The Mission Paradox Blog

The Art is the Marketing

Let's be very clear, the art you create is the marketing.

You can't separate the two.

You can't make predictable, boring, art exciting.

You can't use advertising to make art intended for a homogeneous audience, diverse.

There is no use of social media can turn something safe into something risky.

Marketing isn't magic.

What marketing can do is take quality art and connect it with an intended audience. It can create captivating messages that will help attract this audience.

It can help the audience feel connected to the artist or to the organization.

It can educate the audience and help them learn more about the art.

It can do all those important things.

But it isn't magic.

The art always comes first.

Said versus heard

It isn't what people say, it's what people hear.

You can say "risk" but then keep doing the same limited range of artistic stuff . . . people hear "safety".

You can say "we welcome all" but if your audience looks the same and you keep marketing in the same places, people hear "keep away."

So when I say that the National Arts Marketing Conference is looking for proposals for their 2012 conference, you may hear:

"if you aren't an expert, don't submit a proposal"

or . . .

"If you haven't been working in arts marketing for 10 years, don't submit a proposal"

or . . . 

"If you don't sell millions of dollars worth of tickets and manage a big staff, don't submit a proposal"

Ignore those thoughts.  If you feel like you have something meaningful to offer to the arts world, then submit a proposal.  Don't restrain yourself.  We've heard from all the typically suspects.  

Maybe it's time that we hear from you.

 

The high price of attention

For marketers, the Super Bowl demonstrates the power (and price) of attention.  

Think about it.  Why in the world would anyone pay milliions of dollars for a handful of 30 second commercial spots?

It is because the Super Bowl is one of the few times that we are willing to be interrupted by commercials.  It's one of the few times that we, as a culture, are actively paying attention to advertising.

The advertisers are willing to pay a lot for that attention.

That's how valuable it is.

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Consider your email list.  Your mailing list.  The subscribers to your newsletter or YouTube channel.  Those are people who have given you a small piece of their attention.  

You have the same asset that advertisers are willing to pay millions to get.

It's very easy to forget that.  We get used to counting the number of people in our database and forget the value of each individual name.

200 people who actively listen to you and react to your message is more valuable then 20,000 people who barely know you exist.

You know that.  I'm just reminding you.

I'm also reminding you that the most valuable asset you have as an artist (or arts org) is the attention of your audience.  

Every marketing tool you use, from email, to customer service, to direct mail, to social media should be designed to respect and engage that attention.

Whenever I get my hands on those sorts of tools, I'm always thinking about how I can delight my audience, or educate them, or make them laugh.  

That's the exchange.  You give me a bit of permission and attention and I give you something special.  Or at least I try too.    

Once I've done that, I figure it's ok to "sell" them on a particular artistic event.

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Spend a little today thinking about what are you doing with that incredibly valuable attention your audience has given you?  

It's the most important thing you have.  Use it wisely.

 

Eternal battles

Life we go easier if you accept the following:

1. You will always be conflicted about the interaction of art and commerce.

2. You will never find a perfect balance between giving your audience "what they want" and leading them into different directions.

3. There will never be enough money.

4. Organizational politics will always be a part of your life. That's true even if you create the art alone. You'll probably need to partner with others to get that work seen, which means working with organizations, which means dealing with politics.

5. No matter how you do things someone, probably someone close to you, will think you are doing it wrong.

6. Somone will tell you, "it's ok to fail" and then go nuts when you actually do fail. That is their problem, not yours.

7. You will always need to manage your own artistic career. You can have helpers, managers, etc. but you always need to be the CEO of You, Inc.

Getting them to "Hell Yeah"

In 2009, entreprenuer Derek Sivers shared his "Hell Yeah" philosophy to making life decisions. Here's a quote:

"If I'm not saying 'HELL YEAH!' about something, then say no."

I think it's a good way to make life decisions. It also should help inform your approach to connecting art to audience.

The goal to all the "stuff" that you do, i.e. making artistic programming choices, the marketing tactics you use . . . the goal of all of that is to get your audience to say "Hell Yeah, I need to see that".

Not, "maybe I should see that."

Not, "that looks interesting."

The goal is to trigger the sort of emotion response that makes people want to jump up and be a part of your artistic experience.

Is that hard? Of course it is. People (like you) are jaded. They have too many choices. They have been sold a bill of goods far too often.

In spite of all that, "Hell Yeah" is still the goal.

If you approach your artistic and marketing choices with that point of view, then it will help you make the sort of interesting, exciting decisions that are necessary.

I'll give you a case in point. Direct your web browser toward the website my team created for a production.

The whole idea of that website is that if we give our audience enough interesting angles, enough cool pictures, enough nice music to stream while they are working, then it will slowly move them to "Hell Yeah."

Now that's just one approach. There are a lot of good ones out that there that have nothing to do with the web or technology.

Just remember what the goal of all this should be.

The Flip Side of the Dark Arts

I'm not suprised that a lot of people dislike the idea of marketing/selling/advertising/etc.

Sometimes, I dislike too.

