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The Scene Room
The Scene Room Podcast spotlights the movers and makers redefining the performing arts—focusing on innovative marketing, leadership, and the importance of collaboration. Hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman, with a keen eye on audience trends and cultural shifts, the goal is to explore how artists and organizations are connecting with communities, shaping the future, and redefining what it means to engage and inspire.
The Scene Room
Ruth Hartt — Flipping the Script on Arts Marketing
The arts sector has seen a steady decline in audience attendance over the past four decades. Yet many organizations continue relying on traditional marketing strategies that speak primarily to insiders—those already familiar with their art forms—rather than reaching new, curious audiences.
Ruth Hartt is challenging this paradigm with a forward-thinking, audience-first approach to arts marketing. With a unique background as both a professional opera singer and a business innovation expert, she introduces Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s influential “jobs to be done” framework—a groundbreaking theory of consumer behavior—as a powerful tool for audience growth.
Instead of targeting demographics or promoting artistic features, Ruth urges arts leaders to understand what people are really seeking—stress relief, connection, inspiration—and position the arts as a way to meet those needs. It’s not about diluting artistic excellence; it’s about creating relevant, resonant entry points for a broader public.
With examples like the Peabody Essex Museum’s “Escape the Algorithm” campaign, Ruth shows how this shift in perspective opens the door to entirely new audience segments. She also tackles common resistance to the idea of “customers,” arguing that it’s not about commercialization—it’s about making the transformative power of art accessible and relatable.
Whether you’re an artist, marketer, administrator, or advocate, this conversation is a practical and inspiring guide to reimagining arts marketing and revitalizing cultural participation.
All episodes are also available in video form on our YouTube Channel. All episodes are hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman.
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Don't hesitate to reach out to us with guest ideas, information you'd like covered, or any ideas you might have—the hope is for this to be a continuous resource and dialogue with our listeners.
Visit TheSceneRoom.com for more information.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the Scene Room. Today I have Ruth Hartt in the room. She is rebuilding cultural audiences through a radically customer-first model. Ruth merges nearly two decades as an opera singer with deep expertise in customer-centric innovation. She equips arts organizations with the strategies they need to reverse audience decline and spark new growth. If you're enjoying the podcast, please do like, share, review, do any of those things. It really helps keep these conversations going. I'm really delighted to have Ruth here. I followed her on LinkedIn. She's always saying interesting and thought-provoking things on there, so let's get to it. Ruth, welcome to the scene room. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me.
Ruth Hartt:Elizabeth, tell us where you're podcasting from, so I am based in coastal Maine and it's finally warming up here. It's been a very long, slow spring, but we're finally easing into a warmer season.
Elizabeth Bowman:I spent many summers in Maine on Popham Beach so beautiful, just the perfect place for little families and the best lobster rolls around. I've been following you on LinkedIn and really admire all that you present on there, all the very thought provoking ideas you have and other people's ideas that you share as well that obviously align with your thought process. Can you tell the scene room audience a little bit about what you do and what you're working on and just your overall who you are?
Ruth Hartt:Absolutely so. I come from the world of opera, as you do as well. I started out my career as an opera singer and a music educator and was doing all the things that artists do to sort of cobble together a living, and I spent a good amount of time doing that and then made a kind of dramatic transition into a whole different career. I landed at a think tank, which was not anything I had ever planned for my life, but it was a fascinating pivot, a really fascinating world to land in. It was a think tank that was started by a Harvard Business School professor, clayton Christensen, and I had never heard of him before, but it turns out that he was a world-renowned business thinker and so famous that you know people were constantly calling you know ambassadors of countries and Fortune 500 CEOs calling for his advice on how to tackle big problems in their industry.
Ruth Hartt:And so, for me, I just had a kind of a boot camp in not only nonprofit management but also business theory and business frameworks. I started learning about how Clayton Christensen talked, about how to build sustainable companies and how to attract customers, and, of course, immediately I had a light bulb go off in my own mind because I started thinking to myself why aren't we using these ideas in the arts? Because we're losing audiences, we're having a hard time being sustainable and attracting customers. So I want to explore, like, what would it look like to apply these ideas to the arts? And so started blogging about those ideas and applying them to the art sector and really started to uncover what I think is the way forward for all of these arts organizations who right now, are feeling like there is no path forward. So it was a very exciting way to merge my two worlds.
