BeDynamic Provides Crucial Content to Award-Winning ShowUp.com Site

Alliance for Audience is a non-profit organization serving as the greater Phoenix region’s “convention and visitors bureau for the arts.” Founded in 2003, Alliance for Audience’s mission is to engage new audiences while dramatically raising awareness of the breadth of the region’s arts and cultural offerings.

To accomplish its objective, Alliance for Audience would have to overcome several hurdles. In addition to the vast size and de-centralized physical layout of the Phoenix area, which makes promotion of events difficult, arts organizations and cultural destinations lack the resources to effectively market their offerings to new audiences and find that comprehensive event information is not easily accessible by even seasoned arts and cultural audiences.

On a broader scale, arts funding over the past few years has significantly decreased, the result of several factors stemming from the economic aftershocks of 9/11 and increased competition for decreasing levels of corporate and government support. As a result, arts organizations have had to find ways to significantly increase ticket sales, often with smaller budgets.

The Solution: BeDynamic Provides the Tools to Deliver Cultural Content
Given the challenges facing the Greater Phoenix arts community, Alliance for Audience found a unique partner in BeDynamic, a leading provider of arts and cultural content for a variety of destinations. BeDynamic uses the latest digital content aggregation and distribution technology to deliver timely, detailed information on arts, culture, and entertainment.

"Our market has had to work creatively to find new ways to involve audiences in arts and cultural activities," said Matt Lehrman, Executive Director of Audience for Alliance. “Trends in audience participation have been building for years. So 9/11 wasn’t the cause, but it certainly was a key point of clarity for non-profit arts organizations to realize that we must take a more business-minded approach to reaching audiences and better understand how they make decisions.”

In November 2004, Alliance for Audience launched ShowUp.com as its flagship project, serving as the region’s single source of arts and cultural information. ShowUp.com allows viewers to browse information on arts and cultural performances, exhibitions, classes, workshops, venues and more in a real-time format – critical in catering to the “impulse buyers” who are making up more and more of the market. Alliance for Audience depends on BeDynamic to consolidate, deliver and manage the volumes of ongoing cultural events, venues and images ranging from numerous sources such as theaters, museums, festivals, and dance companies. Patrons view theater, museum and other venue happenings from more than 600 Phoenix area organizations. The image-driven calendar on the Web site includes details such as dates, pricing, times, and maps.

Since its launch, ShowUp.com has become the leading resource for the region’s cultural listings and includes the following highlights:

- Ticket Marketplace, ShowUp.com’s online ticket sales, sold more than $60,000 in discounted, day-of-show tickets during the year.
- Cox Communications, Arizona partners with Alliance for Audience to prominently feature the event content on their media website.
- NewsChannel 3 provides a weekly segment on its popular Good Morning Arizona show to feature events highlighted by ShowUp.com.
- You’ve Got Shows e-mail newsletter distributed by Alliance for Audience reaches more than 6,000 households each week with event details.
- The Arizona Republic features last minute deals offered by ShowUp.com in its weekly entertainment section, The Rep.
- Arizona Office of Tourism and regional Convention & Visitors Bureaus features ShowUp.com as a cultural resource and are partnering with Alliance for Audience to create a regional museum destination pass to be sold to tourists.
- Results: ShowUp.com Wins Audiences

ShowUp.com has become a recognized brand in a competitive marketplace. After just 1 ½ years of existence, ShowUp.com serves nearly 15,000 unique visitors every month – generating more than 70,000 monthly visits to the site. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Phoenix named Alliance for Audience and ShowUp.com the Arts Organization of the Year for 2005.

”BeDynamic is a critical partner to our success,” said Lehrman. “We are at the beginning of a terrific collaborative project of the region’s arts and cultural community, with the potential to energize arts and cultural participation. The ability to collect and present comprehensive, quality and timely information about all that’s going on is the essential foundation of this project – and that’s the great value that BeDynamic delivers.”