Continuing the theme of Summer Simplification, let’s take a little trip to Marketing 101, where the seemingly indecipherable concepts under the umbrella of the vast field of marketing — Branding, Strategy, Advertising, PR, and the rest — get their own, well, stanza.
Often when I’m meeting with a client, I reference a category of marketing, for [...]
Let’s take a moment, shall we, to get back to basics.
Yesterday, a lighting company contacted me about crafting their marketing strategy. When I asked for background on the company, the owner sent me a recently written press release, and at our meeting today, showed me their logo, website, postcards, and briefed me on recent events. [...]
Artists are natural entrepreneurs. In general, they are innovative, enthusiastic, hard-working, highly intelligent, and resourceful. That last attribute is the subject of this post…resourcefulness.
Entrepreneurs come up with a great idea, then go out and find the resources or develop the capabilities to “make it happen.” Or, they look at what they already have available and [...]
Over the last seven months we’ve discussed many topics, such as: the emergence of artistic entrepreneurship in the new economy; the importance of demanding fair value for your creative contributions to society; tools of empowerment (e.g. clarity, action); the importance of strategic business planning in the arts; the merits of analysis (industry, market, and competitive); [...]
Our research and survey responses indicate that artists and “do gooder” arts organizations struggle with the concept and reality of competition; especially because creativity is such a product of collaboration, connectedness, and reciprocal inspiration in a network of people. We need each other, yet we are in competition for the same resources, audience members, buyers, [...]
Excuse me for being M.I.A. over the last month, but I was busy producing the National Black Arts Festival’s 1st Annual Winter Ball (“The Art of Change”), featuring special guests Dr. Cornel West and Big Boi from Outkast. I won’t go into all the details of the event (although it was fabulous!!), but I do [...]
A bunch of terrific organizations provide fiscal sponsorship and I was fortunate to meet and learn about them last week at the second Annual Gathering of the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors. The NNFS is dedicated to improving the practices, capabilities, and awareness of fiscal sponsorship in the nonprofit sector through education and advocacy. [...]
Consultants report that the hardest part of helping artists and arts managers create a strategic plan is getting them to answer the questions: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you do?’
Why is that? Why can’t we tell our audiences, patrons, customers, funders, or collaborators who we are in five sentences or less? Because we are [...]
“…the process itself is more important than the plan.”
- Jeffery Timmons, New Venture Creation
One of the key objectives for our professional development program is to help artists achieve success through manageable, persistent, strategic and consistent action; without sacrificing their spirit. Basically, we want to help you learn how to design a strategic plan for your [...]
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