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Ross Binnie of The Cleveland Orchestra joins Jill to discuss the orchestra's decade-old Center for Future Audiences program. The initiative aims to attract younger audiences to classical music concerts. Binnie discusses their digital platform "Adella" and their mission to shift perceptions of classical music to make it more inclusive. Additionally, he emphasizes the importance of finding new ways to engage and retain audiences across age groups and shares how The Cleveland Orchestra is doing just that.
For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
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letstalk@trgarts.com
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letstalk@trgarts.com
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For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
Creators and Guests
What is Leading the Way with Jill S. Robinson?
Leading the Way with Jill S. Robinson is a journey into the international arts and culture industry. Join Jill, a driving force in the sector who has counseled arts leaders for more than three decades, for conversations with some of the most insightful and daring minds leading the way to a resilient 21st century.
[00:00:02.970] - Jill S. Robinson
Greetings and welcome to Leading the Way with Jill Robinson. Today I interview Ross Binnie, Chief Brand officer of the Cleveland Orchestra, to talk with him about their center for Future Audiences program. It's a decade old. Millions of dollars of investment have fueled their program design that is innovative, and hundreds of thousands of young audiences who are attending classical music concerts at Blossom Music Center. At Severance Music Center, we talk about those audiences, who they are, the programs, what they are, and what it means to programs like the traditional subscription, loyalty, aging audiences, and more. Ross is an old friend. I hope you will enjoy our conversation. Thanks for listening. Ross Binnie, I am so pleased to be talking with you today for our Leading the Way podcast. You're the chief Brand officer at the Mighty, and I mean that most seriously. Cleveland Orchestra, one of the biggest, most important in the world. I'm so grateful that you would take time to talk with me today.
[00:01:16.690] - Ross Binnie
Thank you, Jill. I'm looking forward to it. It's a bit auspicious saying that about the Cleveland Orchestra, but I suppose that's the cross we have to bear.
[00:01:26.530] - Jill S. Robinson
It is the truth about the Cleveland Orchestra. And actually, one of the things that I learned when I was with members of your team in Pittsburgh for the League of American Orchestras conference this year is that the Cleveland Orchestra has a sound studio or recording studio that dates back to a century ago and was the innovator in recording. Can you say something?
[00:01:53.780] - Ross Binnie
Yeah. When they rebuilt Severance Hall. When they built Severance Hall, I should say. And when it opened, we were, I think, the second orchestra behind Detroit to be on the radio, and we built it with a recording studio in mind, so we were ready for that path.
[00:02:20.270] - Jill S. Robinson
Wow. And 100 years later, this is not the focus of our conversation today, but there are lots of things we could be talking about for certain with that kind of legacy. But 100 years later, you're innovating on the digital side with a program that you're the creative engine behind. It's called remind.
[00:02:42.190] - Ross Binnie
We've got a digital platform. It's called adela. It's named after Adela Prentice Hughes, who actually formed the orchestra back. It's a nod back to those days of the recording, but she was the lady that put this orchestra together for Cleveland. And so our platform is called Adela, and we've made over 40 productions now of concerts that started in the pandemic, but our goal is to just keep going on. It's pretty exciting work. I love that side of I mean, that's something I didn't think I'd be doing, being an executive producer for these shows and helping script some of the content. But it's a balance of showing the concerts and making features that tell our story, tell the story of the great music that we put on.
[00:03:30.340] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, it's so beautifully done. I just would say to everyone, it's offered on subscription, so I don't know where the general public would get a sneak preview, but it is so beautifully produced and it's like a PBS show almost in its features and insights about the music.
[00:03:47.600] - Ross Binnie
We put a lot of time into it, for sure. And they can just go to Adela Live and they can sneak peek at the trailers and there's some free material up there.
[00:03:59.830] - Jill S. Robinson
I recommend everybody do that. Hey, listen, that actually is a good segue. You and I have known each other for a long, long time, starting in Detroit. You obviously are not an American, but you've worked in American orchestras now for a long time. 25 years.
[00:04:18.270] - Ross Binnie
99, 24. 25 years, yes. This will be my 25th year I'm in now. I've only worked in the two. I started in theater in the UK and I was involved in stand up comic venues when I was young and hip. And then as you age, you probably find a majority about orchestras that you enjoy. I followed the audience path into the orchestra world, but for 25 years I've been selling tickets one way or other or trying to increase the engagement with our audiences.
[00:04:54.870] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, you know, I came the other way around. Orchestral music, this center for future audiences that we're going to be talking about, I so dig, because classical music, I think, is timeless and ageless, but you are right, it is both perceived and there is complete and utter reality. Complete and utter reality. That arts and cultural audiences, classical music audiences have fit within a specific demography, haven't they? They've been, if I'm being stereotypical and.
[00:05:32.980] - Ross Binnie
Probably completely and ironically back to my British roots and I don't know, you got global clients all over the world, but I found it very OD how stereotypical the American orchestra audiences were about this. It's more elite than in the UK, so in the UK, it's sort of jeans and T shirts on a Sunday afternoon and I'm going down to the well here, it just seemed to be like and so I came from a background like there's no economic barrier to any of this. In fact, our number one audience segments is teachers, right? They're certainly not economically the richest people. So I always found, like, why is this happening here? What is it about the US market that has changed it completely to be even more bowtied? I can't think of a better word way to put it. You know what I mean?
[00:06:42.040] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, mrs. Got rocks is what I would say. I think it's philanthropy, isn't it? Isn't it?
[00:06:48.750] - Ross Binnie
I think it's largely that the government funding, obviously, as it exists these days in other parts of the world, certainly takes some of those barriers out. So price points and philanthropy. You're right, it's a completely different animal.
[00:07:09.890] - Jill S. Robinson
The observation I've made in our work in Europe and the UK is just that. There's a cultural Canada, too, a bit. There's a cultural expectation that arts and culture is part of communities. It doesn't change the economics. The economics are getting harder there, too.
[00:07:32.480] - Ross Binnie
Absolutely.
[00:07:33.710] - Jill S. Robinson
But here it was founded without it being the sector was founded with the assistance of great philanthropists, without the funding from government until the NEA was founded. And even then, in the mid 20th century, that funding didn't represent the amount that we see in other parts of the world. So the construct is really different. And so the center for Future Audiences, this is quite something. It's a decade old, and it is designed to take the mic here and just tell us about the mission and vision of the center for Future Audiences.
