Arts Hacker: It’s not easy being a Gen Xer. Our generation tends to be overlooked in the world of marketing. I like to give my millennial colleague and fellow ArtsHacker author Sarah Marczynski a (jokingly) hard time for writing all of her millennial posts.
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Really, in an industry that is losing its audience to alternative methods of entertainment, artistic companies should have targeted marketing toward all generations at one point or another. It is pretty insane to me that the industry would advertise less to a generation that at the point in time has more disposable income in light of lowering ticket sales. Why would they target college-aged kids or recent graduates when there are 20 years worth of people who already have the money to go to a show? There do not have to be any gimmicks or discounts to get them in the door; according to the article, you could simply have a diverse enough season with flexible packaging to accomplish what many people have spent months trying to accomplish for Generation Y. But is it really that simple? If an arts company partook in this avenue of thinking and invested money into targeted advertising, how soon will this generation drop off from watching the arts as well? Is it possible that the arts world is so focused on Gen Y because Gen Y has been inundated with arts from a very young age, and their generation represents the beginning of the extinction of the live arts?
Though this article seemed to have some seated flack against Millennials, I will give it a nod for being useful and helpful. I find it both surprising and expected that there has not been much marketing done toward GenXer’s. I know that I stopped putting in effort to invite the GenXer’s I know to theatre events because they are “too busy with their children” or “have been working too hard and just want to stay in.” From my interactions with GenXer’s this is a shared mentality, a mentality which is hard to break through and may seem like it is not worth the marketing effort. But alas, if a theatre is struggling for funding and audiences, they should combat that mentality head-on. Thankfully, this article gives some insight into marketing strategies aimed at getting GenXer’s through the doors. I think there is a huge opportunity to bring in this generation over the next five to ten years. GenXer’s are approaching the age where they will be empty-nester’s. Their children will be off to college and now they will have a substantial amount of time on their hands. It would be wise of any theatre to start capitalizing on this potential now.
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