speaking in clicks

[January 22, 2010]

The more time you spend on the Best Buy Facebook page, the more it degenerates into two rather unpleasant experiences. First, there’s the overriding feeling of redundancy, which results from product pages that mimic similar material available at bestbuy.com.

Second, a few minutes on Best Buy’s Facebook “Wall” and you wonder how a brand could generate so much ill-will without addressing it internally. Having a Customer Service Rep respond in measured tones (“I’m sorry to hear you had so much trouble…”) hardly addresses the issues. At the average Best Buy, it would seem, service is below par. I don’t know how else to evaluate the sheer number of searing complaints.

So, much as I hate to say it, I think Best Buy would do better to pour its advertising budget into training its employees and repairing its service departments. What better advertisement, in the end, than to be known by word of mouth as a highly competent, reliable service provider? At the very least, stealing some space from product promotion to make room for consumer education would go a long way to reducing problems—by reducing confusion.

As it stands, Best Buy’s willingness to handle customer complaints so half-heartedly underscores what’s missing in the standard American business model. Even here, on Facebook, where one is told to expect the coming of the brand marketing revolution, a major brand misses the message: Your strength as a brand lies in your ability to speak to your customers as one real person to another.

In other words, you have to care. It has to bother you that your customers are being treated to lousy service. Hoping you can paste over systemic flaws with happy-face customer interfacers is a delusion growing out of a failure to grasp a fundamental principle: A brand’s only true product is customer satisfaction.

Clearly, here’s a company that has seriously underestimated just how “public” a public forum Facebook actually is. In digital space, comments linger, opinions are shared and their impact multiplies exponentially.

If I choose to compare the Best Buy Facebook presence with the presence created by Coca-Cola, I realize I may be accused of comparing apples to durians. As in most other respects, Coke is a brand in its own category, having built up a brand equity I doubt more than three or four other companies can match.

All the same, what they choose to do with that equity is very telling. At Coke-Facebook, the message is “Open Happiness.” It’s not a price-point or a value statement but a direct call to the human psyche. Instead of selling product, Coke sells you on a connection—to everything you love most about life.

Not that Best Buy doesn’t make a play for the same territory. It’s just that the tagline “Buyer Be Happy,” which appears fleetingly on the page link, is immediately drowned out by a garish promotional overlay. Meanwhile, the sentiment behind this tagline is simply drowned —by the complaint tsunami that daily breaches the Best Buy “Wall.”

Ultimately, this suggests that the onset of social networking and the social media that support it have not only transformed e-commerce, but commerce in general. It’s a reality change of the highest order. Brands that treat customers like faceless non-entities are finding that customer complaints now leave an indelible stain on even the shiniest of logos.

[January 19, 2010]

The basic premise of opening a brand channel on Facebook is simple, in a complex kind of way. It has its roots in our shared capacity to turn external objects into symbols of comfort and well-being, through association with positive emotions.

Grow up in a family where Dunkin’ Donuts, let’s say, is a the treat that routinely appears at festive events—and you won’t be able to stop yourself from associating those pink and orange Ds with happy thoughts. Even in cases where festive family events turned dysfunctional, the imprint has been made—and DD is permanently linked to a rush of emotion.

Knowing that, it’s a simple step to realize that people are eager to channel those ingrained emotions through discussion about the brand on Facebook—where they’re already sharing personal opinions, announcing milestones or proclaiming their allegiance to cherished causes.

Into this delicate bubble-dome of remote trust and distance intimacy step cautious brand managers. Those who succeed recognize the true value that digital community members bring to the table. Sure, social media marketing is, at base, still about boosting sales—and it’s useless to argue otherwise. But the task of the moment is to strengthen and expand the scope of the emotional associations consumers already have with the brand.