Marketing can be the ultimately dark art.  I cringe when I see a commercial that shames some women who dare eat a cupcake.  I shake my head when I see a car or beer commercial that preys on a man's insecurities.

It breaks my heart when I see a politician or pundit use words or phrases that are designed to tap into our "lizard brain".

Marketers have long understand what science is just starting to show.  We are not rational actors.  We can be influenced.  We can be persuaded.  Images, words, sounds, all of those things can work together to bring out the negative end of human behavior.

But there is a flip side to all of that . . . .

The flip side is that effective marketing/communication/advertising/whatever can be used to bring out the best in us.

It can help us to become more critical thinkers.  It can help us find more joy in our lives.

It can help us to find things (like your art) which are designed to feed our mind and our soul.

Part of what I like about working in this particular field is that on my worst day, all I did was try to connect some people to some art. 

With all the bad ways that marketing can be used, I think that's a good use of the craft.

At it's core, marketing is about spreading ideas and emotions.  Used the wrong way, those ideas and emotions can damage lives.

But used the right way and in the right hands (your hands!) marketing can connect people to ideas and feelings that make the world a little bit better. 

That is a pretty cool thing. 

 

Repost - Power and the Arts

I like this one so I'm reposting it. New blog post on Monday

 

What we offer

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, offers his thoughts on selling the live experience

"We in the (live) sports business don’t sell the game, we sell unique, emotional experiences. We are not in the business of selling basketball. We are in the business of selling fun. We are in the business of letting you escape. We are in the business of giving you a chance to create shared experiences. I say it to our people at the Mavs at all time, I want a Mavs game to be more like a great wedding than anything else."

Those thoughts can be applied directly to connecting people to the live arts experience.

In my own day job, I'm in the midst of trying to connect people to this. When I'm doing that I try to remember that no one is buying a ticket "just because".

They are doing it because they are excited to be part of a world premiere.

They are doing it because it is a night out for friends.

They are doing it to connect with something that is important for THEM, not for us.

We (the theatre, the musuem, the orchestra) are not the point of all this. We are the hub. We are the medium that allows others a reason to connect and experience something together.

When we forget this, things tend to go bad quickly.

The arts can't just be a more expensive, slower, less convenient version of TV or movies. It has to be more to thrive. Part of getting to that more means understanding who really matters here.

It isn't us. It isn't you.

It's them. It's the people who take the journey from their safe, warm, homes and plunk down cash.

What are you offering them?

Looking for my 2012 clients

Here's the deal:

Every once in a while I work directly with a handful of individual artists and arts organizations.

For example, this year I worked with a visual artist, a theatre that focuses on highlighting artists with disabilities and a few other interesting folks.

We are headed toward a new year so I wanted to open the door to a few new clients. I'm going to do this the old fashioned way. I'm going to explain what your getting and offer you a discounted price for a limited time.

Technically what I'm offering is called marketing coaching. You are going to come to me with your marketing challenges. Challenges like these:

You need to sell more of your jewerly on Etsy.

You need to build awareness for your Kickstarter campaign.

You need to sell more tickets to your plays.

Then we are going to break your problem down into pieces and tackle the thing one week at a time. We do that through a series of phone calls.

The phone calls last about two hours. At the end of each call, you'll get some homework. DO THE HOMEWORK.

We do that for six weeks, maybe seven if we need it.

At the end of the process you should have some answers to your challenges. That's cool, but that's not the point. The point is the process. The goal is that when the next tricky marketing challenge comes up, you'll have a way of finding your own answers.

The price is normally $750.

If you sign up by Monday, Jan. 2nd, I'll knock it down to $500. I'm comfortable with taking payments in installments. If you need an installment plan, email me and let me know. Payments are done via Paypal.

Need some testimonals, click here

Got questions about the process? Email me at mission.paradox(at)yahoo.com

Ready to get to work? Email me.

Louis offers all you need to know

Comedian Louis CK on how he got the authority and freedom to due his well respected sitcom:

"I got it by demanding it and refusing to do the show any other way at all and by having the leverage that I was completely willing to walk away without doing the show and by agreeing to an extremely low budget so that they could offset the risk of giving me this freedom because they are risking less money."

The next time I get one of those "how to build an artistic career" questions I may just give them that quote and call it a day.  But what the hell, let's break it down a bit.

"Leverage" - We talked about this.  Louis wasn't some starry eyed kid.  He has spent a lifetime honing his craft with all the failures and blow ups that come with it.  Over that time he built his own audience.

"Willing to walk away" - Isaac talks about that in this post.  It's a very basic idea.  The one who wins almost every negotiation is the one who is willing to walk away from the deal.

"Risking less money" - A bit of wisdom helped Louis to understand that artistic freedom and money go hand-in-hand.  If he went with the network with the top production budget and salary he knew that money  came with strings.

He left the money on the table in exchange for the freedom.

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So if you want a "path" to success, there it is.  Do the work for years (Louis has been in comedy for about 16 years).

Fail a lot.

Use your successes to build an audience and an asset.

Then leverage those assets on your own behalf.

Easier said then done, I know.

But that's true of almost everything.