The main challenge was increasing consistent attendance at live performances with the objective of expanding age range and diversity, crafting new lovers of dance, music, and theatre.
Thousand Oaks Arts (TOArts), a local nonprofit benefit corporation wanted CM to undertake an audience development initiative to grow audiences for their three resident companies.
To learn how to best reach these demographics, we created and aligned with CSUCI for a detailed survey specifically assessing behavior and attitudes towards live performances and probing ways to grow audiences at these live performances. We created alignments with Ventura County agencies and marketed a survey for county residents of all demographics.
Using CM’s GeoAlgo, our survey received an astounding 991 responses, giving us a massive chunk of data to work with; through this we learned the concerns that kept audiences from attending the shows and the draws that could get them to attend more shows.
The results indicated that audiences very much want pre-concert packages that include dinner, drinks, or other amenities from local restaurants. CM formed a partnership between Janss Marketplace and TOArts, giving away a select number of tickets to resident company shows, coupled with gift cards to restaurants in the marketplace. These social media giveaways received nearly 600 entries from theatre-goers of all ages, boosting social media page engagement, followers, and heavily driving people to the TOArts website where they could purchase tickets for upcoming performances.