Doing Marketing in the Creative Age!
The Use and Placement of Arts in Marketing and Socio-economic Development
By: Nil Sismanyazici-Navaie, VP of Account Services, Equals Three Communications, Inc.
As we advance from the Information Age into the Creative Age, the definition of a marketer and an artist becomes more interconnected and complex. Today, especially in the more developed societies, the access to information and communications technologies and the availability of software allow interested individuals to explore instant digital arts from graphics to videos, create their own free websites, blogs, vidcasts, and become key players of the new social media. They share content, voice their personal opinions online and other mobile platforms, and contribute to the worldwide viral marketing of products, issues, and causes.
Creative Age indeed puts the creativity, innovativeness, imagination, ingenuity, artistic, and productive talents of people first, recognizes the defining environmental factors that shape one’s culture, appreciates people’s diverse backgrounds and cultural differences, and harnesses their full creative talents to build the infrastructures and businesses that sustain triple bottom lines, and enable economic growth. As the Creative Age lurks around the corner, the long discussions around whether marketing is an art or a science discipline has indeed (finally) become obsolete. Marketing is simply both; a hybrid of:
§ science that focuses not only on research methodologies to analyze audience decisions and the changes of their behaviors, but also the communications and media technologies that help measure campaign effectiveness;
§ and the arts where abstract, observational and relational ideas use words, sounds, colors, shapes or images to craft and carefully translate into engaging products to inform, create awareness, educate, or to encourage some other actions for the audience to take!
Regardless of its significant position throughout history, for decades the arts have been considered secondary to all kinds of socio-economic development schemes. As more studies were conducted that revealed the value of the arts, the arts discipline has been further integrated into the social sciences. One may argue that when critical business and social issues are at stake how can arts be of any importance to marketing, particularly a ‘social marketing’ campaign?
Social marketing is an inclusive discipline that has been in practice for more than three decades, especially in the health sector, and has made significant changes in awareness and prevention of risky-behaviors and other potentially detrimental habits of target audiences. At the core of social marketing is continuous research which strives to understand the correlated factors that shape audience decisions and enable awareness, attitude and behavior change for the better and the overall improvement of communities. Today the focus of social marketing is not only to address health concerns but also to address a number of other issues from public safety in commuting, to environmental causes, youth economic-empowerment, cultural identity and heritage, and more.
In social marketing with arts, the art is primarily used as a communications tool, material, and/or strategy for social change. The social marketing for the arts, or in other words, societal arts marketing, either directly promotes artistic goods/services to generate income for particularly underprivileged communities; or indirectly to build capacities. The increasing use of arts via multiple disciplines and integration of deep social content, development values, and principles in artistic performances help improve target audience behavior and their overall skill-set[i]. There are hundreds of successful examples worldwide that showcase the benefits of using arts, from traditional to digital formats. The arts is utilized as communications and education tools in social marketing campaigns as well as income generating activities that help sustain the livelihoods of indigenous artists and artisans around the world.
For example, Adriana Bertini, a young Brazilian artist has been designing dresses, skirts and suits made entirely of quality-test-rejected condoms to raise AIDS awareness and inspire the use of condoms. Her international condom couture artwork, Dress Up Against AIDS Project that is showcased at venues like the United Nations in New York and Fowler Museum at UCLA consists of art workshops, debates, artistic interventions, publicity campaigns, lectures and formation of young spokespeople in AIDS prevention. While this medium communicates strong messages around HIV/AIDS prevention, it also promotes the artist and her work[ii].
Today not only have such interactive arts projects become key outlets for emerging socially-conscious artists, but also the good old mass-media commercials. Just recently at the 2009 Media and Advertising Conference in New York there were discussions on how artists were using advertising as a means of introducing their work to new consumers. Panelists cited ads like Apple's MacBook Air spot that used Yael Naim's song "New Soul" to illustrate this. Due to this ad, within six months of the song airing on the commercial in mid-January of 2008, the previously unknown artist was able to sell a million downloads.[iii]
I can attest to this new phenomenon myself. There was this song that I kept hearing during the DirectTV commercial that sounded so familiar; and I just loved it. One night I told my husband that somehow I knew this song from my days across the pond, but could not remember the artist and how desperate I was to find who she/he was. The next day he pleasantly surprised me by forwarding the YouTube video link of the Viennese artist Waldeck’s “Make My Day” clip; AND … it really made my day; finally I was in peace! This music, rediscovered through the Direct TV commercial, reached me through YouTube, landed on my mobile phone and was almost adapted as a ring tone. Apparently quite a few others like me went through the same process to “find Waldeck!”. Thanks Direct TV.
All marketing and communications agencies that develop creative products use commercial arts including many genres of art and art techniques from illustration, story-telling, photography, to music videos, animation, computer art, educational e-games, and more. Good commercial and/or socially-intrigued artists are able to understand research findings and audiences, organize information, have knowledge of fine arts, imagination, originality, knowledge of media, and the ability to communicate well through their creations.
The art is indeed a nonnegotiable element of marketing as well as it is a marketable good whose return benefits not only the artist(s), but also societies, if designed and used strategically. This connection between the arts and marketing, and the value of arts as a communications and social development channel between the individual and society will become even more apparent and recognized in the rapidly emerging Creative Age!
[i] ‘Societal Arts Marketing: A Multicultural, Interdisciplinary and International Perspective’ by Sismanyazici Navaie, N. in Arts Marketing (Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004) edt. by Kerigan, F., Fraser, P., and Ozbilgin, M.
[ii] Q & A with An Artist: Adriana Bertini, art’ishake (2006). No.4