Elizabeth Bowman:So Clayton Christensen is the one who promoted the theory of jobs to be done.
Ruth Hartt:Yes, so Clay was one of the architects of the theory and he wrote the book the book about jobs to be done and he wrote the book. The book about jobs to be done. That he wrote is called competing against luck, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to do a deep dive in this jobs to be done framework.
Elizabeth Bowman:Can you tell us a little bit about this theory and because you've spoken about it often, and so tell us a little bit about what it means.
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, so this is probably one of the first frameworks that I learned at the Clayton Christensen Institute. That really caught my ear. I think it's really spoke to me as an opera singer, as an actor, and with all the training that I had on digging into a character's motivation and making sure that when I was on stage I was connecting you know all of my gestures and my facial expressions to genuine meaning. Otherwise, you know all of my gestures and my facial expressions to genuine meaning. Otherwise, you know the audience wouldn't really care. So jobs to be done to me is a very similar idea. It's really a very simple framework on the surface and it tells us, you know, why people make the choices that they make.
Ruth Hartt:I think it's so important because in the arts, most of us think in terms of demographics right, we say, well, what age are they, what income bracket are they, what ethnicity are they in and how can we reach them in those ways. But Jobs to Be Done thinks about what motivates people in a whole different way. It really is more about not who they are, but what they're trying to accomplish in their lives, and so really you know why we buy things is not about buying a product or service, but it's about achieving an outcome. It's a fascinating way to kind of flip the lens from you know what are we trying to sell to these people? And turn it on its head and say what are people trying to accomplish in their lives, like, who do they want to become and what outcomes or benefits or transformations are they looking for that we can actually provide for them through our products?
Elizabeth Bowman:And I guess the question is how do we survey our audience's current and perspective to determine what you're talking about here, and how would you do that?
Ruth Hartt:So I always like to start with sort of a macro look at the world, because when we look at national consumer trends, we can kind of get a sense of what outcomes people are seeking in their lives.
Ruth Hartt:And so there's a lot of incredible research out there done by firms like McKinsey and Deloitte and GWI and the Pew Research lots of other areas as well where you can start to dig into what it is that people are struggling with, what motivates them, what outcomes they're looking for in their lives, and that gives an incredible start to thinking about our community, right, how do these trends map to our community and what does it mean for how we can reach them?
Ruth Hartt:And what I love about starting with this macro approach is you can actually quantify what percent of people in your community are actually seeking things like wellness or stress relief or a digital detox or any number of things that you can find. And I think it's you know it's such a different approach than who can we find that loves classical music, which is, you know, not that big of a number. You know it's like you know, six percent of the population now that's attending classical music performances. So when you flip it on its head and say okay, these outcomes that we know art can provide you know, how many people are actually seeking those.
Ruth Hartt:The numbers are massive, which I think is really exciting, and so you asked about. You know how do you find out? How do you survey your audience. So I like to take those sort of macro ideas and those outcomes and then send a survey to the audience and say pick one, what is your biggest priority right now, in your world today? To really start to craft targeted messaging and to really speak to people on a really deeply resonant level around what they care about, what matters to them. You know what outcomes are they looking for in their lives. I think it really opens up some magic there.
Elizabeth Bowman:Definitely this macro approach that makes total sense and how you might form a marketing campaign based on bigger scope ideas about behavior rather than, yes, your love for classical music or classical entertainment or live music or any of these things. You shared a campaign the other day on linkedin that captures this. Can you tell a little bit about that campaign, because I'll show the images on the video version of this podcast as well, just to accompany what you're about to say?
Ruth Hartt:Yes, and I think you're referring to the Peabody Essex Museum.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah Right, that's right yeah.
