Creative, digital and cultural enterprises can radically improve their businesses using ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’. Advising a creative business in Spain, I suggested that they adopt a Blue Ocean Strategy. The company was working in a highly competitive marketplace, with many other businesses offering similar services. This meant that very often they were competing on price. …
Category: General
Dance at Work
Here’s an eBook that’s highly recommended for people who want to combine their creative passion with smart business techniques – that combination I call ‘T-Shirts and Suits’. ‘Dance at Work. The Creative Business Toolkit’ is written by Helen Baxter, a creative entrepreneur based in Wellington, New Zealand. Helen’s book is excellent for entrepreneurs who want …
The ‘3Ms of Marketing’
The best way to illustrate the technique of using the 3Ms of Marketing most effectively is to use a true story. Julie, a jeweller, asked me for some marketing advice. With a limited budget for marketing communications, she couldn’t decide whether to invest in a better website or in a printed brochure to promote her …
Your Competitive Advantage
What’s your Competitive Advantage? Knowing what you can excel at in relation to competitors – and then building your business strategy around that focus – is probably the most important element of any successful business strategy. If you are competing in a market place by offering the same thing as many other rivals, then you …
Increase prices with a winning marketing strategy
Devising a successful marketing strategy leads to charging higher prices for your creative products and services. It also works the other way around. If you increase your prices, you will have to devise an improved marketing strategy. Whichever way you tackle it, you can increase prices with a winning marketing strategy. This is because a …
Crowd Funding video
Here’s a video about crowd funding (or ‘crowd financing’) for projects and businesses in the creative industries. For more information about crowd funding for creative projects, see ‘Raising Finance by Crowd Funding’ and a related article ‘Iron Sky: A Crowd Sourced Movie‘. Embed this video in your own website or blog from the T-Shirts and …
Features and Benefits: the “So What?!” test
If you are talking to a potential customer and they say (or maybe just think) “So What?!”, then the chances are you are talking about features, not benefits. It’s a trap we can all easily fall into. We are enthusiastic about our creative businesses and want to tell people about what we do and how …
Free eBooks: T-Shirts and Suits
Download ‘T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity’ by David Parrish as free eBooks in a selection of formats The eBook of T-Shirts and Suits is available as the full-colour version of the book, in interactive PDF format. It is also available as a text only eBook for Kindle and smartphones. We …
New economics of creativity
My keynote speech to film and TV producers in Finland (video below) referred to the changing business environment for creative enterprises. Consumers are now also creators and marketers; technology is advancing and becoming cheaper at the same time; global communication and distribution are easieir than ever before. These new realities bring both threats and opportunities. …
Creative Mischief
Thanks to Mark Beaumont, Creative Director at Dinosaur, for introducing me to this excellent book. Written by Dave Trott, it’s a series of anecdotes and thoughts about the world of advertising, drawn from his extensive experience as a creative in top agencies. Very thought provoking and inspiring. As I was reading it, I thought that …