The Mission Paradox Blog

What's your edge?

Another fantastic quote . . .

"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly."

- Col. Hackworth, United States Military

Any student of military history can tell that even the biggest, baddest, most well armed army can be shut down if their opposition is able to alter the playing field to their advantage.

It's the same in the every other field.  Find your edge and you can make it in even the harshest environments.

The best advice ever?

Maybe.  It comes courtesy of Steve Martin on the Charlie Rose Show

"When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them — And nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script, here’s how you do this — But I always say, 'Be so good they can’t ignore you.' If somebody’s thinking, 'How can I be really good?', people are going to come to you. It’s much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties."

Amen brother.

Click here to listen the whole interview

The standard of "good" is higher then ever

Click this link to watch this parody of a rap video.  It's not exactly safe for work, but just put the volume to low and check it out.  Then come on back to the blog.

Now you may have found it funny (like I did) or not.  But when I watched the video a few more times, I was struck at how high quality it is. 

The rap was well written.

The music track was mixed nicely.

The video was high quality and edited by someone who knows what they are doing.

The lesson I take away from the video is that the standard of good has been raised.  Think about it, 10 years ago a video like that couldn't have been produced without help from a major record label.  And there would have been no way to distribute it without the label.

Now all it takes is a good digital camera, a small soundboard and a Mac and there it is being seen all over the world.

So please don't believe that saying your work is good quality is sufficient to make it sell.

Because good is easier then ever now .  .  . good is almost becoming average.

Learn to steal ideas

Every once in a while someone asks me where I got an idea from.  My response is almost always . . . "I probably stole it from somebody else."

Stole is probably a bad word.  What I mean to say is that I am constantly on the hunt for good ideas when it comes to sales and marketing.  So if I see a company doing something interesting with their marketing, I almost always make a mental (and sometimes a written) note of it and then see if I can incorporate it in my own work.

With all the information out in the world about basically every area of business there is just no good reason to try and reinvent the wheel.

So if you are trying to sell your artistic products, or trying to make a way into a new market . . . try looking at the marketing or business model of an artists you admire, then go do that.

Counterfit Choices

I took my girlfriend out to our favorite restaurant over the weekend.  For those of you who have never been there, just think of your favorite high end restaurant (i.e. good food, good service, high prices) and you get the idea.

When we sit down at our table, the waiter always offers us our first choice of the evening . . .

"Do you want the sparkling water, or the bottled water."

We also chuckle a bit when he says this, because clearly the waiter has been instructed not to inform us of our third water choice, tap water. 

What I find even more amusing is the subtle social pressure the waiter applies when offering the incomplete set of choices.

Picture someone is at the restaurant on a first date, or with a big business client.  Clearly, they want to impress their dinner companion.  So imagine their shock when right off the bat, the waiter puts the squeeze on him by essentially saying . . .

"Do you want the expensive sparkling water, the slightly less expensive bottled water . . . or are you going to be a cheap bastard and get the free tap water?"

Now remember what I said at the beginning, this is our favorite restaurant.  This is because the food and the rest of service far outweighs the clumsy way the restaurant starts the evening.

But whenever they run the "water routine", I can't help but wonder if it is really worth it to them. 

Does the few extra bucks they get when someone purchases the water outweigh the risk that they might even slightly offend a customer at the start of a meal where he or she may end up spending several hundred bucks?

More importantly, think about this example in light of my last post about how everything you do is marketing. 

Here is a restaurant that has probably spent millions adding little touches to their product, promotion, etc. to make it clear to the world that they are an elite fine dining establishment.  Then they run the small risk of blowing that whole image to shreds for a few bucks.

Perhaps I'm making too much of the whole thing.  But it just strikes me as  a risk not worth taking.

The beauty of a well told story

I was having a conversation with an artistic organization.  I asked them what they were doing to market their work.  Their response was what I usually hear, "we send out postcards, hang posters, do newspaper ads, etc."

Here's the thing , that's not marketing.

That's advertising.

Advertising is a part of marketing, but marketing is so much more.  Look at it like this, marketing is all of the following (in no particular order):

1.  Your visual identity - Meaning your company name, logo, the colors on your website, the images you use to promote your shows, etc.

2.  Advertising/Promotion Mediums - It's not just how your ads look but where do you put them?  Do you promote using social networks, do you advertise in certain local newspapers (and not in others)?

3.  Your product - Meaning does the product you offer the world match the advertising and promotion you put behind it?  Are you promoting yourself as the edgy, risky theatre company but then doing work that is anything but?

