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A Network To Build Chicago Arts Audiences

||| September 13, 2025 by Marj Halperin

You don’t want to miss this Open Forum.

Every time I talk to one of our speakers for the Fall Open Forum, I have the urge to grab pen & paper.  Peter Giangreco and Michael Organ are full of quick, pithy ideas that I don’t want to forget.  Don’t buy Internet ads geographically like you buy print.  Your current ticket buyers are your best resource to expanding audiences with people who look like them.  Give them incentives to bring their friends.   But not without getting something in return—like an email address, sign-up on your Facebook page, etc. 

See what I mean?  Full of good ideas.  And they move at a fast pace.  We’d expect that from political campaign operatives, of course.  And these are the guys who masterminded Obama’s Internet marketing strategy.  We know how well THAT worked out. 

Not only do they speak politics, they speak arts.  So they’ll tell us how they maximized Obama’s internet presence, and will also translate their expertise into some “news you can use” as soon as you leave the Forum. 

We’re trying something different to help with that translation:  Giangreco and Organ’s formal presentation will be short and to the point, leaving time for them to plop into consultants’ chairs.  We’ve chosen three arts groups to receive an on-the-spot, “fishbowl consultation” on internet marketing.  They represent a wide range of organizations in terms of size, target audience and other measures, so they’re  sure to help bring out something useful for just about everyone in the audience.  

Hope that includes you!

Get all the details by clicking here.

(Marj Halperin, President of Marj Halperin Consulting and Open Forum Moderator)

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1 Comment

On September 15, 2025 at 7:06 PM, Julia Perkins said:

I thought that today’s presentation was excellent.  The presenters, Pete Giangreco and Mike Organ were candid and informative on how arts organizations can capitalize on the lessons learn in “political campaign marketing” to assist them advancing their niche marketing goals.  The lessons shared on contextual relevance, leveraging urgency, and audience sharing (understanding that content management and control is the tradeoff) are areas that the arts community can modify to complement current tactics.  Organ’s discussion on demography, lifestyle and behavioral patterns provided a quantitative approach to drill down audience segments that are most likely to support the organization. This skill set of statistical modeling, for many, is quite foreboding and needs to be better understood.  I would strongly recommend that AEE consider offering additional hands-on workshops (similar to database management and ROI) that teach these techniques so that they can be applied.  Great job!

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