What Every Nonprofit Communicator Can Learn From Arts Marketing Genius Sean Kelly

Kirk: [00:00:00] Welcome to Let’s Hear It.

Eric: Let’s Hear It is a podcast for and about the field of foundation and nonprofit communications, produced by its two co-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. No relation.

Kirk: Well said, Eric. And I’m Kirk.

Eric: And I’m Eric. Let’s Hear It is sponsored by the Prebys Foundation, a foundation creating an inclusive, equitable, and dynamic future for all San Diegans.

Check out their amazingly good podcast, Stop and Talk, hosted by Grant Oliphant and Crystal Page. You can find them at stopandtalkpodcast.com.

Kirk: You can find Let’s Hear It on any podcast subscription platform.

Eric: You can find us online at letzhearitcast.com.

Kirk: And if you like the show, please, please, please rate us

Eric: on Apple Podcasts so that more people can find us.

Sean: Let’s get onto the show.

Kirk: You know, I think with this episode we’re coming way back to your home turf. Ah. We’re coming back, we’re coming back to your favorite place to reside. , It’s all these things, but this is the heart of it for you. This is where you’re most happy. This is your happy place.

This is your

Eric: happy

Kirk: place on

Eric: Earth. [00:01:00] My people , the arts people are my people.

Kirk: This is it. This is so it. It’s so clear. It’s so awesome. This is it. , This is home turf for Eric Brown.

Eric: Yes, and. Well done. As they say- Well done … in the improv world.

Kirk: Yeah.

Eric: Yes, and. Do you wanna know what the and is?

Kirk: Please, please give me the and.

Eric: All right. So if you stumbled upon the podcast and you go, “Oh, no, an arts marketing person. What in the hell- Mm … are they talking about? Why, I’m a nonprofit foundation, communications, whatever the hell I am.” Yeah. “Why do I gotta listen to some nonprofit marketing guy? Not interested.”

Well, okay, here’s why. , , i spoke with Sean Kelly, who runs a company called Vatic, and what he does is- Vatic … he, it’s a marketing firm for people to sell more tickets. And you’re like, “What in the hell are you, Eric, are you…” So I’ve known Sean for a million years.

Kirk: Hmm.

Eric: Since he was the head of marketing for a performing arts organization here in the Bay Area, and he is, to my mind, I think I might have said this during the thing- You did … the [00:02:00] smartest, most brilliant marketing person I have ever known. Hmm. And I think that the sorts of approaches that he takes to putting as many tuchuses-

in as many seats for as much money as possible in the theater are absolutely applicable to a communicator, to an executive director, even to a foundation president, because what he does is he listens so carefully to his audience, and he studies the numbers and the data, and he lets those things drive how he talks about the work, what to charge, all that sort of thing.

So this could apply to your fundraising. This could apply to your communications and messaging, to how you, if you’re a nonprofit organization that is trying to, to engage new donors, how you market your organiza- all that kinda stuff. And Ch- Sean is funny. He’s really, really smart. And so I would say don’t back [00:03:00] out just ’cause you go, “Arts, I don’t do arts.”

That’s my admonition.

Kirk: Hey, there’s so many things we love in this episode. It’s the origin story. It’s the passion. It’s the clear, , insight and brilliance. It’s the stick-to-it-iveness, which we’ll talk about when we come back. So this is Sean Kelly. I will say it’s Vatic, V-A-T-I-C, ’cause that’s not always obvious when we talk- when we say it out loud.

And you find them at Vatic, V-A-T-I-C, .tech. You’ll find them there. And I love Vatic’s mission statement or tagline or whatever, “Dynamic pricing while you sleep.”

So Sean Kelly, thank you so much for coming on Let’s Hear It. This is a great conversation. We’ll listen, we’ll come back. This is Sean Kelly on Let’s Hear It.

Eric: There’s a tension at the heart of every arts organization that folks don’t always like to talk about. On the one side, you’ve got the artists, the musicians, the directors, the performers, the people who’ve given their lives to their craft, and they believe rightly that what they’re doing [00:04:00] matters.

On the other side, you’ve got seats. Some of them are empty. A lot of them are empty. Their costs are going up. The box office, it needs to hit its numbers. And somewhere in the middle, you’ve got the marketing department, which a lot of people in the arts world view the way maybe a chef views the health inspector.

Necessary maybe, but not exactly welcome in the kitchen. So here’s the thing, though. Arts organizations are businesses. And in a moment when they are scrambling just to keep their doors open, getting that right has never mattered more. My guest today has spent his career living in that tension, leading marketing at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto and the Dallas Symphony.

And eight years ago, he started a company called Vadic to help arts organizations do something the airline industry figured out decades ago, for good or ill, charge the right price for the right seat at the right time. His name is Sean Kelly. He is one of the sharpest marketing minds I know. , Today we’re gonna talk about what it actually takes to fill a house and why [00:05:00] getting more people through the door doesn’t have to mean selling your soul.

Sean Kelly, I’m so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Sean: Eric, thank you so much for inviting me. It is an absolute delight to be here.

Eric: Okay, I have long felt that you are the most brilliant marketing mind in, I don’t know, the world.

So I have admired you from close and from afar, and I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Sean: Well, you’re, you’re far too kind. I, I remember very fondly our days of working with your wife back at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley when you were my board crush. So it’s love- It’s lovely to be able to reconnect.

Eric: I’ll say. I remember going into your office, and first of all, you had this great big whiteboard that had a million things on it. There was numbers, there was words, there was questions, there was everythings. And I would, I’d ask you a question like, “Okay, , what does the house look like next week?”

And you’d know the answer. And I would say, “, what do you think the biggest problem is?” And you’d know the answer. W- [00:06:00] what is it about your brain? What kind of questions have you come to learn how to ask to be able to do your job?

Sean: I, I think it actually, it probably gets back to, , getting a graduate degree in theater.