Ruth Hartt:So I somebody sent this to me on LinkedIn and I immediately got pretty excited, because it's really rare to find marketing in the arts sector that has a really clear customer first value proposition and we can talk about value proposition in a minute but this particular organization is the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, massachusetts.
Ruth Hartt:They partnered with an ad agency called Hatch and they crafted something which I thought was incredible.
Ruth Hartt:So what they did was, instead of talking about the product, the museum, the, you know what you're going to see in the museum, they talked about a problem that people are facing in their lives, which is this overload of the digital world right, screens and the algorithm and doom, scrolling and all of that, and so they were comparing and contrasting the museum experience with being sucked into your phone, right, and so the tagline for this is escape the algorithm.
Ruth Hartt:So this is the museum's tagline, and you've got all these different plays on words. You know, stroll is greater than symbol scroll, and then scenes is greater than screens, and then art is greater than artificial, and so it's just. I think it's so incredible how they're giving people a reason to care about museums, again because they're talking about the transformation or the outcome that they can provide that so many people are looking for, which is a break from the screen and a real world experience, and so, yeah, that was one that really stood out to me as a fantastic example a real world, experience and so, yeah, that was one that really stood out to me as a fantastic example.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, really fantastic marketing. I feel like libraries and museums always get it first. Yeah, the classical performing arts institutions are always last. We need to move it on.
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, I don't know why that is.
Elizabeth Bowman:But yeah, I do find libraries really because they've had to really adjust, you know, because people aren't necessarily like running to the library, as they used to, to just get out books like they. They understood who they would be evolve into in order to be a relevant space. They've understood the relevance argument right away off the bat, and I guess that's our struggle here. But, yes, I love that ad campaign. So if you're listening on the podcast, just I guess I'll throw that in a reel and also in the video version.
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, and you mentioned the word relevance. Which is like one of my soapboxes, and that's one of the things that sort of started me on this journey was I, you know, another opera singer moment. I was seeing that word everywhere in the art sector and of course, my opera singer brain is like what does that word mean? What's you know, what's the translation, what's the etymology of that word? And I went digging and it turns out the word relevance comes from the Latin relevare, which actually originally meant to be helpful, and to me that totally encompasses this idea of the jobs to be done framework. Right, so if you're going to attract customers, you have to be helpful to them, you have to provide them with an outcome that they're seeking, and so that's the way that I love to think about relevance and, like you say, I think libraries have figured that out.
Elizabeth Bowman:So, being the voice of change that you are within this industry, can I ask what resistance you encounter most on this journey?
Ruth Hartt:I would say the most common resistance is really this emotional knee-jerk reaction to what I'm talking about, because I use the word customer. Right, I talk about product-centric versus customer-centric, and I think a lot of people, when they hear this kind of language, they start to worry that changing their approach to not focus on the product means, you know, abandoning their artistic ideals, their artistic excellence, dumbing down the product. That comes up a lot, particularly with the artists, the artistic directors, you know, those types that really feel that their job is to preserve the art form and to preserve the tradition, and so I would say that is probably the biggest resistance that I encounter.
Elizabeth Bowman:It's interesting that they would have that resistance, mainly because the role of the arts marketer is to create an access point for the product that they are presenting within the theater. So it doesn't necessarily have to align entirely with what is happening on the stage, but you have to provide, obviously, an honest connection to that product. But sometimes the thing that's going to happen on stage is too complicated for the average audience member to necessarily get into their head in that like 0.2 second range that we apparently require now in the age of the scrolling Right, and we have very little time to get someone to buy a ticket, little time to get someone to buy a ticket. So to align a marketing campaign artistically with what is happening on stage is actually, I think, impossible, because the thing that is on stage does take time to marinate in and the thing that obviously gets them to buy the ticket doesn't. So these are just two different experiences, two different expertise.
Ruth Hartt:Anyway, yeah, no, I like what you're saying. I think you know I don't know if you've read Nina Simon's book, the Art of Relevance, but she talks about creating relevant doorways, right. So, and I like that, I like that image. I also like to talk about making the connections for these people who aren't familiar with the art form, to their real lives, like showing them exactly how this particular experience can bring them the outcomes that they're looking for. Right, I think that's the job of the marketer.
