Mission Is The Marketing from TLCC 2026

The arts don’t have a marketing problem. They have a mission translation problem, and it’s hiding in plain sight. From the floor of the Tessitura Learning and Community Conference in Washington, D.C., we talk about what happens when financial pressure pushes nonprofit arts organizations toward short-term tactics, while the very thing that makes them special is long-term community impact.

We unpack a striking insight from our TLCC survey: almost everyone inside an organization understands its mission, but they believe only about 35% of patrons do. That gap is more than a branding issue. It affects loyalty, repeat attendance, donations, subscriptions, and whether audiences feel proud to advocate for you. We explore how “save $30” urgency can coexist with meaning, and why mission-forward brand marketing often makes performance marketing work better, not worse.

We also get honest about measurement. Boards love charts, but not everything important shows up in attribution. Damian shares a gut-check analogy about relationships and ROI, while Meghan and Jackie push for clearer, braver messaging that explains why arts institutions matter without apology. We end with practical ideas for communicating impact, inviting new audiences into your ecosystem, and challenging the “this is how we’ve always done it” story.

Subscribe to Fandom Unpacked, share this with someone who markets live experiences, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find the show. What’s one sentence you wish every patron knew about your mission?

Recorded Monday, August 3rd, 2026
Guests: Damian Bazadona, CEO & Founder, Situation; Meghan Goria, Account Group Director, Situation; Jackie Lau, Managing Partner, Situation
Producer: Peter Yagecic, Founder, A Mind at Work Consulting

Transcript

Live From TLCC In DC

Peter Yagecic 0:04

You're listening to Fandom Unpacked from Situation, recording live from the Tesatura Learning and Community Conference just outside Washington, D.C. This is the series where we unpack modern fandom with some of the brightest minds in sports and entertainment. I'm producer Peter Yagecic, and joining me from Situation are CEO and founder, Damian Bazadona, Account Group Director for Arts and Culture, Meghan Goria, and managing partner Jackie Lau. For those who have never been to TLCC before, it is the flagship event for those working in arts and culture and working in technology to bring those things together to create community. And Jackie, not to put you on the spot, but this is your very first TLCC. I'd love to get your impressions of the conference, especially for those in our audience who've never been.

Jackie Lau 0:51

What do you think? I think the most impressive thing that I've learned today is while this is a technical conference, it's really a very scrappy arts and culture family. And the community here, it's like the everyone has known everyone for years, and it's like a family reunion. So it's very fun to be a part of that. And I'm super excited to be here.

Peter Yagecic 1:13

Well, Meghan has been dubbed by several people here as the queen of the Tessitura conference because that a compliment. Absolutely. How else could be it be interpreted? Um, you I feel like you know everyone. You can't walk five feet without somebody flagging you over and giving you a hug at this event. Um, how does that feel?

Meghan Goria 1:34

It's so fun. It really is like a family reunion. Um, you know, I've been working in this business for 20 years at this point, and uh everybody has worked with everybody else. And so we've all come up together, and it's just wonderful to see people in new roles at new organizations and new geographic areas. It's just a great chance to see each other and and catch

Mission As The Marketing Superpower

Meghan Goria 1:55

up.

Peter Yagecic 1:55

And uh earlier today, you and Damian presented on stage. Uh, and I would love to dive in a little bit to talk about how you put that presentation together, what's some of the big themes uh that came up as you were uh talking to each other about what you wanted to share with this community.

Meghan Goria 2:12

Um can you dig into that a little bit? Sure. Well, our presentation was really focused on what we think is the superpower for arts and culture institutions, which is they are all mission-based. They are creating community, they are part of a community, um, they are not purely commercial. And so we really have these opportunities to lean into the impact of our organizations and our institutions on the audience. Um, so that's really what we were trying to do was uh encourage our colleagues in the marketing space to really embrace their superpower and uh bring forth that mission into all of their communications with their audience.

