Steve Messam is a talented artist – and a shrewd creative entrepreneur. Steve was approached by Cumbria Tourism in the UK to create an art installation to help publicise the launch of their campaign for cultural tourism. The budget offered was modest, so Steve put together a business case for a bigger budget. He knew …
Category: Marketing
Three Top Business Tips for Creatives
I was asked to give “three top business tips” to creative entrepreneurs in an interview about how to successfully blend creativity and business. Ellie Stevenson interviewed me, along with Nick Williams of ‘Inspired Entrepreneur’, for an article published on ArtsHub UK. Here’s an extract: Can you give us three top tips for running your own …
Creative Business Guide
A useful and readable ‘Creative, Cultural and Digital Industries Guide’ has been published by Business Link West Midlands It is available in hardcopy from Business Link West Midlands and downloadable as a free eBook in PDF format below. This creative business guide was written by David Parrish, author of the book ‘T-Shirts and Suits: A …
Viral marketing – MUTO video
Thanks to Danielly Netto from Newcastle University Business School, who’s researching business models in the creative industries, for including this viral video in her presentation. This is a video from artist BLU showing the awesome MUTO ‘animated graffiti’ work in Buenos Aires. Published on the internet using a Creative Commons licence, it’s already had about …
Artist’s ‘Second Life’
Artist Ken Walters sells his work in the virtual world Second Life, as well as in real life to galleries, individuals and companies. I met Ken when he attended one of my training workshops for creative people in business and I was fascinated by his personal story as well as his artwork. A feature in …
3,14 or 50 Kinds of ‘Free’
Thanks to Hannah Rudman for sending me a link to an article on Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ website about ’14 Free Business Models’, which is based on a paper entitled ‘Copying and Copyright’ by Google’s economist, Hal Varian. The 14 business models which involve giving things away free include: ‘Sell Physical Complements’, ‘Advertise Yourself’, ‘Sell …
Chase one rabbit (Chinese proverb)
Here’s some ancient wisdom from a Chinese proverb: “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” A useful thought for all creative entrepreneurs. It can be applied to: deciding which creative speciality to choose, from all the creative things you can do. deciding which particular market segment to focus on, rather than trying to appeal …
The Art and Science of Advertising
The best advertising agencies know that the ‘creative’ elements of advertising are just the tip of the iceberg – or the ‘icing on the cake’. Less visible, but equally important, is the market research and clear understanding of customers’ want and needs. Advertising legend David Ogilvy emphasised the importance of researching how customers think in …
Get out more!
At the launch party for Creative Times Online, which was full of ‘creative industries’ people clustering together, I met a civil engineer. Civil/structural engineers don’t normally attend these gatherings of ‘creatives’ (fashion designers, musicians, writers, film-makers, advertisers, artists, website designers, broadcasters and publishers, graphic designers, performers, computer games programmers, designer-makers, etc.) So I was intrigued. …
Good Enough…
Thanks to Phil Birchenall for sending me this article about the Flip Video camcorder. It’s about a simple and inexpensive camcorder that’s “good enough” rather than being “the best”. It has just the right range of features to be usable and useful, at a reasonable price. It’s opened up a new market of ‘ordinary’ users, …