And if I have to kind of distill that down to, like, what were those essential tools I received from that, it would be the ability to craft a narrative, regardless of whether you’re performing that narrative on a stage or you’re trying to analyze a script or- In my case, if you’re looking at a large data set, right?

How do you understand what the data’s trying to tell you? And I was able to use that when, after I finished my graduate degree and decided I didn’t want to be an actor, and I ended up working at Starbucks Corporation as a product manager, and I did this giant data pull, , where I pulled the sales from 10,000 stores for a year.

Right? Wow. It took days for it to [00:07:00] come out of the system. And then when I looked at it, I was able to see that there was all of this waste inside of the system, that there were really actually only about 18 to 24 things that patrons really wanted to buy out of the pastry case, and then there was all this other crap.

And so I presented that data back to the organization. I was like, “We are spinning our…” Literally there’s a term called a SKU, a stock keeping unit. There were literally 375 stock keeping units, but there’s only 18 to 24 that actually sell. But there were multiple permutations of the same thing, so there was like 18 different versions of a blueberry muffin.

But we didn’t have 18… at Starbucks you didn’t have 18 versions of a latte. You just had the latte. And so my proposal to the organization was- … well, we should just come up with one blueberry muffin, and then everyone should be forced to sell it. ‘Cause there were [00:08:00] stores that weren’t selling blueberry muffins because they literally thought they couldn’t sell blueberry muffins, even though it’s the number one selling SKU.

So it was that kind of thing. And so then, you know, I, I left Starbucks and I went into the world of theater, and I just started using that same logic of, well, the patrons are trying to tell us something, , with their ticket buying behavior, so we need, we just need to be able to pay attention.

We need to be able to build a narrative out of that.

Eric: What are the patient, patrons trying to tell you? The

Sean: patrons are trying to tell you-

Eric: In general …

Sean: what an evening or an afternoon of their time is worth. And we’ve all had shows or titles that you couldn’t even- Mm … give tickets away, right? When I was at the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle, we presented the world premiere of , a musical by an author who shall remain nameless for the purpose of this call, and she was very famous, and [00:09:00] I could not give tickets away-

to this show. And I lost a lot of sleep over that because we had all these performances- … and it was a 2,000-seat hall, and you’re just trying to make sure that the performers on stage are having a good experience. And there’s a certain point where you have to acknowledge the fact that, like, you’re not a god.

You can’t fix everything. And you just have to pay attention to what patrons are telling you, and I think a lot of arts organizations end up spending, a lot of arts marketers end up spending a majority of their time worrying about the things that aren’t working When there’s actually not a whole lot they can do about those.

Rather than focusing their time on the things that are working and how they can leverage that- Mm-hmm … success for the good of the theater or orchestra or opera or ballet.

Eric: But there is the, there, of course, there is this tension. [00:10:00] Needless to say, if you have a, a play that is so obscure or abstruse that you just can’t get anybody to come, then , you’d probably wanna start that…

You, you don’t wanna put it at the Fifth Avenue Theater with 2,000 seats. A theater in w- by, by the way, in which I have performed way, way back when. So it’s a little Fifth Avenue- Oh,

Sean: well.

Eric: I know. In, in the national tour of On Golden Pond with, , J- Lovely … James Whitmore, 1981-something. Anyway.

Sean: It’s a, it’s a big haul for a straight play.

Eric: I see. Uh- A digression. Anyhow, but there are these tensions because y- you know, if you’re the ballet, you can’t do Nutcracker every week. , Th- there are how do you think about putting together a season in which, , you get, your artistic yayas out and also find those popular things that you know are gonna fill the seats?

How does that work?

Sean: Yeah, I mean, our advice always to clients is absolutely, we don’t want you to only do blockbusters. We want you to do things that are more obscure. We want you to do world premieres. Those are important. Those are especially important for subscribers. You wanna make sure that your subscribers are [00:11:00] getting things in front of them that feel fresh and new and help you retain them.

Subscribers are the lifeblood of American arts. But at the same time,

Eric: you’re,

Sean: you have to acknowledge that there’s probably not gonna be a lot of money that comes in from those. And so you’re gonna have to balance that out with things that are gonna pay the bills. And so you have to be able to do it all.

And the challenge is, you know, we have a couple of clients this year in the world of symphony who’ve got brand-new music directors. And music directors come in and they have been hired for their vision, and invariably in year one they execute that vision. But unfortunately, it looks just different enough from what their folks have been used to that they pull back on spending and on purchasing tickets because it’s not, , it doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot.

And it’s always very challenging to have to go back to artistic and [00:12:00] say, “Listen, , there’s nothing wrong with the programming. Really interesting, but there weren’t enough kind of meat and potatoes titles in there to ensure that we hit the revenue goals that we need for the organization.”

Eric: Does it make the artistic people crazy when the marketing people come in and say, “Give us something that’s a little less obscure”?

Sean: They don’t love it, I will tell you that. They don’t love it, and until you become a trusted partner, which can often take years-

Eric: Mm-hmm …

Sean: until you become a s- trusted partner, coming back to them and saying, “You know, we don’t have enough money coming in the door,” and they’ll be like, “What are you talking about?

That’s the clarinet concerto. All of the clar…” I literally had someone say this to me- … when you’re like, “All of the clarinet lovers in Dallas are going to be flocking to the Meyerson Symphony Center.” And I was like, “I’m not saying they’re not, but also there’s maybe, like, 20.” Like, there’s just not enough of them compared to the people who will flock [00:13:00] to the organization when you’re doing Beethoven’s Fifth.

Eric: Yeah. I, I seem to recall some conversations I had with you about obscure- … bits of classical music that you were attempting to market. So, oh, and then when I was doing the read, when I said the thing about the, how the chef views the health inspector, your face turned a very funny set of colors.

Sean: Well, you know, I used to work in restaurants and so the- … the health inspector analogy is apt. It’s painful , I don’t think you’re wrong. I’ve never thought of it that way. But, I, do think that’s, that’s pretty accurate. And unfortunately, it’s not how arts organizations are most successful when you have this kind of Hatfields and McCoys tension either between artistic and marketing or marketing and development or, like, , whoever the two sides may be.