Many factors, including dumb luck, factor into maintaining an effective social footprint, but most of them, I’ll wager, boil down to:

• Giving consumers a voice
• Responding directly and honestly
• Acting on suggestions whenever practical
• Rewarding participation with real value

In the end, this is simply another way of saying, “drop the mask” and speak to real people as a real person. It doesn’t matter if your company lacks a charismatic leader (and Lord knows plenty of effective leaders lack the Hollywood gene). Reliably telling the truth generates its own kind of animal magnetism—especially when it costs you a few lumps along the way.

To see the process in action, read a few snippets of recent conversation over at the official Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook group page, where counter employees and customers kvetch and commiserate:

View Excerpt 1

Here customers express compassion for downtrodden workers, clearly identifying with a shared experience: Working is…somewhat unpleasant.

In another excerpt, a customer expresses affection for the brand and a appreciation usually associated with military troops or first responders.

View Excerpt 2

And then there’s that final exchange, where the conversation veers off in the direction of social injustice—hardly part of DD’s brand universe.

All in all, the level of emotion, the degree of identification with the brand and its representatives shows just as much about the power of brand advertising and strategy as it does about the inherent power of social media. Because the link these people feel is to the product and the experience themselves, not its presence on Facebook.

Undeniably, DD’s Facebook presence succeeds as a lightning rod for the wave of emotion associated with the brand. It does so, you’ll notice, by allowing consumers to interact with employees, real people. And like real people, employees have emotions of their own about their interactions with customers. The surest sign the Dunkin’ Donuts “gets it” is the way these exchanges have a free-flowing life of their own.

That, as I see it, is the “take away” traditional advertising media must grab onto as quickly as possible. Yes, a print ad can’t have interactive dialogue, but it can speak as directly and in equally human terms—provided it drops the decades-old patter of “copy that gets results.”

Because when it comes to communication, nothing refreshes like honest emotion.

[January 15, 2010]

A key principle of marketing, one hears repeatedly, is differentiation through branding. From a local design shop trying to sell you overpriced business cards, to the brow-furrowing halls of Harvard Business School, the message is clear. You want to sell, Baby? Ya gotta stand out from the crowd.

It’s the topic that just won’t die. Not that it isn’t, as a principle, absolutely sound. When it comes to practical application, however, many advertisers run into a bit of a contradiction.

For example: If you work in direct mail marketing, there’s one sentence you’re destined to hear at least 10 times a day:

We have to break through the clutter!
Ironically, there’s a tendency to talk about “the clutter” as if it were some kind of natural phenomenon, like El Niño or the H1N1 virus. As if it weren’t an entirely man-made problem, brought on by the mistaken idea that bombarding people with mail they don’t want will persuade them to buy products and services they also don’t want.

I mean, if we really wanted to do something about “the clutter,” there are certainly enough marketing experts in this country, whether in business or academia, to attack the problem and arrive at a solution.

Yes, it would require a few major players to jump off the dogma-go-round that dominates marketing theory, but the upside would be that maybe, just maybe, your customers might actually start reading their mail again.

But, OK, if we accept that “the clutter” is a classic immovable object, we have no choice than to fall back into the loving arms of the goddess Differentia. And in the warmth of her tender embrace, we’ll try to sell our wares by making them stand out from the crowd.

Tangled Up in Tried-and-Trues
And yet, what words do we use to describe them?

• easy, fast, convenient (71,800 results)
• best of breed (1,650,000 results)
• best in class (3,150,000 results)
• business solution (1,820,000 results)
• your whole family will love it (576,000 results)
• don’t take our word for it (1,830,000 results)
• it’s that simple (11,400,000 results)

As the Google tallies in parentheses show, as of January 15, 2010, a great many people are currently engaged in the paradox of attempting to differentiate their offering with the exact same phrases as a great many other people.

Dig only the shallowest trench in these results and you’ll see the promise of “best,” “convenient” and “simple” is currently being applied to everything from software to suppositories. So not only are advertisers failing to differentiate themselves from competitors, they’re also failing to differentiate themselves from other product categories.

