Business-Arts Partnerships That Achieve Real Results
By Judith A. Jedlicka, President, BCA
As I travel throughout the country, I speak to countless numbers of business professionals, and I am frequently always asked questions:
- Aren't the arts limited to a certain few?
- Isn't it a stretch to say that business and the arts have a lot to offer each other?
- Does a business really gain anything from an alliance with the arts?
- Can a small company get involved with the arts - or is it only for big companies?
These are all very practical questions.
Let's step back for a minute and look at the big picture. The arts are not just paintings in a museum or a dance performance in a theater. The arts are all around us. We all participate in them every day of our lives - and many of us take them for granted. The arts are the music on the radio, the colorful packaging of our foods, wonderfully designed buildings, the jewelry and ties we wear, the ice sculptures now in Ice Park and permanent sculptures in our public spaces. The arts are also everywhere we turn in business — letterheads, logos and package designs, print ads and radio jingles, and promotional displays that capture our attention and make us buy one company's services and products instead of another's.
The arts enliven our workplaces. Wouldn't you prefer to work in a shop or for a company that plays music in the background and displays visual arts — posters, children's art work, lithographs and painting — than one that doesn't? And if you were a manager, wouldn't you appreciate being able to hire young people who are better prepared to be productive workers and team members - able to think creatively — because they had studied the arts as part of their K-12 education?
The arts enrich our communities. They make them attractive places in which to live and do business. And, they help draw tourists — tourists who spend money which adds to the economic vitality of an area. It is said that for every $1 spent on the arts, about $4 more are generated in restaurant, hotel and retail sales, as well as ancillary expenses such as baby-sitting and parking fees. And while I know I am in Alaska — which attracts tourists who enjoy the great natural beauty of the state — these visitors also enjoy your Art Expo, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, concerts, theater and museums -such as your wonderful University of Alaska Museum - when they visit. I like to think about the arts in the broadest sense. I hope you do too. I like to say the arts are everything from A to Z — arboretums to zoos with everything imaginable in between.
When I am asked if business and the arts really have anything to offer one another and if business really gains anything from its association with the arts — the answer I always give is an unqualified — yes. A well-planned collaborative venture between business and the arts can produce measurable results for both a business and the arts. And, I would hasten to add that such collaborations are not just for big companies. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all partnerships between business and the arts in this country are undertaken by small and midsize companies — those with annual revenues of $50 million and less. This is not surprising when you remember that 96% of all companies in the United States fall in this category. Big companies generally have the ability to get more attention for their projects.
Let's take a look at a few examples of partnerships that have produced results from business and the arts. In Denver, Colorado, the Westin Tabor Center — a hotel in the city's downtown -wanted to increase Saturday night stays in the hotel, and the Performing Arts Center wanted to increase ticket sales. By working together, they produced a promotional package that featured a special rate for a Saturday evening guest room and orchestra tickets for one of the Center's "Best of Broadway'' performances. The Denver Center's ticket sales increased, and during a three-year period the Tabor Center sold more than 10,000 of these packages, realizing more than 22 million media impressions about this promotion, worth an estimated $30 million. You have some hotels in this city that might do something similar with your Museum on the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival.
Many retail centers throughout the United States have opened their doors to the arts and as a result the number of shoppers and sales have increased. The Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, has seen its sales grow at more than twice the national rate sales since it began presenting performances and exhibitions, and offering the arts the use of its facilities for special fundraising events. The WestShore Plaza, a shopping center in Tampa, Florida, set itself apart from its competition and increased sales by developing a variety of arts related initiatives. The management of this shopping center worked with students from a local art school to design sculptures that surround the mall's water features, and it developed an arts education program with a local grade school that concluded with an exhibition of student drawing in the mall. Just imagine all the proud parents, grandparents and friends who visited the mall to see this exhibition and then had lunch and shopped. This same mall also draws shoppers by hosting craft fairs, performances and other exhibitions as part of the year-round shopping experience. Just a few blocks from my office in midtown Manhattan, a bagel store regularly shows photographs and visual works by neighborhood artists. I go out of my way to pick up my coffee and bagel there, just to see the changing exhibitions. Elements of any one of these examples can be adapted by any store or group of stores.
The arts also offer businesses opportunities to entertain, network, develop new leads and reach target markets. Devine Millimet & Branch, P.A., a law firm based in Manchester, New Hampshire, attracts new clients by providing arts organizations with pro bono services and offering them the use of their offices for meetings and special fundraising events. This is a great way to meet board members and develop new business relationships. And, I.W. Marks, a jeweler in Houston, Texas, knows that its support of Houston's opera and symphony has helped increase sales and has led to developing customer loyalty which enabled this jeweler to ride-out the recession during the 1990s, when many of its competitors closed their doors.
Another example of how business and the arts come together to produce results is a holiday promotion created by Cobb Pontiac Cadillac, a car dealership in Montgomery, Alabama. This dealership increased its year-end sales one December by offering everyone who test-drove its cars a free CD and tickets to a local choral group's holiday concert. This promotion also helped the choral group promote its concerts sell CD's increase its box office revenue.
