Moving beyond the functional
Editor's note: Ron Halverson is president of the Chicago-based strategic agency Halverson Group. Mindy Cultra is managing director at Halverson Group.
It’s no secret that museum attendance in the U.S. is in decline among everyone but the 65+ set. People are busier than ever and competition for their free time is encroaching from all sides, whether it’s other cultural venues, alternative out-of-home activities or simply the allure of staying home and binging on Netflix. How does a museum remain relevant – and grow – in today’s distraction-filled digital age? The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) took on this vexing question in a unique way: by hiring a research agency to conduct a museum study using a methodology it typically applies to consumer brands. That agency was Chicago-based Halverson Group and that methodology is called Jobs to Be Won.
Instead of taking the familiar path of audience research – focusing, for example, on member and visitor perceptions of cultural institutions – Halverson Group broadened the IMA’s competitive set beyond other cultural institutions, focusing on all the life situations that motivate people to seek leisure activities of any kind. This is because a key tenet of Jobs to Be Won is to break through typical category walls and put one’s organization into the shoes of people navigating their busy, complex lives. The approach is to ask: What jobs do people need to get done in their lives and how can my product or service get “hired” for these jobs? Derived through survey design, a job to be won is a job that is winnable, viable and valuable enough for an organization to pursue for growth. And, in many cases, it makes sense to go after more than just one job.
It’s important to note that the hires people make to fulfill the jobs in their lives are not purely functional – they are rooted in deeper motivations. For example, we don’t hire lawn mowers to cut grass; instead, we hire them to keep up with the Joneses or take care of our homes. This emphasis on motivations is essential because while people often change the solutions to the jobs they are seeking to get done (for example, they can fire their lawn mower and hire a service to cut their grass), their original motivations remain consistent. Viewing their products or services through a user’s motivational lens can help businesses implement smarter and more enduring innovations, as well as develop more relevant marketing strategies.
Energize and direct
So, to reiterate: jobs are the motivations that energize and direct people’s behaviors in the context of the situations in their lives. Now let’s bring it back to the art museum. What jobs might people hire an art museum do for them? Remember, it’s not “show them art” – that’s a function. (As we established above with that ill-fated lawn mower, functional solutions do not have the staying power of those that tap into people’s deeper moods and emotions.) What motivation-based job(s) could an art museum do for visitors? To thrive in today’s world, the IMA needed to find out.
The first step in the study was to identify the broader jobs of leisure. What are people hiring leisure activities to do for them? Next, Halverson overlaid these jobs on the IMA’s current and future states. Was the IMA being hired to do people’s leisure jobs as often as it could be? What jobs was the IMA doing well (and which could it do even better)? Importantly, what jobs was the IMA fulfilling for current IMA members (key to not alienating a small but powerful segment)? Finally, what jobs could it go after to increase its audience base (that is, from what other leisure activities that do the same job could the IMA steal visits)? The study for the IMA led to just these answers.
Act in certain ways
Decisions about leisure activities are, for the most part, based on our everyday situations and the mood state we’re in, which motivate us to act in certain ways. Just as we may hire a lawn mower (yes, that lawn mower) to help us in our quest to be upstanding property owners, we hire activities and destinations to do jobs for us in a variety of life circumstances – we have kids to entertain, we want to breathe fresh, clean air after a long week at work or we want to learn something new.
Researchers at Halverson Group surveyed more than 1,000 people in the Indianapolis area and adjacent states to find out what situations lead them to seek leisure, what they hope to get out of it and the activities and destinations they turn to. The deeper motivations they uncovered ranged from “I want to feel sophisticated and refined” to “I want to create a tradition” to “I want to act like a kid again” and so on.
Through multivariate analyses, Halverson Group boiled down the hundreds of motivations to eight core jobs (Figure 1) that people could hire Indianapolis metro-area activities to do for them, from providing Pure Fun to a chance to go Along for the Ride. (See sidebar for a list of all eight jobs.) Halverson Group overlaid the various leisure activities in the Indianapolis area with the jobs these activities are most often hired to do. The research showed that, in a given year, Indianapolitans were most often seeking to hire activities for a Mental Reboot or a Social Celebration. And they were turning to everything from the zoo to the movies as solutions.