It’s precisely this lazy, boilerplate type of differentiation that has made millions of Americans throw out their mail, mute their TV and click past the infinite array of dancing skeletons in digital space. Like the elevator music of the 1960s, mechanical repetition of generic and largely unverifiable claims is now nothing more than background noise.

Can that really be anybody’s idea of differentiation? Yet year after year, the US marketing crank turns out a steady stream of same-old, same-old.

Web 2.0: “The UnClutter”?
Now, unless I miss my guess, more than one person whose opinion I value is ready to assert, in eloquent, scientific terms, that many of these issues with traditional advertising media are being addressed by the rise of user-controlled social media marketing.

Could it be that user-generated content and commentary will permanently break up “the clutter,” by allowing users to write their own cogently differentiating brand narratives based on their own specific experiences?

If so, the evidence should already be visible through branded pages on major social networking, sharing and blogging platforms. What will simple, empirical observation of these pages reveal? I mean to find out. Is a new age truly in the making, or do brands still believe they can stand out from the crowd—even in digital space—by following the herd?

[January 12, 2009]

Pixel widths, white space, negative space, foreground, background, color palettes, photography, illustration, video windows, slideshow panels, buttons, bevels (inhale)…

Clearly, the number of visual elements a digital designer needs to juggle is staggering. Add to that the desire to create a memorable layout, provide a good user experience, engage consumers and motivate them to action—and we’re talking about a mountain of work.

Given that, it’s easy to see how many Art Directors might find it tough to also accommodate the demands of Copy. In today’s typically understaffed, underbudgeted and overscheduled work environment, the temptation to give Copy “Later for that” status must be overwhelming.

Such temptation is only strengthened and deepened by the growing industry consensus: Copy as merely another category of building stock—cut to fit like carpet, poured into molds like wet concrete, swapped in and out like playing cards, and written by anybody with access to a keyboard.

Against this background culture of indifference, there’s nothing to break a harried Art Director’s ingrained habit: Designing layouts based solely on design principles with little concern for the Copy depth the topic, the audience or the client demands.

Shut Down the Machine.
There is a better way. Without adding to an Art Director’s burden we can break the culture of indifference and elevate digital creative, making it more memorable, more motivating and more “trustworthy” in the broadest sense.

It starts with Process. Projects should never enter the design phase until everyone involved agrees on the project’s underlying message. Then both schedule and budget must allow room for Art and Copy to develop a way to deliver that message. Standing up for this time is simple: you just need to show your resolve.

Start Up the Adventure.
For their part, Art Directors need to get beyond the functional requirements of “how many words” and explore the emotional climate and imagery the copy conjures up. Because copy’s effectiveness is directly related to its ability to create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind.

By the same token, Copy creatives must stop writing without reference to visual context. Instead, they must risk all to align their work with the messages conveyed, not merely by photography or illustration, but by the total design palette.

Of course, this temptation to merely editorialize also grows out of the culture of indifference. With the “get it done” mentality so deeply entrenched, resisting the pressure to “import and tweak” existing boilerplate copy is tantamount to career suicide.

Yet these bad creative habits are the root cause of our current state of Web-wide mediocrity. That’s whyCreatives of every stripe must banish the cookie cutter and resist the call to cut and paste. Lit with that commitment, the path from indifference to creativity is clear.

[January 8, 2010]

Embedded in the career of many a copywriter is an ongoing tug of war. On one end of the rope are colleagues who believe Copy’s main purpose is to instruct and flatter. In their mind, the job comes down to endless variations on a tiny array of schematic messages:

• Do “This” now and get “That”
• Other cool people like you have already done “This”
• Read these tips. They make “This” easier to do
• Do “This,” get “That” and we’ll send more instructions
• Tell all your cool friends to do “This” too
• We really like how cool you are!

