When the Cincinnati Opera opens its 2008 summer festival with Madame Butterfly this Wednesday, Chris Milligan is betting you will come away transformed. In fact, he’s dedicated his career to understanding, translating and communicating that transformative experience into successful box office returns for the nation’s second oldest opera company.
As Cincinnati Opera’s director of marketing and audience development, Milligan is the Opera’s "maestro of marketing," having recently won the American Marketing Association’s Cincinnati chapter Marketer of the Year award. One glance at some of his accomplishments and you can see why. Over the past decade, he has been responsible for growing Cincinnati Opera’s annual attendance by 12% as well as reaching 105% of income goals for last season.
“Today’s opera companies have to play the middle ground between innovation and audience expectations,” says Artistic Director Evans Mirageas, who believes Cincinnati Opera is fortunate to have a “musician as well as a brilliant marketer” in the role of marketing director.
So how does the intense and simultaneously laid back Milligan buck national dips in subscriptions and single ticket sales without the benefit of an agency or significant budget? He starts with a clear understanding of who the company is and how the company is perceived by its audience base. And the only way to discover that perception is to ask. Research is especially important to Milligan. His need to place himself squarely in the shoes of his patrons is a task he does not take lightly.
“To the leadership of the opera,” he says, “we the marketing department are responsible for communicating the voice of the company through research.”
A turning point in his quest to understand and to be understood came when he raised a single question on a survey a few years ago. The answer to that one question has become the touchstone of the Opera’s successful marketing campaign and philosophy. That survey read simply: “At its best, Cincinnati Opera is… “
Respondents were given a list of 35 adjectives from which to choose. Overwhelmingly, three small but powerful words continued to bubble up to the top of the list. At its best, Cincinnati audiences saw their opera company as: beautiful, magical and thrilling.
These three words would become Milligan’s adopted mantra, and thus was born the company’s brand. From then on, the word to Milligan’s staff was to deliberately measure every piece of marketing collateral they created against this litmus test. The marketing staff says the words allow them to focus more effectively than if given a creative brief that would spend most of its time sitting on a shelf. Gradually, these three gems permeated throughout the company.
“We tease Chris about those three words mercilessly,” says Mirageas. “But it works because it plays just below what people think about opera. It taps into what we want in an emotional experience.” Box office reports testify to its efficacy as both attendance and ticket sales continue to rise.
Continues Mirageas, “As a marketing director, [Milligan is] an artistic director’s dream because he understands the artistic merits of the art while providing his best advice backed up by research and how it will work. He will agonize over the smallest subtleties. But they make a difference. They make people feel involved at Music Hall.”
Milligan holds tight to the philosophy that brand and marketing are connected throughout a company. In fact, he seeks the advice of the rest of the Opera staff on a regular basis for inspiration. “Chris starts with the idea that everyone in this company is a smart person. This is not at all common in an opera company to have an open door policy for marketing,” says Mirageas.
This is an extension of Mirageas’ and General Director and CEO Patricia Beggs’ attitude toward their company. Staff input is not only encouraged, but is expected. “Company culture is prosecuted from the top to bottom,” says Mirageas. “Unlike some arts institutions, we are not a refuge from people who can’t perform. We create an office environment that hopefully breeds creativity.”
The marketing team holds regular creative retreats where coming up with 500 new ideas from Opera staff is not at all uncommon. “Everyone has a voice in this collaborative effort,” says Milligan. “No one wins for having the best idea. Rather, we all have good ideas that we build into practical executions that help us to see the Opera differently.”
Innovation is a prized commodity among the marketing staff. Recently the company has introduced expanded web capabilities, podcasts and a new set of webisodes, the latest of which highlights Madame Butterfly.
Milligan is adamant that he and his staff stay current with relevant trends. The marketing team is encouraged to attend multiple rehearsals for inspiration. They also all read—a lot. Everything from The New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and a stack of the latest nonfiction business books. “I’m not ashamed to tell you I subscribe to Vogue,” says Milligan.
“One of my favorite ways to stay current for web-based content is to visit ViralVideoChart.com, which has the top 20 web videos that are featured on various blogs,” he says. The site is an addictive barometer of what current commercial, political and user-generated content is at the forefront of trends.
So why is it important that Cincinnati has a world-class opera company?
For Milligan, the answer is personal. “Opera produced at the level that we produce can be transformative. It can touch an emotional core in an immediate and unexpected way.” Believing that the art form is more than just a “jewel box experience,” Milligan thinks about new ways to introduce his passion to new audiences that might dismiss the operatic art form as being too stodgy or elitist.
“Madame Butterfly is a great first opera,” he asserts. “What keeps me coming back to Madame Butterfly is that it breaks my heart every time. It makes me ultimately appreciate the people in my life and what’s important to me. People see opera and think everyone dies, it’s so depressing. But I see the opposite effect. It reminds you that life is precious. It’s a message about life; it’s a message about how to live life and to cherish those things that are important to you.”
Photography by Scott Beseler
Chris Milligan, Director of Marketing and Audience Development
Illustration provided by the Cincinnati Opera
Wig from Madame Butterfly
The knife, Madame Butterfly
Jeff Syroney is the Managing Editor of Soapbox and someone who is blown away each time he attends the opera.