T-Shirts and Suits blogThis blog section contains new information, ideas and examples for creative people who want to make their businesses and organisations even more successful. Written by business adviser, trainer and creative industries consultant David Parrish, these articles add to the ideas and examples published in his book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity'. Blog posts are listed by category - see below right. The Creative Business: 12 ModulesThe Creative Business is a series of 12 modules of information about developing creative enterprises, written especially for people running businesses in the creative industries. The information is particularly relevant to creative businesses and cultural enterprises in the fields of Advertising, Literature and Publishing, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Music, Design, Cultural Heritage, and Crafts. Published on the Creative Choices website, this series of 12 articles covers a range of business issues facing creative entrepreneurs: 1. It's Creative but is it a Business? Business Feasibility - deciding whether or not to make a business from your creativity. 2. You're Creative - but so are they! Dealing with competition - understanding your competitive advantage in relation to rivals in the marketplace. 3. Not All Customers are Good Customers. Choosing Customers - finding the right customers to fit with your creativity, ambitions and values. 4. Precision Marketing. Advertising and Publicity - communicating your key messages to customers. 5. Structuring Your Enterprise. Setting up a Business - choosing the best structure: self-employed, not-for-profit company, or commercial enterprise? 6. Make Money While You Sleep! Protecting your Ideas - using intellectual property rights to protect your creativity and make money while you sleep. 7. Creative Collaborations and other essential C-words. Working in partnership with other individuals and businesses in the creative or other sectors. 8. Raising and Managing Money. Financial Management - getting the right financial result by managing your income and expenditure. 9. Customers as Partners. Keeping Customers - listening to customers and building closer relationships with your best customers. 10. Reassuringly Expensive. Pricing - deciding how much to charge by looking at pricing and value from the customers' point of view. 11. Focusing your Enterprise - selecting priorities for development as new opportunities arise. 12. Growing your Business - key issues ahead as your business grows. --- Read and comment on these articles by David Parrish at The Creative Business blog on the Creative Choices website. --- Raising Finance from Fans
Raising finance from loans or investments can be a major challenge for all types of businesses, and it’s especially difficult when credit is scarce and investors are feeling the pinch. So any alternative ways of raising funds are worth exploring. Enterprises in the creative, cultural and digital sector have creativity at the centre of their products and services, yet don’t always apply that same creativity to the business side of things, such as marketing, leadership or finance. But some do. True ‘creative entrepreneurs’ are not just creative people doing business – they are creative with business too. Some of these creative entrepreneurs - especially in music and film - are exploring innovative ways of raising serious amounts of money by asking lots of people for modest investments. This ‘Crowd-Financing’ approach can be labelled ‘Fan-Financing’ when fans are the focus for investments. Here are some examples:
Australian musician Clint Crighton has devised a way of raising funds from his fans to record his next album. For 100 Australian dollars (about £50) you can join an exclusive club of fans which gives you special privileges: a lifetime free entrance pass to all his live gigs, a signed pre-release version of his next album, and a chance to win a trip to Los Angeles to be there at the recording of his next album. A membership of 1,000 true fans will raise the 100,000 Australian dollars he needs. Three British teenagers raised £105,000 by selling credits in their film - for just £1 you can have your name listed in the closing credits. Award-winning Merseyside writer and film director Fiona Maher sold bit-parts in her film on eBay to raise money for her first full-length feature film. A new film called The Age of Stupid is using crowd-financing to raise investment from the public by selling shares priced £10,000 which entitle investors to a share of the profits.
Music and film are leading the way with fan-financing in the creative industries, but surely other enterprises - in the creative sectors and elsewhere - could adapt these models to their own situations and raise much-needed cash by adopting this crowd-financing approach.
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This article was first published by 08businessconnect.com Copyright David Parrish 2009. Some Rights Reserved.
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20 Things You Must KnowThanks to Alun Parry for telling me about Andrew Dubber's excellent free eBook It's a must for anyone in the music business. And for everyone else too. For other creative entrepreneurs it has lots of useful information about Web 2.0 business strategies, the Long Tail, and lots of good advice about internet marketing in general. --- Art is not what you see..."Art is not what you see, it’s what you make others see" - Edgar Degas, French artist (1834-1917)
I agree with this statement, which switches things around nicely, so that instead of thinking only about our own point of view as the creator, we also look at things from the point of view of the audience/client/customer.
In the context of combining art and business, Degas helps us to think about Marketing and Quality in useful ways. I suggest that:
- Marketing is about looking at things from the point of view of the customer (or "audience" or "client" if you prefer).
- Quality is not what you put into it, but what the customer gets out of it.
I'm sure Edgar Degas would agree.
Furthermore, what you 'make others see' might be a variety of different things. According to Charles Leadbeater in his essay 'The Art of With', the writer Umberto Eco "long ago declared that works of art were open to multiple interpretations; the reader was as active in creating meanings as the writer."
In business terms, we need to be open to these various 'meanings' or 'customer interpretations' because otherwise there can be a big difference between what you think you are selling and what the customer is actually buying. What you consciously or unconsciously 'make others see' could be a lifestyle, a feelgood factor (or even a 'feelbad factor'), or maybe a 'talking point' or a 'story' when they buy your creative product or service.
What both Degas and Eco are saying is that we need to be aware that other people (the audience/reader/consumer/customer) might see things differently than we do.
Understanding how clients see things and perceive customer benefits helps creative entrepreneurs to become even more successful in terms of marketing, pricing and choosing the right customers.
