Visibility and involvement in effective arts marketing

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to propose a methodological tool for arts marketing, arguing that traditional approaches are not as effective as the newly developed visibility/involvement model in assessing the quality of a cultural organization's marketing strategy.

Design/methodology/approach

The innovative model evaluates art galleries' promotion materials combining their local, visual, and textual dimensions of meaning, drawing on three different theoretical and methodological areas of thought: critical discourse analysis, systemic functional analysis, and mediated discourse analysis.

Findings

The visibility involvement model can be applied by cultural organizations to discern their key audience, and thus, their communicative focus. It is also the foundation of practical recommendations to enhance a gallery's marketing strategy to either deepen or broaden their audience.

Research limitations/implications

While the paper investigates the predominant meaning dimension of different groups of promotional materials, it does not investigate all relevant dimensions. Although, the proposed model provides insights into the quality of the art galleries' marketing activities, it only provides a rather vague distinction between the degrees of visibility and required involvement. This paper does also not account for the usability of the model for organizations outside the cultural sector.

Originality/value

The innovation of the newly developed model lies in the combination of these dimensions coming from three theoretical and methodological areas of thought: mediated discourse analysis, systemic functional analysis, and critical discourse analysis.

Citation

Lange, C. (2010), "Visibility and involvement in effective arts marketing", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 650-668. https://doi.org/10.1108/02634501011066546