I just finished reading Resonateby Nancy Duarte. The book’s promise is bold. According to Dan Post in the introduction, when “applied with passion and purpose, the concepts in this book will accelerate your career trajectory or propel your social cause.” And the book delivers, thankfully.
Resonate is about composing engaging presentations that transform audiences. It provides hands-on advice and compelling case studies to change the 45-minute PowerPoint-dominated ordeals you repeatedly have to sit through into life-altering experiences.
Apart from the inevitable Jobs and Reagan examples, quite some of the case studies are about cultural icons, such as the 2008 TED talk by conductor Benjamin Zander. Watch it if you haven’t already, its message is becoming ever more relevant.
To succeed in our never-ending quest to make culture and the arts more relevant in the lives of people, all we have to do (online) is approach the right people at the right time and place with the right message through the right communication channel.
Simply put, don’t tweet about overflowing toilets unless you want to make a point about the pressing need for maintenance funds. And in that case, be sure to ask at the beginning of the month, when people just received their paychecks.
The museum of the 21st century is as successful in being relevant to people, as Google and Facebook ads are. (Or, if you prefer, will be in the near future.) In fact, we can use the very tools Google and Facebook ads provide us to prove that the more relevant we make our content, the more likely they are to engage with it.
In the chart below I’ve plotted a number of Facebook ads we ran. The potential reach of the ad is on the horizontal axis, on the vertical each ads true reach (normalized to a similar number of impressions per ad). The CTR chart of the same data is very much alike.
Without a doubt, ads aimed at a specific target group, with a specific message, almost always outperform the more general ads.
Culture suffers from an ever worse image, at least in the Netherlands. Culture, almost, has become a dirty word. When a couple of months ago it became apparent that culture in the Netherlands would be severely cut, the response was a countrywide scream for culture. Like, people really screaming for culture… I believe that’s about the worst thing you can do to promote culture.
Rather than screaming, this video focuses on the intrinsic strengths of culture, the arts. It sells what culture has to offer: passion, emotion, inspiration, the dumbfounding feeling of witnessing something truly unique. This is what culture is all about. This is why culture is important!
I like to say there’s nothing easier to promote than culture, the arts. Unlike fastfood or cheap airline tickets, culture is a high-value product meaningful to nearly everybody. We only have to show it in its full strength. Then, we don’t have to scream. All we have to do is whisper.