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Share your own thoughts and experiences about all this on the Creative Enterprise Network.
--- Raising finance the AEV waySteve 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 a modest £4,000 GBP so Steve put together a business case for a bigger budget. He knew that the client wanted publicity and so argued that a bigger investment in a more impressive work of art would pay dividends in terms of 'Advertising Equivalent Value' (AEV) - in other words, the cost of the publicity in column inches if it were paid for as advertising. Steve pitched his idea and business case to the PR Agency Colman Getty, who specialise in arts related work and had been commissioned by Cumbria Tourism to publicise the art installation and campaign for cultural tourism. Using data from previous projects, Steve calculated that the Advertising Equivalent Value should be at least £150,000 GBP and possibly as high as £250,000 GBP, provided the budget for his art installation was increased six-fold. Colman Getty understood the commercial value of the PR that could be generated and helped Steve to convince the client to invest accordingly. The result was a spectacular installation called 'Drop', a huge inflatable sculpture modelled on a drop of water. The sculpture was installed at various scenic locations in the English Lake District. Part of the publicity campaign was to encourage tourists to take and publish photos of the huge silver sculpture and this viral marketing helped to promote the campaign further. With the help of Steve Messam's art, the campaign was highly successful and exceeded its targets in terms of publicity. In one weekend alone, over 10,500 people went to see it. News and images even reached the world's biggest circulation newspaper, China Daily. Steve's reputation - and his creative enterprise - goes from strength to strength. He will be exhibiting his latest art installation at the Venice Biennale in June 2009, raising finance in a similar way using the business case of Advertising Equivalent Value, rather than an application for an arts grant. --- Discuss this and other ways of raising finance on the Creative Enterprise Network. --- 'Crowd Financing' to fund a filmHow do you raise finance for a feature film? It's an expensive business, but some creative entrepreneurs think imaginatively about raising money, including raising small amounts from lots of people. Like 'crowd-sourcing', 'crowd financing' allows many people to participate in a small way to have a great collective effect. This 'crowd-financing' approach is now more feasible than ever before because of online networks and ecommerce technology. Fiona Maher sold bit-parts in her film on eBay and now three British teenagers have raised £105,000 (105,000 GBP) so far, by selling credits in their film for just £1 (1 GBP) each, according to this article in the Guardian. Congratulations to these entrepreneurs for using their creativity to think also about finance as well as their film projects ! PS: Thanks to Felix Holm for his reply on the discussion forum, letting us know about 'Boy Called Twist', a South African film financed this way. PPS: Thanks also to Hannah Rudman for providing links to the excellent site The Age of Stupid (Crowd Financed film with funding models, budgets etc) and the fundraising/campaigning site The Point. --- Join the discussion forum about Crowd Financing on the T-Shirts and Suits Creative Enterprise Network. --- Creative Enterprise NetworkT-Shirts and Suits has set up an online Creative Enterprise Network to help creative people world-wide to promote their enterprises and to network with each other across national and cultural boundaries. It's free to join - and easy to upload photos, videos and information. There are specialist groups within the network, including: You are invited to join the network and to invite friends, colleagues and contacts to join too. The network welcomes anyone involved directly or indirectly in the creative industries, cultural industries, creative businesses, cultural organisations, cultural enterprises and creative industries support organisations. Creative industry organisations world-wide are invited to join. www.creative-enterprise-network.com --- The Business of CultureFor many people, the words ‘business’ and ‘culture’ don’t sit comfortably side by side. Some people assume that culture has to be non-commercial to be valid, and therefore to apply commercial thinking to cultural endeavour is to pervert it. But even charities and ‘non-for-profit’ organisations in the arts and cultural sector need to be business-like, even though the traditional business motive of profit maximisation does not apply. -- This article was first published by www.08BusinessConnect.com --- Creative Enterprise NetworkCreative businesses and cultural enterprises can promote their organisations, products and services through this online network. This free network for creative people in business can be found at: This creative entrepreneurs' network features videos and photos from creative enterprises and allows creative entrepreneurs to interact to publicise events and share smart business ideas through discussion groups, blogs and even live chat. An international creative industries network, CEN was launched as "T-Shirts and Suits (Creativity and Business)" by David Parrish, author of the book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity'. There are other T-Shirts and Suits networks for creative entrepreneurs, including a group on Facebook, and T-Shirts and Suits Coffee Club events, which are also free to join and open to everyone involved in (or interested in) creative businesses, cultural organisations and the creative industries. --- Three Top TipsI was asked to give "three top 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'. Here's an extract: Can you give us three top tips for running your own successful creative business, David? --- Note: This is an extract from an article by Ellie Stevenson, first published on ArtsHub UK. --- Share your own Top Tips with other creative people in business on the Creative Enterprise Network --- Creative Business GuideA useful and readable 'Creative, Cultural and Digital Industries Guide' has been published by Business Link West Midlands Businesses in the West Midlands region of England can obtain a hard copy of the Guide. The creative industries guide was designed by iDM Design, Wolverhampton
This creative business guide was written by David Parish of TShirts and Suits. Similar creative business guides can be written for other organisations in the creative, cultural and digital sectors. Contact David Parrish to discuss options and possibilities for your own version of this creative industries guide. ---
Are You Busy?"Are you busy?" is often a conversation opener between creative people in business. The implication is that you should be busy; if you're not busy, then something is wrong. But wait a minute ! It's easy to be busy, busy, busy. Mainly because it gives us an excuse not to Think. "Action is easy; thought is hard", wrote Goethe. “Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action” I'm writing this at the end of the year, which is a good time for reflecting on the past and making plans for the future. (But we should reflect and plan more often than once a year, so anytime is good.) Personally I'm going to make a resolution to be less "busy-busy" and focus on doing a few things really well and in a less frantic way. Then my answer to the common question "Are you busy?" will be an uncommon "No not busy - but highly effective." (Wouldn't that be a cool thing to be able to say?) But first, the hard part. It means I need to stop and think, then decide what are the most important things I need to do - and therefore what not to do - in the coming year. I'm going to think and make some strategic decisions. What about you? ---