Both of them have a job, and arts organizations work the best when the artistic [00:14:00] department is making really strong artistic decisions and when the marketing department is there as an advocate for the patron, where they’re coming forward and saying, “Listen, we are an organization that was built for the community, and so here’s the data that we have to help us make choices because this is what we know the community wants to see.”

Eric: Now you talk about subscribers being the lifeblood, but we are seeing subscriptions plummeting. The youngs, they don’t do subscriptions. The model for filling a house has changed a lot. Can you talk about what folks are dealing with right now?

Sean: So I have a different point of view on subscriptions than a lot of people.

People have been forecasting the death of subscriptions for, like, 20 years. Subscriptions are still alive and well, and the few organizations that I’m aware of that turned off their subscription model have suffered-

Eric: Hmm …

Sean: greatly because of that. That said, it is very hard, [00:15:00] and it becomes more difficult every year.

One of the interesting things that we found with our clients at Vatic is that they will bring us in, and we will do dynamic pricing for them for the first year, and that can often mean that individual titles or individual performances of individual titles will see some significant increases, prices that for most of these organizations the patrons have never experienced before because the system is designed to actually evaluate what is the true value of this performance.

And it doesn’t have any emotional baggage that goes along with that. And so if the system is saying, you know, and it creeps up, right, day by day. So if it thinks it’s supposed to be $200, then it’s $200. Now, folks inside the organization might have a different point of view, and they’re entitled to that opinion.

Mm-hmm. If they were going to buy a ticket, they might think that price is too much, but they’re not the ticket buyers. The ticket buyers are the ticket buyers. [00:16:00] So anyway, we go through that first year. You know, some of the prices move up, right? They see some, higher prices come into the marketplace than have been there in the past.

Eric: But then this weird thing happens in year two, which is they see this huge surge in subscriptions.

Sean: And the reason for that is because now suddenly the value of subscription has become perfectly clear. . Because for a lot of these organizations, when people call in and, , they’re like, “Oh, we wanna get a cou- you know, a pair of tickets,” and then they find out what the price is, a lot of the box office will say, “Well, you know, you could actually just get a three performance subscription for that same price, same seat.”

And suddenly, like, the light bulb goes off. It’s like, oh, now there’s really a value in making that advance commitment. So much so that, , last year five of our clients actually put a cap on subscriptions ’cause they felt like they were gonna sell too many subscription seats and it was gonna hurt their single ticket revenue.

Eric: Wow. Wow. Oh, and, before we go to the break, I would love for you to tell me the John Denver story ’cause you told it to me a [00:17:00] long time ago. The John

Sean: Denver story.

Eric: And it made me laugh.

Sean: So in my early days at the Dallas Symphony, we had a tribute band coming through doing a show called The Music of John Denver.

We had given it a relatively, we’d given it a relatively low goal. It was on subscription. It had not done well on subscription, and , we did not really have high hopes. First day of single ticket sales, we got the data back and sales had skyrocketed. It was well in excess of what we thought it was gonna be.

And so I went to the product manager for pops and I said, “Hey, look at what happened with John Denver. Do you wanna raise prices?” ‘Cause we want her to feel like she has, you know, agency over what’s happening with the prices for the titles that she’s responsible for. And she said, “Sean,” she was a little salty.

She said, “Sean, how about you do whatever you feel is right to do for John Denver, and I’m gonna go over here and work on something that actually matters.” [00:18:00]

Eric: Uh-huh.

Sean: And so we thought, okay, well, this is the perfect example. Like, we can just let the algorithms do their thing, and we’re not gonna press the edit button.

We’re just gonna let them do their things. And so the question we always ask when we tell the story is what do you think the top price was for The Music of John Denver at the Dallas Symphony Center? For a loge seat at the Dallas Symphony Center.

Eric: It’s gonna be high, isn’t it?

Sean: And yeah, it was $276. And here’s the thing

Eric: It wasn’t…

John Denver’s dead, right? It wasn’t the actual John Denver.

Sean: And then the tribute band arrived, and they saw where the prices were, and they went to operations and they said, “Hey, we went to the website and the prices have really gotten quite high.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s, that’s what the marketing department is in charge of.”

And he goes, “Y- they do realize that John Denver is dead?” It’s like, “Yes, they, they’re aware of that too.” But here’s the thing, those [00:19:00] performances didn’t sell out. We were never gonna sell out two performances in a 2,000-seat venue, , for the music of John Denver. The, but the people who wanted to come really wanted to come.

They missed John Denver, and so they were excited to come see it. How many complaints did we get about high prices? Absolutely none.

Eric: Huh.

Sean: People were thrilled. And there’s actually very good data that shows that the more you spend on something, the higher your satisfaction is with it. And so those people had a fantastic time.

Ball Symphony made an extra $50,000 off of those two performances above and beyond what it was originally forecast to do. I don’t care what organization you’re at, $50,000 is real money.

Eric: That’s a great story. , I love that story. Okay, we’re gonna take a very quick break, and we’ll be back and we’ll, we’re gonna talk more about what you have done with all of this incredible knowledge and s- skill and artistry, , right after this.[00:20:00]

You’re listening to Let’s Hear It, a podcast about foundation and nonprofit communications hosted by Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. If you’re enjoying this episode, you may just be a rule breaker. Check out season three of Break Fake Rules with Glenn Galich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, as he chats with inspiring leaders in philanthropy, government, media, and more about breaking the fake rules that don’t work so that we can build a future that does.

Check them out wherever you get your podcasts. And now, back to

Kirk: the

Eric: show.

Welcome back. My guest is Sean Kelly. He is the marketing genius behind this company called Vadic, which does dynamic pricing. You thought you were signing up to hear, um, Let’s Hear It: Communications and Strategy for Nonprofits and Foundations, the, the…

We will get there, but… And, and this is not, like, a, a, a pay-to-play marketing , thing. Uh, Sean is just one of the smartest, best marketing people I know, and I think that his insights have so much value for nonprofits [00:21:00] around the country in terms of u- understanding how to communicate with an audience , and reach them.