Damian Bazadona 2:50

I think it's safe to say, and and you're closest than I am, that so much of the financial pressures of the arts and culture space sort of points to everything a little bit more short-term-minded. We need to drive sales immediately. We need to drive sales this week. Where their superpower lies in their larger, longer term, like a longer term strength and goal if you really start to think about the power that these organizations have in their community. And so it's a hard balance. It's a hard balance of kind of saying, well, it it because mission doesn't often bring urgency. Mission is a little bit more, it's deeper than that. It's like long, it's almost an exponent to all your marketing. But it's it's not a, it's not a it's not an urgency play. Save $30 is urgency, but it's also not a long-term solution to building relationships. I know uh Megan talked a lot about this in her presentation, just about transactions versus relationships and how to think about it. Actually, expand on that. It should be helpful to kind of rekindle some of that.

Meghan Goria 3:46

Yeah, I think it's it's really uh we we tend to think so much in the dichotomy of it either has to be urgency or it has to be touchy-feely. And honestly, what what what we were trying to get across in our in our conversation is that it doesn't have to be either or, it should be and we should be able to say save $30, but also we are the cornerstone of your community. We are the the institution that is bringing you this joy and bringing you this experience. Um, and that that tends to be the secret multiplier, right? It it makes the save $30 message that much more effective when they are excited about who you are and why they should come and experience what you're putting on stage.

The 60-Point Mission Awareness Gap

Damian Bazadona 4:29

I thought it was amazing. Is like, so we surveyed the uh the conference and uh prior to coming here. And uh what was staggering to me, and one of the questions we asked attendees, how well do they know their organization's mission? And then we also asked them a similar question, but how how well do you believe your patrons know your organization's message? And there is quite literally what, a 60-point gap, 60-point gap. 95% of people said who worked, they said they recognized and understood the organization's mission, but they thought only 35% of their patrons actually understood that. And that is a staggering opportunity, to say the least. And um there's a lot of work to be done on that front. And on situation on our side, I know Megan's working with our clients on this, is to really talk about what are all the ways which we can do that against, I recognize, enormous financial short-term pressures to get there. You also talked a little bit about some of the accountability measurement, right? So we talked about the ROI and and how we're able to engage a lot of that on individual performances versus the longer-term stuff. Talk about that. That was interesting.

Meghan Goria 5:31

Yeah, it's it's a conversation that we have so much with our clients because, as you say, the financial pressures are real. We know we have to sell tickets. That is always going to be the number one most important thing is you know, bringing in the money, keeping the lights on. But I think it's so important to reframe the conversation, particularly with executive leadership, with board leadership, um, to say, yes, in the short term, of course, we have to sell tickets for Tuesday's performance. But in the long term, we need to continue to build relationships with our audience so that they know that we are a nonprofit organization. They are then uh excited and interested in our future communications and want to come back and want to give us money, ideally, and want to become a subscriber. It doesn't have to be an either or. Um we need to be looking at short-term ROI, how many tickets have we sold for Tuesday, and long-term, how are we building relationships with these audiences and keeping them around, keeping them loyal.

Peter Yagecic 6:25

Well, those relationships, I mean, that that really is what you're talking about is fandom. You're talking about inspiring your audiences to want to be your advocate, wanting to have a relationship with you, come back over and over and over again, and to advocate on your behalf, um, to not just be transactional about spending that money to see that one show. You want them to become fans of the organization through that mission.

Meghan Goria 6:48

And we actually see that when there is that brand level marketing, when there is a conscientious campaign to really tell people why they should care, that then that multiplies the performance marketing. So then, you know, the the daily we have to sell tickets for Tuesday, those ads do better when there is some sort of why behind it, when it's not just exclusively a what.