Winning in Hard TimesHow will creative businesses cope in the economic downturn? That’s a question that I have been asked many times recently, both in the UK and overseas. In response, I make the following points: --- The LEGO CrowdLewis Pinault from Lego Serious Play addressed the Creative Clusters Conference in Glasgow - and I had fun making a duck (see photo). Lego Serious Play helps bus As a bonus, the manual dexterity needed for this kind of creative play stimulates parts of the brain that other activitie do not reach, apparently. Lego also invites its millions of users to design new bricks and kits for the company. As Lewis Pinault said "this open platform needs tons and tons of volunteer designers." In other words, adopting the Wisdom of Crowds or Crowdsourcing approach, the company uses the ideas and energy of people outside the business to create new products it can sell. Another example of Crowdsourcing, from the book Wikinomics, is about a Canadian gold mine, Goldcorp Inc, which published its geological information on the internet and offered $575,000 in prize money to anyone who could help them find more gold. Submissions came from all over the world and transformed the $100m company into a $9bn giant. Instead of keeping information and ideas in-house, sometimes it's better to share data and engage with the crowd to collect new ideas and design better products and services. PS: The crowd of Lego fans also promote the company indirectly using viral marketing by publishing more than 55,000 videos of their Lego models on YouTube. --- Let me know how your creative business uses Crowdsourcing techniques. --- Business Growth: Does Size Matter?Part of my job as a business adviser in the creative sector is to ask questions – sometimes awkward or unexpected questions. So when entrepreneurs ask my advice about how to grow their businesses, my first questions are: “Why do you want to grow?” and: “What do you want to grow?” Discuss this subject on the Creative Enterprise Network --- Copyright © David Parrish. 2008. Some Rights Reserved First published by 08businessconnect --- ... and what we didn't doThe most focusedcreative enterprises are clear about where they want to go and have a clear vision of the future and exactly what 'Success' means. In a 'Designing Your Creative Business' workshop for creative entrepreneurs in Taipei, sponsored by the British Council in Taiwan and the Taiwan Design Centre, I suggested a technique to help develop a business strategy. 1. Firstly, imagine you are already in that successful place in the future. Maybe you are being interviewed by a journalist about your journey to success. 2. Then look back on the most important things you did to get to that point. These are the things that really made a difference - the things you are most proud of when you look back. 3. Now return to the present, and those key things you were looking back on are now still in front of you. They are the main elements in your business strategy. In my book T-Shirts and Suits I recommend that sometimes we need to Say No in order to focus on the right things to do. This came up again in a conversation after the workshop. So we also need to reflect on what we deliberately didn't do, which helped us achieve success. And these 'Things Not to Do' in your business strategy are just as important as the things you must do. --- Viral marketing - MUTO videoThanks 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 3,000,000 views on YouTube so far and received nearly10,000 comments. The business model used has been categorised as 'Findability/Creative Investment'. In other words, the creator gives something away for free in order to reap financial benefits by other means. It's one of the 3 (or 14) Kinds of Free. It's a brilliant example of viral marketing !!
See also Viral Marketing Video from Berlitz. See also Buzz Marketing --- Don't be a 'Poor Pioneer'I often advise creative entrepreneurs who have innovative products or services. Sometimes it's a completely new idea and they are planning to open up a new market for it. Someone asked me whether I'm ever tempted to 'steal' the ideas people tell me about when I'm advising them. My answer was firmly No, for two reasons - more later. My job as an adviser is to ask questions, including tough ones, to help entrepreneurs make their creative businesses even more successful. Sometimes the truth is that there is nothing at all to stop others joining the party once all the hard work has been done. In this case I fear for the business concerned. I tell them that they may end up penniless after opening up new frontiers - they may become a 'Poor Pioneer'. Creative people take pride in being 'groundbreaking'. But breaking the ground for others to make all the profit is not so smart! In other cases the entrepreneur's answer is that other businesses cannot enter the market and take the profits, because they have created some sort of 'barrier to entry' to prevent others joining the party. In creative enterprises the barrier to entry is often some kind of intellectual property such as a patent or copyright-protected work. In this case copycats cannot easily follow them into the marketplace with 'me-too' products or services. Intellectual Property Rights are the creative entrepreneur's defence against commercial predators. Which takes me back to the question of why I don't copy my clients' ideas and set up a rival business. So I either (1) don't want to, or (2) cannot set up as a competitor to my client after hearing about their new business initiative. The most successful creative enterprises are capable of both (a) developing new products or services and (b) using intellectual property rights to protect their position against competitors so they can enjoy the fruits of their creativity without 'new entrants' stealing market share. So don't be a Poor Pioneer, looking back bitterly on all the creative work you did, only to find that other people made all the money from it. Use intellectual property rights in partnership with your creativity, to devise a successful business model. It's much more fun to be a Rich Pioneer ! --- See also: Creative Labourer - or Creative Entrepreneur? and Let's follow George Lucas 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 The Guardian tells how a stroke made him into an artist, giving him another kind of 'second life' after previously working as an engineer, without any kind of artistic training. He now runs a successful creative business from his home in the North of England. He has combined his new talents as an artist with a marketing strategy which includes a variety of online and virtual media including Second Life. Ken also publicises his work through social networking sites and has published images in the "T-Shirts and Suits (Creativity and Business)" international group for creative people in business within Facebook. His income is derived from direct sales and through the licensing of his intellectual property.