And you have built these relationships with these organizations based , on this knowledge that you have, and you started this company designed to maximize the value , of every seat in that, in the theater or , the venue , that your clients work in. So can you talk a little bit about Vadic and , how you took all that cleverness that you have and turned it into this new business?

Sean: Well, I worked on the algorithms for a long time. We have 16 algorithms and, you know, the very first one we built at DataWorks Silicon Valley, and then as we would find more and more things that we felt like there was some kind of anomaly with the data, and so we needed, , an algorithm to work around that.

We needed it to work with that, too, ’cause , it was having some kind of an impact on what prices you should be charging for single ticket prices. And so we built things around seasonality. We built special algorithms for holiday, ’cause holiday [00:22:00] sells differently. We built, , algorithms when something is absolutely, positively has to be a sellout, and you gotta move through every seat.

There’s special algorithms for things that are… where it’s hard to fill seats. So, you know, it’s taking this very three-dimensional view of what’s going on with your organization and trying to manage prices according to that, but at the same time, take human emotion out of it.

, Most of our clients are doing dynamic pricing of one style or another. But almost always there’s a limit to what that can do because they’re human beings, and human beings have feelings, and we say, “Oh, we couldn’t possibly charge more than $100,” or- “… We couldn’t possibly charge more than $200,” or whatever that is.

But again, you’re not the ticket buyer. The ticket buyer is the ticket buyer. So how do we get to that sense of what the ticket buyer [00:23:00] thinks, and how do we do that in a logical fashion? So , we took all those algorithms, , we did , a pilot test in North Carolina. , You know, they made an extra $100,000 that year.

For a small symphony in North Carolina, that’s a big deal. So we felt like, nope, we’ve got something that really works. We commercialized it. We now have a bunch of different integrations with Tessitura, Spektrix, PatronManager, AudienceView. And so we integrate with their systems and manage their prices on a daily basis.

Eric: And so sometimes prices go up, sometimes they go down, sometimes they stay the same. And i- it’s, I, if I understand this correctly, you’re trying to get the most… , if you could charge a million dollars for one seat, you probably wouldn’t do it because then you’d, then people would be playing to a single patron, and that’s not what you want.

You want a, as full a house as possible w- that produces as much money as possible, right?

Sean: Right. It has to be able to do both. , It’s all well and good if we can raise, it’s an industry term here, the average ticket price. We can raise the average [00:24:00] ticket price 15%, but then if you sell fewer tickets, well, then that, that’s not a success, right?

You have to be able to do both. And so we look at average ticket price, we look at the average number of single tickets sold per performance, and then lastly, we look at the average amount of single ticket revenue per performance, and that’s how we measure growth year over year. And for our clients, on average, that is 23% growth year over year, and that’s on top of the dynamic pricing they were already doing.

And then we try and build a system that, for our multi-year clients, becomes stable and continues to grow, and continues to grow that cumulative increase in revenue.

Eric: Well, you’ve looked at a lot of data now over these eight years, and then, uh, certainly before. W- what do you know about arts [00:25:00] audiences that you think arts organizations ought to know?

Sean: Oh, well, I think arts audiences value your product far more highly than you do And I think it comes from a culture of less than in the nonprofit arts, and that’s why people are paid so poorly and the organizations are under-resourced. And they do it for the right reasons. They do it because they think that the problem with people coming is price, and so they wanna keep prices as low as possible.

But by and large, the problem with people coming isn’t price. The problem with people coming is product. It’s programming. And the folks who are doing it the best are the ones who are paying attention to serving the needs of their community while maintaining a high level of art. And the ones who are more ego-led are the [00:26:00] ones who are struggling

Eric: So interesting.

In San Francisco, I don’t know if you’ve been following the San Francisco theater scene, for example. , A number, I, I can’t remember how many, a good dozen theater companies have closed in the last, , since the pandemic. And I’m just wondering if you have , any Sean Kelly wisdom to drop on w- why you think that happened.

, It’s possible that some of these things that you talked about , are in play, but is there anything else? Is there anything else about how people go to the theater or how they take in their arts that has changed that organizations missed and they need to be thinking about more of these days?

Sean: So for those of us of a certain age and I’m including you and I in that group, right?

Eric: Thank you. I am, I am of more of a certain age than you are, by the way.

Sean: We’re both of a certain age, right? We all remember going into grandma’s kitchen and opening up the junk drawer, and there was that giant ball of rubber bands because grandma was raised during the Depression.

And so you [00:27:00] saved everything, right? The Depression literally changed people’s DNA when it came to living in this world. And the same thing has actually happened for our current modern society. Our DNA has been changed when it comes to attending performing arts, planning for attending performing arts, subsc- which of course it affects subscribing, right?

And we, lots of folks haven’t necessarily taken that into account, and what it’s really gotten down to is that folks have to have a really good reason to leave their house. And if you’re not putting that really good reason in front of them, they’re not gonna come. And that’s harsh. You know, I grew up in San Francisco.

I hope to move back there someday. I’m currently living in Dallas. Please don’t hold that against me. I met my husband here, and now apparently- … I am destined to live the rest of [00:28:00] my life in Texas. But I grew up in San Francisco, and I remember what an incredibly rich, vibrant performing arts community there was, and all of these wonderful, beautiful little organizations that were doing these very niche but very important works.

But on the other side, you could say that it was somewhat oversaturated. And so as the total number of patrons shrinks, so has the number of organizations because it’s become harder. And it’s painful to have to talk to those organizations who are making really special work. And I have two degrees in theater, so I know a bit about niche theater It’s painful to have to say to them, “You need to adapt.”

