Selling an "Expanded Theater" experience

Seth Godin again below:  The questions I think we we need to pose are: How can a theater be more than just a cultural touchpoint for a community?  What lifestyle marketing do we use to capture the donor's attention and to help them realize that we can permeate and influence an entire community?

It will be easy to make a decision to support a theatre in a community based on the wide variety of services we offer that are more than just "art" based.  Developing a "Cultural Identity" is important and there are many ways to make that attractive to a wider audience.  Becoming a Cultural Expression in a community is wider than just becoming a new theater in an area.  One that benefits other non profits. One that mentors more than just young thespians. Expanded "theater" solves more problems that a wider group of people can relate to and support.

Selling to people who haven't bought yet

The portion of the population that haven't bought from you or your competition yet is not waiting for a better mousetrap.

They're not busy considering a, b and c and then waiting for d.

No, they're not in the market. They don't believe that they have a problem that's worth the time and money they think it's going to take to solve it.

As a result, smart marketers don't market to this audience by saying, "hey, ours is better than theirs!"

If this group thought that they had a solvable problem, the would have solved it already.

No, they won't respond to a better-than-them pitch. Instead, they're much more likely to respond to a new statement of their problem and a new statement of the solution. Don't ask them to announce that they were wrong when they decided that they didn't need a tablet, a survival kit or an anti-impotence drug. Instead, make it easy for them to make a new decision based on new information.