And, Dolphin Architects & Builder in Johns Island, South Carolina, sponsors local concerts and exhibitions, and hires a local artist to sketch each new home it builds. The company then prints the sketches on notecards and presents the notecards to each new home owner. Dolphin credits its involvement with the arts for increasing its name recognition and boosting sales by $7 million during a two-year period in the late 1990s. And, local artists and arts organizations adore the company because it is helping them attract new audiences.
The arts also enhance a company's image as a good citizen of the community. We all know that utility companies are sometimes viewed as less than desirable corporate citizens. The reverse of this is true in Montana. The Montana Power Company, headquartered in Butte, worked with all the symphony orchestras statewide and created a model win-win situation. The company helped organize the Montana Power Summer Symphony — an orchestra of musicians drawn from all the symphonies throughout the state — and then promoted and underwrote a free outdoor concert which has now become an annual summer event. In the first year alone, the company reported that its residential electric customer rating rose from 7.2 to 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 — with 10 being the best rating — and public interest in all symphony orchestras across the state grew.
The arts also help companies attract and retain employees. A recent article in Wall Street Journal reported that 41% of job applicants indicated the office environment would effect their decision to take a job. And, 93% of the respondents to a survey on the BCA Web site this past spring said they would rather work for a company that was involved with the arts than one that was not. How does this translate to business? Wieden + Kennedy, an advertising agency based in Portland, Oregon, is able to attracts some of the best talent in the industry because it offers employees an experience unmatched by its competitor — the opportunity to work side-by-side with contemporary artists. This happens in an historic ice house in downtown Portland that the agency transformed into its headquarters and a space for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA). Here, on any day of the week, you can find employees from the ad agency and the artists and staff members of PICA interacting about an advertising campaign concept or an installation in the exhibition space., displays and sells visual art created by local artists in its five-star restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. Dick Elliott, the restaurant's owner, credits the arts for helping attract repeat customers and a low rate of employee turn-over. And, local artists appreciate the opportunity to show and sell their works.
These are all simple and effective ways for business and the arts to work together and realize gains. They can all be adapted by some of the companies and arts organizations in this city. The arts also make locales unique and great places in which to live and visit. This is important to the development of a workforce and tourism, and ultimately the sales of products and services. One of my favorite examples of this is King Engineering in Tampa, Florida. When this civil engineering firm talked about how to celebrate its 20th anniversary, it decided not to hold a big party in a hotel. Instead, it put its resources into an economic development project in the city. King transformed an underutilized warehouse in an industrial area of the city into an outdoor sculpture park. Today, this park is a popular site for community events, and it is a destination point for thousands of residents and visitors each year. And, by the way, the company won a national Business in the Arts Awards for this project, and has received a great deal of national attention as a result. Another example of this is the partnership that a Nevada real estate company developed with the arts in its area.
When American Nevada, decided to turn acres and acres of desert in Henderson, Nevada, into a bustling community, it incorporated the visual and performing arts into its plans. Today, Henderson is one of the fastest growing communities in the country. There is large scale sculpture on display throughout the entire city, and the company has helped the local arts organizations present and promote plays, concerts and a host of year-round performing arts events. In other words, the arts are helping this company turn Henderson into a great place to live, and work, the company is helping the arts expand their reach.
The arts are also essential to the development of a productive and creative workforce. We know from research that when the arts are part of K-12 education academic performance improves and youngsters score higher on their SATs. With this in mind, Crayola sponsors an extensive arts education program that focuses on creativity in relation to the study of history, science and mathematics. And Tuscarora Yarns based in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, underwrote an educational project that reinforced the pre-Columbian history lessons of local fourth graders. Each student created a tile depicting an aspect of life of this ancient civilization which was then incorporated into a public outdoor mural. The project also taught these youngsters how to operate as a team — something important in business. Just imagine a public mural created by elementary school students here in Fairbanks.
If you are still not certain that the arts can yield returns for business, just listen to some of the data we gathered from an optional pop-up question on the BCA Web site.
- 88% indicated that they would be more likely to purchase a product or service from a company that supports the arts than one that does not.
- 95% had a positive view of a company that supports the arts.
- 93% indicated that they would rather work for a company that supports the arts than one that does not.
- 94% indicated that the quality of life would decline if business did not support the arts.
These are very compelling numbers. The message I want to leave with you is simple: The arts are good for business and business is good for the arts. A well-conceived collaboration between a business — no matter what its size — and the arts is a win-win situation. If you are part of the business community and you are involved with the arts, you know this is true. If you are part of the arts community and you have never thought about venturing into a relationship with a business — know that it will have a positive effect on your organization. As someone who has worked in business and in the arts, and now works to bring business and the arts together, I know there is much to be gained from a business-arts collaboration. Business gains, the arts gain, and the entire community gains. I hope each and everyone of you will work with the Fairbanks BCA to build collaborations between business and the arts. Remember, the arts are all around us. They enrich our lives, our businesses and our communities. They also unite us with our past. They help us succeed in the present, and they are our legacy for future generations.
Thank you.