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player ready...In their quest to learn more about their audiences — and how to make those audiences grow — most performing arts organizations go right to the source, polling their customers for information.
This season at Court Theatre at the University of Chicago, for example, every program for the production of “The Invention of Love” has an insert page asking viewers to answer a few basic questions about who they are, in terms of age, ethnicity, education and household income. By the end of the show’s extended run, Oct. 21, Dianne Claussen, the theater’s managing director, estimates, the theater will have gathered vital statistics from about 5,500 responses, or about half the total audience. This is a high percentage, probably boosted by the fact that the responses are anonymous.
The information found in these surveys enables the organizations to plan follow-up methods for reaching potential audience members, and it enables the institution to provide these demographic statistics to major donors that require such information in grant applications.
Final statistics for this year’s survey are not complete, but a similar survey taken last season showed that Court, whose mission is “to celebrate the immutable power and relevance of classic theater,” has an audience split 50-50 between males and females, that 55 percent of the customers are over 55, and that 74 percent are white, with African-Americans and Asian-Americans, accounting for 12 and 7 percent.
Though every organization has its own audience profile, Court’s results show a pattern that holds true in many cases of mainstream arts institutions: The largest percentage of the audience consists of a graying, white audience.
Without abandoning that audience, arts organizations are being asked by their donors to spread their nets wider.
“Most foundations today stress diversity in age and ethnicity,” Claussen says. “Generally speaking, they like to see a diverse audience and a younger audience. We are trying to follow that trend.”
With demographic information in hand, Court and other arts organizations are able to take action on several fronts in building audience growth in both new and proven territories. According to Claussen, if the response shows heavy coverage in a specific ZIP Code, direct mail advertising and telemarketing will concentrate to that area. On the other hand, areas that are not well represented become targeted for special attention, too, often through marketing research firms hired to develop new audience bases. As an added incentive for opening up subscription lists, customers are offered season discounts if they bring in a new subscriber to the theater.
“The goal,” Claussen says, “is to add on to the audience, and to cultivate the audience we already have.”