[00:08:21.050] - Ross Binnie
When I first came down to Cleveland, I had this vision that, again, back to this construct, that there is no barrier to the music. It's not like you have to go and learn astrophysics to come and enjoy it. Now, you may not like it and you may not love it. There's no excuse for not trying it right. And when I got to Cleveland without hands down, I believe we had the oldest audience in the country, and we had a donor who was interested. The Milton Tamar Maltz of the Maltz Family Foundation wanted to did make a huge gift at the time to our endowment.
[00:09:11.680] - Jill S. Robinson
It's a huge gift period.
[00:09:13.550] - Ross Binnie
Huge gift period. $20 million. And to support the creation of this construct, that was to just break down every barrier, open any door, try and get young people specifically. But I was interested that the concept of future audience is important. Why? The people of Cleveland have not tried the Cleveland Orchestra and they're insanely proud. I mean, I'm blessed. I'm Chief Brand, officer. It's really rather easy. It's relatively easy when you have this incredible outpouring of support from a community. I always say for this orchestra to be in the conversation with some of the great orchestras of the world, you look down if you Google the great orchestras of the world, cleveland is usually on that list somewhere, completely. But one of these cities is not like the others. I think it's 43rd in the country now in terms of size. So the outpouring of support for an organization. So being Chief Brand officer helps. And I just thought, well, then we should open the doors to everybody in this community to create that access and start as many young people primarily on their journeys to love us as much as anybody in this community. You can sit in a cab from the airport when I first came here, oh, you're going to Cleveland.
[00:10:42.710] - Ross Binnie
I love the Cleveland August. Do you go? No, but I love know the cab driver.
[00:10:49.850] - Jill S. Robinson
You have major institutions in Cleveland.
[00:10:52.100] - Ross Binnie
You have sports teams, you have the clinic. Absolutely. And we're absolutely up there. And so the whole idea here was to use that money to research and break down barriers, take out, if we had to bus people to concerts. We would if we had to take the price point out of the equation, especially for the young people. Make sure there's no excuses. My goal is always make sure you've ticked the Cleveland Orchestra off your bucket list. And that's what we set out to do.
[00:11:30.890] - Jill S. Robinson
It's quite something, actually. My career, as we've known each other a long time, almost 30 years in this industry of nonprofit arts and culture came from the orchestra business. And when I began to learn about what you've been up to, heard about it over time, but now it's a decade, and it's millions of dollars worth of investment and extraordinary results. Hundreds of thousands of people, I thought, boy oh boy, we really need to shine a light on this. So I want to talk about the various programs that are in it that speak to young, from young people to just new models that you're really innovating. But the Cleveland Orchestra and we at TRG are going to try to unpack what's actually happened with these audiences over time.
[00:12:32.190] - Ross Binnie
That's exactly right. Just for some perspective, we've had over 400,000 young people, for example, whether they're students, whether they're under eighteen s, and we'll talk about those programs in a minute, come through the various programs we've got. I have no idea. I'm at a sort of crossroads. So we launched it in October of 2010 at a press conference with Mr. Moltz and Tamar, and he was on TV, and I remember him saying things like, when I come to the orchestra, all I see is gray hair and no hair. And I'm like, great. And then we're having a lunch for him afterwards. And I go up and I say, thank you for doing the press conference. This is really important. And he says, good luck. I don't know how you're going to do it. And 400,000 people later I'm like, great. And the question I get asked most of the time is, so are they still coming to concerts, these young people? Are they going to be subscribers? Are they going to be this? Are they going to be that? And I was like, good question. I should ask know, because I don't know what's happened.
[00:13:50.860] - Ross Binnie
And even if they've left Cleveland and they've gone somewhere else, great. Hopefully they're not afraid of the orchestra. That's the.
[00:14:01.110] - Jill S. Robinson
Of the part of the fabric of our education system with school concerts and other things that have gone by the wayside in so many communities is exactly this just familiarity with it. So if nothing else, then that. But yes, we're going to talk today and then unpack the data and look at demography, look at migration, look at what we call loyalty, or the recurring revenue or recurring attendance of these different segments to see so that we can tell a story. Come next spring, you and I will get back together again and tell this audience and hope it's good news, even.
[00:14:47.530] - Ross Binnie
If it's not it's educational if it's.
[00:14:50.350] - Jill S. Robinson
Not totally it's the point. Right, right. And I know that you're interested in that, too, and you've got the sense of humor and all of it to carry off all of the narratives no matter what they are. Okay, so in preparation for this, I kind of bucketed your programs, which are there's like a half a dozen or eight of them, but there are programs for young people under 18. That's a massive one. You can start wherever you want, but maybe there and then there are programs for students that are college student in orientation. And then there are these super innovative, innovative programs that are really leading the way as today. We're talking about the death of the subscription and new models for how we create frequency and loyalty that we'll talk about. So should we start with the under eighteen S?
[00:15:50.250] - Ross Binnie
I think that's the place to start. Of the 400,000 people that have been through these programs, young people, half of them have come through our summer venue at Blossom Music Center, and the other half have come through Severance Music Center students. So half of them are in the under 18s bucket.
[00:16:18.590] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah. Blossom Music Center paragraph just describe outdoor venue, popular music, and orchestral music also.
[00:16:26.230] - Ross Binnie
Yeah, we own the venue Live Nation program, the big gigs, and we program Pops and classical concerts as a summer outdoors. If you haven't been, it is unbelievably beautiful.
[00:16:41.950] - Jill S. Robinson
It's thousands and thousands of people.
[00:16:44.030] - Ross Binnie
It's in the middle of Cuyahoga National Park. It is absolutely gorgeous. And it was built for the orchestra. It was opened in 68, I believe.
[00:16:53.740] - Jill S. Robinson
My late business partner, Rick Lester, worked at the Cleveland Orchestra all those years ago.
[00:16:59.410] - Ross Binnie
He was marketed he was in my job back.
[00:17:02.770] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, he was. And so there's Blossom, and then there's also Severance Hall or Severance Music Center, which is when we opened we were talking about Severance.
[00:17:13.100] - Ross Binnie
And it's that's right. That's our September through May winter venue, essentially.
[00:17:19.460] - Jill S. Robinson
Okay, so under 18s program started at Blossom outdoor, popular.
