Mobile and the arts: where to start?

By Ben Davis November 25th 2013 11:31

For some arts organisations, the array of platforms and devices in digital is bewildering.

For small organisations, perhaps a theatre group, how is awareness and ultimately ticket sales to be improved? Beyond this, the prospect of actually engaging and collaborating via digital media can be daunting or perhaps feel like a pipe dream.

And for large arts organisations, how easy is it to compete with big brands, or big online-first non-profits such as the Khan Academy, when it comes to education and engagement online? Is a multi-pronged mobile strategy, featuring a number of apps and a responsive website, the best approach?

Lots of questions! In this post I’m framing a talk I gave for IT4ARTS last week, at the Barbican. I’ve given some background and fleshed out the challenge for the arts, in digital and on mobile.

I’ve also reviewed a number of mobile apps, looking in particular at the Tate, and there are also some references and jumping-off points to talks by those working and innovating at museums and galleries.

American Express Unstaged: using storytelling to transform online music

Brands and musicians have an uneasy alliance. For every generation defining Michael Jackson and Pepsi coupling, there’s a whincingly regretful pairing of Iggy Pop and Swiftcover.

In the last few years, more and more recording artists are hooking-up with large brands in order to reach a wider audience and make up for dwindling record sales, and it seems brands are much more willing to invest in the music industry lately, especially in terms of live music and event creation.

American Express has recently linked many different media strands together, including live music, online streaming, social video and social media, to create Unstaged, a channel that caters for an online, music hungry audience while offering effective brand promotion.

Let’s take a look at the ways American Express Unstaged brings the offline, online with storytelling.

Twitter and TV: ignore the stats and focus on best practice

In this post, bear with me and you’ll get a couple of case studies and some best practice from brands using TV and promoted tweet tie-ups.

Before I give you the fun stuff, I want to say that best practice is all that matters. Ignore all the stats about engagement and sales uplift.

I don’t usually advocate ignoring stats, but as B2B marketing and service industries now pervade major cities of the developed world, we are awash with stats. And stats that claim to explain general concepts, such as generic increase in purchase intent after viewing a promoted tweet that references TV, are not helpful to you.

Yes, these stats succinctly explain the perceived benefits of advertising on Twitter, but like all data, it’s only that which directly pertains to your company that is of use.

There’s no point examining averaged trends when what you’re interested in is your business. Being blinded by amazing engagement stats will mean you don’t think properly about your campaigns. The last thing you want to do is drip out a poorly conceived set of promoted tweets and have faith they will deliver ROI.

The success of your marketing and advertising is dependent entirely upon detail; detail that’s way more granular than simply what channels you decide to advertise in.

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