Damian Bazadona 7:15

Hey guys, Damian here. I just want to take a quick moment to say if you're enjoying this podcast right now, odds are you're in the business of selling live experiences. And if you don't know my team at the advertising agency Situation, you most definitely should. Aside from just being an awesome group of human beings, they're a global team of professionals covering a brand base in sports, arts, theater, culture, museums, or any live experience that requires people coming together. Big, small, all shapes and sizes of brands. You can hit them up at the information below in the show notes.

Selling Brand Marketing To Stakeholders

Damian Bazadona 7:55

There was a through line in the room, I felt, from both, I mean, all sizes of organizations in the room, from very large institutions to smaller, I'd say community, it's like community playhouses, that the I think one of the pressure points of the people in the room agreed, but they were saying, how do I sell this up to stakeholders? And that seems to be a complicated conversation, again, because it's like short term versus a long term. And what can you, in theory, prove out is working versus what's not working? But I think you showed some research that showed you have to take a bigger view on some of this.

Meghan Goria 8:25

Yeah, there is, luckily, we we do have, you know, uh board members love love charts and graphs and loves love research. Um, so we do have have data that really supports this idea that um, you know, that both a brand approach and a performance approach together really are the superpower here. That is the multiplier. Um, and I think that that's just part of the part of the the difficulty of having these conversations with uh board members is that we have to set the expectation that not everything is going to be an immediate response, that we need to take a slightly longer-term approach because we are facing long-term and existential problems. They're not going to be solved tomorrow. It's not going to be just a single meta-ad that's going to solve all of our problems. We have to really take a much more holistic, much more 30,000-foot view of how to approach this.

Peter Yagecic 9:14

What kind of conversations do you hope that you'll be able to have with current clients, potential clients on the other side of this conference, on the other side of that presentation? Where do you want the conversation to go?

Meghan Goria 9:29

What I love most about the work that I do is that we actually get to brainstorm with each other. We get to try things, we get to test things. Uh, and so what I would love to see from current clients, from future clients is a real deep conversation about who are we? Why should people care? And then what is the best way to share that message? Is that, you know, is it visual? Is it written? Is it uh, you know, are we speaking to emotions? Are we speaking to um urgency? What are, you know, how are how are we actually getting that message to the public? And what are the steps that we can take as as an advertising agency to support that message getting to as wide an audience as possible? So we love, you know, this is this is a bit of a a sort of gut-based conversation and and encouraging people to really search their feelings to quote Star Wars, um, and and come up with the best, the best method for their individual organization. Um, but then we can support them with data that says actually this is the this is the way forward. This is what is actually going to work.

Peter Yagecic 10:34

Are there any organizations that you can think of either that you work with directly or just in the world that you think are really doing this successfully? Was there anybody that you could point to as a North Star that says it's so clear to me that this is an organization that gets what we're trying to drive home?

Meghan Goria 10:56

Long pause. I think I think it is something that the arts uh has in spades and is hesitant for whatever reason to embrace. We as an industry tend to not be braggarts. We don't like to tell people how wonderful we are. Uh and other industries absolutely do. CPG companies do, you know, hospitals do, other other institutions do. Um, and I think that we need to own our power a little bit more. And so I think that it is it is something that we haven't seen from a lot of organizations yet, and something that we want to see moving forward.