[00:17:24.450] - Ross Binnie
Then the summer of 2011, we introduced under 18s free. My wife and I were sitting out having a picnic when I was when I first came down here and the summer before. And she said, you know, sitting out on the lawn with our four kids, this should be free for the kids for $50. We can have a great night out with a picnic, and the kids can run around and we can enjoy a night out together. It's better value than a movie. She had far more plans than that. But the notion of this just made a ton of sense economically as well, because it's not necessarily the kids I want. It's actually those parents, the young parents who are buying tickets for the very first time. After that first season, we did about 13,000 under 18s free that summer, and 50% of those households were brand new. We're just trying it out so it was creating some real energy. And the next fall we introduced it at Severance Music Center to our Sunday concerts and our Friday concerts under 18 free. The parents have a little more of a white knuckle approach to that. They're a bit more nervous about the Severance it's the inside situation.
[00:19:06.650] - Jill S. Robinson
Did you change anything operationally for those concerts, or were they identical?
[00:19:12.110] - Ross Binnie
There was a bit of internal panic about what was going to happen at Blossom, about noise and kids running around. But it's a beautiful lawn. People sort of get it most. And at Severance we've had very few incidents of disruption over these years, so I can't say we actually did. But there was the usual orchestral panic about how it's going to go, and it was a pleasant surprise.
[00:19:47.510] - Jill S. Robinson
In the theater world, relaxed performances have become a real asset. Are you familiar with relaxed performances in theater?
[00:19:56.610] - Ross Binnie
Not really, no.
[00:19:59.210] - Jill S. Robinson
I remember learning about them in the UK first, but they're happening in the US and North America too, and they are performances that are designed to enable people who have physical realities that might cause them to need to be not. You know, it can be anything from I might need to use a light to see, I might need to not sit, I might have tourette's whatever it is, and I don't know, but I assume that children are welcomed in that kind of environment. Children who might need that same kind of freedom and flexibility. So I was curious, the orchestral field is notoriously stuffy and formal. It hasn't always been that way, but we've evolved to that. And Severance is a very formal place. So I was just curious whether or not and I'm hearing no. I'm also curious about how you spent to communicate from a marketing point of view. These free, did you tag it or did you campaign it?
[00:21:01.980] - Ross Binnie
We campaigned it. It's in all the materials that it's Sundays and Fridays. And to offset some of the panic, we still haven't moved to Thursdays, which is our traditional board member opening night. And our Saturday nights are much more formal. Date night, if you like.
[00:21:21.540] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, for sure.
[00:21:23.110] - Ross Binnie
And Sundays, we've always found the skew in the audience was older and younger because they're Sunday matinees. And the Fridays I treat as more of a happy hour, sort of. If there was going to be a relaxed night, it would probably be on a Friday.
[00:21:41.690] - Jill S. Robinson
Okay.
[00:21:42.220] - Ross Binnie
Even though the concept may be the same, the branding of each day, it just feels slightly different when you're in the space.
[00:21:48.220] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, well, and that's part of Brand, right? What is it I experience while I'm there?
[00:21:54.190] - Ross Binnie
Yeah.
[00:21:54.910] - Jill S. Robinson
Okay, so you launch in eleven. By twelve. You're in Severance Music Center. I don't know if there's more that you want to say about the under 18s.
[00:22:03.300] - Ross Binnie
No, it grew and grew at its height. We like to say by the end of by about the 1819 season, we were at our peak, and we were saying 20% of our audience was under the age of 25.
[00:22:22.170] - Jill S. Robinson
Wow.
[00:22:23.370] - Ross Binnie
And that's so student programs. Yeah. The energy, you could just feel it. I think part of the success of all of these programs is not treating the students and the under. Eighteen s to the kids table. I e. Oh, by the way, the back two rows are good for the students. If there's a great seat available and a subscriber exchange is out of it, put a young person in the seat. It's not a big deal. In fact, the audience love to see young people sitting around them and engaged fully, and it just happens they get a price break.
[00:23:04.620] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:23:06.070] - Ross Binnie
I think it's a huge point for all of us that are thinking, oh, I've got to get rid of the back three rows of the balcony. How am I going to do it? Oh, young people. It's such an insult.
[00:23:17.770] - Jill S. Robinson
Totally. What did Milt say? Did he observe changes?
[00:23:22.270] - Ross Binnie
Yeah, he can see, I mean, particularly at Blossom. When you go out to Blossom and it's a 20,000 seat venue, and you've got 10,000 people there, which is good for us, and there's so many young people there, you can't miss it. And he's just like, I remember, you know, someone about a year or two into this, I was doing a newspaper interview about how it had gone, and they said, So what motivates you? What's made it successful? And I'm like, well, quite simply, I have to go and see the donor every year, report out. And there's nothing like just a simple question, well, how's it going, Ross, for you to like, I better get on with Know and take it pretty seriously. And he noticed, and he even said on one occasion, it's so give you give philanthropic gifts. It's really good to see real results happening in real time.
[00:24:20.990] - Jill S. Robinson
Right.
[00:24:22.750] - Ross Binnie
So he's very happy with it.
[00:24:24.920] - Jill S. Robinson
I'm looking at your data that you shared with me in the 1011 season, 8% of your audiences were 25 years old and younger.
[00:24:35.470] - Ross Binnie
And that's an arbitrary line I've made, that most students will be under 25.
[00:24:40.700] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:24:41.910] - Ross Binnie
It's not like I can ask particularly.
[00:24:44.490] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, no, it's a fair delineation. But by the fiscal 19, 1819, it was 20%. And to have 20% of your audiences be comprised of younger people is a massive positive change. But it's also 200,000 young people plus their families.
[00:25:08.870] - Ross Binnie
50% knew, and it drove revenue up. There's a risk. Everyone's like, if only 8000, and those 8000 are essentially students at that time. Right. They're not under 18s, because very few would have been bought a ticket pre this. So to see the revenue growth, so you assess, is there a risk going on here? Initially, no, I didn't see one. We can increase the students, therefore the revenue will go up, and we'll talk about students in a second. And then the under 18s. If these are 50% new households, these are the people that were sitting at home going, oh, let's just take the kids to the movie. Right. And therefore we're carving out some of that wallet, too.
[00:26:04.980] - Jill S. Robinson
Right. Okay, so let's talk about students. There's the student advantage program, the student ambassadors program, and frequent fan cards. Yeah.