On the other end of the rope are colleagues who believe Copy’s main purpose is to be allusive and who have their own cherished list:

• Profile-Appropriate Pop-Song
• Whatever’s on YouTube
• Calvin Klein Ads from the ’90s
• Facebook!
• Hot Celebrity Wearing Jeans (We’ll fit some words in later)
• Seriously, whatever is on YouTube

And there in the middle, ropes tied to either wrist, is a copywriter who, even through the searing pain, can still grasp the pros and cons of either extreme.

Lurid and reductive metaphors aside, the issue here is that writing for adware cannot be reduced to a mechanical bag of tricks. Neither the “Copy That Gets Results” nor the “Entertain Me, I’m Bored with My Career” school of creative direction can ever produce anything more than a lifeless imitation of good work.

Simple Impulse.
As I said, each ideology contains a nugget of truth, even if it’s buried under mountains of emotional, political and intellectual effluvia. The problem is, as an industry, we’ve been at this game long enough to have lost its original impetus.

The point, as I see it, is to connect and motivate. How you do it, and why, depends on the particulars. Not that there isn’t tons of advice available, but most of it is beside the point. Far more important than the top 10 tips “every writer should know” is a simple impulse to reach out to another person. Which person? That’s where the particulars come in and the particulars can only be found through direct observation.

It’s easy really, assuming you actually have talent for writing, a talent that includes the capacity to acquire writing technique. Given that, you only need to open your carefully trained eyes and look. Because just as much as any true visual artist, you’re a keen, sympathetic observer of everyday life and the human condition.

Telling Observation
Let me guess what your observations tell you: People—all people—contain multitudes [see #51]: multitudes of opinions, emotions, desires, aspirations and ornery bits of half-digested nonsense. As such you can’t hope to make your point stick without first dipping it in a very specific cultural context.

Here’s the glimmering coin that’s caught the eye of the “Entertain Me…” school. At the same time, with so much going on in the noggins of the people you want to reach, you need to give them a clear focal point. That’s the shiny bauble that’s turned the head of the Results worshippers.

Delicate Balance
At the end of the day, however, all the breathless theorizing in the world can’t alter the facts. It takes time and patience to build an audience’s trust or, for that matter, even get their attention. There’s simply no point in asking copywriters to cram every possible message from every possible angle into every single consumer engagement. Instead, brands and their agencies need to take better note of the pace at which people absorb information, learn to trust that information and therefore feel motivated by it.

If it’s true that post-digital consumers are deeply suspicious of advertising, you’re going to have to reach them in small, incremental steps and always as one “multitudinous” human being to another. Accomplishing this task requires a delicate balance of talents and skills, but don’t worry, your copywriters can handle it—as long as you stop hog-tying them with poorly absorbed dogma, political posturing and the absurd notion that writing has anything at all to do with words.

[January 5, 2010]

Over time, I’ve often been reminded of the classic catchphrase “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” This phrase is actually just one component of an exhaustive theory of sales psychology developed by Elmer Wheeler many years ago. His “tested sentences” may have the archaic ring of pre-MTV America, but just run it through your own internal translator and I’m sure some of it will still ring true for you.

As a train of thought, Wheeler’s ideas have lost none of their relevance. The question in my mind is how to adapt his thinking for an audience drenched in advertising from the time it enters neo-natal care. At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, I’m afraid even the sizzle has lost most of its sizzle.

That’s because, as frequently happens with innovative ideas, selling the sizzle has succeeded too well. The unprecedented saturation of the world with sales messages has only accelerated the process. In the U.S. people encounter sales messages on billboards, in print, on radio, on TV, in movie theaters, on smart phones, on Web sites and even on the rooftops of yellow cabs.

Inevitably, our diligence in maximizing sales has started to bump into the law of diminishing returns. When everything sizzles, nothing does. Exhibit A? Ad-Muting. While this sport has been greatly facilitated by “remote control” the real question is: Why have our ads become so generic that consumers even have the impulse to mute them?

From remote control to direct control.
As I see it, Ad-Muting is only partly due to statistical factors like “changing demographic profiles.” What’s really going on is that people are turning away from passive entertainments like TV, and turning toward the feeling of control they experience in social networking environments.