But the reality is they’ve gotta adapt, and if they’re not putting something in front of people that’s compelling enough, then [00:29:00] audiences won’t come out. One of our clients is in the Midwest. They just finished building… A couple years ago, they just finished building a new, , 200-seat black box theater.

Beautiful facility. And then they would always put on a production in winter for it, and then no one would come. And they were really starting to struggle. They were like, “Should we just not…” They asked me last year, they, “Should we just not be booking anything into this?” And I said, “You just finished building it.

You spent a lot of money on it. What are you talking about?” I said, “You need to put something in it that’s so amazing that people, even in the winter, even in the blizzard, they will come out.” I said, “Put the right title in, and it will change your point of view on this venue.” And so what did they do? They put in The Mousetrap And it has- It has completely sold out the entire run, and people are writing them all these love letters.

“It’s the perfect venue, and it was so intimate, and we loved it so much.”

Eric: Right.

Sean: And this is the classic example. Like, they haven’t moved off-brand, right? But they found something that would really [00:30:00] speak to their patrons, and the patrons came out.

Eric: Yeah, even in fancy, fancy London, Mousetrap has been running for 100 years, right?

Right. Uh, so l- let’s, so y- you mentioned that Vadic works with folks who are on specific ticketing-

Sean: Mm-hmm …

Eric: platforms like Tessitura and others, and some of them, I think, are, relatively small-sized organizations are on some of those ticketing platforms. Is that correct?

Sean: Absolutely. So we have organizations that have as few as 200 seats, and we are very successful with them.

Eric: Now, , for o- organizations that are not yet in the position to work with Vadic or-

Sean: Mm-hmm …

Eric: they’re not on the right kinda platforms or whatever, the small regional theater or the community orchestra, whatever it is, what’s your ad- what’s your advice for them? How do they market smarter? How do they price in ways that can maximize their return and still fill the house?

Sean: So the first step is they’ve gotta be having conversations. They’ve gotta be having conversations with their development colleagues. They’ve gotta be having conversations with their artistic colleagues. [00:31:00] They have to be having conversations with the managing director or the CEO. And those conversations have to revolve around, A, who is our , art for?

It’s for the community. B, w- how do they value it, and how do our internal points of view on value get in the way- Mm-hmm … of finding what that true value is? And then the outcome that happens from that, by having this very honest conversation about we’re the problem The outcome from that is, A, you can start to explore what audiences think the true value of your art is, right?

And you can start to really, , get in alignment with that. And the more in alignment you get with that, the better tickets will sell. It’s, it is a fallacy that the best way to sell more tickets is cheaper tickets. I remember talking to an organization, and they were [00:32:00] like, “Oh, we have all of these, you know, $29 seats.”

It was an opera company. “We have all these $29 seats in the upper balcony, and they never sell.” And I was like, “Right, ’cause they know they’re terrible seats. You’ve told them they’re terrible seats ’cause you’re only charging $29 for them.” Like, you, you can’t bamboozle people, and the low price doesn’t necessarily get them to do the thing you want them to do.

But once you start to align those prices with what people ac- your patrons actually think the value is, this other thing happens that I think is actually the really important thing. Which is you as an individual in that arts organization start to understand your own true value.

Eric: That’s, that’s, uh, wonderfully put.

You know, as you were talking, I was thinking that, uh, lot of – arts organizations are kinda like the chef who wo- who won’t put salt or pepper on the table ’cause you’re gonna, you’re gonna eat it the way I made it, and you, you, I don’t care, I don’t care what your, what your tastes are. Is, is that appropriate?

Sean: , I [00:33:00] think there’s a broad spectrum of arts leadership that’s out there, and we have a lot of great arts leaders who are in the organizations that we service as VADIC, , and all of us are learning. The hard part is that often no one’s willing to have a conversation. No one’s willing to go to their colleagues in artistic and say, “Listen, love the season, but-

we need a money maker in slot number three We can’t have three weekends of piano concertos in a row. Right? Like, it, it, it can be hard to just say, like, there’s a need that we have. We ha- Yeah … we have a need for revenue. That’s how we pay bills. That’s how we pay our wonderful staff. That’s how you pay all of those wonderful performers on the stage.

And we have– There has to be a balanced conversation about that, and [00:34:00] sometimes that means charging more, and sometimes it means charging less, and sometimes it means choosing a title that is a little bit more like “The Mousetrap.” And none of those are bad things, because at the end of the day, we’re just trying to keep the doors open.

Eric: Well, you’re keeping the doors open, , for a lot of places. , I think it’s just extraordinary what you have built. I’m just so impressed. And I would say for folks out there, and this is– Yeah, I will give you the shameless– I’ll do the shameless shill plug for Vadic. , This is a, you know, a non-compensated shill ’cause I just believe in what you’re doing so well.

Folks should, , give Sh-Shawn a call and, , just, , pick his brain a little bit. Talk to him about what your organization is doing and what it could be doing better, and I have a feeling that , he’ll have great advice and maybe even y-you can be a, become a client. But the idea is w- the wisdom that you have brought to understanding how to listen, , how to read the tea leaves, and how to take the data and turn it into really useful [00:35:00] information is, , alchemy.

And I, I just so– am so impressed with you. I’m so happy that you came on to talk about your work.

Sean: Well, it’s been an absolute delight. Thank you for having me.

Kirk: And we’re back And we’re back. So yeah, I love this. Dynamic pricing while you sleep. I love so many aspects of this conversation. Can I tell you though, actually, one of the things that I most appreciated is you, , as you came to , your home turf for this discussion- Uh-huh

is the visibility into the dynamics around an arts organization and these different aspects of the arts organization and how they have to get aligned. And when you start talking about it, it makes perfect sense, but if you’re not in that world, you’re probably not thinking about these, these push and pulls and these tensions.

And as you were setting this up initially and talking about, hey, these are all the aspects where, you know, anybody doing any kind of work , could relate to this, I actually think this is part of it too. I mean, every organization that we work with that we know that w- we’re in this mission and purpose-driven work, there’s always [00:36:00] this disconnect between sort of the back of the house and the front- Yeah

of the house, you know what I mean? Who’s, who’s setting the calendar for what’s happening versus , what your marketing and communications people know that your audiences are gonna be responding to. , So I thought even just that dynamic itself was a great starting point for all of this.

