Geffen Playhouse is one of the gems in the Los Angeles theater scene. Located practically on the UCLA campus, the not-for-profit theater opened its doors in 1995, and has since received more than 40 regional theater awards and hosted a string of award-winning actors and playwrights and acclaimed directors.Joseph Yoshitomi, Geffen Playhouse's director of marketing and communications, has been a big part of the theater's success over the past six years, with accomplishments that include the launch of the...

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Starting today through Monday in Atlanta, Americans for the Arts hosts its annual marketing conference, National Arts Marketing Project Conference. Tomorrow Jim's leading a Community Forum, titled The Greatest Revenue-Generating Tool Most Organizations Barely Use, about the the value of good customer service.Read more about Jim’s talk here. And if you’re going to the conference, be sure to say hello!Got a comment or question? Join the conversation on Twitter or Facebook.

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Last October, Melissa Carbone scored the biggest deal in Shark Tank history for her company, Ten Thirty One Productions. Investor Mark Cuban saw great potential in her company's attractions -- the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride and Great Horror Campout. A couple months later, we asked the CEO and founder about her formula for winning.Fast forward one year, and Business Insider catches up with Carbone to "see how she's used the Shark to push forward her plan for total domination...

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In his recent post “'Customer Information' or License to Spam?" Jim wrote: Customer information is valuable when it’s the result of permission and when it’s not just “data,” but when it actually represents a person with value to and interest in what your organization is doing. It’s not a blanket license to spam. Now, James Baggaley at Spektrix chimes in with "Stop Spamming Your Customers Before it's Too Late." He outlines three things arts organizations should do right this second when...

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The dark and raunchy comedy Hand to God -- about a demonic sock puppet -- opens on Broadway in April. The show’s first big ad in The New York Times (below), created by theatrical advertising and marketing firm AKA, makes the show's vulnerabilities its strength, according to producer Kevin McCollum, who also produced Avenue Q.

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Back in January, Jim commented on Dan Visconti's article, “The Audience Is the Most Important Instrument”: "I don’t even want to add much to it, except to say that there’s a term I use that matches the sentiment Dan expresses: audience-oriented. Everyone in the business of live entertainment and arts should be audience-oriented. I hate the word “pandering” because it implies that the person who refuses to “pander” could, if he or she just chose to, churn out some crap that...

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Happy #TBT. To celebrate, we’re sharing an oldie-but-goodie post from Jim ... with a Halloween theme:Word Stock Market: SpooktacularThe Word Stock Market is an occasional feature on SellingOut.com, where I will tell you whether to buy, sell or hold a certain word based on whether that word has a strong future or has seen better days. For example, if you’d bought the word “hybrid” 10 years ago (when it meant a cross between a horse and a donkey, not...

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Before we once again ask, “What Is the Best Broadway Can Be?” on Monday, February 23, 2015, at New World Stages, we’re asking our TEDxBroadway 2015 speakers to tell us a little more about themselves.Dr. Laurie Santos, associate professor of psychology at Yale University, is a cognitive psychologist who studies the evolution of human cognition by exploring how animals think about the world. She was recently voted one of the "Brilliant 10 Young Minds" by Popular Science magazine. You...

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Here are the top Broadway shows last week, ranked by Revenue Per Seat, with grosses, and ranked by Gross, to the right. RPS tells a different and more interesting story about which shows can bring in value per seat versus simply being big.Revenue Per Seat reflects the efficiency of a show’s marketing and the strength of its appeal, where Gross Sales reflects the effectiveness of the show as a money-making entity. Both are important to understand. To see previous rankings, click here.

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