So where did the IMA fit in this picture? When it first hired Halverson Group, the IMA was firmly anchored in Purposeful Pause (and that was where its members liked it). But Purposeful Pause activities only made up 10 percent of all leisure activities that people hired in a year. What if, in addition to Purposeful Pause, the IMA could get itself hired for jobs sought after by a larger segment of Indianapolitans? Pushing into jobs that more people were looking to get done could attract a new audience. Purposeful Play, in which Indianapolis folks were spending 14 percent of their leisure time over the course of a year, was a viable place to grow – a job to be won for the IMA. Social Celebration, sought after 16 percent of the time, was worth IMA’s consideration as well.
Understanding the jobs of leisure helped IMA explore viable territories for growth. The next step was to turn these jobs to be done into jobs to be won by the IMA through developing actionable strategies for growth.
Three-part growth strategy
Halverson Group used the Jobs of Leisure framework to help the IMA develop a three-part growth strategy.
1. Protect and nurture its base. As mentioned above, at the time Halverson Group was engaged by the IMA, the museum was firmly anchored in fulfilling the job of Purposeful Pause. By adding programming that would fulfill this job for members and current visitors in more life situations, the IMA would protect and grow its membership. To activate this strategy, the IMA reinvented and expanded its Summer and Winter Nights film series to steal even more visits from movie outings, which make up a major competitive share of the Purposeful Pause job.
2. Lure new audiences. Halverson Group also recommended that the IMA broaden programming to capture the more frequent Purposeful Play life situations to expand its audience, while staying true to its mission. From the research, the IMA had learned that the interactive exhibits that were currently at the museum did not equal “play” in people’s minds, so to steal visits from other providers of Purposeful Play, the museum had to lead with fun. Not long after Halverson Group completed its study with the IMA, the museum created a mini-golf course with holes designed by local artists, better fulfilling the job of Purposeful Play. This new initiative allowed the museum to keep its core audience and fulfill their desired job, while simultaneously stealing visits away from, for example, the zoo (another destination that fulfills Purposeful Play).
3. Drive awareness and consideration. The third recommendation was to strategically recruit the broader community to the IMA through special seasonal events anchored by key holidays and social celebrations. These events would lead to dramatic increases in visits for non-core programming, while introducing the IMA to a vast new audience that was interested in fulfilling the jobs of Social Celebration and Pure Fun. This past winter, with its Winter Solstice celebration, the IMA edged in on the job of Social Celebration, competing with other destinations that attract families who want to unplug and appreciate the lighter side of life.
Grew by almost 70 percent
The larger point is, by understanding the jobs to be done in people’s lives and strategically identifying which ones the IMA can get hired to do, the IMA is winning new jobs. Despite implementing an $18 admission charge (the museum was previously free), membership grew by almost 70 percent in one year. It’s not surprising, then, that one of the biggest proponents of the Jobs to Be Won work is Charles Venable, the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s CEO, who, after the research was completed, told the Indianapolis Business Journal, “We’re looking at how to get people here who want large social gatherings – people interested in ‘purposeful play.’ That’s going to require us to continue to push the envelope. We want to be going in that same direction while still doing enough of the traditional material so core audiences still feel it’s the IMA they always loved.”
Just as artists get more notice when they are willing to push boundaries, so are cultural institutions more likely to be given more consideration when they think outside that typical box called “our competition.” In fact, getting out of that box is something all organizations can benefit from doing. Out-of-the-box ideas can be abundant but knowing which ones will pan out can be paralyzing. Identifying jobs to be won cuts through the uncertainty to help stakeholders align around a few high-probability growth strategies.
The eight Jobs of Leisure
Outdoor Escape: Connect with the outdoors, find a change of scenery, move your body while relaxing your mind in a slow-paced natural environment.
Purposeful Play: Be playful while expanding one’s mind. Do something that everyone can agree upon – allowing everyone to have fun, create fond memories and make an impression.
Purposeful Pause: Seek tranquility where it’s possible to get away from it all, relax and unwind by immersing in a passion, observing beauty and appreciating culture and the arts.
Mental Reboot: Renew yourself and nurture the spirit by seeking individual time in a slow-paced environment to think and reflect, often involving outdoor activity.
Pure Fun: Indulge yourself and others with the lighter side of life, provoke laughter and fun without having to think too deeply.
Social Celebration: Energize and excite through an adventure that is out of the ordinary and indulgent in a way that inspires and feels young at heart in a fast-paced, social setting – focused on needs and desires, not obligations.
Along for the Ride: Do something for no good reason other than to be social and feel a sense of belonging, where you can almost picture one person asking “What do you want to do?” and another responding, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Current and Connected: Seek intellectual stimulation and personal challenge while staying up-to-date and learning about a subject to feel mature and wise, connecting with others and meeting new people.