Eric: Well, it, you know, his idea that the ticket buyers are the ticket buyers.

Yeah. They’re the ones who buy the tickets, and- … you have to understand what they care about and what they want. Mm-hmm. And if you devalue, if you cut the price of your tickets, they’re g- you’re sending them a signal that this stuff isn’t worth anything. And I think that we do this in so many ways in a- across foundation communications.

Oh,

Kirk: yeah. Oh, yeah.

Eric: You know, we don’t pay our people enough because we’re supposed to all just care so much so that we can work at p- pennies on the dollar. We don’t ask for enough money from donors- Mm-hmm. Right … because we don’t want to offend them. Yeah. , We don’t talk about our work in ways that are meaningful to the people who we’re [00:37:00] trying to communicate with.

I can’t tell you, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen an organization’s name created over somebody’s kitchen table because they thought- … it sounded good, or , the new initiative was started- Yeah … like two people’s like, “What should we call it?” “Oh, let’s call it, uh, whatever.

Accelerating and Scaling Impact.” “That’s what we do.” It’s like, oh my God. So I, so I think those things are- Or

Kirk: our stakeholders.

Eric: Or for our stakeholders.

Because we- Yeah … understand it, so therefore- Yeah … that’s all that matters. Yeah. And I think that Sean does the exact same thing in, in thinking about how do you promote an arts organization and make sure that you get as many people in the seat paying as much money as possible, and you just have to get over that stuff, espe- especially in, in the perf- f- performing arts because people’s like, “Ooh, we shouldn’t, you know, cut people out or whatever.”

, You can find ways to ensure that you can give tickets to people who wouldn’t [00:38:00] otherwise get there, but do not undersell your work, and do not tell people that it has no value.

Kirk: And , this kind of magic-

Eric: Well, I’m all worked up, Kirk. I’m, I’m, uh, feeling-

Kirk: It’s ins- I’m a little

Eric: verklempt … this is,

Kirk: you’re on your home turf.

This is it. This is your love. This is your first love. I was realistic. By the way, national tour of On Golden Pond. What a, what a drop. What a name drop. Oh, yeah, I performed on the national tour. What a, what a flex. What a flex.

Eric: Eh.

Kirk: But, um- It

Eric: was a long time ago. The most interesting thing that ever happened to me was over 40 years ago.

So, you know, whatever.

Kirk: , So also- Some flex … , we get some visibility into this superpower, , and I love how Sean pulls this forward, but also how this is woven into Sean’s work today. Graduate degree in theater. Second he says that, I’m like, “Oh, I wish I had that, too.” , But then what does…

, i kinda wanna know, like, what, what happened? There’s almost like a s- there’s almost like , a Marvel comic- … , origin story here, because you emerge from the graduate- Different Sean … , you emerge with a graduate degree in theater, and somehow you [00:39:00] get this inclination that I actually wanna build narrative around data And I thought that comment alone, we should pull it out and build an entire year worth of episodes just on that idea.

Because this is actually what we’re asking our communicators to do increasingly, right? Let’s

Eric: excite people by talking about data. It’s fun.

Kirk: But let’s, we’re talking about building data, narrative around data. , And where does Sean actually apply that?

Eric: Blueberry

Kirk: muffins. And I, I wish… Starbucks.

Blueberry

Eric: muffins. And I

Kirk: wish… , i’d love to know what you have to do to get data from every Starbucks store everywhere, and the fact that he’s pulling so much information, it takes days- … for it to come back. I’m sure that’s a little bit faster today. , But he’s demonstrating this capacity to be like, “Oh, wait, there’s a story in here.

There’s a story in these numbers. I can pull this story out of these numbers.” And that’s exactly why it would be worth it to talk about for a year, because pulling the story from the numbers is actually, that’s the thing that changes the world. , Like when we see all these campaigns that have impact, when we see [00:40:00] all of these, be it political, be it what have you- Yeah

somebody somewhere is sitting in a place where they can look at the data, they know it’s actually happening, and they can weave a narrative out of it. , And I think frankly it’s one deficiency for our field as a whole, going back to your kitchen table comment, , like our willingness to just sit with that data, get clear about it, and then actually pull a story back out of it that’s gonna resonate with audiences.

That’s a superpower, and Sean has it, and I would love to know how Sean developed it , and how he keeps it polished. Because I think it’s intuitively ob- intuitively obvious for some people. I wonder if it’s trainable. I wonder if it’s teachable.

Eric: , It’s interesting. I went into his office back when he was at TheatreWorks, which was the company that my wife was a fundraiser for, and started asking him a whole bunch of questions about how do you sell tickets.

And g- I, I’m just interested as , a theater lover and former person in the theater. And, , and he had this great big whiteboard. And then , so I go, , “How do you know , what to charge?” Yeah. And he would, he- Yeah … had all these numbers written on this whiteboard. And, I would just ask, you know, “, what is the demographic?”

He knew the answer. “When do people come?” He knew the answer. “, What do you think is [00:41:00] driving it?” , He had really good ideas … Like, he was asking these questions. About his patrons so- Mm-hmm … he could figure out how to get as many heinies in as many seats for the most money possible, because that’s- Yeah

how a theater company survives. Now- Yeah … if you’re not a theater company, you ask different questions with different things, but, you know, what’s working? I mean, that’s the blueberry muffin story- Mm-hmm. Right, right … which is what’s working and how do we know? And then it’s quite possible- Yeah … that, you know, some managers, they don’t like blueberry muffins.

“I’m not gonna put ’em on the menu.” Yeah, but they sell, you know? , My favorite thing was the John Denver story.

Kirk: Oh my. Wow.