Trusting Instinct Beyond Spreadsheets

Damian Bazadona 11:34

I think insights have have trampled instincts. And I think there's a problem with that. It listen, we're a digital marketing agency, we're part of the culprits of it. Like, so there's a little bit of like living in spreadsheets and mistaking, I would argue, attribution to really what's causing people's attraction to these live experiences by just assuming you need to do marketing, media, advertising in these sectors, that's what's driving sales. Where it's almost like it is way bigger than that. And it's really an instinctual argument that I try to make. It's like, why do we all come to work every day to do this thing, to surround ourselves around this mission? Why have we chosen these careers? It's communicating that of why we get excited. It's if you look at most creative messaging that is out in these organizations, their mission is not infused in it. Now, you can make the argument it's infused in the programming choices, but it's not really infused in how they market themselves. And so I'm trying to, when people say, well, how do I advocate? How do I move this up the thing? What kind of charts am I going to show them? I'm kind of, and I made this analogy. I'm like, what's the ROI of saying I love you to your children? Like I can just look at it going, well, if I send them to these schools, these things are going to happen. I'm like, but you should realize that underbelly is like, well, saying I love you every day and showing up being present, how do you evaluate whether that's good or not? But you know, of course we do that. That's really the heart and soul of what drives success in relationships. So I find it like I don't want us to get stuck. We've become intimidated and cornered. And if you can't prove it out, then in some version, and I believe, I just don't, I think there's just, it's so much. Give me any number that I didn't crunch, you know what I mean? I'm going to be very skeptical of it. And then you can draw a data point. That's what we learned in today's society. You could draw any data point the way you want to draw it. And so there's a little bit of that going to instinct and gut and trying to connect with people, like of just instinctually what feels right and not being scared of your instincts a little bit. Test it a little bit more. Obviously, we're data people, we get it. But I would say that's what I would like to see more of it, a little bit more confidence of just talking to like normal human beings, like, what are we doing this for? And would any normal person know this? Because by the way, our data shows they believe only 35% of their customers even know the mission, then you might as well be a commercial production. You've lost your entire nonprofit status by thinking that way. So that's the I think to me, that's the the big opportunity to it.

Meghan Goria 13:47

I remember we were in a client meeting, Damian and I uh talking to a a nonprofit theater that had programmed a show that they they said from the jump that this is not going to sell tickets. And we said, well then then why are we doing it? Well, it's it's because it's part of our mission, right? This is it's a new playwright, it's an up-and-coming playwright, so we want to make sure that they get exposure. And we said, well then why why are we why are we selling it like a commercial show? We know it's not gonna sell tickets. Why are we telling people what it's about, who it's by, you know, who the actors are? Why aren't we focusing on the mission of why we program this thing? Well, you know, I'm not sure. I don't think that we that's not what we do. That's that's that's never been how we approach things. We have to make sure that we're billing everybody properly and all of that. It was it was wild to me because you know, you had you asked that question, and they had never thought of it that way. And and those are the conversations that we like to have. We like to have those challenging conversations of if you are programming something because of your mission, why are we not marketing it in the same way?

Damian Bazadona 14:49

And even if you think of it as an exception, those seats are gonna go empty. They're gonna sell 30% of the house. That means 70% of the house is empty. And you're kind of going to myself, well, if we knew this, we never gonna sell tickets. Why are we not strategically inviting audiences into our ecosystem in a way that's saying this is our mission? This is it. Because you, it's kind of unbelievable. We're throwing the talent before. And I'm kind of going, why are we just wasting money, time, energy, effort? You're not even practicing your mission. You're just doing bad business at this point. And versus you flip it the other way. How about people, if this is their first time, you invite them back. Let's say they see one of your other productions. We're doing this other show. We want you to come and be our guests because this is why we do these shows. It's um, and because you know what it comes down to? The reality is it takes work. It is quite literally an investment to live your mission. It's hard. Um, you can't really simply write a check against it because there's a lot of things that are involved with it. So I get it, but it's sometimes just look around. I'm like, this is my slight concern about any time you're in a bubble. This is a bubble. We all live in bubbles in some version or another. But when you're in the space, it's like, well, here's how we operate. We're very important. And the arts are very important. And the reality is like a lot of things are very important. And we need to better, I think, make our case in a way that's uh, I think probably better grounded in business practices. But that that would be a separate podcast.

