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6.14.2005
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Volume Three
Issue Six
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Welcome to June's Arts Marketer of the Month.
This issue features an interview with Betsy Jacks, former Director of
Marketing for The Whitney Museum in New York City, who currently heads
up the Thomas Cole Historic Site in New York's Hudson Valley.
Read on to hear how Betsy has made the transition...
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Featured Arts Marketer: Betsy Jacks
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Betsy Jacks, Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in New York's Catskill Mountains
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In 2003 Betsy Jacks became the Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in the Hudson Valley after spending almost 5 years as The Whitney Museum's Director of Marketing.
Betsy's background is a mixture of art and business, beginning as a painter and working in art organizations in New York City. After seeing the need for marketing at the non-profit organizations she was working with, Betsy attended the Kellogg MBA program for a degree in Marketing. Following business school, the position she found at the Whitney as Director of Marketing was exactly what she was looking for. Betsy says that at The Whitney, "I was working with some of the most talented and motivated people I have ever met. Everyone there was performing a labor of love."
And Betsy has taken that enthusiasm and motivation with her to the Thomas Cole Historic site! Since her move to the Hudson Valley in 2003 (when she and her husband moved into the little white farmhouse they had just restored) she has been applying her valuable experience from the Whitney (and beyond) to help develop and expand Cedar Grove's potential.
In the Q & A below, Betsy shares her insight about the important elements of marketing the arts - no matter what the size of the organization!
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Q & A with Betsy Jacks,
Director of Cedar Grove & The Thomas Cole National Historic Site
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Thomas Cole's home, Cedar Grove, built in 1815.
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To begin, Betsy, can you describe Cedar Grove and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site? Give us an idea of the scale and scope of the organization and what goes into running it?
The Thomas Cole Historic Site is the "new kid on the block" in the Hudson Valley. We are into our fifth year of being open to the public, and we are growing like gangbusters. Ticket revenue grew 45% over the past year. What is it like running this organization? I'd say it is like drinking from a firehose.
Cedar Grove is, in many ways, where American landscape painting began. It is the home and workplace of the 19th-century artist Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of art. The Federal-style brick home, built in 1815, was completely restored about five years ago, and Thomas Cole's studio building of 1839 was just restored last summer. We are now open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from May through October for tours of these buildings and the gardens. We also present special exhibitions in the Main House as part of the tour. Currently, the exhibition is paintings by George Inness, a later member of the Hudson River School. Aside from the tours, we take advantage of our nearby Catskill Mountains by offering guided hikes to some of Thomas Cole's favorite painting sites, and we have recently launched an Art Trail brochure which enables visitors to find these painting sites on their own and to compare the painted views with the actual ones.
There are some very obvious differences between the two organizations you have recently worked with - the Whitney Museum in NYC and now Cedar Grove. What differences are the most significant? What similarities have you found?
Beyond the obvious differences of mission, scale, and history, I found a remarkable similarity between the two organizations. They face the same needs, they both must be creative in the use of limited resources, and both are dynamic and changing institutions. On the plus side at the Whitney, I had a large advertising budget to manage. On the plus side here, I am the one deciding what programming we will offer. One of the differences that I love the most is the difference in my constituents' expectations. From the Whitney, the public expects perfection. Here, people are overjoyed that the buildings have been restored and are open to the public. A success story is a wonderful place to begin a conversation with your audience.
How have you been able to apply your experience from The Whitney to your work at Cedar Grove?
I learned so much at the Whitney, and I am constantly reminded of that. I was given the freedom to try new marketing strategies, and learn what worked and what did not. For example, the Whitney is the place I learned the value of partnering with other organizations, gaining access to new audiences with minimal expense. With email marketing, for example, I created promotions with other non-profit organizations, and reached their mailing lists without expending funds on printing and postage. I think the most important thing I learned, which I use everyday here at Cedar Grove, is that the most expensive marketing is often the least effective one -- that is, paid advertising. Far more effective are efforts that get people talking to (and emailing to) each other, generating word of mouth.
The Whitney also provides an example of excellence as I grow my new organization. Cedar Grove was very recently a private home belonging to the Cole family, and it has been making the transition to a public institution, which changes everything. A public institution such as the Whitney, for example, tracks the movement of every object in its collection with an expensive software package and highly trained staff. Do you track the movement of every object in your private home? No. After working at the Whitney, I can answer the question, "how is this supposed to be done?"