After all, in social space you roam free, sending, receiving and responding only to the messages you choose. The only crimp in that freedom is the dawning realization that what you say in social space tends to stay in social space forever. It’s there to be cross-referenced, shared, quoted, posted, ridiculed and stolen for all eternity.

With that realization comes the commitment millions of people now feel to broadcast an emotionally invested and deeply personal digital identity.

So in 2010, I see advertising’s next frontier right through the cross hairs of that personal commitment. Instead of selling external attributes or fantasy benefits, it’s time to sell consumers a share of the brand itself, a sense that their concerns have a direct impact on the brand’s evolution.

By the same token, we can’t rely anymore on generic terms to make people feel sexier, richer or more gangstah. Instead of doling out “happy dust” we have to be more specific. We must show how the brand adds value to a consumer’s inner world of memory, desire, creativity and belief.

Make that connection and you won’t be selling a product or its sizzle, but something more powerful: A personal stake in the survival of the brand. That’s where the beef is now.

[December 29. 2009] 

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. Since then, each site has improved in design and messaging in differing degress. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of digital marketing for the arts in the US.]

Art museums hold a special place in the public imagination as storehouses of culture and history. What universities are for “knowledge,” art museums are for everything many people associate with our better nature. From that lofty perch, a Web site visitor might reasonably expect to receive a cultural experience commensurate with the status art museums hold.

Whether because, in terms of long-term cultural evolution, digital space is still too new, or whether these great institutions mistakenly see their Web sites as unavoidable necessities, the sites I visited did not live up to that expectation.

Cataloguing…
The site built for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while elegant and sensitively designed is, at base, little more than an electronic catalogue. The one key function it does fulfill is a kind of distance learning, a way for people new to art history to get a general orientation to an astonishing array of works from many different eras and cultures.

As a digital experience, however, the site is highly unsatisfying and, consisting of ream after ream of thumbnail-and-text pages, is ultimately more overwhelming than inviting. Like the oracles of ancient Greek mythology, its message is profound, but rather inaccessible.

Considering how far removed many Americans are from the works of art themselves and their cultural contexts, the Museum does itself a disservice by failing to provide users with a clear point of orientation. The rudimentary search functionality on the home page is only minimally useful, and only to visitors with previous exposure to art history.

For those patient enough to dive in and start clicking, the breadth and depth of the collection itself makes up for the site’s inadequacy as a site. Just as important, the informative commentary, written in a crisp and perfume-free style, conveys a casual air of authority and scholarship that invites further exploration.

…Communicating…
In contrast, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) more successfully engages visitors in the process of touring its vast collection. Instead of relying solely on thumbnail and text displays of individual works, the site includes an extensive collection of video and multimedia features. Laid out in bold colors and sensitive to proportion and scale, it invites interaction.

MOMA also offers a blog, linking out to major social networking sites, as well as Red Studio, a microsite oriented to younger teens. Red Studio includes interviews of artists, conducted by teens, articles on the themes of contemporary art and educational games.

While the site navigation lacks true coherence (try finding Red Studio), the site succeeds for one simple reason: MOMA recognizes that a Web site is a communications medium, not an object. It exists, in other words, to tell a story and invite your reactions. .

..Consciousness.
Whether you turn to the Philadephia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis or a dozen other examples, the same themes recur, and the overall impact is actually kind of discouraging.

With the birth of digital space rapidly receding into the last century, it’s high time the majority of arts marketers shook off outdated ideas about its form and function. Whatever treasures the past holds, in this era nothing exists entirely offline. As such, an arts institution’s digital presence is every bit a part of its identity as its hallowed halls of stone.

Despite appearances, it’s not a question of financial resources. Of course, the inexcusably scattershot way the arts are funded in this country has no doubt taken its toll. It explains why a site built for a symphony orchestrashould so closely resemble an e-commerce site.

