Institutional Alignment

A tidal wave of generational change is swelling. New leaders want marketing to harness business intelligence to build institutional capacity.

New artistic directors want marketing to bring in first-time, often nontraditional audiences. Good. Any arts organization that intends to be relevant needs to be helmed by leaders intent on genuinely serving their communities. Marketing is key. Not just keepers of the gate—website, social media, email, frontline sales and service—but keepers of the data. It’s marketing teams that connect companies to communities and inspire big ideas. Sweibel Arts provides customized frameworks for critical institutional alignment.

San Francisco Ballet called us during the run-up to Tamara Rojo’s inaugural season as Artistic Director to create a go-to-market plan. We aligned Tamara's artistic vision, the board's perspective, and the marketing department’s research around recommendations to drive recommendations, agency selection, branding, and creative.

Sweibel Arts, in association with WolfBrown, also created a programming-driven audience initiative for the Madison Symphony Orchestra. This project aligned the MSO’s programming with its goals for expanding its audience of first-timers in the Symphony’s growing market. We started by optimizing all of MSO’s top-of-funnel marketing. Then we developed a prioritized list of concert programs, formats to test, and the marketing programs to launch them. We concluded by analyzing performance and sales to better understand how to implement these models at other organizations.

New York Philharmonic at the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts at Oklahoma State University