[00:26:19.420] - Ross Binnie
Go. The student advantage was always there. It's not like this was just we had to reinvigorate those 8000 you talked about before. The center for Future Audiences essentially were registered students who could buy a discounted ticket before they came. The beauty of this was thinking of it again, opening the door because they could only sit in certain sections. It was definitely segregated to some degree and thinking about how often they came. So I think we did the research that we have something like 60,000 students within 30 miles, whether it's case Cleveland State, as far away as Baldwin Wallace. We have a lot of students close by, and we worked out they were coming like one, just over one, maybe 1.2 times a year. And I wondered if and this was a shot in the dark without research, I wondered if and I noticed they were all coming early in the season. So I presumed that professors were saying, you have to go to the Cleveland Orchestra. Right. And it was tick the box and that's off their list. And I wondered if it was they were running out of money. As a parent, I know kids run out of money towards the end of the second semester, specifically in the spring, and I thought if I could get we started selling Frequent Fan cards, which were a $50 purchase.
[00:27:57.310] - Ross Binnie
They're still a $50 purchase. It makes no difference whether it's 50, 60 or 70, but it's still a $50 purchase. You can come free as a student to any concert, assuming that there are tickets that the Cleveland Orchestra is doing at Severance. And we found that students took us up on this $50. They only had to go more than three times to get their money back. And great date night. And we saw the numbers going up in the spring when they were running out of money. They still had something to do on a Saturday night.
[00:28:32.620] - Jill S. Robinson
Right. So the frequency went from 1.2 to five.
[00:28:35.780] - Ross Binnie
Yeah. Over five. Just super. So it's better than ever. And people took us up on the offer. And it's better than having to pay for a house when people actually are willingly paying for it and coming. And we were getting more money per student than we ever had before.
[00:28:57.500] - Jill S. Robinson
Right. So now you've got 1300 of these cards issued.
[00:29:02.190] - Ross Binnie
Yeah. At our peak, it was over nearly 1900. I think I see that.
[00:29:07.390] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:29:07.740] - Ross Binnie
And then into the pandemic. It dropped off quite a bit.
[00:29:12.910] - Jill S. Robinson
Naturally, we're all growing back again.
[00:29:16.000] - Ross Binnie
It's on its way back. It's such a good deal. And we've had universities actually buy them for their students, which is nice, rather than doing it individually. Because one of the challenges and I'll get on to the ambassadors as a result of this, one of the challenges is people have asked me, well, how have you done all this? It's really, really tiring, really exhausting work, really on the ground. It's setting up tables at university, welcome events. It's very hands on, it's very day to day and it's not necessarily lucrative, so it's not easy work. And the students are always leaving.
[00:30:04.510] - Jill S. Robinson
Built in churn. Right.
[00:30:05.730] - Ross Binnie
So it's constant churn. One of the things we brought in were these ambassadors. We would give them a fan card and say, can you just go and work your work it for us.
[00:30:18.510] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, right.
[00:30:19.700] - Ross Binnie
And some of them are great. Some of them have come from quite a long way away. There's the guy that used to come from college in New York, and he would get a van and he would fill it with his friends and bring them down. He would do the whole concierge thing.
[00:30:37.940] - Jill S. Robinson
Wow.
[00:30:38.420] - Ross Binnie
I mean, he was probably our super ambassador, but it sort of just creates an ability to make sure your marketing department don't have to do it's so time intensive. And after the pandemic, when you're trying to get everybody else back, this is one of the things that's slower to crank up.
[00:30:57.890] - Jill S. Robinson
Again, it's a really clever way to address the investment need for this kind of program. Pre or post pandemic, how we spend our time and money. I know something you obsess about as a person who really has always focused on revenue and the return on that. And it's so much different to see a friend recommend or someone my own age, someone who looks more like me recommending something like that, than somebody who's our age or somebody who doesn't.
[00:31:32.480] - Ross Binnie
Well, you're a teacher and I'm a teacher. Right. I teach marketing to arts administrators of the future. And I'm like, look, the number one thing, hands over fist. It doesn't matter how good my ad is, it's word of mouth, isn't it? It's 90% better than anything else. So word of mouth is the answer here.
[00:31:56.590] - Jill S. Robinson
I actually didn't ask you. Do you recall or do you know now how much you have to invest in the under 18s program? How much of your budget gets allocated ish either on a percentage or a real?
[00:32:08.870] - Ross Binnie
I can't answer that right off the top. I could probably find hardly anything now. It's just tagged in every brochure.
[00:32:16.790] - Jill S. Robinson
That makes good sense. And for the student program, is it mostly time or is there a budget?
[00:32:24.650] - Ross Binnie
There's a budget and it goes through, essentially, our group sales operation. Do a great job with this. There's a small budget, we should probably increase it, we should probably reflect on how much we do spend on it. But as things got tight, coming out this coming out, this crisis, we've looked at it, but it feels like it's time for a reinvestment.
[00:32:51.580] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah. And do you know what, on an annual basis, how much students deliver on an income? On the income side?
[00:32:59.420] - Ross Binnie
On the income side, I remember running it, it was about a third of a million at one point. It's way more than it ever was.
[00:33:11.500] - Jill S. Robinson
Right. Consequential. And so I ask these questions because it's important to celebrate an investment in future audiences. And the income side of it is certainly philanthropic. I mean, it's certainly philanthropic, but these programs are also delivering income. So we've got 50% of under 18 households new. We've got parents buying tickets for themselves. That's a new revenue stream. Completely brand new revenue stream for the orchestra. Then you have the student programs. Now, if you operate in a market that only has one small college, the scale would be different. Maybe the decision to invest here might be different. But if you operate in a market like Cleveland, where there's multiple universities and multiple pathways, this is certainly something to be looking at. Let's move to then, the last category of the programs under the center for Future Audiences. And these are new programs, members Club. Members Club, rather. And TCO rewards. These are programs I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but they are purposefully different than the subscription offering. What was the genesis? What was the need and sense of urgency?
[00:34:39.340] - Ross Binnie
We're going to talk about the death of subscription anyway. But my belief back to in Detroit, I've always believed that there is a solution that is omnipotent. And I've tried a lot of things that are really bad. Like when Priceline came in with Name Your Own Price, I was the first in Detroit to like, yeah, name your own Price people. And I'm not going to tell you how embarrassing that was and how low the average value of a seat turned out to be, but I've always believed that story.
[00:35:17.720] - Jill S. Robinson
I don't know, I'm super. Like, seriously, did people lowball it?
[00:35:22.230] - Ross Binnie
Did it go okay? So it came out at like a dollar 58. I'll tell you, there's a wake up call to what you think. I mean, I would be embarrassed to offer now, we could turn some down, but it was an interesting experiment. But anyway, that's completely on the side. But I've always believed there's an egalitarian approach to making sure there's something for everyone. And there's always, I thought, been a gap between a curated subscription and a single ticket buyer.
[00:36:05.270] - Jill S. Robinson
Right, I agree.
[00:36:06.930] - Ross Binnie
And as the world has changed from this notion have you ever read what's the book? Bowling?
[00:36:19.750] - Jill S. Robinson
Oh, I know. The book. Bowling. I know when you say that word.
[00:36:23.460] - Ross Binnie
Yeah, we'll have to Google it. Anyway, the concept here is about how Americans values have changed from being belonging to flexibility and how belonging is still important. But things like bowling leagues, orchestra subscriptions, churches, all have got to embrace flexibility somehow. And I've always thought. That the fixed seat curated package. In this day and age, it's impossible for me to ask in February or March somebody to make their plans for the June of next year. And with the Netflixes of the world, where I don't know if your credit card bill is the same as mine, but the end of every month, I'm like, how many 599s do I need?
[00:37:22.730] - Jill S. Robinson
Right. Completely.
[00:37:24.300] - Ross Binnie
I believe this model could work in our business, especially when the number of doctors that I heard from, like, I can't subscribe. I just don't know. But I want to come a lot. So for a monthly fee, which is 29, which program are we talking about?
[00:37:42.930] - Jill S. Robinson
Which one?
[00:37:43.390] - Ross Binnie
This is a members club.
[00:37:44.710] - Jill S. Robinson
Yes.
[00:37:44.990] - Ross Binnie
Okay. For a monthly fee of $29, you become a year round member. And you can use this at Blossom. You can use this at Severance. You could use it in Miami, where we perform as well. If you wanted to go to Europe, I'd get you these tickets. Wow. And you can come to as many concerts as you like for $10 a pop. Steeply discounted tickets, as long as you're a member of the members club. And the people that are enrolled in it, which is over 300 at the moment, has become a fiercely protective group of make sure you don't get rid of it. They love it because they can just book their seats for $10 a pop. And if they like the concert so much, they can come three times in a row. We don't care.
[00:38:31.250] - Jill S. Robinson
And the members club, do you know what the average frequency is in any given year?
[00:38:37.570] - Ross Binnie
It was up over six, and I think it's growing. It's the first of our subscription packages to come back actually to normalize after the Pandemic. People are spreading out. If you add up the amount of money they're spending at 29 a month and the $10 tickets they buy, it is an equivalent of a curated package. We're not losing a penny over it.
[00:39:02.430] - Jill S. Robinson
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
[00:39:04.490] - Ross Binnie
And they've got this flexibility to use it in the summer. Right. They can just go to Blossom.
[00:39:11.230] - Jill S. Robinson
Private receptions and other things for them. Are you curating experiences for this group of people?
[00:39:18.110] - Ross Binnie
We were. We did some research about just before the Pandemic, we did some research. And what are you wanting from this? And meeting each other was not one of them. I don't mean that as an insult. They just didn't want to be part. I don't want to be a member of this club that wants to be members with me sort of thing. I like the flexibility. I like to go with my partner. I like to just use it. And we found that it was very value oriented. So a members night behind the scenes is not that's much more in the category of what we do with our young professionals group, say, The Circle, right. Where you're joining for a social experience.
[00:40:05.330] - Jill S. Robinson
Right?
[00:40:05.970] - Ross Binnie
But this is very much seems a transactional experience, which is fine by me as well.
[00:40:13.940] - Jill S. Robinson
You launched this in the fall of 2016, so 2016 17 season. And you did find that research also found that it was younger mid career professionals who were attending. Is that still through this channel?
[00:40:32.870] - Ross Binnie
It is this it's this gap that we found in people who had sort of graduated. I mean, you're going to help me tell that story, but I'm hoping it's the people that graduated through whether it's a student program or an under 18 somewhere, a young professionals program who wanted to subscribe but really didn't want to be told what to do, when to do it. And we found that these people are absolutely in that category. We're just beginning to ramp up the marketing again. We have this gap in the middle of everything going to hell. We never sort of have taken the next step, I believe. But we've now got, for example, our telemarketing operations now offer that as a subscription option.
[00:41:33.860] - Jill S. Robinson
So the Members Club around 300 and The Circle around 100 right now, but had been 300. We're in this period. The difference the target audience or the people addressed are similar. The difference is the Circle is a circle of friends and I do some things with them and the Members Club is my path transactionally for flexibility and value.
[00:41:57.120] - Ross Binnie
Correct? That's a beautiful way to put it. The Circle is as much a fundraising activity, so some of their events might be tailgating out at Blossom together before a concert rather than it's a purely transactional thing and they will do eight to ten of these events a year and it's much more structured. So it's a slightly different pitch.
[00:42:30.970] - Jill S. Robinson
We're going to get to rewards here in a minute, which is truly something new. But a couple of thoughts occur. One is that at TRG prior to the Pandemic, you know well, that we were focused on allocating resources for the biggest return and this market segment called 18 to 30 was notoriously difficult and there was lots of data that talked about a lack of frequency, lack of philanthropy. Just I used to tell the story that my dad was a classical music subscriber and I asked him, were you in your twenty s? And he laughed and said, of course not. And in the context of all of our eyes being on 2000 and 32,040 which I think I celebrate so much the fact that the pandemic woke us up to the realities of change in our communities and the realities of the need to really think about how we sustainably, operate and move past what's right in front of us to what's in front of us here in a decade or so. And that's demographic change in communities everywhere in the west and these kinds of programs that find a way to allow younger and different people a path to the fine performing arts let's just call it and I'd put theater in that camp too, even though that's not the intention, hardly ever.
[00:44:02.240] - Jill S. Robinson
Theater is probably the most it tries to be and I think in many ways is the most accessible. These kind of programs, they feel really important. So I just want to say that and name that to people who might know me and heard me say things or have heard TRG speak to these things.
[00:44:21.950] - Ross Binnie
I think you're right and I think it's aren't people aren't dumb and they just need to give it a run. And I don't for the life of me believe that you go to the I mean, many people do believe that you go to the Cleveland Orchestra and you're immediately in love, I reckon four in every hundred that happens to right. That seems to be the industry standard. But that's not to say you shouldn't know that the door is open to you. And I don't think from a marketing perspective, we do ourselves any favor. When we've tried in the past and maybe it's just the way I think about it, but we've tried to and I've definitely been guilty of this familiarize or colloquialize or call our maestro Gustavo, or whatever it is, actually, the crowd want sincerity. They want to know that we're going to still wear the proper kit and take them very seriously. They just want the flexibility of the access to keep with it. So when our brands drift and I'm not opposed to a 45 minutes concert with lots of drinking, don't get me wrong, but when our brands drift to that's the play and not the music and not the experience, I think we sometimes get in danger of just sort of drifting away and not dealing with what we're good at.
[00:45:57.820] - Ross Binnie
People want us to do what we're good at.
[00:46:00.290] - Jill S. Robinson
I love that, I think is super interesting. In the era of oh, my God, panic, oh, my God, there has to be a silver bullet. Oh, my God, we're going to turn ourselves into a pretzel. Oh, my God. It's price. It's this, it's that. The subscription is dying. Oh, my God. We're dying. And at the Cleveland Orchestra, subscription fixed seat curated subscription has been a model for decades and decades and decades. There is still, what's, the largest subscription package curated that you have?
[00:46:38.810] - Ross Binnie
Maybe 22 this year. It's nonsense, really, to think that. Anyway, back in it, I tell this story a lot. I've got this chart of our subscription sales from 1986.
[00:46:52.670] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:46:53.810] - Ross Binnie
And we, I believe, were probably the last orchestra that used to always sell out on subscription. Right. Rick was probably a judge and it was all about remember the sports? And we were at 95, 100% house fill every week and it was all sold in subscriptions so we could care less about a single ticket buyer. Right. And then as subscriptions wane over the next 50, 40 years or whatever, we forgot to care about single ticket buyers and realized, oh, my God. But back in 1986, only 8000 households bought all the tickets. It was just a great big country club. And you can imagine what they looked like, right. And the profile of those people and how exclusionary must that have been for those 8000 households to buy all the tickets. And at the end of the year, I suspect and I'm being dramatic here, but I suspect it was like a country club where they divide up the fundraising bill between those 8000 households right. To balance the books.
[00:48:04.870] - Jill S. Robinson
We forgot to market, in your case, to single ticket buyers. But I still see this is part of the argument that you and I have had before. I believe that the question today is not, is the subscription dead and gone? But what are both two things? What are the tactics? What are the strategies that we're using to encourage people to enjoy and value a subscription? And remember that if you dig classical music, if you actually dig it, there is a benefit to having these dates in your calendar and these seats that you enjoy. And what we don't invest in, we do not invest in, is the retention of and the selling of. And it was the late 80s, early 90s, when clever marketing staff began to go, oh, we're going to start surveying audiences about what they want, we're going to start using market research. And we believe that the subscription is a model that is dying. And because we believe it, we let it happen. Do I think that it's the only avenue? Absolutely not. It's both and but the decline when recurring revenues and subscription is growing in every other industry wyatt is so welcomed to be dead in hours.
[00:49:33.460] - Jill S. Robinson
Like, I could be on a soapbox for years about this.
[00:49:35.890] - Ross Binnie
Well, conceptually, I mean, there's a break here in my mind between the academic and the practical reality of I agree with you. I don't believe subscribing is dead. I believe that the way we do it, institutionally is based on our ticketing systems having to be built a certain way. We're flying a plane and therefore so you go to most of our websites and the first question you're asked is, what day of the week do you want to come? And I'm like, for 20 years I've been apoplectic, but why don't we ask the customers what they'd like to see? But, oh, no, the system has to tell you. You've got to go into the Thursdays before I can tell you what the concerts are. And until we can rework the way, like, stop thinking about ourselves and think about what the customer's experience gosh. And it's based on our ticketing systems or based on our practical. And I've worked with these ticketing systems, not the one we use now, but back in the early, before I got into when I was in the UK, I worked on with a ticketing system company and it was all about, well, it's built this way and we don't want to create spaghetti.
[00:50:58.760] - Ross Binnie
I get it. And that was the early days of computers. It just seems to me now with and I don't know anything about AI, so I'm about to get into enormous amounts of trouble. But with all that stuff, I should just be able to go onto the Cleveland Orchestra website, click the buttons of concerts I'm interested in, and it puts a package together for me and then sells me the seat that's available.
[00:51:19.670] - Jill S. Robinson
There it is, ladies and gentlemen, I agree with you entirely if we stop.
[00:51:25.720] - Ross Binnie
Because I can do that for just about everything else.
[00:51:28.250] - Jill S. Robinson
Totally. Totally, totally.
[00:51:30.370] - Ross Binnie
And so I'm not opposed to the death of the subscription concept. The death of the packaging of the subscription concept may be my academic sort of jump off.
[00:51:41.720] - Jill S. Robinson
I bought a subscription in my local community and I couldn't get there a lot of the time. In some markets, the flexibility to they allowed me to exchange everywhere and anywhere so that I could get to the end of the season and still feel like there was some level of value. And we are not always very flexible about that. These systems are arcane and they were built in the we still act like it's the 80s in lots of places.
[00:52:09.030] - Ross Binnie
And I feel sometimes I probably think like the 80s more than most people. But again, it's about playing this long game. I want you to not panic about I mean, go back to the Members Club. When we did the research, what was the number one panic that was on their minds? The number one panic was on their minds was like no disrespect to Southwest Airlines, but, oh, my God, the seating is not reserved. Am I going to get a good seat? So all we had to do was yeah, because we're going to allow you to do it more than three weeks in advance or know you can do it when you're ready and sort of creating those barriers. But listening. To what the people were saying. I just want you as someone who's going to come to the Cleveland Orchestra to find a path that works right and not have loads of bullets. So if you want to fix it and us to curate it, trust me, that's not going away. It's still the biggest revenue stream for the least cost that we have. And our goal is always to how slow can we make that decline?
[00:53:23.630] - Ross Binnie
And if you get a new music directory or you open a new building or whatever the three things are that always make it boost, you get a little bump back up and then you let it go. But it's managing for that.
[00:53:35.200] - Jill S. Robinson
The Future audiences is about the future mechanisms for audiences to engage. And in the circle in the Members Club, you've got younger than the traditional audience. I think this is also true with TCO Rewards. This is brand spank anew. So Rewards is a points program.
[00:53:55.830] - Ross Binnie
Yeah, I get in trouble when I call it points for play. You're not earning money, you are getting rewarded for coming. If you're a subscriber, you get points. Right. And we want you to use it for upgraded experiences. That's a slight nuance, but we sort of only just started it in August of 2022. The initial results are sort of extraordinarily good. So wait a minute.
[00:54:34.850] - Jill S. Robinson
Describe it. If you apply or enroll in the Rewards program, then there's a system that is outside of Tessatura or outside of your CRM that helps you manage Jill's transactions and receive rewards for those transactions regardless of what it is. Do I receive a reward for philanthropic engagement?
[00:54:58.990] - Ross Binnie
Yes, and you receive a reward for watching our videos and you receive award for watching this. We went with a product called Crowd Twist that is powered by Oracle and they do things like Disney, Marvel, red Bull racing for Formula One is the and we're sort of the nonprofit oh, that's interesting. But it's really to engage people loyalty. And we're finding it's mostly single ticket buyers, which is the entire goal, to get single ticket buyers to come more often. We're finding that early research showed that 26% of we did two pools, people who were in the Rewards program and people who weren't. And the people that were in the Rewards program spent 26% more.
[00:55:57.870] - Jill S. Robinson
That's meaningful.
[00:55:59.470] - Ross Binnie
Potentially. I mean, we're only a year in, exactly a year in, but the enrollment is way ahead of our pace. It's sort of 20,000 people now have enrolled.
[00:56:10.860] - Jill S. Robinson
Wow.
[00:56:13.090] - Ross Binnie
And they're getting to the point now where they've got enough points to do stuff. So that's going to be the interesting next because they didn't have enough to buy things. But we're seeing people upgrade into box seats and use it for all sorts of things or merchandise or whatever. But that's going to be the next thing. Will they spend their points or will they hoard them till I eventually have to fly them to Europe for three weeks with the orchestra?
[00:56:42.950] - Jill S. Robinson
Do you have systems that enable do you know when I walk into the concert hall that I'm a Rewards member?
[00:56:50.670] - Ross Binnie
No, not necessarily. Except, you know, when you beep on Tessatura, you're going to get your points automatically. So you get rewarded just for coming. You get rewarded for subscribing and then you get rewarded on top of that for coming, for showing up right. Or making sure somebody does show up.
[00:57:12.630] - Jill S. Robinson
There's an app, I actually don't know if it still exists, but a former colleague of mine left TRG way early in our business and went and became a real leader in tech and he was involved in an app called Experience App that was used in sports and it used beacon technology. So that when I walk up to the venue and I'm a subscriber or other defined loyalist. It directs me on my cell phone to specific lines, specific benefits, specific things. And I think about this kind of program, and I think about the resources that not everyone has, but in the context of tech today, these costs are going way down to build this technology in. And I think about that at Blossom or at Severance as a we're certainly.
[00:58:04.920] - Ross Binnie
Working on our app, our TCO app.
[00:58:10.260] - Jill S. Robinson
Okay.
[00:58:11.150] - Ross Binnie
And that is part of a later phase where you will be able to go and zap in for your points. Yeah, but it's encouraging. We'll see how it goes, but I'm excited by it. I think it's something that people obviously love to do. I mean, we just had a call yesterday from someone who feared their points were going to expire. If you haven't logged in for a year, your points expire and was having a panic attack. What could I buy? What could I buy? It's like, don't worry, I'll make it sure they don't run out. You just relax.
[00:58:45.730] - Jill S. Robinson
Okay, so 20,000 households, and of the people who are purchasing that use that rewards program, compared to people who look like them, who aren't, we're getting 26% more engagement, more participation and frequency. So we're a year in, but there's.
[00:59:03.300] - Ross Binnie
A there there it's very early. I mean, who knows? But I'm just really excited. It tends to be the single ticket.
[00:59:12.760] - Jill S. Robinson
Patrons that are and having the capacity and ability to track not just ticketing and subscription philanthropy, the transactions, but also your engagement with online content. There's really interesting applications there to organizations, especially, actually, as we're starting to invest more in digital, we are, because we learned during the pandemic how important those resources are. And getting people to engage with that kind of content, too, is really interesting to me. Okay, so I want to, before we go, talk about a reality that everyone's facing right now, which is there's a lot of staff churn, and there's been a lot of transition during the past three and a half years. And there's no question that these kinds of programs we've talked about it. They require systems, they require people, they require a focus on new and on retention. And even in a big organization like the Cleveland Orchestra, the pressures to focus on the now and the things that are immediate and urgent, I know are ferocious. How do you, with your team, stay focused on growing frequency, growing loyalty, growing the future while you're in the maelstrom of recovering from the present?
[01:00:47.450] - Ross Binnie
Wow, that's a good question. I think we suffer. Like, most fundamentally, I think it's my job. If there was something about my job, it's to run interference, to make sure we can stay and play the long game that we're always playing the long game. We have a position, which is a patron advancement officer, for want of a better term. That's John's title, and he's the one that came with the rewards idea and he's the one that is always looking about this funnel, right? Let's make sure the funnel is at least wide enough for fundraising to have an even money chance and grow that so we can expand the front end all we like through the center for future audiences with our students and young people and all that. But if there isn't somebody absolutely focused on making sure that pipeline and that connection and that communication is there now it's really hard because you're right, each marketing person is only as good as the last gig. Usually in our business I've often said we're like baseball managers, you go on a bit of a losing streak, it's time to move on, right. And we don't do a good job of marketing brand.
[01:02:24.870] - Ross Binnie
We market a new car every week essentially.
[01:02:28.060] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, right.
[01:02:28.760] - Ross Binnie
And so the focus on the short term is relentless and it's one of the things I've not necessarily successfully changed or I know how to think about it. So having somebody dedicated to that process is a good idea that make to making sure that they're thinking about the wider opportunity here. But you're right, the turnover is dramatic people. It's hard enough in our business I don't know if it's the same, you should tell me in theater and other disciplines, but it's hard enough getting to grips with what we do each week in our product and the nuances. And then there's all the unsaid things about marketing in our business that, oh, you can't do that because so and so is going to have a fit and all that takes so long to learn to be thinking about the big picture. And I think it clouds us. I think it blocks our ability to behave like other industries would. So I go back to subscription model. Oh, we've built them like this for 100 years, why are we going to change now? And we've been talking about the death of audiences since 1920, right? And it hasn't happened so why would anyone believe us?
[01:03:50.540] - Ross Binnie
So in order to break these silos, I think, you know, the person that's sitting in the chair actually has to not panic at the first sign of audience decline or a couple of bad weeks and really say, what about those people and how are they doing? And have we looked after them recently? And have you noticed they haven't been coming? Or have they been coming? So we were just talking about you could beep in and you get rewarded for not for coming as a subscriber. Well, have we checked that? The person that isn't beeping know as long as nothing horrible has gone wrong here, let's find out what it would take for them to give their tickets away.