Peter Yagecic 16:04

Yeah, well, and Andrew in his keynote, Andrew Recinos, CEO of Tessatura, in his keynote this morning, he talked about changing the story. Changing the, and and Megan, I think this speaks to what you were just talking about with the momentum of, well, we're doing this because this is the way we've always done it. This is the rails that we're on. But that it really takes a lot of courage to change that story and to get out of that bubble that you were just talking about, Damian, and to ask each other, you know, why, why can't we do it a different way? And I think that's one of the reasons that we love coming to conferences and being in community with people because you get a chance to kind of break down those barriers a little bit to talk about, well, what if we did it slightly differently? It it's a chance to provoke each other and say, what would happen? What would happen if we did it this way? Yeah.

Damian Bazadona 16:51

And I love this bubble for what it's worth. Uh you know what I mean? I like it. I don't say it. I'm like, it's just a thing and it's beautiful. Like it's a beautiful thing. People care deeply about what they do, they're good at it. And so in that world, it's just, but it's it's hard. It's always hard. It's it's there's so many forces at going back to the status quo. It makes sense. And so it's like, okay, so how do you really begin to challenge that? And change is hard. I get it. Hey guys, Damian here. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm gonna bet that you're probably thinking about how your team works and adapts right now in this new technology landscape. That's why the one person I always point people to is my co-host, right here, Peter Yagecic, and his company, a Mind at Work Consulting. They run smart, tech-infused workshops that help teams build new skills and actually put ideas into action. Peter is way too humble to brag, but I have no problems bragging for him. So if you're serious about what's next, talk to a Mind at Work Consulting. More in the show notes below.

Communicating Impact And Final Takeaways

Peter Yagecic 17:59

What's one thing that each one of you will think about in a different way when you go home from DC? That's a a seed that has been sown at the conference that you hope will uh turn into a plant.

Damian Bazadona 18:14

The ongoing question of how do you communicate impact? That's a it's something I really can't shake. Um, and I think, like, for example, I think hospitals do it really well. You watch an ad and you watch it, you go, wow, they kind of tell you what the mission is. We save lives. Let me show you how we do that. And by the way, 98% of the time we're successful. You just watch their ads. It's like, wow, they literally script mission from here's why we do it, here's how we deliver it, here's what it means for you. I think there's a page in that for the arts and culture space, but what exactly does that sound like? And because arts and culture is always it's always been on measured on more softer metrics. It's always like, oh, we build empathy, we do these things. It's like we're not, but the reality is like we are enriching lives and communicating that in a in a confident way and really maybe bragging a little bit more, like leaning more into it. Um, I I to me, I just can't stop thinking about that given we just had such a large conversation. Like, oh, how do we really bring that to life? And I believe we're gonna unlock it. I think we're gonna start, I think a lot, I think you're gonna see a lot more of that.

Jackie Lau 19:11

I think for me, it's you know, Damian touched on this in the conversation today about nurturing all audience members and not just the person that can pay the highest price. And so making sure that we are speaking to everyone and not getting sucked into just the bottom line all the time and and really making sure we're we're doing that work.

Meghan Goria 19:36

For me, it's about uh getting out of the weeds a little bit. And that's something that I actually really like about this conference because we we are physically separated from our offices. We are in community with with other folks and other industries that maybe we don't see every day. It's you know, theater folks talking to museum folks, and and you can kind of get get a bit out of the weeds of your of your day-to-day issues and problems and and take a step back and understand a bit more about what's happening outside your bubble.

Peter Yagecic 20:05

Well, I have enjoyed getting outside of our regular fandom bubble with the three of you. This has been a treat. Uh, we love kind of mixing things up a little bit and uh having great conversations. So that's gonna do it for this episode of Fandom Unpacked. Thank you, Damian, Megan, and Jackie. If you liked what you heard today, please check out all the great QA interviews we've done over at fandomunpack.com, or by searching Fandom Unpacked and following the series in your podcast player of choice. We'd also love for you to rate and review the show while you're at it. That helps us find new fans. We'll be back in your feed in a couple of weeks for the entire Fandom Unpack team. I'm Peter Yigisic. We'll see you next time.