Ruth Hartt:The other thing that I think comes up in terms of resistance for a lot of arts leaders is this worry that if we change the way we market, what if we lose our current patrons?
Ruth Hartt:That's another one that comes up a lot, and I think it's interesting because it really kind of shows the way that we're thinking about sort of the marketing funnel in general. Right, I think that a lot of times, what we see in arts marketing is this focus on the loyal patrons, which is why I talk so much about how arts marketing needs to shift, because most of the marketing that we see talks about the product and you know it's really targeting the folks who already know about the product, right, and so what I'm saying? I'm saying don't. You're not going to ignore the, the loyals, right? You're not going to ignore the folks who already know and love your art form. You're just going to add on the rest of the marketing funnel that you've been ignoring, right? And so you're going to start to create content that actually speaks to all these other people who aren't familiar with the art form but are seeking the things that the arts can provide, and so that's where the marketing funnel and the value proposition starts to become important.
Elizabeth Bowman:In 2011, I think I was executive director of a small chamber ensemble and had to rebrand and do a sort of marketing facelift to this organization in order for it to survive. It was in a dire position at the time when I came on board, but there was this loyal fan base who would come. It was a small but mighty and completely loyal group of a certain age bracket. So there was the challenge right Like suddenly I had to change the marketing message, change the graphics. It was a lot for those patrons to handle, and what I did was I actually started doing audience segmentation, so obviously understanding who those people were, and then including handwritten notes to them, which took time because there were like 80 of them, but not extremely long notes, but trying to just so that they would understand that there was a some element of personal connection there. So they see all the change in the language and the new graphics and all this stuff, but then there's a personal note, you know, and so it's really about just connection and and they need to feel seen.
Ruth Hartt:So yeah, I love that, and I think that that is sort of ties into the idea that when you are changing your approach as an organization, you have to not only talk about the change within the staff, but you have to communicate the change to organization. You have to not only talk about the change within the staff, but you have to communicate the change to your. You know all of these stakeholders, like the loyal audiences and the donors right, they need to understand we are making these changes because we want to thrive in the future and so, you know, enlisting them to be a part of that change I think can be really beneficial as well.
Elizabeth Bowman:For smaller arts organizations that don't really have a budget to do these big surveys or these kinds of things. You mentioned earlier that there are these studies done by McKinsey and Deloitte. Where does one find these?
Ruth Hartt:You just Google them. So yeah, if you go on to you know these research organizations like McKinsey and Deloitte and GWI, you're going to find incredible wealth of research and they are sometimes specific to generations, so there can be a 50-page article on the millennials or Gen Z. But also sometimes they're more general consumer trends and they can be national, they can be global. You just kind of have to do a little digging. But, like I said, it was McKinsey, deloitte, gwi, pew. There's a lot of organizations out there that do this kind of work and they put out studies constantly, even like the American Psychological Association. They've got studies out there about, you know, the levels of stress and anxiety that are out in the world.
Ruth Hartt:So I think probably the best place to start is one of my favorite books, which is your Brain on Art, which talks about the outcomes that the arts can provide, right? And so you look through that book and you look and see, okay, well, the arts helps with physical well-being and it helps with stress and helps with anxiety. So let's go find some data around those issues and how many people are struggling with those issues, and then that can sort of focus you in on what perhaps your community is also struggling with and looking for.
Elizabeth Bowman:I love that idea of using these big businesses to the benefit of the smaller arts organizations. I've actually spoken to a lot of people in the arts and they're not necessarily looking at the data from these various companies, so this is a great idea.
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, well, it's funny, I think we get so insular in the arts world. We don't tend to think about what's happening in the world at large. You're like we don't exist in a vacuum. Is, I think, my point right? So understanding what's happening in terms of consumer behaviors and trends and priorities, I think is actually incredibly valuable for the arts. So I agree.
Elizabeth Bowman:Can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on specifically right now?
