Selling the Experience of Music: CSO Marketeer Sherri Prentiss

Sherri Prentiss, new marketing director for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, did not see red when she had her first look inside Music Hall.
   She saw opportunity instead.
   Prentiss, 35, former marketing director of the Madison (Wisconsin) Symphony Orchestra, heads the 26-member department charged with filling Music Hall’s 3,516 red velvet seats over 70 times a year (counting both CSO and Pops concerts).
   The CSO’s first new marketing director in 17 years, she arrives at what she calls “a really exciting time to be part of this organization.”
   Rose colored glasses?   The figures might give her pause:  Attendance at CSO Music Hall concerts dropped 10.2 percent last season over the year before.  CSO subscriptions dipped 13.7 percent and single tickets sank even further, by 16 percent.  (The Cincinnati Pops did better, with an 8 percent rise in attendance at its 22 Music Hall concerts, a .2 [note: this is 2/10 of a percent, not 2 percent] percent increase in subscriptions and a dip of .2 percent [again, 2/10%] in single ticket sales).
    Plans to refurbish the hall are still being weighed, despite tantalizing speculation about updated facilities, new patron amenities (food service, shopping), a new parking garage and reduced, more comfortable seating.  As CSO music director Paavo Järvi put it at a pre-concert “Classical Conversation” Nov. 3, “we have 1,000 empty seats and not enough leg room.”
   Compared to the Madison Symphony, a regional orchestra with 27 subscription concerts a season and a 2,250-seat hall, Prentiss will have a lot more product to sell in Cincinnati.  “There are a lot more concerts and a lot more seats, but I know that good marketing is universal.  It’s just applying it on a large scale.  It’s not a matter of skill or technique.  What I saw here during the course of my interview process and meeting folks is so much opportunity to implement ideas, refine plans, engage communities in research, form more strategic partnerships and alliances with business, community leaders and media.”
   A graduate of Northern Illinois University (corporate communications) with a master’s degree in journalism and mass communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Prentiss worked in public relations and advertising before joining the Madison Symphony staff.  During her eight-year tenure, subscription audiences more than doubled, subscription revenue more than tripled and she created more awareness of the orchestra through ad-savvy branding and e-marketing initiatives.
   A native of Chicago, whose German born mother kept the house full of classical music – “she would spend all day on Saturdays and Sundays scrubbing the house to Mozart” – Prentiss relates easily to Cincinnati’s German-influenced Midwestern culture.  Music Hall impressed her at first sight. “The grandeur of Music Hall is certainly something to behold.  When you walk in there, you feel like you’ve walked into someplace special.  That part of it makes up for a lot that may be missing by way of patron amenities or comfort.”
   She agrees, however, that size does matter.  “It’s a big hall and I do feel that there is a lot to be gained by having a more intimate experience with fewer seats.  There are world class acousticians out there who would be at the ready to help us make sure that the acoustical integrity of the hall is maintained.
   A crucial challenge for symphony orchestra marketers in today’s world is to present the musical product fairly and honestly.  “The integrity of the product is critical, but I do think there are ways of reaching and engaging people that maintain that integrity.”  Järvi’s new “First Notes” videos screened above the stage before each of his Music Hall concerts, “is a great example of that,” she said.  “Here you have a way to pull people in and education them, but do it in a way that is own their own terms.  It’s not intrusive, it’s brief enough that if they don’t have time to get down to Music Hall for ‘Classical Conversations’ an hours before the performance, they can still broaden their horizons within the context of those first couple of minutes before the concert, then get to hear how it’s played out.  They know what to listen for or what the context is behind the piece.”
   Prentiss, who lives in an apartment in Fort Thomas with her husband Mike, also a PR professional, said that in the orchestra business as a whole, “there’s been more focus on features than benefits.”
   “By features, I mean ‘here’s the program, here’s the guest artist, here’s the box office number,’ with very little description about what it’s going to feel like when you’re listening to the music.”  She cited the CSO’s recent performance of Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” best known for its two-minute introduction excerpted for the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
   “Yes, there’s ‘2001,’ but it’s also an expansive, free-flowing fantasia, which is how, I think, one can begin to encapsulate the experience of listening to it.  There has to be some value proposition for the potential audience when they’re deciding, ‘am I going to the symphony tonight?  What am I going to feel like sitting there listening to this music?’  Not just ‘who’s the guest artist and, oh, it’s a piece by Strauss.’  There has to be some other value proposition to entice you because if you don’t know what those things are, you might not come.”
   The other value propositions could be “an escape from the mundane, or a way to have a romantic evening out with your spouse or partner,” she said.  “The music is, of course, the centerpiece, including the guest artist and the conductor, but ultimately what people are looking for is an experience.  We are in an experience economy, and that is changing the way we’re marketing our product.”
   Prentiss, who played piano as a child but gave it up because she felt she had no natural ability, is in awe of people who do and how they do it.  She cited Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg’s “electrifying” Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and an Albinoni encore by violinist Vladimir Spivakov that ended with him pulling the bow slowly across the strings.  “It just went on forever and ever and everyone was collectively holding their breath.  When he finally lifted the bow, the place erupted.  Just talking about it makes the hairs on the back of your neck go up.
   Prentiss plans to do a lot of research – both into people who come to concerts and those who do not.  “The barriers to attendance as well as the reasons for more frequent attendance are similar when you extrapolate them to people with similar characteristics.  It’s the birds of a feather theory.”
   Good research is “very expensive,” she said.  “We’ll be looking at what we can do and what we won’t be able to do right away.  Getting our research objectives out on the table is important, then coming up with a plan to address them over a period of time.”

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Nov. 13, 2007)