Concern over exodus of arts marketing professionals

The Arts Marketing Association (AMA) has launched a series of job templates to help tackle the “growing gulf” between expectations of arts marketing roles and offered pay rates.

It warned that during the pandemic “a huge amount” of marketing talent left the arts, culture and heritage sector, due to a crisis caused by consistently poor pay being offered to skilled workers.

The association reported that recruiters are struggling to fill roles, warning that marketing “ultimately can be the difference between success and failure in reaching audiences and ensuring a sustainable future for organisations”. 

A recent Centre for Cultural Value study revealed that the performing arts workforce is 15% smaller in 2022 than it was in 2021, meaning that staff are working longer hours to accomplish the same level of output. Many advertised vacancies are for two roles that have been merged into one without reducing expectations accordingly, AMA said.

“We’re seeing demoralised and burnt-out arts marketers who have left and will continue to leave our sector,” said CEO of AMA, Cath Hume.

“Long-term this will negatively impact the success of the sector and its organisations. Our members are being asked to take on more and more within their roles, but with no corresponding increase in resource or budgets.”

Many advertised roles have become “catch-all” positions with “wildly unrealistic” expectations, the association said, in part due a widespread misunderstanding of what marketing roles involve, particularly at senior levels.

The new templates aim to combat this by including appropriate job descriptions for various roles that can be used for recruitment. 

As well as creating fairer conditions for existing arts marketers by ensuring that skills and expectations are aligned with the pay and working hours available, they aim to make the sector more accessible and inclusive to those currently under-represented in the workforce.