Global corporation EA Games were impressed with his work and commissioned him to design 100 digital dinosaurs for a new educational game called Spore. Ken retains ownership of the copyright in the designs and gets a cut of merchandise sales as part of the licensing agreement. In this way he is developing additional income streams as a Creative Entrepreneur. Ken Walters can be contacted by email (mail@kwdag.biz) and his website address is http://www.kwdag.biz/. --- 3 (or 14) 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 Information Complements', 'Site Licences', 'Sell Other Things', 'Sell Personalised Versions' and 'Ransom'. Another blog post by Chris Anderson is about The Three Kinds of Free, ie (1) 'Cross Subsidy', where giving away one thing leads to sales of another, (2) 'Third-Party Subsidy', where advertisers, for example, pay for free content and (3) the 'Freemium' business model, where the vast majority of consumers get the product for free and a small percentage pay a premium for some kind of enhancement which subsidises free distribution to the majority. "In this model, charging a small percentage of a large user base beats charging a large percentage of a small user base", Chris Anderson says. There are plenty of good reasons to give things away for free - including making more money. Read also 'Give it away free' which includes example of how creative enterprises in Brazil and China have given things away free for smart business reasons. --- Creative Times: Getting ideas from unusual places
A great place to get ideas is from business sectors outside the creative industries. Creative Times is now online ! --- Passion in business"Do you have to abandon your creative passion to become more businesslike?" is a question I am sometimes asked when I'm talking with creative people in business. My answer is that passion is essential in a creative business. We need to harness it, not deny it. And we must stay true to our values as our creative businesses develop and grow. Randy Komisar's book Monk and the Riddle, The: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living is a modern fable about life and work, set in California's Silicon Valley. It emphasises the need to integrate passion and values into your business objectives. It's an inspiring read. Its main audience is businesspeople who are driven to make money, so they can indulge their passions later, what he calls their 'Deferred Life Plan'. Komisar's message is about the importance of passion at the heart of a business strategy. Creative people in business have plenty of passion - it's the business strategy that's sometimes the weakness. That's why my own book 'T-Shirts and Suits', written especially for creative entrepreneurs, starts with the assumption of a creative passion then explains several crucial business issues which must be combined with passion to create an effective enterprise. Komisar and I agree: it's not a matter of choosing either/or, whether to be passionate or businesslike, as if one excludes the other. It's a matter of integrating both, in harmony. The metaphor and philosophy of 'T-Shirts and Suits' is about bringing together creative passion and smart business thinking in intelligent ways that are consistent with our values. The best strategies involve passion - and other essential business factors. Jim Collins' Hedgehog Strategy involves identifying what you are passionate about - plus an understanding of how you create value and in which area you can excel in relation to competitors. Rob Kinsey is an artist with a passion - and a focus. His focus is to select a particular market he knows well and he has become successful because of this focus combined with his passion. Sara Lönnroth's phrase "Let your heart drive you and your head guide you" emphasises the need to combine heart and head - passion with clear business thinking. Passion is vital, but it's not enough. Necessary but not sufficient. But passion at the heart of a creative enterprise which also uses its head to devise a clear business strategy is a potent combination. ---
Chase one rabbitHere'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: Let me know about how this applies to your enterprise. PS: Another animal to take inspiration from is the Hedgehog. --- The Art and Science of AdvertisingThe 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 his book Confessions of an Advertising Man The science of psychology has a lot to offer too. A fascinating book called Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion Here are just a few examples: These 50 secrets from the science of persuasion can be used by any creative business, not just advertising agencies, to help make any kind of promotion, publicity and sales initiative more effective. We need to underpin our creative advertising with the scientific facts. --- 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. In contrast, the most effective (and most creative) people learn from other industries and sectors. (See article on Lateral-Thinking Leadership.) I then looked around the room and wondered how many of these 'creative' people ever go to gatherings of engineers, hoteliers or bankers in search of new ideas, business methods, or customers. Probably very few. We should get out more. --- Rolls and RoyceSuccessful creative businesses need a combination of creativity and business strategy - what I call 'T-Shirts' and 'Suits'. Sometimes, one individual has both of these elements in good measure, but more often than not, the harmony of creativity and business is formed by two people, or a larger team. Frederick Henry Royce met Charles Stewart Rolls in Manchester in 1904. Royce was the engineer and Rolls the businessman, and their partnership formed the world-famous company Rolls-Royce. Jennifer Harris, writing in Management Today, points out that different skills can combine in a complementary way but different attitudes cannot. I agree. There must be a shared vision for the enterprise, even if the partners involved are very different characters with different skills. So the shared vision is in many ways the starting point. If people are working hard together but with different goals in mind, conflict - or at least stalemate - is likely to occur. Matters of risk, growth, financial reward and lifestyle are all issues about which partners might have different views. If these are not in harmony, each person may have a valid, but different, business strategy in mind as their road map to different destinations. Success means different things to different people, so simply agreeing together that you want the business to be 'successful' is not clear enough. Working towards different definitions of success will inevitably bring problems. That definition of success needs to be clearly defined and agreed. "Start with the end in mind", says Steven R Covey in his bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Having that clear vision of the future, and then starting with that end in mind, is exactly what successful creative entrepreneurs do. 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, not just video enthusiasts. It got me thinking more about Quality. Creative people in business are rightly concerned about Quality. However, quality is subjective, not objective. And in business terms, the customer's perspective is vital. Sometimes creators add "too much" quality, not because the customer demands it but simply because the producer wants to - or thinks they ought to. I recently bought a digital camera. Not the 'best' or the most complex, but one that is small and light enough to take with me without having to decide every day if I really want to carry the extra weight. As a Nikon, it's well built and I expect it to be reliable. Also it was easy to obtain and sold at a reasonable price. It does the job for me, it's 'fit for purpose', therefore it's 'quality'. Quality has many dimensions because the consumer takes into account price, convenience, speed of delivery, maintenance costs and usability in deciding their own definition of quality. So we need to think about offering Quality in different dimensions. For example: Not everyone wants the biggest, longest, most expensive or most complex version of what you can offer. Is a Rolls Royce better than a bicycle? It depends on what the customer actually wants. By understanding customers' perspectives on quality, the most successful creative businesses use their creative talents to produce goods and services which fit customers' definitions of quality as well as staying true to their own sense of artistic integrity. --- Read also what Edgar Degas and Umberto Eco say about the customer's view of Quality. --- Film funding through eBay...Financing a feature film can be a complex and expensive business, and most talented film directors never get a chance to make a full-length feature film because of lack of finance. But with her 'can-do' attitude, resourcefulness and determination, Fiona Maher has made a film on a micro-budget, raising cash from a variety of sources, calling in favours and getting in-kind support from suppliers and a wide range of talented people in her network. One of the creative ways she raised funds was by selling roles in the film on eBay to people wanting to take part in the film project. 'The Tree of Death' is a comedy feature, described as 'Blair Witch meets Spinal Tap' CCTV = PRManchester band The Get Out Clause used CCTV as PR - and then were publicised on Sky News! With the help of public relations expert Liam Walsh of AskMe PR, the band performed under Closed Circuit TV cameras in various places around Manchester - then demanded the footage from the CCTV operators under the Freedom of Information Act. They then used the footage to make their promotional video! This 'guerrilla marketing' stunt resulted in the band's video being featured on Sky News. Watch video here. --- Cate Blanchett 'Sparkles'Congratulations to one of my client creative businesses, Sparkle Media on their successful projects in Australia ! The visual effects and animation company has recently worked in Australia with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, producing video footage for the multimedia theatrical performance Minutes of a Separation. Sparkle Media also worked for Reebok whilst in Australia on an 'advanced fitness' website project. It's a pleasure to work with creative entrepreneurs like Glenn Maguire and Andy Cooper, who are the company's directors. Sparke Director Glenn Maguire said: Working internationally from their base in Liverpool, Sparkle has worked closely with creative industries support agency Merseyside ACME. Creative Times: Leading Creative People - it's like herding cats!Leading Creative People ... My presentation to the owners of advertising agencies from around the world was on the subject of Leadership. One aspect they were particularly interested in was how to lead 'creative' staff. Link to full article: Leading Creative People Creative Times is now online ! The Price of a BedWould you pay 50,620 Euros for a bed? Probably not. But apparently some people do. Why? What's going on here? I'm fascinated by pricing strategies and run workshops for creative businesses on the subject. In the case of a Hastens bed, you are invited to buy into the story of a small family firm in Sweden. The advert asks "Who would spend 50,620 Euros on a bed?" Are you one of the select few? --- I'm interested to hear from you about pricing strategies - especially about businesses in the creative industries. Carnaby Street W1Westminster Council bought the copyright in the design of its iconic street signs (pictured). The designs were created by Misha Black in 1967 and the copyright remained with the designer until his death, when it passed to his estate. Black's son then sold the copyright to Westminster Council in London for £50,000 GBP (100,000 USD). The Council plans to charge licence fees to more than 100 companies that use the design on popular tourist souvenirs and other products. Designers should follow Misha Black's example by retaining copyright when creating designs for clients, to make a profitable sale later - or to generate licensing income themselves. --- --- --- Don't Co-operateIn contrast to the business strategies of collaboraton or Co-opetition, there is another strategy to consider: 'Don't Co-operate'. This is one of the characteristics of the success of Apple Inc., according to Wired Magazine in an article called 'How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong'. The article shows how Apple breaks several of the conventional rules of business adopted by most hi-tech companies, such as 'Communicate', 'Play Nice', 'Love Your Customers', and 'Coddle Your Employees'. Apple's unconventional strategy demonstrates that there are no universal rules in business - you have to create a unique formula which works for your enterprise, and your customers. Beware 'Copyright Grabs'Photographer Chiz Dakin (Peak Images) asked me to warn other photographers about the problem of 'copyright grabs'. Chiz is concerned about the trend for businesses, particularly large corporations, to "grab copyright in any image they can get their hands on", as she puts it. This practice is a hazard for photographers who don't carefully read the small print in contracts with clients. So the advice from Chiz is: make sure you read the small print to ensure you don't lose your intellectual property rights in your images! See also: Paul Arden RIPAdvertising genius Paul Arden died on 02 April 2008. Some of his most influential work was done while he was executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi for 14 years. Paul was responsible for advertising campaigns for clients such as The Independent ("The Independent. It is - are you?"), Toyota ("The car in front is a Toyota"), British Airways, Fuji, and the slashed purple silk images for Silk Cut cigarettes. Earlier in his career he worked for Ogilvy and Mather and other agencies, developing his reputation as a leader in design-led advertising. His books are wonderful. A real maverick and often difficult to work with, he relished getting the sack and was proud of his lack of formal education. He was a Beckham fan, notably Victoria Beckham's wanting to be "more famous than Persil Automatic" and praised Elizabeth Esteve-Coll's controversial decision to adopt the slogan "An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached" for the Victoria and Albert Museum when she was director there. His creativity lives on... Give it away free!Creative entrepreneurs often ask me how they can make money from their music or computer games when MP3 files and software is so easy to copy. One answer is to use the fact that people copy your stuff to change a threat into an opportunity. Banda Calypso's music is copied onto CDs and sold on street corners in Brazil. They don't get a cut of this income but they don't mind. In fact they supply theses street-sellers with master CDs to copy! And they organise things so that there is a plentiful supply of their music for sale in each town on the route of their tour, before they arrive to perform. They see this copying and selling as an advertising function and they don't have to pay these street-corner entrepreneurs. Their gigs are always full and they've made enough money to buy a private jet to take the band on tour. Timothy Chan, one of the richest men in China used to get ripped off by copyright pirates. His computer game CDs were copied illegally and sold cheaply. He could have tried in vain to stop this. Or he could have let his business go bankrupt. Instead he changed his business to take advantage of the copying. He decided to make his money from online connection fees instead of CD sales. He changed the game so people had to play online and pay a very small fee per minute. The copied CDs spread like wildfire and so did his customer base. Every CD copied now helped his business. Smart entrepreneurs see opportunities when others see only threats. See also: 3 (or 14) Kinds of Free --- Let your heart drive you...A creative passion is often the driving force for creative entrepreneurs. I was asked recently by Putte Svensson from Rockparty in Hultsfred, Sweden, what would be my advice if someone said they just wanted to have fun. My answer was that fun is important and essential to any enterprise. I went on to say that I do indeed want people to have fun - and for a long time! Having fun for a short while and then going bankrupt isn't much fun at all. I help people to also look at the business issues that will help them to continue to have fun in a sustainable way, long-term. Things like marketing, finance and intellectual property also need to be taken into account to make sure the fun continues. The philosophy of T-Shirts and Suits is about combining creativity and business acumen. It's about using rationality as well as emotion - the left side of the brain as well as the right side. I sometimes talk about 'using our heads as well as our hearts'. Sara Lönnroth, who is the project leader for Mötesplats Mode&Design (MM&D), at the Transit Business Incubator at Konstfack in Stockholm, suggested a phrase about this, which I've adapted and translated as: I'm going to adopt this as one of my sayings from now on! 1,000 True FansInstead of dreaming about having millions of fans, nurture one thousand 'true fans'. He writes: True fans are the people who will buy whatever you produce or drive out of their way to see you perform.It's a feasible target and these people become the core of your customer base. You can then build up from there in partnership with a publisher, distributor or agent. The article has lots of examples of creative people using cool business methods to build a customer base and generate income streams at the same time. The full article is online at Kevin Kelly's Technium website/blog. We don't sell beer...The Duvel Cafe in Stockholm is a bar which sells a range of Belgian beers. I was fascinated by the beer glasses as much as the beer itself, so I took a couple of photos. In Sweden, they use the term 'Experience Industry' for what is known as the 'Creative Industries' in the UK and elsewhere. What I like about the Swedish term is that it refers to what the customer gets out of the deal, rather than what the producer puts in. This understanding of how the customer benefits is a crucial marketing perspective. I asked the barman about the glass and he told me how the Tripel Karmeliet glass had been designed to improve the taste of the beer. It's shaped a bit like a brandy glass so the beer can be swirled around. For the price of a beer I was getting some information about design as well as the story of the brewery. "We don't sell beer," he said "We sell knowledge." The customer's experience is not just a drink of beer. --- See also: 'What are you selling, really?' --- Madonna - creative businesswomanMadonna has recently terminated her contract with Warner Music after 25 years and signed a new contract with tour company Live Nation. Now that digital music is so cheap, not to mention illegal downloads, Madonna recognises that her main income in future will be from performances and related products, not music sales. So she has changed her business model and Live Nation is a more appropriate partner than a traditional record label. "The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift," said Madonna. Madonna's move illustrates that creativity is not just about being an artist. You can use creativity in business too, by rearranging your business to maximise income as technology and customers' behaviour changes. As an artist and a businesswoman (a T-Shirt and a Suit), Madonna is a topical example of how creativity and business can be combined intelligently. Managing Cash Flow and Fixed CostsOne of the biggest challenges for creative businesses, especially fast-growing enterprises, is the management of cash flow. When businesses fail, it's frequently because of a cash flow crisis rather than lack of profitability. The gap between cash outflows and cash inflows becomes too big and they run out of cash. An unprofitable business will inevitably run short of cash but even profitable businesses can face a cash crisis if cashflow isn't managed carefully. As a business grows and its turnover increases, there is always a temptation to increase fixed costs. Then these higher fixed costs commit the business to regular cash outflows, even though the cash inflow may be more erratic, due to fluctuations in trade and delayed payments from clients. I have seen businesses increase their fixed costs to such an extent that they are risking serious cashflow problems. In one company, a chief executive hired temporary staff to deliver short-term projects but then engaged them full time as employees, which meant that the company's expenditure was no longer flexible, even though an endless supply of short-term projects was far from guaranteed. To feed the company's new dependency on more and more cash, he then had to keep finding more and more projects, because they were no longer able to reduce their costs in lean times and 'ride the waves' of the ups and downs of business as they used to do. To avoid a cashflow crisis the company accepted unprofitable projects, to get a quick cash fix, even though it was digging itself into deeper trouble in the long term. Unless future cash inflows are guaranteed to be steady, beware increasing fixed costs if you want to avoid cash flow problems. Credit control is another major issue in managing cash flow effectively. Slow paying customers and bad debts can put a creative enterprise out of business, especially in the first few years when it is more vulnerable financially and less able to negotiate favourable trade terms with clients. Choose