4.  Your employees or artists - If one of the members of your band is an arrogant punk that ticks everyone off . . . that is part of your marketing.  If someone calls your art gallery and is greeted by a warm and helpful individual, that is part of your marketing.

I could add a few other things to the list but that's a good start.

So the reason that marketers like myself get all aroused by companies like Apple or Starbucks isn't because we necessarily enjoy their products.

It is because they have managed, if even only for brief moments, to make all the elements of marketing work together.

Take a product like the IPhone.  Now we could have a ton of debate about whether the phone is good or bad.

But what is clear is that everything about the IPhone fits like a well made story.

From the design of the phone

To the commercials

To the image of the CEO, Steve Jobs

To the employees that sell you the phone

To the store you buy the phone in

It is all giving you the same message about Apple . . . that it is the company that creates cool, useful technology for creative and beautiful people.

Again, we may have some debate about whether the world needs a message or a company like that.  And there are certainly moments when Apple, like everyone else, does things that take away from that message.

But we can see that when Apple is at its peak, everything in their story fits together.

The problem that I see most artistic companies have is that they don't quite grasp that everything they do and say as an organization is marketing. 

Because they don't understand this they give off inconsistent or inauthentic messages and then wonder why the general public doesn't respond.

It isn't because you aren't spending enough on marketing it is because either the message you're telling the world is inconsistent, or the people you are talking to don't want to hear your message (which is a reason to find a new target audience)

If they don't come . . . it's your fault

I have been keeping track of some very interesting conversations revolving around the death of Danny Newman, the theatre legend that bought the idea of an arts subscription into the forefront. 

A lot of the conversation is about how difficult it is to get people into the theatre.  This idea is best expressed by a quote from Jorge Ortoll of the Ma-Yi theatre.  He says:

“If it’s a rainy day, they don’t come (to the theatre). If it’s hot outside, they don’t come. If it’s a nice day to go to the park, they don’t come.”

If I could, I would put my arms around Jorge and give him my number one rule of the arts.

Rule #1:  When the people don't come to see your play/painting/concert IT IS YOUR FAULT!

It's not the audience's fault.  It's your fault.  What Jorge is basically saying in the quote above is that their potential audience is so uncommitted  that they will use the smallest thing as a reason not to show up.

That means the problem is one (or more) of the following:

1.  The theatre is producing unexciting, low quality work

2.  The theatre is producing good work but hasn't learned (yet) how to skillfully use marketing, branding, promotions and public relations to spread the word about their plays.

Neither one of those are the audience's problem.  They are problem that particular theatre must figure out.

Dealing with criticism and feedback

If one of the keys to being a professional artist is to listen to your audience (and trust me, it is) the question becomes what do you do with your audience feedback. 

Or put another way, how do you decide which feedback to listen to and which feedback to ignore?

Here's some advice:

1.  Consider the source.  Just because 100 people have given you some feedback on the latest exhibitions of your paintings doesn't mean that all 100 comments have to be treated equally. 

For example, a comment from someone who has been observing your work for years may be more useful then a comment from someone who is having a first time experience.

2.  Consider the quality of the feedback.  If a person is taking the time to give you specific feedback (i.e. "I had a hard time believing that the two main characters in your play were really in love) then that feedback is much more useful to you then a very general comment (i.e. "I didn't like your play")

3.  Learn to balance your feedback.  It has been said by many people smarter then me . . . but it is worth repeating.  If half your audience loved the ending to your play and half your audience didn't then it is a wash.  Don't change anything.

The importance of craft

I have already admitted that I have a fondness for shows like Top Chef, another show I enjoy is Project Runway.  Now being a guy that typically loves football and pro wrestling, I sometimes wonder why I love those type of shows.

After mulling it over a bit, I figured it out.  Both shows are (at least in some measure) about craft.

The craft of cooking.

The craft of designing clothes.

And if reminds me that if an artist wants to make their name in a competitive world they have to, on a very core level, know what the hell they are doing.

So even if you are clothes designer and your ideas are creative and exciting, if you can't sew, if you can't manage your time well, then all your creativity is for naught.

Of course every field has incredibly talented individuals in it who are self-trained and never go to school to learn their skills.  But I think it is far to say that 90% of all really good artists are good because they work really damn hard at it.

Even in my field as a marketing consultant, I work at my craft (marketing) constantly. 

I write on my blog as a way of improving my writing skills. 

I teach on the collegiate level as a way of improving my oral communication abilities. 

I am constantly reading and researching my field.  That is the only way I can get better.

So, no matter what your artistic skill is, never, ever, think you have gotten to good to learn (and re-learn) your craft.