Drawing by Hugh MacLeod

My recent article Why Artists and Creatives Have an Unfair Advantage at Internet Marketing turned out to be one of the most popular things I’ve ever written at Wishful Thinking. So if it touched a chord with you then you might like to download the hour-long podcast interview I recorded with John T. Unger, in which I expanded on the opportunities and pitfalls of internet marketing for creative people.

I’ve never met John in person, but due to the wonders of modern communications I’m pleased to count him among my friends. Read my interview with John T. Unger over at Lateral Action to learn about the amazing business he’s built himself as an artist, sculptor and ‘impossibility mediation specialist’ leveraging the power of the Internet. His podcast blog Art Heroes Radio is essential listening for 21st century artists, and I was delighted to join the panel of experts he’s interviewed about the business of art and the out of business.

In the course of the interview, we cover topics such as:

• why artists are resistant to marketing in general and marketing themselves in particular
• why we are scared of selling out or just plain scared
• the pain of trying to balance time spent on marketing with time in the studio
• why it’s no good just posting your artwork, writings, videos etc. and hoping this will magically lead to fame and fortune
• practical tips on things like like using a professional blog platform, getting people to subscribe and writing headlines that get your work noticed

The audio file is free to download and share, so do forward the link to any of your friends who you think would benefit from it.

Photo by LittleMissSilly

I’m on a panel next Thursday 1st May, at All Together Now – Social Media and the Future of Community Sport, a joint Sport England and Channel 4 event at the Channel 4 building.

This is what it’s about:

Over the course of the past three years the emergence of blogging, social networking services and platforms which showcase and share user generated content have transformed the possibilities of how we connect, converse and collaborate with one another.

’In the 20th Century, we were defined by what we owned, in the 21st Century we will be defined by what share and give away’ Charles Leadbeater, author of We Think

The potential for organisations and brands to harness these technologies and tools to engage with users, customers and their communities in radically new ways is becoming clear.

How can all those organisations working to promote active participation in sports and the brands that wish to sponsor their activates and campaigns work together to make the most of the unrivalled viral power and network effects of the web in the run up to 2012?

Other speakers will include Thomas Godfrey, Commercial Director of Sport England, Jon Gisby, Director of Technology and New Media at Channel 4, Rebecca Caroe, Gi Fernando of Technlightenment, Antony Mayfield and Ed Mitchell.

I’ll be there as an ambassador for social media, to share my experience of blogging, social networking, Twitter, etc. and give the representatives of sports organisations some idea of the possibilities and pitfalls of engaging with people via the web.

After receiving the invitation I was struck by two thoughts: 1. How much time I spend on football messageboards when I should probably be doing something else, and following on from that, 2. that sport may be the ultimate social object [WARNING: cartoon with rude word] i.e. conversation starter and social catalyst. If I meet a stranger and they let slip they’re interested in football, I know we’ll have plenty to talk about and there will be no awkward silences (well not unless they turn out to be a Rangers fan).

So it looks to me as though sports organisations have an open goal in front of them – they have something that most people love to talk about and nearly anyone has an opinion on. But will they slot the ball calmly home or sky it over the bar? Or will they be fatally distracted by the animated advertising board behind the goal?

There are still a few free tickets left, so if you’re interested in any combination of social media, sport and marketing, then register for the event, ask me some easy questions during the debate, and come and say hello afterwards.

If you can’t make it on the day but you’ve got any thoughts on how sports or other organisations should engage with people via social marketing, please leave a comment below. I don’t think I’ll be able to link to you from the stage but I’ll certainly Twitter my thanks if I use any ideas from the comments.

Thanks to Steve Moore of Policy Unplugged for inviting me to join the panel and giving me an excuse to post a photo of Celtic.

EDIT: I’ve posted my presentation slides to Slideshare. You can probably tell I was trying to keep things as simple as possible.

Social media enthusiast and all round good egg Antonio Gould recently interviewed me for one of Channel 4′s New Media 4Casts. I talk about the difference blogging has made to my own business, particularly in terms of making new friends and attracting new clients without having to interrupt them with a cold call. I also offer some suggestions on planning and writing a blog to promote your creative business.

The blogs I mention in the podcast are Copyblogger (excellent advice on writing blog posts), Gapingvoid (weird and wonderful uses of a blog – i.e. using rude cartoons to sell South African wine, Saville Row suits, Scottish feature films and Microsoft), and David Airey (great example of using a blog to growing your business as a creative freelancer).

If you’re considering starting a blog you should also have a good look at Problogger (start with his series on Blogging for Beginners) and read every single post on Skelliewag (there aren’t that many, but she’s achieved phenomenal success in a few short months – and tells you how she did it.).

The programme also features Emily Martin talking about how she makes a living as an artist from her beautiful Black Apple blog and Etsy shop – well worth checking these out if you want to use the internet to sell your artwork or other products.

Another contributor, Nick Booth, offers some excellent practical tips on podcasting and videocasting, and how letting go of copyright control can benefit you as a creative professional.

My bit starts at 7.50 but I recommend you listen to the whole thing, particularly if you’re relatively new to the whole social media/blogging scene. Antonio has done a terrific job of assembling the interviews to give an engaging overview of the possibilities for artists and other creative types.

As they say in all the best cheesy commercials – it worked for me, it could work for you too.

Bonus links: my pages on Blogging for Creative Professionals and why A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas.

If you’re involved with pitches and new business for your agency, you may like to come along to a free breakfast event I’m running with Rebecca Caroe in central London at 8am on Thursday 22nd November.

I’ll be talking to Rebecca and taking questions from the audience about the Enneagram system of personality types, and how it can help agencies in a pitch situation, where the personal chemistry between agency and client team can be crucial to success.

If you followed my series on the Enneagram series of personality types for Successful Blog, then you’ll know I’ve been using the Enneagram for around 10 years, helping understand themselves and others better, and achieve their goals in sales, management, training, teamwork, negotiation and their personal and professional development.

Rebecca is a consultant specialising in business development, marketing and sales for PR, advertising, airect mail, and digital agencies. She’s very creative, focused and practical. We’ve had a lot of fun knocking ideas around between us and finding points of common interest. So I’m looking forward to a stimulating and enjoyable conversation on the 22nd – if you’re interested in joining us, please send me an e-mail.

Very enjoyable time at the PSFK London conference the other day. It’s being extensively blogged elsewhere (links below) so I won’t try to cover the whole thing, just edited highlights. If you’re not familiar with the PSFK blog, it describes itself as “a lens of changes in cultural behaviour that influence all of us” – or to mix the metaphor, it’s a constant stream of new trends in media, business, fashion, the environment, entertainment etc etc. For someone like me it’s an interesting read, for professional marketers I gather it’s essential.

So where are all these trends leading us? The first conference session presented us with contrasting visions of the future. First up was Timo Veikkola, whose job is predicting the future for Nokia. I was intrigued to learn that we’re currently in a “Noah’s Ark period” of floods, cataracts and hurricanoes, not to mention Famine, War, Pestilence etc – but that by 2010 or so we’ll see renewed optimism in society, which apparently happens at the dawn of every decade. I was fascinated by Timo’s predictions and explanations of how he extrapolates from “What’s happening now?” to “What’s going to happen next?”. By the end of his presentation I was even starting to feel (dare I say it) quite optimistic. Thenl the bubble was burst (for me) when we were presented with the following quotation, apparently without irony:

“The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.” