Reflections on the AMA Conference 2022
I was able to attend and speak at this year’s AMA Conference at East Side Studios in Birmingham on Friday 15 July. It was fantastic to see everyone in person again and reconnect with so many people.
I arrived late on Thursday evening as I had the privilege of saying goodbye to Marc for the last time. After dropping everything off at the hotel I went to the evening social at Fazeley Studios. It was amazing walking through Digbeth, there were artist studios, breweries and cultural spaces side to side with working industrial units and factories.
The Custard Factory in Digbeth
The card machines broke as soon as I arrived, so no refreshing pint for me! (This didn’t stop the majority of arts marketers partying into the early hours apparently). I joined the other Akers on the arts and culture tech scene Matt (my brother) and the rest of the Spektrix team for a good chinwag.
With the group was Hugh Topping, we got chatting about the challenges of surveying audiences for funded organisations, collecting diversity and inclusion data, and what crowdEngage can do to help.
On the walk home we bumped into the lovely Supercool team and Crayg Ward (Theatr Clwyd) who were dancing the night away in a Cuban bar (thanks for the drink Kate!).
Conversations and catch ups
On Friday I joined two other Tech Champions, Hansel McKoy (Search Engine Marketing) and Jacqueline Ewers (Email Marketing), at our stand in the main area. We were there to build awareness of the Digital Culture Network (DCN), get the message out about our free 1-2-1 support for Arts and Culture organisations in England, and network with suppliers.
“Develop and increase digital skills and maturity of the arts and cultural sector in England”
Introducing the free Digital Culture Network support to Temi Salau of Sound and Music
Talking to all the ticketing providers highlighted the recent and ongoing challenge of getting organisations switched over to Google Analytics 4 (or alternatives) since Google announced it was closing down Universal Analytics. There are loads of opportunities here to share knowledge and templates to get everyone switched over before the deadline next July.
I spoke to Soph McCormack-Gow at After Digital who has taken it all to the next level, implementing server side tracking for their clients. We’ve had a further chat since the conference about partnering on content, so expect to see some things through the DCN channels soon.
Caspian Turner of Accessible By Design popped over to our stand and we had a great chat about collaborative pieces for the DCN.
New and old Tech Champions: Jacqueline, Hansel and Nick
I caught up with with a few ex-colleagues, Nick Kime (Cog), Rachel Miller (The Lowry) and the queen of CRM, Helen Dunnett, who i’m working alongside for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Programme. Nick ran an excellent session on the practicalities of website development, it was great to see him in action again.
I also spoke to Aenne Lotze who I helped with Google Analytics and Tag Manager configurations way back in 2019 when Aenne worked at artsdepot. Aenne now works at Spektrix, providing analytical insight in the marketing team. It was wonderful to hear a tangible example of how the Digital Culture Network can help career development within the arts.
There were many more I bumped into for quick chats and others I spotted and would love to had caught up with, but time flies at these kind of events!
Why are you measuring that?
I ran an afternoon session to a packed room called Why are you measuring that?. It covered the importance of tying any metrics back to your organisational vision and how a marketing funnel can help categorise and focus what you need. I had a lot of fun being in a physical space with people again and it seemed to go down well.
“Measure what you value, don’t value what you measure”
I tied my content into the A New Adventure theme by taking the audience on a journey and including many nautical references (it may have featured The Little Mermaid 🧜♀️ more than once!).
I’ll be running an online version of the session in September, so please sign up and come along if you’re interested.
Main takeaways
I got to attend hardly any of the sessions as I was on the stand and delivering my own session, but the following reflections are based on the many discussions throughout Friday:
Simple, practical advice is always useful
There are brand new arts marketers joining organisations all the time as people move on and up in their careers. This means basic marketing concepts and ideas are worth repeating, regularly. It may be old news to some, but for most it will be the first time it’s been heard and will remain extremely valuable.
Related to this, the AMA have launched template job descriptions in a drive to combat the growing gulf between expectations of arts marketing roles and sector pay. We need to retain and develop the great talent already in place.
Everyone is busy working away in silos
All across the sector we are working in silos trying to overcome the same challenges. At the moment there is a lot of wasted energy and time striving to do the same thing. There needs to be a better way for Arts and Culture professionals to connect and share what is working well or ask for peer support.
The Arts Marketing Association Community Support group on Facebook (1,800 members) goes a long way towards this, but I wonder if there is an opportunity for something much bigger.
Would it be useful us or someone else to build a platform and community using something such as Mighty Networks to facilitate peer to peer support, shared learning and structured training courses?
We’re doing wonderful things
Being in the same room with 500 people working across arts, culture and heritage was a stark reminder of how wonderful our sector is.
No matter what arts organisation, supplier or agency you work for, your core objective is to help people experience great things. Isn’t that wonderful?
Finally…
Thank you AMA
The whole AMA team, Pilot Theatre and Stagetext were amazing and delivered a fantastic conference over the two days. To deliver an in person event again must have been extremely challenging. It was brilliant.
A special shout out to Ciara Harris and Abby Deem at the AMA, who organised everything with us in advance perfectly and were so accommodating when we had to change things at the last minute.