NEA's New Chairman: "Mercurial"

The NEA has a new Chairman: Rocco Landesman. Here is a nice profile of him from the NYTimes.

Highlights of the story for me were the following:

His leadership style: smart, decisive and “a very entertaining person to be around,” but also “mercurial,” “unpredictable” and “an extraordinarily hardheaded businessman.” I'm always interested in leadership style - and particularly like the word "mercurial" meaning "subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind; sprightly, lively" when we perhaps typically think of good leaders as the antonymous stable or steadfast.

His branding with a slogan: The new chairman said he already has a new slogan for his agency: “Art Works.” It’s “something muscular that says, ‘We matter.’ ” The words are meant to highlight both art’s role as an economic driver and the fact that people who work in the arts are themselves a critical part of the economy. As for the former agency slogan, “A Great Nation Deserves Great Art,” he said, “We might as well just apologize right off the bat.” Really interesting - illustrating the undertones of a slogan - equating the language of appealing to what we deserve to an apologetic nature.

He must be reading Richard Florida: “When you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town,” he said. “There are ways to draw artists into the center of things that will attract other people.”

His money source for projects: Given the agency’s “almost invisible” budget, he said, goals like these would require public-private partnerships that enlist developers, corporations and individual investors. I like this a lot - my fiscally conservative upbringing still makes me question how much public funding should go into the arts - though not the merit of the art or the importance of it finding alternative funding sources than the traditional market provides - so I'm a big fan of private sources (developers/corporations/investors) trading resources for benefit and creating partnerships.

Trouble with Merchandise Sales

I went to Richmond, Virginia, with the NCTA for a couple days last week for planning meetings for the Richmond Folk Festival. While there, we stopped in a local music store that is an old favorite of my co-workers. The store is apparently not faring well, in part due to the economy, in part because CD sales are down due to the popularity of digital music downloading. Josh spoke to someone working there and reported back to the rest of us this fun fact: To compete with the downloading trend, some of the suppliers have been discounting CDs to only $6 or $7 dollars. The result has been an apparent skyrocket in sales, but only in the 80's hair metal band genre.

Next, during one of the meetings, we were discussing how to drive merchandise sales at the festival. We want to use some kind of incentive to encourage the marginal patron to buy. (Those who want to buy already are, those who don't, won't, but we want to capture the people on the fence about it - right at the margin.) Generally, this is done with price discrimination pricing structures - where the front row theater tickets are still $100, but you can sit up in the balcony for just $30 - so you don't lose the revenue of those willing to pay more, but you capture the "maybe" buyer with the incentive of reduced price tickets. Anyway, the problem with these folk festivals is that admission is free, and CD prices are all set by the artists, not within our jurisdiction to offer at reduced prices. One suggestion was made of offering a prize of a complete set of CDs - one from each artist at the festival - to one lucky winner in a contest you were entered to win with the purchase of any piece of merchandise. Not bad. But not sure that's enough to drive sales. Is there a way to offer incentives to marginal buyers to drive sales, without changing prices?

I'm also wondering why some markets can support $20 for an official poster (the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair), and some struggle to sell many for $5 (Richmond Folk Festival). The merchandise is similar - reproduced from original art work with similar appeal. The easy answer would be in the demographic differences between the audiences, which I don't have enough information about to report on, except that attendees of art fairs are there to purchase things, attendees of free music festivals go in without the expectation of purchasing things. But I wonder if it also has to do with the heritage of the event - the art fair being 50 years old, and the folk fest being 5 - and people kind of "wanting a piece" of something with more lineage? Any other ideas?

very sneaky Starbucks

I thought this was really interesting:
Stealth Starbucks: Seattle-based coffee giant opening neighborhood shops in disguise

One Starbucks location "is being rebranded without visible Starbucks identifiers, as 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Two other stores in Starbucks' native Seattle will follow suit, each getting its own name to make it sound more like a neighborhood hangout..."

Generally a reputable brand wants to be identified as themselves - their logo is a mark of the quality their consumers have come to expect from their products. Signaling is important here. This is such a powerful influence, we have trademark law to prevent others from using the all-powerful logo.

So what happens when your logo marks your brand so well it becomes a problem, and what it connotes to consumers isn't desirable anymore? Coffee drinkers apparently want a local joint, not big corporation. Can you keep peddling your product, but under a different brand image - not going to the trouble to reinvent your brand - but just covering it up? Will the consumers suspect (as Steve Johnson expects they will) the truth? And will it cause feelings of betrayal - or a realization for the consumer that the brand might be what he actually wanted? Maybe Starbucks will tell us.