,” said pretty much every nonprofit organization ever. Whether you’ve worked at a nonprofit, know someone who’s worked at one, support one, volunteer at one, or are not connected to one at all but are a living, breathing human, you’ve probably heard this at some point. Nonprofits — particularly performing arts organizations — of all sizes say this like it’s our motto sometimes, and while there are some reasons for this (namely that we are often undercapitalized, don’t prioritize or budget for risk-taking with new projects, and are not generally rewarded by our leadership for trying new things if they don’t immediately produce financial returns), this kind of thinking is holding us back. And at times, this kind of thinking is even a defense mechanism when we’re afraid to try to something new, or even just so overworked that adding something new to our plates seems outright daunting. I admit to that. Since joining the California Symphony, I’ve even thought before that I shouldn’t tackle certain projects and instead leave those innovations to “the big guys,” arts organizations that have much larger budgets, because (here it comes) we just don’t have the resources. Then I realized that when I used to work for those really large multi-million dollar arts organizations, we still used the same excuse regardless of how big our budget was, and we passed up working on some interesting ideas because of it.
All of this was epitomized for me this summer when I attended a conference for the Association of California Symphony Orchestras, at a presentation led by Frank Capek on creating next generation customer experiences. Capek, who has worked with clients such as Marriott, L’Oréal, and Merck, said that size and budget are often an issue, but not in the way you think. He proceeded to say that being large and well funded can often be a greater limitation than being small, and that the small and nimble are the ones who often can innovate better. “The future,” he said, “belongs to the nimble.” That day, I decided that the California Symphony’s size is not a limitation, it’s an advantage, and we would move faster than other arts organizations, large and small, because of this mentality. That day I decided that there was no reason we couldn’t be the first small or mid-size budget professional orchestra to stream a concert online.
Facebook Live debuted to select public figures in summer 2015 and rolled out to all pages and individuals as a free platform in April of this year. Later that month, the San Francisco Symphony was the first professional orchestra to utilize Facebook Live to stream part of a full orchestra concert, and while other orchestras had begun to adopt the platform for streaming events, lectures, and smaller ensemble performances, to our knowledge, no other professional orchestra had since used it to broadcast part of a full symphony concert. The California Symphony is located just 20 miles away from San Francisco, based in the suburb of Walnut Creek. The San Francisco Symphony’s budget is approximately $70 million, while ours is $1.5M. We knew that given our location in the tech-centric Bay Area, we needed to do this, and we also knew we knew that we didn’t have a lot of cash to make it happen. Oh, and the decision to stream the season opener was made in early August at the aforementioned conference, and the concert was September 18, giving us just over a month to make it all come together. Small and nimble, right?!
Initial outline for the California Symphony’s streaming pilot project.
We quickly articulated our goals for the broadcast: 1) We wanted to offer more than only music, making sure that anyone watching the stream, no matter their level of experience with or understanding of classical music would learn something about who we are and what we do, and what goes into producing a concert on stage and off. 2) We wanted to take advantage of the Facebook algorithm, which promotes longer live streams in more people’s feeds, meaning the longer the broadcast, the more people would see it. In other words, we had no expectation or desire for people to watch our entire stream — we knew the main attraction was the concert itself — but by utilizing our already-in-place pre-concert talk and adding in some great behind-the-scenes content, by the time the concert began, the stream would be promoted in up to five times the number of viewer newsfeeds than if we had broadcast for a shorter amount of time. 3) We wanted to tie-in the event to our 30th anniversary (a nice coincidence in timing that this aligned with our season opener and also why we chose not to wait to execute the project until a later concert in the season), and 4) We wanted to integrate the broadcast into a larger community engagement activity, making the California Symphony more open to and known by our own community. Our final project brief:
Offer a free Facebook Live video and audio stream to kickoff the California Symphony’s 30th anniversary season. The stream will last approximately 90 minutes including the first 30 minutes of the season opener concert, and will be available for viewing on the Symphony’s Facebook Page as well as projected outdoors on the Lesher Center Promenade. Additional activities for all ages will take place outside the Lesher Center, including:
2:30 — Food trucks, instrument petting zoo, and Pokémon Go stops and lures
3:00 — Stream begins with pre-concert talk by Music Director Donato Cabrera
3:30 — Stream continues with backstage interviews and a behind-the-scenes look at what happens before a concert
4:00 — Stream continues with the first 30 minutes of the concert (approximately), including “Network” by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts and the first movement of the Mozart Flute Concerto with soloist Annie Wu
4:30 — Stream concludes
Promotional image shared on social media and shared with community organizations for easy, turnkey inclusion as well as consistent branding.
