Marketing Loop
Scruffy Rachel Biffin ;)
What does an artist in practice look like? This has been an overarching question in the process of building a marketing strategy for the Soft Edges Studio brand.
I started to look at the depictions of artists in the current marketing out there.
As mentioned in last week’s article, I see artists market themselves online with stills featuring lots of movement, large canvases, paint splattered in video close ups, brush strokes, materials, objects…quite a lot of physicality. It’s interesting, attention grabbing content.
My challenge building marketing for Soft Edges Studio is I don’t have a “physical” art practice to photograph. See, I make art on the computer and then order it to be printed with a click of a button.
Realising I don’t have an indie haircut, tattoos, or an art practice that makes for interesting content (there’s only so many pics of me at the laptop that one can publish!).
Before you think, ‘oh come on, just enjoy doing the art and don’t get caught up in the business and marketing of it”, I’ll counter with this; I have a marketing and brand centric brain and I can’t help thinking that way. And I’m building a business. Businesses need to be marketed.
And I think I’ve discovered a way to convey my practice. It’s kinda meta…
When I get my works delivered from the printer, I get to play with them in a physical space before reinterpreting them back into the digital space via taking photographs of them for the purpose of marketing. It’s a lovely loop.
Just as when I’m making my art all else falls away in the flow state and the creation on the screen becomes the most important “object” of my attention (except for, perhaps, my poodle needing me to open the door), so too is the art at the centre of my marketing.
I also love writing about how I get to the art I make, and why.
Yes, I know people want to see and know about the creator but it’s not the most important thing. It’s the art object. And, it’s the viewer’s interpretation of it hopefully hung in their ambient space, soothing and nourishing the soul!
Till next week,
Rachel
