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FeedThe Wilmington Arts and Entertainment Marketing Initiative: A Campaign by Mobius New Media to Promote Arts, Entertainment, Dining, Nightlife and Shopping in the City
An arts and entertainment revolution happening right in your backyard… Are you in?
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The sheer number and diversity of the events listed on the site is astounding—except to those who work in the arts. They know that the city offers a strong entertainment and cultural structure historically anchored by five major institutions: The Grand Opera House, Delaware Theatre Company, Delaware Symphony Orchestra, Delaware Art Museum and OperaDelaware. World Cafe Live at The Queen is a new major addition, and there are scores of other first-rate arts and entertainment venues within the city and its environs.
So far, some 75 organizations are represented on the Web site. Small or large, all are included—the only criteria being that they must be arts and entertainment related. The scope is centralized in Wilmington, but extends to the suburbs, to include such venues such as Arden’s Gild Hall and Winterthur in Greenville.
“The web and mobile sites are amazing,” says Danielle Rice, director of the Delaware Art Museum. She credits the Web site for much of the success of a recent event at the museum that attracted a somewhat younger crowd—90 percent of whom said they had never been in the building previously. “Attendance far surpassed our expectations,” says Rice.
The Study that Started It All
The Wilmington Arts & Entertainment Marketing Initiative had its genesis in a 2009 study of 999 “cultural consumers”—those who attended at least two cultural activities in the past year and reside in Delaware and nearby areas of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Conducted by Slover-Linett, a noted research firm for the culture and education communities, the survey found that Wilmington’s culture and nightlife were virtually unknown to this sophisticated audience. Almost half the respondents had not attended any of the city’s major arts institutions in the last five years, and 27 percent could not name a single Wilmington cultural institution.
Those numbers got the attention of the arts community, and an advisory board was quickly formed to plan a marketing initiative. Board members are: Paul Weagraff, Director of Delaware Division of the Arts; Michelle Kramer-Fitzgerald, Owner of Arts in Media; John Rago, Director of Communications and Policy Management for the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs; Marty Hageman, Executive Director of Downtown Visions; Mark Fields, Managing Director at The Grand; and the Art Museum’s Rice.
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