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, I actually just created a free resource for arts organizations that I'm pretty excited about. One of the, I think, the main issues with arts marketing is that the value proposition, which is really the foundation for everything that you create. You know, your website, your social media, all of that. So in the arts, the value proposition tends to be very product focused, and so I wanted to create something to help arts organizations figure out how to make that pivot from talking about the product and the features of the product, which doesn't really work when you're trying to grow, right, when you're trying to attract people who don't really care about the product, right. So I created this playbook to help arts organizations really craft a solid value proposition that's really customer focused, and so it's all around answering the questions that customers have, whether they know it or not, when they're thinking about you know what they're going to pull into their lives, what they're going to buy, spend money on, spend time on, and it really is.
Ruth Hartt:I think the value proposition itself is all about answering that question why should I care? Or what's in it for me, right? And so there are five elements in this playbook that I encourage arts organizations to look at. They're sort of the five questions that customers have. So the first is what problem can you solve for me? The second is how will my life be better if I engage with this product? And the third is how will you make it happen? And the fourth is how are you different from all the other alternatives that say they solve this same problem? And then the fifth is how can I trust that you can deliver on this promise?
Ruth Hartt:So those five building blocks the problem, the outcome, the solution, the differentiation and the proof are things that I rarely see in the arts world, and I think if you can answer those questions, especially on your homepage of your website, it instantly helps the newcomer say oh yeah, I need that, right, because I have that problem, or I'm looking for that outcome, and that's the kind of thing where you can vary. You know, like you said, what is it? The two seconds that you've got to catch someone's attention. Those are the kinds of questions you have to answer very quickly so that the newcomer can say yeah, you know what. I need to investigate this, right, I need to learn more, I need to buy a ticket, because this is something I need in my life. So I'm excited about this playbook and I think I'm hoping it'll be useful for folks.
Elizabeth Bowman:And you can check that out on your website, I assume.
Ruth Hartt:Yeah, it's cultureforhirecom slash playbook.
Elizabeth Bowman:Where do you see the arts industry going in the next sort of five years?
Ruth Hartt:like with all this AI business, also integrated into our system. So here's a stat from one of those big research studies that I mentioned 51% of the population is really concerned about AI and not really interested in engaging with it or, you know, just in general not feeling comfortable with it. And I think that's a huge opportunity for arts organizations to say, hey, we are not in any way, shape or form, created by AI. Right, we are authentic, we are genuine, we're created by humans in real time. So I think that's my take on AI at the moment, but in the next five to 10 years.
Ruth Hartt:So when you look at the data, when you look at the National Endowment for the Arts and how audiences have declined steadily over the last 40 years, it doesn't look good. And when you pair that with Colleen Dillon Schneider's work on impacts experience, when she's looking at the negative substitution rate, you know if we don't change what we're doing, if we don't become more relevant, if we don't adapt to the digital world that we now live in, it really the steady decline continues. But I think if we can start to shift, start to adapt our business models of our value propositions to really connect with who consumers are today, I think we have a chance to really massively turn things around in terms of being more relevant, becoming more essential and showing people how important we are because of the outcomes that we provide. So that is my vision, you know to bring these ideas to the sector and really start that movement of reclaiming our relevance.
Elizabeth Bowman:If we use the tools, the AI and stuff in terms of the machine behind the art, then I think it's all in good practice.
Ruth Hartt:Absolutely yeah. Any chance you get to automate and take more work off the backs of these overworked arts leaders Absolutely yeah.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, the poor arts administrators everywhere. Yeah, the poor arts administrators everywhere. We were talking before the podcast about how a lot of arts administrators may or may not be underpaid and what are your thoughts on the importance of that and how it's going to manifest going forward.