Whether living large or hand-to-mouth, however, any and all of these organizations could improve its Web presence with very inexpensive change of perspective. In digital space, success is counted in how well and how often your audience interacts with your Web presence. It’s not what you display, but what you say that counts—in the new multimedia composite language of sight, sound and limitless cross reference that will one day lead us to a new level of consciousness.

Digital space, in other words, is itself an art form and, to unleash its full potential, needs to be treated as such. In the years ahead, there’s an opportunity for leaders of the arts community to take a leading role in developing that potential. The first step will come when they stop leaving their Web presence in the hands of vendors and engage the task with the full scope of their talent, training and vision.

[December 22, 2009]

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. Since then, each site has improved in design and messaging in differing degress. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of digital marketing for the arts in the US.]

The more sites I visit, the more I realize how far we are from realizing our potential in digital space. Leaving aside bad taste, slap-dash functionality and sheer hucksterism, the overwhelming majority of Web designs are still rooted in the world of print and TV.

Visit sites built for arts organizations and you can practically taste how much the designers wished they were working on a glossy five-color brochure. And that’s what the majority of them have produced: a static page turner—minus the tactile sensation, the rich aroma of fresh ink and the guilty pleasure of dog-earing a favorite page.

While some, like the LA Philharmonic’s, do offer some sparkle—more sites than I can count are little more than electronic brochures. Here, well-chosen still photography and an abundant library of video and sound clips almost convinces you that the site’s first language is Digital.

Only the oddly orgasmic photo of the music director, Gustavo Dudamel, spoils the effect. Reading like a caricature, it’s far more evocative of a classic movie short than a transcendent artistic experience. And yet, photoshopped images like this are the common coin of print brochures, where scale and placement would help mitigate the impact of such a horribly out-dated cultural cliché.

Dancing in No-Motion.
Western Classical Dance embodies movement, sound, color, passion—not to mention several hundred years of tradition, intercut with influences from many different cultures. So it may come as a surprise to see the static digital pamphlets proffered by the American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater or the Martha Graham Dance Company.

In each case, the presence or absence of video links is beside the point. Trapped in the narrow confines of brochure design, video is not integral to the overall structure of these sites. In the midst of such emotionless landscapes, video can only function like an animated still.

While sharing many of the same traits, the site for the Joffrey Ballet does include a blog, featuring photos of current productions, which visitors can comment on through Photobucket. These simple measures add a welcome dimension to “art as usual,” that claustrophobic miasma of intra-referential nonsense, which arts organizations routinely use to justify—quite unnecessarily—their very existence.

Artistic ’Vision.
In stark contrast to these examples is the standard set by the Netherlands Dance Theatre. Starting with the home page, the site is alive with sound and motion. Video captures a wide array of performances and the user experience—sleek, reactive—invites a lengthy stay.

More important, the site manages to convey something of what Dance is about: not a decorous display suitable for framing, but a vital expression of the human experience. As such, it embodies a key principle: A Web site representing the work of artists must itself be a work of art.

[December 18, 2009]

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. Since then, each site has improved in design and messaging in differing degress. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of digital marketing for the arts in the US.]

As I continue to explore Web sites for major American orchestras, one thing is clear. These organizations see their digital presence as a collection of design protocols rather than as a communications medium. This by-the-numbers approach is on display at the Boston Symphony.

On the home page, a slideshow marquee features a random mix of photography and illustration—each in a conflicting graphic style. Supporting the marquee are lengthy, unarticulated columns of hyperlinked text and updated data. It’s hardly an engaging way to present one of America’s top cultural treasures.

Delving into the interior pages, I’m reminded of a text-heavy home design catalogue. And what text it is. Written in the pseudo-journalistic style of mass-produced public relations, it constructs a dense wall of formulaic nonsense between audience and orchestra. As such, it embodies precisely the raised-pinky mentality so alienating to the “uninitiated.”