An additional goal was to capture the information of the people who watched the stream for future marketing. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that we care A LOT about patron retention and getting first-time attendees to come back again. For the people watching the stream online, this is easy: Facebook’s advertising tools now allow for you to run ads to people who have watched specific videos on your page. You can even specify in your targeting if you want people who watched at least 25/50/75 percent, etc., or people who watched at least 10 seconds of your video, and on and on. So the people who watched the video stream online (whether live or later) — especially those who watched within a 10–20 mile radius of Walnut Creek — will definitely be seeing ads inviting them to attend our other concerts this season. For the onsite activities, we set up an enter-to-win station where people could join our mailing list in exchange for the chance to win tickets to future concerts and gift certificates to one of the food trucks on site. People could join via an iPad that was connected to our email software so the entry went straight to our mailing list, and we also offered old-fashioned paper and pencil forms for those less comfortable with the technology. We also pre-printed extra first time attendee postcards to hand out to the people watching the broadcast outside, offering them a discount to attend a full concert in the future and join us inside.
Enter-to-win form set up to directly import new patron contact information to our email software. We also ask for full mailing address information to add these new attendees to future marketing mailings.
We said at the top that we executed this project for $2,500. We scrimped and scrapped everywhere we could, and it’s worth mentioning we simultaneously developed a much more substantial budget so we could apply for funding to do this bigger and better in the future. The point is that it is possible for an arts organization of any budget size to execute this type of project, and here’s the breakdown:
$0 = Facebook Live platform to stream
$200 = Videographer. We hired a college student film major: someone knowledgeable about how to frame a shot (particularly important for the backstage interviews), sound quality, and other similar details, and who is also young enough to be completely comfortable with the Facebook Live technology as well as affordable for us.
$0 = Camera. Our videographer brought his own equipment, but ultimately we decided to simply use an iPhone because walking around filming backstage was going to be nearly impossible with a DSLR camera connected to a cable connected to a laptop connected to the internet. Also, because Facebook Live is so new, very few high-end video cameras are compatible with the platform at this time, and Facebook Live was specifically designed for the mobile app, integrating with the camera on your phone rather than the Facebook webpage on your desktop.
$556.31 = Audio/Visual rental. For the outdoor broadcast, we originally had plans for a giant projection on the wall of the building, and all that ended up going into the “bigger and better” budget. Instead we rented a 55″ television and speakers on stands, and that worked just fine for this pilot experiment.
$338.71 = Labor for AV setup/teardown. This included one IATSE (i.e. union) stagehand and one person on staff at the venue where we perform. This amount includes payroll taxes, pension, and workers comp.
$1,218.92 = Orchestra costs. This line gets a little complicated, but the short of it is that the California Symphony is a professional unionized orchestra, and in addition to our local union agreement, we are signatory to a national agreement with the American Federation of Musicians that governs these types of media projects for orchestras of all sizes across the country. While the orchestra costs are the largest portion of expenses for this project, you can deduce that the musicians don’t individually see much extra in their pocket. It has to be said that we absolutely could not have done this project without the agreement and support of our orchestra members. Not only are they some of the finest musicians in the Bay Area, they are some of the finest people, too, and they were so wonderfully encouraging of this experiment, many of them commenting on and liking the stream, and inviting their students, friends, and family to watch. Their support is allowing us to build new audiences that will in turn patronize more concerts if we’re doing our jobs right. Love them.
