WHEN ARTS MET MARKETING

Abstract

This article argues that arts marketing theory is embedded in the existing context of the nonprofit arts sector – that is, Romantic belief in the universal value of the arts and producer authority over the consumer. As “a set of techniques” and “a decision‐making process”, marketing was able to sit comfortably in the nonprofit arts context during the 1970s and 1980s. However, recent recognition of marketing as “a management philosophy” has brought out incompatibilities between the customer orientation of the marketing notion and the Romantic view of artistic production. This article demonstrates that arts marketing writings embrace Romanticism through the following: generic marketing concept; relationship marketing approach; extended definition of the customer; extended definition of the product; and reduction of marketing to function. Such findings suggest that persistence of the existing belief system and the embeddedness of the market be considered when marketisation in the arts sector is analysed.

KEYWORDS:

• arts marketing
• Romanticism
• marketisation
• cultural persistence and embeddedness

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank Professor Oliver Bennett, Egil Bjornsen and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. In this article, “institutional change” refers to a shift in formal and informal systems such as policy, law, ideology, culture, belief, norm and rule, which influence the way in which individual organisations in a sector should behave (Powell & DiMaggio 1991; Scott 2001). As to the nature of the change in the British nonprofit arts sector since the 1980s, many conceptualisations have been attempted: “marketisation”, “commodification”, “privatisation”, “commercialisation” or “managerialism”. However, “marketisation” seems to be the most comprehensive notion that refers to the phenomenon of market reasoning becoming a dominant institutional force in the sector. Other notions are likely to be concerned with particular aspects of marketisation.

2. The Society of West End Theatres (currently the Society of London Theatres) consisted mainly of commercial theatres with a small number of subsidised theatres.

3. ACORN (A Classification of Residential Neighbourhoods) is a manipulation of census data that indicates distinct groups and types based on the housing, age, household and socio‐economic character of the population. Using the ACORN data, arts organisations can identify the residential postcodes of their existing and potential audience, and accordingly their profile.

4. Originally, the first three volumes of the manual were published in 1978, as the CORT Marketing Manual by the Council of Regional Theatres, with assistance from the Arts Council. The revised version was published by Theatrical Management Association in 1982, and the fourth volume in 1983.

5. The concept of “embeddedness” has received increasing attention in social science disciplines. It generally refers to the boundedness of the market to historical, cultural and social contexts of society, but its use varies depending on how one sees the relationships between social relations/institutions and the market and between social relations/institutions and rationality (see Scott 2001).