your customers carefully and agree a payment schedule through the project, ideally with a percentage paid up-front, rather agreeing to be paid only on completion of the job. Delays happen (often the fault of the client) which in turn delays payment and in the mean time cash is flowing out every week and month that goes by. A cash flow projection spreadsheet is an essential tool for effective financial management of any creative business, so that potential problems can be foreseen - and then avoided. Smart creative entrepreneurs keep a close eye on cashflow as well as turnover and profitability. Time Management for Creative PeopleTime Management is an issue that comes up frequently when I'm advising creative businesses. In my view, time management is both a strategic issue and an operational challenge. If we are unrealistic about what can be achieved with finite resources, we will always be frustrated. Trying to run two businesses when you only have the time needed to run one is an impossibility, not a matter of better time management. So firstly we need to prioritise strategically and decide what we are going to do - and not do. The 'Not To Do' list is as important as the 'To Do' list. It's more realistic to focus on a few things and do them well than to attempt too much and do nothing properly. Then it comes down to operational matters - ie how to actually manage our time on a day to day basis. Business Coach Mark McGuinness has published 'Time Management for Creative People' as a free eBook. I've recommended it to my clients as well as finding it useful for my own work. It’s subtitled ‘Manage the Mundane - Create the Extraordinary’ as it’s designed to help you maintain your creative focus while dealing with your other commitments. Download the eBook from Mark's 'Wishful Thinking' blog . Have a creative 2008 !As the year draws to a close, I'd like to wish you Peace at Christmas and every success in 2008. I'm privileged to have worked with some wonderful people in 2007. Thank you to Mike Carney for the new visual identity and to Darren Ratcliffe for my new website and blog. Thanks to Merseyside ACME and Smiling Wolf for publishing my book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity' as a free eBook. The 'T-Shirts and Suits' group on Facebook has grown rapidly since the summer to become a network of more than 800 creative entrepreneurs from all over the world. As well as working in Liverpool, Manchester, Derbyshire, London and elsewhere in England, international projects took me to Norway, Germany and Holland during the year. Best wishes to all my consultancy clients and to everyone who attended my training workshops and seminars. I have enjoyed helping your creative enterprises to become even more successful - and I've learned a lot from you. As well as my ongoing business advice sessions and training workshops, I will be initiating some new projects in 2008. I'm also looking forward to publishing more useful information, ideas and articles for creative businesses in the forthcoming year. Watch this space! Have a great holiday and see you again in the new year... David Selling cheese: a marketing problemAn incident in the the BBC TV programme 'The Apprentice' provided an excellent example of a marketing error. In one episode, Sir Alan Sugar sent his teams of would-be apprentices to sell English food toat a farmer's market in the centre of a French town. One team did particularly badly and they were invited by a furious Sir Alan to explain themselves. The team leader pointed his finger at a member of his team, blaming the team's 'marketing manager', saying that the banner advertising the food stall was the problem. He tried to deflect criticism from himself by blaming it on his 'marketing department'. In my opinion, the problem was indeed a marketing problem - but not the one the team leader identified. When given the task of selling English food to the French, the team leader had decided to go to a 'cash and carry' food wholesaler and buy a huge slab of processed cheese, wrapped in plastic. They then took it to France, cut it into small cubes, and presented it to prospective customers on cocktail sticks. Then the good people of France were invited to buy chunks of processed cheese! Needless to say, the French customers refused to buy. More than any other nation on earth, the French know about their cheeses and are very selective about what they eat. Trying to sell processed English cheese to French consumers was always going to fail. Even if they had a multi-million Euro advertising campaign, the French would never buy the stuff. The problem was not the advertising and promotion (the 'marketing department'). The real marketing problem was choosing the wrong product to sell to customers - the marketing strategy. There was a fundamental mis-match between the product and the target customers! If you have a flawed marketing strategy (ie business formula) , then no amount of operational marketing (adverts, promotion, banners, brochures etc) will save you! On the other hand, if you get the marketing strategy right - perhaps by choosing to sell English chutneys, pickles and marmalade to the French - then the advertising doesn't matter as much. You could say that if you get the [strategic] marketing right, then the product doesn't need [operational] 'marketing'. The biggest marketing mistake of all is to think that 'marketing' is just about clever advertising, colourful banners, websites etc, without checking first whether the underlying strategic marketing formula is right. In other words, marketing is not about 'selling anything to anybody' using clever techniques, but about carefully matching your products or services to the right customers. The lesson is: get your strategic marketing right first, then think about your operational marketing (marketing communications). --- Let me know about your own experiences of strategic marketing. The "So What?" test of features or benefitsIf 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 we do it, to produce products or services - and forget to sell the customer benefits. The customer will ask themselves "What's in it for me?" and if we fail to explain what's in it for them (customer benefits), and just talk about the facts or features of the product or service, they will walk away. An example. I was talking with a web designer and asking how he could help me with a project I was working on. He went on at length about the open source software he used, the capability of the programs, his skilled staff etc, etc. I was thinking "Good for you! But what's in it for me?" I had to ask him directly before he explained the benefits to me, the potential client, of his using open source software. Marketing is about looking at things from the customer's point of view. That means emphasising customer benefits they are interested in, not the features of the product or service we are interested in ourselves. --- Let me know of your own experiences or stories about features vs benefits, from your own creative business or your experience as a customer. An Artist with a Passion - and a FocusRob Kinsey is an artist with a passion for the sport of motocross, defining himself on his website as ‘motocross racer, fan and award-winning artist’.
