New Subscribers in Gothenburg

Kenneth M Linton, GSO Ambassador

Kenneth M Linton – Ambassador for Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO) is this world-famous Swedish orchestra’s most successful ambassador, regularly attracting a particularly precious type of new audience – new subscribers. His success is hardly suprising as he is a warm, articulate man, clearly passionate about the GSO and very active in his support (he also provides content for their Friends website) Here Kenneth describes his role and explains why he is so committed to the cause:

How did you get first involved?
I write articles for a small monthly newspaper. Last year the City of Gothenburg decided to name a tram after the GSO and there was a ceremony in front of the central station. I took a couple of photos and afterwards thought I could write an article about it. During the ceremony a lady came up to me and put an envelope in my hand and said, “You have won a prize: two tickets to a concert of your choice”. This lady turned out to be Paula Gustafson, a member of the orchestra. In the article I said ‘Paula Gustafson usually plays the cello but here she played the role of Lady Fortuna’. I sent her a letter of thanks and she gave this to the GSO Ambassador Co-ordinator, Måns Pär [Fogelberg], saying, “This chap would be an excellent ambassador”.

Måns Pär contacted me and I learned that the system was, get at least ten of your friends to attend a rebated series of five concerts and you get a free ticket to the series as well. I spoke at a community meeting and said how proud I was of the GSO and if anyone was interested, “sign this piece of paper”. When the meeting was over I had twenty-three names. I was shocked: it took about four minutes! I never thought I’d get that many, I’d thought if I get five or six that would be great. Because of the success I set up a second group in the first season.

This season I’ve set up two groups: in the first group I’ve had twenty-one attenders and that was a bit of a domino effect from the first season, the first season’s group told their friends who in turn joined. They just called me, (I’d never met them) and said, “Could I bring a friend of mine?”

I have also spoken at the university and talked to teachers and professors too.

What exactly do you promote?
I promote subscriptions. In the first season there were five concerts on offer and very heavily discounted; 590 SEK for five concerts, a single ticket cost 285 SEK (circa £25).

For this season I’ve enrolled twenty-eight new people in a regular subscription. We will meet before every concert, in the Victor Rydberg hall meeting room. They will meet Sara Troback, the new concertmaster and four other musicians. They will meet with one musician before each concert; each meeting being approx. 45 minutes.

For the current season, if the previous Ambassador guests re-subscribe through their Ambassador, they get a 10 % discount. We as ambassadors get discounts too if they re-subscribe.

Do people re-subscribe?
In this year there have been about 60% re-subscribing from the first season (the original goal was 20% repeat). The original goal was a 20 % repeat, so I think it fair to say that the Ambassador programme was a success!

Why do you do it?
Lets start with the romantic reason: I’m love with that bloody orchestra! My wife and I lived in a small town outside Gothenburg for the last twenty-six years with absolutely no cultural events at all save the church choir. So coming back to Gothenburg after a twenty-six year’s exodus was coming back to culture really.

On my father’s side it’s a musical family. My parents took me to my first concert when I was six. My father loved to play jazz music and in the fifties made recordings for Decca. In the seventies and eighties he made LP and CD-recordings for the Swedish jazz label Dragon. He also had career as a much appreciated jazz pianist. I don’t play very well but I love music.

What do you do as an Ambassador?
Måns Pär created a slogan ‘Would you like to lend us your friends?’ and that’s the way it has worked for most ambassadors here at GSO. You contact your friends and simply say, “Its great why don’t you come?”

As a normal person you have so many more contacts that you think of: you go to the grocery store, you go to the doctors and most of the time you don’t regard them as possible contacts but they are. Most of them won’t be interested but suddenly in surprising places you find them.

At one of the deprived suburbs we have here in Gothenburg, called Hammarkullen, there are a lot of people from South East Europe and Arab countries with no access at all to the available arts. Gustavo Dudamel is well known for his great engagement when it comes to young people and music. He and the concert house decided we won’t get everyone we want to come in so we’ll go out there. So they used a hall used for basketball and had two concerts on the same day and some eight or nine hundred people attended in all. These were young people from the age of 10 – 15. Some of the young boys are so tough and come in with you know [with the attitude], ‘what kind of sh*t is this?’ The leaders were there in their karate gear, standing with their arms folded… anyway, the concert was such a huge success, straight from the regular programme, Beethoven’s 5th, Tchaikovsk’s violin concerto. Afterwards Måns Pär did a video interview and the attenders said “Great, fantastic!” and really meant it. When he asked them, “Do you realise Beethoven has been dead for over 200 years?”, they just dropped open their mouths and said “It can’t be!”

How much time do you put in?
Not too much, its not continuous, it comes in bursts of half an hour, not even on a weekly basis. Before every concert I mail everyone, Måns Pär sends us an email which we send to our guests. Then it’s the ‘tedious’ thing of going to concerts…that takes a lot of time!

Do you need to be a certain type of person?
Yes, you have to be able to speak to people and have to be organised enough to maintain some kind of contact with your groups. Also you have to recognise your own contacts, ie: ‘This is a contact’, not just, ‘who are my best friends?’, they are not the only ones. Your local bank branch, your doctor, your church choir.

Finally, any Top Tips?
• I would stress what you have stressed in your Ambassador Guide, that for the orchestra it takes much more time than you think. Its only from your book that I realise how demanding I have been on Måns Pär’s time for example. He has been fantastic. I call him at home, at work and he always has time for me.

• From the guests’ point of view – get them to meet with musicians on a personal level. This is what happened in the original Ambassador programme. For the coming season, together with Måns Pär, I have arranged for musicians meeting twenty to thirty people at a time.

• Also some kind of discount is good, particularly in the times we are facing now, as an incentive to help people come.

• In all in our first year, we assembled 200+ new attendees, 60 % of which have gone on to become regular subscribers; way over target!. However, a series of five concerts are not the ideal thing for everyone. Alternatives should be considered parallel to more elaborate offers. There definitely is a market for both!