What makes people want to come to a concert? An exhibition? What makes them want to come back?

Whether it is the program mix of a symphony concert, a knock-your-socks-off exhibition, or the best play of the season, product is the centerpiece of marketing. How does your product score? Especially, does it create an emotional response? Does it click between people - spouses talk about it, parents and kids relating to each other, friends sharing with friends? (That's the real "interactive" in a cultural experience.)

One of our favorite focus group question is, "What did you talk about when you got in the car after (the concert, the exhibit, et al.)." If it was a bland "oh, that was nice," and that's it, the experience was off the mark. For that matter, if people going through an exhibit literally walked right through it without pausing to study or enjoy the "museum experience", it isn't working. But if people stop, study, and then start to talk between them - to share perspectives and personal reflections - then you're getting an emotional response.

Cultural participation is much more a communal process than a solitary one. If people connect with each other through the emotional enjoyment offered, they will connect with your organization. Then "relationship marketing" can begin. Then your memberships or subscription tickets have value - true emotional value, which has much more meaning than simple transactional value.

• Watch your audience. Are they talking? Enjoying being together? Laughing? Sharing ideas and excitement?
• Watch your visitors. Are they talking about the exhibit? Going through it 'together' rather than in individual isolation? Interpreting it to each other?

Cultural experiences that work are those that build a bond between listeners or viewers, creating a shared experience. And that, in turn, is what builds the sense of connection between them and the organization or destination - the event/destination is relevant because of the emotional bond. And relevance, in the end, is why people come back.

From coast to coast local community and family foundations are stepping in to foster cultural economic development. In some cases, their goal is to establish a streamlined and focused plan to stabilize arts and cultural organizations. In others, the goal is larger, to energize their communities through more cultural activities, more creativity based enterprises. And, in yet others, they are targeting specifics, for example, arts education delivery and systems, cultural audience development.

What's interesting to us is that, increasingly, foundations and business/economic development groups are doing cultural development planning - always in past years the province of arts councils. Why is this happening? First, they are a step removed from the cultural and arts system, and can bring an objectivity to the examination. They are looking for a more dramatic outcome than what they see in the lion's share of cultural plans done by arts councils. These organizations get all the local funding requests, review all the financial reports, and know that in most cases their "cultural pillars" are undercapitalized and thus unable to act as economic and community development engines. And finally, they can make things happen through direct initiatives. In some communities, where arts councils either have never existed or are too small to be able to leverage significant interface between arts, museums, education, economic development, and business, the foundations and economic development groups are taking on the task of the interface themselves.

They are bringing fresh entrepreneurial thinking, writing new cultural development goals, and getting the senior funders and decision makers around their tables. They are getting things done, launching major funding and initiating major changes. It's a new generation of cultural policy and leadership, and it is thrilling to see it happening not only in large cities and driven by major foundations, but in smaller communities, by a diversity of funders including both foundations and corporate/economic leaders.

Two technologies now widely in use in other fields should soon dramatically alter our knowledge of audiences, and our ability to provide site-based art content. The first if RFD (radio chip) technology, and the second is immersive technology to provide learning content via the Web. We've been directly involved in exploring and designing applications of both over the past year, and want to make sure that organizations, their educators and marketers are getting ready for the impact of both. Simply put, bar codes and old-fashioned member cards are part of the past. RFD embedded cards are the future, and offer huge advantages in the data they can provide - the exhibits people visit and linger over versus those they avoid, the events they go to across organizations, the frequency of their visits. The implications for database marketing, for identifying and connecting to new audiences are huge. So, too, are the