You’d think the example set by Leonard Bernstein’s 1958–1971 Young People’s Concerts were all for nothing. Even at his most professorial, here’s a guy who knew how to reach across the footlights and connect. By contrast, the voice of the Boston Symphony, as with that of many an American arts organization, sounds as if it’s echoing in a closed, empty room.

Even given the difference in medium—though Lord knows there’s plenty of lifeless broadcast footage—Web developers have a lot to learn from Bernstein’s powers of engagement and communication.

To its credit, the Boston Symphony site connects to farther reaches of digital space with links to podcasts, iTunes, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Here, the very nature of social networking and sharing forces the orchestra’s marketers to speak up and be heard. As I see it, the Symphony would benefit from integrating the immediacy and intimacy of these curated links into the site proper.

At an even farther remove from effective arts marketing are the sites built for the Cleveland, Minnesota andPhiladelphia Orchestras. While I’m perfectly aware of the constraints a limited budget can put on technical finesse, the real issue is the lack of a clear messaging strategy.

In its place is a collection of information packets, whose cumulative effect conveys nothing that would compel audience members to take notice. As a result, these sites are all but indistinguishable from sites built for gift shops or movie theatres. In the absence of a distinct, unifying message, all these three sites can tell us is:

Famous soloists appear with us. Our conductor is prestigious and we have a distinguished past. We reach out to ‘the community’ and have education programs to prove it. You can buy tickets here.

Even on the thinnest of shoestring budgets, any organization can still be a motivating presence in digital space. All you need is the courage to walk away from textbook “Communication-speak” and actually say something to your audience.

[December 15, 2009]

Considering how often the word “creative” or “creativity” pops up in agency life, I recently started wondering how organizations devoted to the classical arts are marketing themselves in digital space. Many of those involved claim to have achieved rare creative insight through classic works of art, music, dance and theatre. Surely here’s a group destined to give site designers and architects carte blanche to explore new solutions.

Tempering my expectations, however, was the realization that marketing departments manage Web site design, not the artists themselves. I might more reasonably expect a site built for an orchestra, for example, to follow standard marketing precepts than be exemplars of inspired creative thinking.

A tour of sites devoted to major American symphony orchestras confirmed my suspicions. While none of them are absolutely horrible, for the most part they confirm the most often-voiced criticism of the classical music industry. Predictable, pretentious and just plain dull, none conveyed even a scintilla of the drama, color, sound and heights of human emotion so unjustly encapsulated in the bland term “classical music.”

In fact, these sites are more likely to remind you of a Hallmark greeting card than of music created by some of history’s most unconventional minds. At their best, as in the case of The New York Philharmonic, they at least convey an open, welcoming feel without, you’ll notice, actually saying “welcome.” As always, the most effective marketing messages are those emerging naturally from a carefully cultivated context of image, word, design and architecture.

Equally successful is the layout, which has the common sense to realize the eye needs a clear path to follow. You’re caught up at first with the marquee image, then shift effortlessly to an array of links to digital audio, podcasts, radio broadcasts and video links.

No such site would be complete without a calendar hyperlinked to upcoming events. Atypically, the New York Philharmonic’s calendar is prominent, clear and accessible without being obtrusive. Figuring, rightly, that a calendar needs no explanation, none is given.

Finally, below the marquee, is the all-too-familiar featured article grid, here kept to reasonable proportions. After all, if everything is featured, nothing is featured, a simple principle that seems to have been scratched out of standard marketing textbooks in the ’70s when no one was looking.

Again, there’s nothing here even remotely commensurate with the actual experience of the music. Still, I have to concede it took a lot of artistry to develop something so clear, articulate and easy to use, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. My only real concern is that social networking links—to Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook—seem casually tacked on at the bottom. Want to reach out to a younger demographic? Don’t bury its very lifeline below the fold.

So, drained of emotion as it is, The New York Philharmonic site is relatively effective. In my next few posts, I’ll take a look at comparable sites across the wide spectrum of arts marketing.