Eric: So this is the Dallas Symphony. Wow. The Dallas Symphony- Wow … you know, which plays all sorts of esoteric things, and at the time they had a conductor who liked to do kinda edgy stuff.

Yeah. And then they put a tribute band for John Denver- … on the docket. Yeah. And it’s on the subscription. Nobody wants to go. And then he- Yeah … he jacks up the price.

Kirk: Yeah. Yeah. And,

Eric: and all of a sudden it started getting [00:42:00] traction ’cause there’s- Yeah … a lot of John Denver fans in there, and even the band themselves, they said like they know that John Denver’s dead, right?

Kirk: Exactly.

Eric: Why are we charging- This is actually … $276 for a ticket- Right. How is this possible? … for a tribute band? Right. Because people wanted it, and they loved it, so.

Kirk: And there’s so… Right. So much in there. I mean, y- you’re doing market segmentation. You’re doing, you know, what wins when, where, how. So, uh, in this- Amazing

what are your patrons trying to tell you? What is an evening or afternoon of our time worth? You know, what… That, that’s the conversation. What is an afternoon or evening of our time worth? And I have to tell you, that’s, that leaves me a little bit cold in a sense- Uh-huh … ’cause wow, that feels tough. You know what I mean?

Like, so what is it worth? , How do I connect and make- Yeah … this worth it for you? What a difficult task that is for everybody in the arts field- It- … and, doing arts work.

Eric: And okay, so the, the mousetrap story is another- Yeah … one that I think is very applicable to anybody, which is you take the, you- At a difficult time, take something that is popular, that people actually want [00:43:00] and like, and do that.

Yeah. And people go, “Oh, no, no, no. We’re a fancy theater. We can’t do The Mousetrap. The Mousetrap is crappy.” I mean, first of all- … it’s been running for, in London for s- 57 years or something like that. So it’s like- Oh, right … people like it. Uh, but- Mm-hmm … but like, “Oh no, we’re, we’re, we’re too good for that.” And, and I think that this is a- analogous to how we do messaging sometimes, w- where we- Hmm

come at something with , a very simple, straightforward approach. Yeah. And then the program people , with the graduate degree in demography go, “Oh, no, no, no.” Right. “It’s very complicated.” It’s like- Yeah. Right … no, if it’s complicated, you’re gonna lose. Right. And if you tell- Right … somebody, an audience, that like, “Here’s this esoteric, challenging piece of theater, and we want you to come out at 20 below zero in the middle of a Midwestern winter,” they’re gonna say- Yeah

“No.”

Sean: Yeah.

Eric: You know? Yeah. So th- th- that’s, so much of this is, , what are the best ways to communicate with our audiences? Yeah. And don’t be afraid to do that. And that’s what he has proved. He has proved, ’cause the one of wonderful thing about marketing [00:44:00] is if the people come and give the money, you know you succeeded.

And our business, like, did we communicate- Yeah … with our audience? Are we driving them to action? Yeah. I don’t know. It’s really hard to tell. Right. It’s really hard. There’s so many other people out there. There’s so many different reasons why people do things, so we can’t really show that we caused it.

Like, Gerwan goes to bed at night knowing exactly how much money he made- Yeah … for his clients.

Kirk: So I love to, um, you know, that dynamic of, hey, let’s have the right mix of things so we build the right audience, to really have a conversation about that in an in-depth way. And, and I, I think about that arts director who’s saying, “You know, no, we need to do the, the following six precious things that nobody’s ever heard of.”

Right. “But just by virtue of us getting into the world, we’re gonna help expand our artistic awareness.” And, and, and Sean and Steven are coming and saying, , that, “That’s well and good, but if you actually wanna keep the lights on, let’s think about this mix of things.” , But that notion of needing to become a trusted partner, and again, that’s the part that’s applicable across the board.

I mean, any time, , communications teams are actually gonna get access to [00:45:00] C-suite conversations, they’re gonna actually be able to chance- they’re gonna give it a chance to drive strategy instead of respond to it at the 11th hour. It’s gonna be built on trust. And- that arts director who’s saying, “Let’s do the precious thing that nobody’s heard about,” that’s very analogous, just like you pointed out.

It’s very analogous to that senior program person- … who has all the credentials, 16 PhDs, and they’re like, , “No, we need to say this with 16 syllables because- Yeah … it’s a really complicated thing.” And we’re saying, “Look, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna s- you, you might be right, but you’re not gonna win.”

So, so trust as a currency, again, there’s so much woven in here in terms of how, how Sean is doing this work and this piece around trust. I also don’t wanna lose it, because you can tell from Sean’s demeanor, this is somebody who knows how to build trust. You know- Yeah. Yeah, yeah … cares about the arts, comes from this background, and wants to build that trust, and it’s something, again, as communicators, we have to think about.

, We’re always building this reservoir of trust so that we can leverage it, we can lean into it, and we can draw, I, I guess, down, even though I don’t think we deplete trust. I think we actually build it as we show more- Yeah … and more value and create more and more outcomes.

Eric: No, that’s for sure. [00:46:00] And yeah, so when, , the person at the symphony says, “We wanna do Horst Fenderstoots 13th clarinet concerto in D flat minor,” and you’re like, “Uh-huh.”

No one’s gonna go.

Kirk: So we get the magic here. , It’s get the right content calendar, make sure you’re doing the right things in the right times for the right audiences, and now they’re on the hook, now they’re coming forward, now we’re gonna price it dynamically. Right. And, and so this is the part, this is where really the magic happens because…

, and I actually love that conversation around subscriptions , and Sean saying, you know, actually, yes, subscriptions are really crucial for creating a platform of funding and support for these institutions, but when you do dynamic pricing, you actually can juice your subscriptions. And I love that notion- I know

of he’s got clients saying, “We can’t do any more subscriptions ’cause we only-” We can’t turn off the subscriptions. Yeah. We wanna be able to sell single seats. We have to do both. So that, so dynamic pricing is a key. And again, that notion that Sean’s sitting on this reservoir of 16 different algorithms to help, , slice and dice and figure [00:47:00] things out.

