Successful artists want to change the world.  They are Outside Zebras that avoid the Herd, they live on the edge, they make purple cows that become Blue Monsters via smart conversations with their clan.

This post is going to be a bit of a ramble about marketing art...just a a way to get some ideas out of my head and into the "sphere."

Lately, I've been reading a lot of stuff written by marketing guys like Seth Godin and Hugh MacLeod .....digesting their ideas, mentally combining their ideas with my own thoughts.....and thinking a lot about how it all applies to art.

Sometimes it seems like we're all copying and regurgitating each others ideas, but I think that's only natural since 1) ideas that work, well, work.  2) We all tend to naturally gravitate toward those who think like us.  Example:  I coined my "collector clan" idea before I even read "Tribes" by Seth Godin.  Sometimes we're all just coming to similar conclusions.

Years ago I wrote a post titled "Be the Outside Zebra."  In that post I wrote, "Write your dreams and goals down. Now look at those dreams. Achieving those dreams will require going OUTSIDE of your comfort zone."  The term "outside zebra" refers to the zebras who hang out on the edge of the herd.  They stay at the edges so that they have access to better, more plentiful food, but in doing so, they open themselves up to more risk of attack from predators.  My point was that achieving your dreams requires that you take risks and move the "edge" of the herd....outside your comfort zone.



Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod - gapingvoid.com


I also wrote in that post, "Collectors buy artists they consider to be excellent."  However, I'm beginning to question the word "excellent", I might replace it with the word "Remarkable."  Enter Seth Godin's concept of the "Purple Cow."  A Purple Cow is what Seth calls a product that is remarkable:  a product so remarkable that it stands out from its competition in the same way that a purple cow would stand out in a herd of ordinary cattle. Your artworks need to be purple cows.  If they're not purple cows - go back to the proverbial drawing board and work until they are.

I always understood the "be remarkable" part of art.  But, in the back of my mind, something kept nagging me.  I couldn't articulate exactly what was bugging me, but I knew somehow this:  being remarkable is not usually enough.  You can have a studio full of purple cows (of course bringing up the philosophical question - if you have a herd of purple cows, then the purple cow doesn't stand out anymore right? :-), but if nobody sees or talks about your remarkable artworks, then who cares?  You might fulfill yourself by creating them, but art is about sharing.  And if you have the ability to breed purple cows, then you have the responsibility to share them with the rest of us!  It all clicked when I read the following statement by Hugh MacLeod, "What an utterly lovely grain of sand you are. . . . too bad you're lying on a beach."

So how do you share your Purple Cows and get attention on your artwork?

Let me introduce you to the Blue Monster, an idea coined by Hugh MacLeod.  The blue monster has become Hugh's icon to represent a "social object" that gets like-minded people excited and talking to each other.  For example, let's say we're at an art gallery and someone asks me who I collect and I say, "Richard Schmid" and you hear me say that and say, "Really?, I LOVE Richard Schmid's work - in fact I have one!"  Bam!  Richard Schmid's artwork (and to a certain degree Richard Schmid the person) have become the "blue monster" through which we have just connected. 

You and your artwork need to become blue monsters.

But, unfortunately for you there is no more advertising space in "Make my artwork a Blue Monster" magazine, so you'll have to do it the hard way.

First you make a purple cow.  If your artwork is not a purple cow, it probably can't become a blue monster.....at least now without a boatload of marketing dollars (I'm looking at you Thomas Kinkade).

Now that you've made your purple cows, you need to show them to the world.  This is where a website and a blog come in really handy.  If you want to do it the old-school way, look into art galleries too.  But simply having a website will not turn your artwork into blue monsters....it's just a home base so people can see your artwork.

For your artwork to become a blue monster, it has to be *worth* talking about.  And for artwork to be worth talking about, it needs to amplify ideas, preferably important or interesting ideas.  To paraphrase Hugh: An artist's primary role is to function as an "idea amplifier".  In my own words:  "A painter shows me what he painted, but an artist shows me why he painted."

After you've created remarkable idea-amplifying artwork, you have to have conversations.  Marketing is conversations.  Ignore your friendly magazine salesperson and/or uniformed "guru" who tells you it's all about "branding:"  "branding" is for sissies - MARKETING. IS. CONVERSATIONS. (If you're having conversations, you'll "automatically" develop a "brand").   You have to have smart conversations that are interesting to other people and not all about you and your artwork.  You have to have conversations that are so interesting that the people you're conversing with want to bring their other friends into the conversation.  And you have to be the leader. 

But you can't be the leader by declaring yourself the leader, you just have to be the most passionate, authoritative and interesting voice in the conversation - then you'll automatically become the leader.  Have conversations that are indirectly related to your artwork.  If your blogging, post images of your artwork that are related to the current conversation, that serve to augment and amplify the current conversation, but don't just pimp your work shamelessly.  Engage people.  After a while, you'll find that you have a group of people who are interested in talking with you and who seem to like your artwork, maybe some of those people have even bought some.

And at that point, you've built yourself a Collector Clan....or a "Tribe" if you want to go with Master Seth's terminology  (Me, being simply a young padawan opted for the word "clan"). 

Oh yeah, another thing:  building the clan takes time, lots of time in most cases.  Hugh MacLeod's blog, gapingvoid has taken years to get to "Blue Monster"/"Tribal" stage.  You're probably looking at at least few years of regular, consistent, engaging, intelligent conversations.  So, you've got to be driven. And you've got to be consistent. And you really have to want to change the world, otherwise you're going to run out of steam.  Marketing art is hard.


So if you want me to boil all these latest art marketing thoughts into a nutshell, I think I've distilled it down to the following:

Successful artists want to change the world.  They are Outside Zebras that avoid the Herd, they live on the edge, they make purple cows that become Blue Monsters via smart conversations with their clan.

Simple?  Yes.  Easy.  No.


Sincerely,

Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic


PS - If you can accomplish the what I've outlined in this post, then we want to work with you.  If you're not there yet, then we still want to work with you and help you get there.  At FineArtStudioOnline we want to help artists that want to change the world.  I'm not sure why I said that except 1-We're probably changing our name to "ArtistEdge" to better capture the idea of changing the world and being on the "edge".  And 2-wanted you to know that we may use that as a tagline, so don't steal it :-)

ArtistEdge (tm)
We want to Help Artists that Want to Change the World (tm)

Hmmmmm......has a nice ring to it.