(cross-posted from the Arts Marketing Blog Salon on ArtsBlog)

In my last post, I talked about one reason that arts marketers are becoming increasingly important to the cultural ecosystem. Here, I’m going to talk about another – though I’m warning you, this one is going to be a bit of a downer.

ArtsJournal’s Doug McLennan has written and spoken extensively about the implications for arts institutions of the face that we live in an era of infinite choice: suddenly, and within a very short period of time, the quantity and variety of aesthetic experiences that are available to us has exploded beyond all recognition. In their Green Paper on digital infrastructure for the creative economy, Fractured Atlas, Future of Music Coalition, and the National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture pointed to the role of “disintermediation” in making this phenomenon possible, defining it as “the fracturing of the system of bottlenecks and gatekeepers that controlled some of the major means of production, distribution and access to audiences.” More than ever before, it is possible for content creators (and their marketers) to have meaningful, direct interaction with consumers dispersed across diverse cultures, geographies, and social networks. For those just seeking to break in for the first time and who don’t need a mass market to stay afloat, this change is nothing short of inspiring: an opportunity to reach audiences faster and with less interference from tastemakers than could ever have been possible otherwise. For more established institutions with networks of artists and professional staff to support, however, the ramifications range from mixed to terrifying, as the sudden rush to enter the marketplace brought on by these lowered barriers creates unprecedented competition for consumer attention and dollars.

We are transitioning into an era when the most valuable scarce resources for marketers are no longer best real estate and time slots (i.e., for advertising), but rather passion and time. To compete, say, in an online contest like Pepsi Refresh does not require much in the way of capital investment – but you are not going to get anywhere without a whole lot of staff capacity (whether paid or not) to tend to the campaign, and a deep base of “true fans” who are willing to go to bat for your cause again and again and bring others on board. The Holy Grail for marketers these days, of course, is when fans become so invested in the artist or institution that they derive intrinsic pleasure and fulfillment from working to support it – and from connecting with and broadening the circle of people who feel the same way. In theory, it creates a virtuous, self-sustaining cycle that just leads to greater and greater opportunity as long as that relationship with the fans can be maintained.

What this rosy picture doesn’t take into account, though, is that if everybody is after the same goal of deep and broad engagement with lots of people, the collective rush to reach audiences may well be unsustainable. Much like the cow herders in the old story of the tragedy of the commons, it is in the rational economic interest of individual artists and institutions to develop and exploit the resources available to the greatest extent possible, even though it may be in the long-term interests of the community as a whole to scale back a bit. As a result, we are at risk of overtaxing and draining the very fans who are so important to the arts’ success. We’ve seen this kind of fatigue already with the aforementioned online contests; arts patrons participating in Chase Community Giving found themselves overwhelmed with requests to vote for this organization or that, and the meaningfulness of any one action or request suffers as a result. But such contests are only the latest nexus for what is becoming an increasingly fraught problem for consumers and marketers alike. Quick poll: how many email newsletters are you subscribed to, and how many of you have filters or other procedures set up to ensure that you essentially never have to read them?

As it happens, I am currently reading through a study that examined (among other things) competitive interactions between performing arts organizations – in this case, between symphony orchestras and opera companies in the same city. The study found that fundraising expenditures by one organization was statistically correlated with lower contributed income for the other organization the following year, holding other factors constant. Perhaps more troubling, the study also found that fundraising expenditures at larger symphonies did not pay for themselves.

The problem becomes yet more acute when one remembers that arts organizations are not the only ones – and certainly not the ones with the most resources – who face it. We are competing not just with each other, but with mass media, sports, restaurants, manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, auto insurers, etc. – all trying desperately now to create the same kind of time-intensive, passion-dependent audience engagement with the same people we’re trying to reach. It’s one thing to be a mere consumer of many different kinds of products. But can one be a “true fan” for Old Spice Guy, the Geico Caveman, Mad Men, Kings of Leon, the Social Network, and the theater company down the street all at the same time–all, perhaps, while trying to get attention for one’s own creations?

As we come together for a convention to celebrate the efforts we make to reach audiences and share tips on how to do it, it’s worth remembering that the people who are on the other end of our communications are ultimately the ones who decide whether we succeed or fail. Our job is to make people aware of the product and encourage them to give it a chance. At that point, however, it’s up to the art itself to work its magic. Because if it doesn’t, they won’t lack for other ways in which they could spend their time instead.

In my last post, I talked about how suppliers of creative content are (for the most part) declining to exit the industry despite extremely strong competition and unfavorable odds for financial self-sustainability, to say nothing of massive success. The standard explanation of this is that artists, writers and the like are “driven to create”—they can’t imagine doing anything else with their time. That may be true at least in some cases, but a class from my business school core curriculum provides a more interesting way of looking at it. The dean of the school, Joel Podolny, and my Competitor professor Fiona Scott Morton co-authored a study of California wineries and found that hobbyist suppliers—basically, rich people that wanted to run their own winery—concentrated so heavily on the high end of the wine market that they collectively made it less profitable for businesses that were interested in maximizing profit. As a result, businesses that wanted to make money would concentrate more on lower-end wines. Podolny and Scott Morton called these hobbyist suppliers utility maximizers and suggested that these winery owners consumed the quality of their own wines (in other words, were willing to accept a lower profit level in order to possess the identity of a high-quality wine producer). Another study found that investment banks with the best reputations actually did not need to pay top dollar relative to their competitors to attract their targeted employees, because the employees to some degree consumed the status of their employer (and were willing to accept less money in exchange for the prestige of working for a top firm).

Basically, I think that the reason we don’t see more exit from creative industries is because most creative content producers are also consumers of their own status as such, and are therefore willing to put up with a boatload of bullshit—including a very high likelihood of making next to no money—in order to be able to call themselves composers or directors or actors or artists. Because, let’s face it, being a creative professional is fun. It’s virtually guaranteed to get people’s ears perked up at parties, and can serve various aphrodisiac functions (though the whole poverty thing can just as easily kill the mood). The undercurrent of ego is strong, particularly for something like composing—you’re getting other people to pay their own money for the privilege of experiencing something that you created for the fun of it. Not only that, many creative professionals retain a massive degree of control over the final feel and execution of their vision, making the satisfaction level at the end of the process that much higher.

There’s a cultural shift going on in which more and more young people are graduating from high school and college and wanting to do interesting things with their lives, something that reflects who they are and what they think about the world. In previous generations, most young adults would end up working in agriculture, manufacturing, or other labor-intensive mega-industries and form their professional identities around a career that might have been set in stone before the child was even born. Now, having been weaned on a Baby Boomer-influenced education emphasizing self-expression and -actualization, Millennials want creativity to be a part of their professional identity, and more and more that means working in some kind of creative industry.

That leads in to the other side effect of this shift: as more and more people decide that it’s not enough to be an audience member or a reader or a listener and decide to express themselves as well, they have less time to consume the work of others. In other words, as the number of suppliers of creative content increases, their average audience decreases (even if the total audience might be increasing dramatically). Andy Warhol’s prediction that in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes is proving ever more prescient in the Internet age. As universal awareness becomes more and more difficult to achieve and a minimal level of awareness easier and easier, the lines between amateur and professional content creators are becoming increasingly blurred. It may be that we are all pursuing vanity projects to some degree.

Some kind of massive aggregating system will undoubtedly pop up to organize all of this content for us and keep it manageable. What I’m less sure of right now is what it will look like. Until then, I’ll try to keep up with my RSS reader.