I thought, again, , all the different pieces of the art and science that Sean is pulling together, plus that lived experience, um, it’s just really cool to see those glimpses of how those things come together.

Eric: Yeah. And this is, just so interesting because he’s asking questions of the data He’s making inferences, he experiments, and then he lathers, rinses, and repeats.

And so i- in that sense, it’s kinda nice that you can be so data-driven. Now, not everybody- Yeah … in our field is as able to be data-driven as that, but I think what he’s doing, however, is, when he queries his database, let’s just say, this is him asking important questions of his audiences, his own organizations, all of that stuff, by being curious and really pushing, and not trying to lead the conversation, but trying to listen carefully.

And I do think that that is another one of these things that’s very, very applicable. It’s why we write the wrong taglines. It’s why we, our [00:48:00] organizations are named in ways that nobody can understand. It’s all that other stuff. You know, he, instead, we need to have that Sean Kelly mind of, of, you know, the curious that, and that reveals itself.

You know? The ticket buyer is the ticket buyer. The audience is- Yeah … the audience. Yeah. What do they care about, and how do we create communications that speak to their values, that en- encourage them, inspire them, move them to do something of value, and then feel good about it so that they come back and do more, and we build this trust, and we build these partnerships, and we build, build, build.

And that’s what he’s, , like amazingly… He’s like one of those TV shows where they would, like The Mentalist, he could see things- … that nobody else could see. He sees patterns that we can’t. Like, that’s Sean.

Kirk: Got it. Yeah. And look, this takes tenacity, so I wanna put this in Sean’s words. , So Vatic is now seven years old.

Six years ago, Sean gets on LinkedIn and says, “It’s our six-year anniversary. Vatic is six years old.” This is how Sean describes it: “I started Vatic with my own money, what is called [00:49:00] bootstrapping. I worked side jobs as a consultant for years to fund it. At one point, I had seven gigs beside my full-time job.

I did that because I believed in the power of getting the price right. I’d personally experienced it as head of mar- marketing for multiple arts orgs. Today we have dozens of clients, their before and after is the story, and that before and after is revenue’s going up.” , So y- you have a great idea, , you’re working it, but guess what?

You’re gonna have to keep working it, because it’s gonna, , it’s gonna take time. It’s gonna take effort to move things. So I do wanna say one thing, and thank you, Sean, for creating and helping foster healthier arts organizations, ’cause I think we would all agree these organizations are just absolutely important parts of the fabric of community.

, The one thing that’s in the background of dynamic pricing, of course, is you have to find customers who are willing to pay, who have the resources to pay, who will pay those dollars, and I think this is one place in the arts world You can arguably find, you’re gonna find the $275 willingness to pay mark for John Denver, uh, you know, cover band because, ’cause there’s that person out there.

But I think, um, [00:50:00] sometimes dynamic pricing people get angry about it because, well, it feels like , it’s gouging, things like that. And , I would just say there, and you guys didn’t talk about it, but I think this is embedded , in the whole process here is that healthy arts organizations can do the other pieces too then.

Sure. , They can promote- Totally … the more obscure, more difficult, harder to reach, smaller audience because they’re healthy. Right. And, and they’ll have content and programming across the spectrum that they can provide to people of all sorts of different- Totally … l- levels of, of willingness to pay because they are healthy.

And so I just wanna make sure we don’t miss that part, that this is part of getting healthy. Yeah. It’s like being clear about your audience, being clear about what the values are, and then making sure , you assign , the right value. That creates health. It allows you to do a lot of things when you’re not worrying about how to keep the lights on.

Eric: Yeah. And it’s not like they wanna sell five $10,000 tickets- Right … and have five people in the audience. Right. The, the point is, is to fill the room. . Because the artists get something out of it. Because- Yeah … the patrons get more out of it. You have more people, you have more potential donors, you have more everything.

And- Right … yeah, and also, yeah, right, if there’s dynamic pricing, well, then you buy a subscription and you [00:51:00] know the price is not dynamic. You- Right … you get the cheapest price. That’s right. Uh, sometimes it goes down. You know, I suppose you could keep your eyes open for that. But the point is that…

And you’re right, organizations can make tickets available to people who can’t afford to pay, , and they build a relationship in a way that it, it makes it feel like there’s value to it- Yeah … not like you’re devaluing everything. So- Right.

Kirk: Right …

Eric: all of those things apply. But, , if you cannot sell tickets and you do not put people in the theater or your auditorium or wherever, you’re not gonna be an organization anymore, and then you’re not gonna have anything, so.

Kirk: That’s right. That’s right. Well, so here it is, Eric Brown on his home turf with Sean Kelly- … supporting the arts. This is where your true joy lies, and, uh- Pretty

Eric: cool …

Kirk: that’s great. Vadic, dynamic pricing while you sleep. Go check out what they’re doing at vadic.tech. And, um, yeah, go find Sean on LinkedIn.

Sean’s got a ton of great LinkedIn content, and, really, really fun to see it. And Eric, my gosh, what a great conversation. You’re right, arts marketing applicable to every aspect- There you go … of our social change equation.

Eric: Totally. Smart [00:52:00] people teach us stuff no matter where they are and what they do.

That’s that. There

Kirk: you go. Sean, thanks for

Sean: being on Let’s Hear It. Eric, thank you for doing that, and, , we’ll see y’all next time.

Kirk: Okay, everybody. That’s it for this episode. Please let us know if you have any thoughts about what you heard today or people we should have on this show, and that definitely includes yourself.

And we’d like to thank John Allee, the tuneful and inspiring composer of our theme music.

Eric: Our sponsor, the Lumina Foundation.

Kirk: And please check out Lumina’s terrific podcast, Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Talent, and you can find that at luminafoundation.org.

Eric: We certainly thank today’s guest and of course, all of you.

Kirk: And most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.

Eric: Oh, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Okay, everybody. Till next [00:53:00] time