Art and sport have been important to Rob for many years. He qualified as a technical illustrator in the 1970’s and his artwork has developed in parallel with his participation in motocross. He competed in the British Motocross Championships from 1977 to 1981 and still rides in Vintage Motocross events. He specialises in painting with acrylic on canvas and produces high quality prints using the Giclée process, which ensures that the colours do not fade over time.  Photo: Rob Kinsey with one of his motocross paintings. “They are all painted with a passion,” says Rob, and he combines his passions for art and motocross with business acumen. He sells pen and ink drawings, prints and original artworks through his e-commerce website to a world-wide customer base of riders, fans and motocross businesses. To help make his creative enterprise even more successful, Rob attended a business development course close to his home in Derbyshire, England. The ‘Focusing Creativity’ workshops helped Rob and other creative entrepreneurs to devise business strategies which combine their creative talents with smart business thinking. “I went on the course feeling that I should diversify my range of artwork away from just motocross because I felt vulnerable by having all my eggs in one basket,” said Rob. However, by the end of the course, after having considered a range of factors such as his competitive advantage, market segmentation and pricing strategies, Rob decided that his best option was to play to his strengths and focus on motocross art. “The course encouraged me to focus on what I’m passionate about and to capitalise on my position in the world of motocross” said Rob. “The message I came away with was ‘Believe in yourself and don’t worry about only working in a niche market – simply become the best motocross artist in the world!’ from the aptly named Focusing Creativity course” said Rob. Despite being a one-person enterprise, Rob’s business strategy is similar to that of some of the biggest corporations. Jim Collins identified that the most consistently successful companies use the ‘Hedgehog Concept’. (The hedgehog is supremely good at one defensive position, and it survives by sticking to its winning strategy.) Businesses using the Hedgehog Strategy have identified the one thing at which they can be world-beaters. This results from an objective understanding of what you can be best in the world at combined with the thing you are deeply passionate about. This focused strategy worked. Within a year he was appointed as the ‘Official Artist to the 2007 Motocross de Nations’ in Maryland, USA. This accolade will give him the opportunity to exhibit and sell his works of art in the VIP and Press buildings at the event, which is the ideal marketplace at the very heart of this international sport. Rob Kinsey has achieved world-class status by focusing on his niche market, concentrating on his specialist creativity and being driven by his passion. ---
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--- Let me know about other creative entrepreneurs who have focused on a specialist niche to achieve world-beating success. Your world-class 'Hedgehog Strategy'Many creative enterprises offer a range of goods or services and regard this as a way of maximising their options and income-generating potential. I understand what they are trying to do. They say it's a case of 'keeping your options open' and 'casting the net widely' in order to increase the chances of winning new customers. One of the problems with this approach is that you also increase the number of your competitors. And in each market you are competing in, the chances are that somebody is better than you at that particular thing. So you end up being a 'jack of all trades but master of none'. Even if that is too critical an analysis of your position, it may still be the customers' perception of your business. Instead of competing on several fronts, I often urge my clients to identify the one thing at which they excel in relation to competitors, in other words, the one thing which 'puts them head and shoulders above' competing enterprises. In a study of the most consistently successful companies, Jim Collins identified that each of these companies uses what he calls the Hedgehog Concept. The fox, renowned for his cunning, has many strategies for killing the hedgehog. On the other hand, the hedgehog has only one strategy for defending itself. Whenever the fox attacks, from whatever direction, the hedgehog rolls itself into a ball of spikes. It works every time. The hedgehog is supremely good at one thing, and it survives by sticking to its winning strategy.The most consistently successful companies identified the one thing at which they can be world-beaters - and then they focused on this speciality to consistently beat the competition. Identifying your own organisation's Hedgehog Strategy flows from a thorough and objective understanding of: This strategy applies to large corporations but also to smaller businesses and enterprises in the creative sector. For example, painter Rob Kinsey has combined his passion for the sport of motocross with paintings of motocross that he sells to riders, fans and companies in the industry. By focusing on this narrow niche, he has found the place where his passion, creative talent and target market overlaps. This is the niche in which he can be a world-beater. --- Let me know about your own Hedgehog Strategy! --- Discuss this blog post on the T-Shirts and Suits Creative Enterprise Network Telling Africa's Story to the WorldTelling Africa’s story from Africans’ point of view is the mission of Africa Media Online, the agency representing African media professionals to the global market. Creative Times - The Message Must be right for the MediumThe Message must be right for the medium - and vice versa. |
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uses psychological research to demonstrate how advertising can become more effective by using science as well as art.
