Reinventing the Culture Business for the Attention Economy

That was the title of a seminar I went to with a couple of other Humanities West people on 9/9, sponsored by the National Arts Marketing Project. The keynote speaker was Doug McLennan (ArtsJournal.com), who made some very interesting points about the difficulties that many cultural organizations are having in making the transition from a mass culture dominated by TV, movies, and newspapers to a niche culture in which people have an almost infinite variety of choices about how to spend their time and money.

A few key observations:

• While half of the mainstream arts journalist jobs have gone away since 2005, there are some 300,000 arts blogs on the internet, and culturally focused media like the New Yorker and NPR are actually increasing their audience and thriving. (The New Yorker has more subscribers now in California than in New York.)
• We've moved from a service economy to an experience economy (think Starbucks), but the next phase is an attention economy, in which there is too much stuff competing for everyone's attention. Ironically, the more choices you have, the more likely you are to be dissatisfied with the choices you make, because you could have chosen so many other things.
• With so many choices, many people don't decide what to do until the last minute, and they are less likely to be loyal returning customers, even if they enjoyed their experience. What these people value is being part of a community and being active participants in whatever is being sold. They want to be able to make comments, express opinions, influence decisions, connect with other participants. This means giving up some real control over the customer relationship, which is hard for many traditional organizations.
• People aged 12-24 trust unknown peers more than they trust experts. That may seem irrational to an older generation, but the internet generation is comfortable with their wide social networks, and is distrustful of experts and authorities, who are always trying to tell them what to think and what to do and what to buy.
• "Losers build websites; winners build communities."

One of the big challenges that Doug didn't talk about, but that organizations like Humanities West face all the time, is how do you appeal to this younger potential audience, while still maintaining the loyalty and support of your older audience, who may be looking for very different things.