Ruth Hartt:This is what I love about this customer first approach, the jobs to be done approach, right? So, instead of you know thinking about demographics and you know having these sort of one-off initiatives to try to bring in these more diverse audiences, I just love this idea that, when you think about the outcome that the customer is seeking, it has nothing to do with the demographic, but what it does is it opens up the door, opens up access for all different types of people, right? So, instead of just people who know and love classical music or opera, you're now reaching out to people who are seeking wellness outcomes, people who are seeking stress relief, right? People who are dealing with anxiety, all these different things that everyone in the world today is struggling with, and I think it really opens up access and sort of illuminates value for these folks who, you know, clayton Christensen would call them non-consumers, right? People who have never seen value in your product before, and it starts to really show them. You know what I need? That, right? That's something I never considered before. That could be useful, but you know, they're talking about an orchestral concert as being, you know, a screen free experience and a way to lower cortisol and all the things that I've been thinking about in my life, and so that I think is it's you're embedding DEI in your business model. When you start to think of it that way, you've got the foundation, the value proposition as the customer outcome and everything sort of builds on that.
Ruth Hartt:That's what I love about how this sort of brings in the DEI, without it being these little side projects, but really embedding into the business model.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, that makes total sense. It just reminded me of a podcast I was listening to the other day about parenting. I know this is not what our podcast is about today, but I could talk parenting all day long, so go for it.
Elizabeth Bowman:It was talking about how kids these days, because they have Google Maps and they have these watches that they wear, that navigate everywhere for them and they're over-supervised. Well, you know, depending on the environment I'm not commenting on on the supervision of children but they generally are less free than we were when we were growing up. You know, I walked pretty far to school on my own from a young age and anyway, this creates cognitive behavior, obviously, in that you're mapping where you're going, you know you might turn left here, you might turn right there. You know that you have about like eight different options in terms of root and this opens up actual thought process in your brain, like it's working on your brain development, like it's key to decision-making and things like that that you wouldn't necessarily think of.
Elizabeth Bowman:Right, and music, learning music develops the same sort of areas as well, because you're I mean, if you're playing piano, you're, there's coordination, there's multiple tones being played at the same time, you're processing intervals, you're mapping, and so then I started thinking about learning music and the role of learning music and that for someone listening who wasn't necessarily a musician and had never been a musician and had children, they might think, oh, my child should now learn the piano. You know what I mean. Yeah, the non-consumer is now thinking because it and that was not the goal of the podcast, I'm sure, but like, that's what I came away with Like wow, that's a good marketing strategy.
Ruth Hartt:Because parents have a job to be done. Right, we talked about the job to be done framework. Parents have a job to be done. One of those jobs is to make sure their kids grow up enriched and well-rounded and healthy, and there's lots of solutions and tools that can help with that.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, all of these ways that the brain is developing in a world that is moving so quickly with technology. And you know we're constantly talking about too much screen time, no screen time, and then no video games. Yes to some video games. You know, or you know, educational games. What is an educational game? You? Know, that's a whole other podcast. If you could advise an arts marketing degree program on what to teach, what are one or two things that you would definitely include on your curriculum?
Ruth Hartt:Oh, I love that question, my gosh. I could talk about this forever. I would absolutely start with the idea of you know the job to be done and thinking not about the product and its features but about the outcomes it can provide, and then mapping that to the needs that we see in the community.
Ruth Hartt:I would absolutely talk about the marketing funnel and the phases that a consumer goes through from being a non-consumer and being totally unaware of the arts to starting to understand the problem that the arts can solve for you and the way that their life could be better and why the arts are a better choice than something else out there like yoga or exercise or meditation.
Ruth Hartt:And then you know the data, the proof around what the arts can do. So that's sort of the mental model for the marketing funnel, all those different questions that they have that you need to answer. So those two I would definitely start with, because there's so much that you can do with those building blocks we talked about the PBD, essex Museum, sort of showing how they are better than the algorithm. Right, that's the differentiation part of the value proposition Such an incredibly powerful marketing strategy when you compare, you know, couch surfing, you know being a couch potato, to actually getting out in the community and hanging out with people and showing people how it's a better choice in their lives. So I guess that those are the things that come to mind. If I was going to sit down and write out a whole curriculum, there would be a lot more there, but that's a good start, I guess.
Elizabeth Bowman:Well, thanks for being on the podcast today, and I will continue to follow you on LinkedIn and check out your website. It's really great to connect with you.
Ruth Hartt:Thanks for having me, elizabeth, this was fantastic.