[01:04:43.050] - Jill S. Robinson
Right, I heard the reason I was so compelled to have this conversation with you Ross, is because this is the Cleveland Orchestra and it's actually proper to use that emphasis in this context. There are so many long held traditions of an institution this big with this much excellence behind it and future in front of it, and to be leading the way on new models in the context of this organization that is big and fussy and tradition bound in many respects. But to have this kind of innovation happening and to have someone with your experience, tenure and title be able to speak to conversations that I just had and we just had with a patron that suggests that there is opportunity for all of us. Like, if we can do it here, then it can be done. Things can be challenged and new ways can be created. I believe fervently in the subscription, as you know. I also could not agree more loudly that the ways that we do it think about us. We are so focused on what we need. There was somebody in a blog recently who posted that our marketing techniques in arts and culture are so dated and so not current that it's really kind of embarrassing.
[01:06:40.820] - Jill S. Robinson
And I thought, boy, oh, boy, is that spot on. And he was republishing a blog from, like, 15 years ago.
[01:06:49.550] - Ross Binnie
In my teaching, I read some of those blogs and I'm like, you're so right. We're so talking about how great we are. Stop it. Stop it. Now. People don't talk about how great you are because we've A, run out of superlatives and B, it just can't be more virtuosic the last week. So can we get on with it and say it's different or acknowledge and our brands are terribly I remember you said it when I left Detroit, you said to me, well done, you at the Cleveland Orchestra. I'm not sure. And I'm like just thinking about your summation. Maybe it is because it was like this. I think it's really important for anybody in a marketing position to sort of bully your way into a seat at the table. I know artistic are always going to lead in most of our arts organizations, artistic direction music directors. I get it. And I'm never going to tell them what to play.
[01:07:55.780] - Jill S. Robinson
It's part of the authentic way that we show up, though.
[01:07:58.920] - Ross Binnie
It is.
[01:08:00.230] - Jill S. Robinson
We don't want you to turn yourself into be authentically excellent and remember that we're here.
[01:08:06.470] - Ross Binnie
I know there's a crowd that love it and that's not and, you're know, back in the George Zale days, probably, of the Cleveland Orchestra, the audience was probably just an annoyance, quite frankly. Great music now. And that's what makes an orchestra that great in the first place, because they've totally blinkered on making great music. So therefore, the Cleveland Orchestra benefits from that. And I think now we have a place where people are like and we've got a huge audience that bloody love us. And with Adela and all the digital platforms, we've got an opportunity to go, oh, that little train really can do it. You know what I mean? And it's so cool. It's great fun to be part of. Just there's an awful lot of things to think about day in, day out.
[01:09:04.080] - Jill S. Robinson
Well, I have really admired your leadership. You're right. When you got the gig, we had worked together in Detroit, and your approach has been always to keep the customer at the center and to use your phrase, bully your way in. You aren't that. You find a way to charm your way in and to find a way to help people be reminded about the power of the music and the impact on the customer. But let's remember the customer, and let's not be afraid to test and learn and try and fail it's. Why? At the beginning, I said, we're going to talk in the spring, and there will be things that we wish had worked differently. And I'm confident we'll talk about it and we'll laugh about it.
[01:09:53.960] - Ross Binnie
Yeah, absolutely. Certainly orchestras, as I say, I don't have enough experience with the rest of the arts to suggest it, but certainly with the orchestras, you go to league conferences, there was always the person with a silver bullet, right, standing up during the presentation. And then you like a year later, you would go and you're like, wonder how that went? But you never heard from it again because everyone's so afraid to fail you're right. There's nothing wrong. I mean, you're making educated guesses with data as best you can. And in this day and age, we're probably more equipped than ever to make it. And down the road, more people will have more opportunities to make data driven decisions.
[01:10:40.090] - Jill S. Robinson
Technology is going to enable data to become so much more easily available, but.
[01:10:48.650] - Ross Binnie
It'S really important that everybody still keeps their identity somewhat unique. So whatever your brand of your arts organization is, you know how what's a good example. Malls have become generic with the same shops and the same orders because they're data driven and they know if they're next to so and so, they do better. And it's all tiny margins if we all get to a place where we're all doing exactly the same thing because we don't have those different identities. Like La. New York and Cleveland have three very different identity orchestras. And great. So they should be we should be using best practice, probably a bit more, but at the same time, there's no one customer in those three markets, no question.
[01:11:41.640] - Jill S. Robinson
And most of the customers for any arts and cultural institutions are local. I mean, you have a national audience, a global audience, but most of your audiences are local on a volume basis.
[01:11:55.350] - Ross Binnie
Whether all our revenue is going to come through the local, because it's about pride. It's like whatever university you went to, you're probably more prone to give to that one than the one you live next door to. Right?
[01:12:11.140] - Jill S. Robinson
And in the context of I hear and second, your caution data, it's like back in the days of. Dynamic pricing and we all just wanted models that would make that happen automatically for us. We can't ever stop managing decisions and allowing technology to just do everything for us, including in the age of AI, when we know we've got to use technology to help make things faster and smarter and us more capable. But we have to be our most authentic experience, differentiated and communicated effectively, and use data to make, I believe, the best decisions around recurring and renewable income. Because you said it earlier, the subscription is still the largest proportion of income at that cost ratio. And that's therein lies the 2000 and 32,040 question from TRG's point of view, how do we create renewable, lower cost income and not just transactional, but relationships that our customers enjoy and that we enjoy following on? Listen, I could talk to you for a long, long time and have over time, but we will talk again in the spring on this same podcast. And we will revisit the center for Future Audiences and share what we've learned about the migration and change and sort of long term impact of this investment that Milt and others endorsed and made so possible through their giving and that you, through your leadership, I mean, that make possible and really continue to invest in.
[01:13:59.820] - Jill S. Robinson
Thank you so much for talking today.
[01:14:01.290] - Ross Binnie
Thank you, Jill. Appreciate it.
TRG Arts
That's all for this episode of Leading the Way with Gilles Robinson brought to you by TRG Arts. Thanks for listening and believing that insightful, daring and innovative leadership is the way to a more resilient future for the arts and cultural industry. Make sure to subscribe to Leading the Way on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And if you found this episode helpful, please rate and review the show for additional resources. And to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.