Tell us more about how your marketing strategy, in particular e-marketing, has had to change (or not)?
The biggest change in my marketing strategy is the size of the audience I am attempting to reach. I simply cannot announce our new George Inness exhibition with a full page in the New York Times as I used to do -- and I don't need to. There is a very strong audience for history and art already here, going to other nearby historic sites, supporting preservation, attending lectures, and wanting new experiences. We can grow by tapping into this existing network. For example, there is a larger and better-known historic site named Olana just across the bridge from us. They draw visitors from across the world. All we have to do is draw them across the Hudson River. We have partnered with Olana on our new "Hudson River School Art Trail", linking the two sites and the nearby paintings sites into one unparalleled experience.
Interestingly, much of my marketing strategy has not changed. I am still primarily engaged in creating word of mouth because the decision to go to a museum is based on one's awareness of the museum when the visiting occasion arises. For example, if I live in Catskill and have weekend guests, and my neighbor mentions that Cedar Grove is beautiful this time of year, and the day before I read an article about Thomas Cole, and in my email inbox is a Cedar Grove newsletter from a few days ago, I am likely to have Cedar Grove on my list of possibilities for the weekend. The difference is, in New York City, I might have fifty-thousand excellent possibilities on my list. The potential audience, however, is eight million people. As an arts organization, you don't have to get every one.
One strategy I picked up from the Whitney is the free preview to your best supporters. There is no louder megaphone than your group of members that has just had a wonderful experience that only they were invited to.
Also, we hardly ever charge admission for events. Make it free, and sell books. We find that we get hundreds of people to show up to a free event, and then they will want to shop.
What can smaller organizations or institutions learn from the biggies and vice versa? What advice would you give?
For a smaller organization, quantity is not as important as quality. At the Whitney we had excellent exhibitions opening every few weeks. At Cedar Grove before I came, they mounted three small exhibitions each year. Currently we present one exhibition for the year, and that enables us to make it a stunner. Visitors are impressed by the high quality, and the show hasn't closed by the time people hear about it.
My best piece of advice for any institution, large or small, is to turn down money if it has too many strings attached that pull you in the wrong direction.
How have you found the arts patrons in a more rural area, compared to the ones you saw regularly in New York City? Are they alike?
Here, as in New York City, there is a community that is highly active in the arts. Another similarity I found, which works to our advantage, is that people are very interested in remembering and celebrating their history. Our supporters have the best qualities of New Yorkers -- passion, motivation, creativity, ambition, curiosity, activism -- yet somehow they are a little different. The people here are not concerned about where the "in crowd" is going to dinner, or whether one's sweater has a few moth holes in it. The marketing message, therefore, doesn't have to be about what is hot now. Our emails and other marketing materials have a tone and a feel that communicates tranquility, timelessness, beauty -- rather than, what is the latest breaking news.
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Visit Cedar Grove's Web Site
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Seminars on E-mail Marketing coming your way!
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Do you want to learn more about how to do professional e-mail marketing?
This spring and summer, we'll be offering seminars around the country to help you get the most out of your e-mail marketing. Here's a quick snapshot:
American Symphony Orchestre League: June 17 - "Super Charge Your E-mail Marketing" with Eugene Carr, at the League's annual conference in Washington, DC. For more information and to register click here.
Theatre Communications Group: June 17: "Cutting edge E-mail Marketing for Theater" with JD Hixson, at TCG's annual conference in Seattle, WA. for more information and to register, click here.
Coming up:
In August, we'll be offering additional day-long seminars on e-marketing in the following cities.
New York --- Los Angeles --- Washington, DC --- Chicago.
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If
you have interesting and creative initiatives that you would like to
have featured or know of an arts marketer that you would like to
recommend for one of our upcoming editions, please contact
info@patrontechnology.com.
Please watch for the next edition of our Arts Marketer of the Month, coming July 11, 2005.
Note:
The CAN-SPAM act mandates that all commercial e-mail contains a
physical mailing address, and ours is: 850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 801,
New York, NY 10019
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