$201.94 = WiFi Hotspots. We purchased two WiFi hotspots and data — one that traveled with the videographer as he filmed so that we’d always be connected for the stream, and one located outside so that we could project the feed from Facebook to our outdoor audience. We did several tests in advance to make sure the connection to the hotspot worked and that walking around connected worked, and we still hit some hiccups with bad connections backstage. Lessons learned for the future “bigger and better” streaming projects.
$0 = Food trucks. A whole separate post could be written on the mysteries of working with food trucks, permitting with the city, and coordinating with these entrepreneurs that don’t keep normal business hours. Suffice it to say having a venue on private property makes everything easier, and eventually we secured a fantastic partner who served up ice cream cookie sandwiches all afternoon before the concert began (attendees paid for their own food). It was a hit!
$0 = Instrument Petting Zoo. We operate our petting zoo multiple times throughout the year, so setting it up here wouldn’t have been too much of an undertaking, except that every single staff member was tasked with other responsibilities for the Sunday Funday and broadcast activities. We partnered with another local business, Lamorinda Music, who volunteered their time to fully operate the booth, and even brought all kinds of extra instruments for the kids to touch, hold, and play. Also a hit!
$0 = Marketing. What this actually means is $0 in addition to the marketing budget already allocated for this concert. We were very careful not to advertise the free concert stream to our regular attendees so as not to cannibalize ticket sales, but did advertise the free pre-concert outdoor activities to that group. To attract new people to come in person and watch online, we included the information in our press release so it was picked up by local calendar listings and even a few outlets we don’t normally get attention from such as family blogs and community forums. We also worked with the local Chamber of Commerce for additional social media exposure, as well as the City of Walnut Creek and WC Downtown Association. Lastly, we used about $200 of the concert’s digital marketing budget for running very targeted ads on Facebook promoting the Sunday Funday activities and concert stream to families who did not have an interest in classical music (because those who did have an interest in classical music were receiving ticket sales ads) and who lived within 5 miles of Walnut Creek.
The total spent came to $2,515.88, and we reached more than 5,200 people (and still counting), compared to our concert hall, which seats 800 max. That’s almost a seven-fold increase in people served by one concert, experiencing this art form in which we believe so much, learning about the California Symphony and who we are, and ultimately taking one more step towards classical music as an entertainment choice.
Little did we know, as we were plotting and planning our opening night stream, the granddaddy of all orchestras in America was doing the same. One day after our season opener concert, the New York Philharmonic announced they would be streaming their opening night on Facebook Live that following weekend. Just this week, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall announced their own Facebook Live projects. What an honor to be in such company, and we hope this posts helps empower you to do so too.
Honestly, almost no one has questioned why we didn’t stream the entire concert, but since a few people have, and in case you’re wondering, the answer is two-fold. One reason is cost. The agreement with the musicians mentioned above has different pay rates depending on the length of the broadcast. If we had streamed the full concert, the project would have cost us more than four times as much for not just the orchestra, but longer labor calls as well, and that would have been closer to a $10k price tag, which we definitely could not afford. The second reason not to broadcast the entire concert is the bigger reason though, because even if we had the funding to cover the larger costs, we still would limit the length of the free concert stream due to principle. We believe in the value of the product we’re offering: a fully immersive live concert experience with amazing, top professional musicians. We want to fund this work in part through ticket sales, so we are happy, eager even, to offer a little taste of a full concert experience — the appetizer if you will (I got in trouble for calling it the gateway drug) — for free, and people who want to experience more need to come in person and purchase a ticket to see the whole thing. We also feel that’s how we do right by our existing subscribers and ticket holders and don’t undercut their purchase by giving it away elsewhere. All told, we are happy to help the community see part of a concert (all concerts if we can secure the funding!) for free on us, and deeply want that to lead to a virtuous cycle of building more fans and audience members.
When we started this blog, we said we were writing for anyone and everyone who’s interested, including our colleagues in the industry. If you are considering using Facebook Live to stream a concert or an event, here are links to our own resources we compiled for this project that might be helpful.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-adverse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
Temporary Site 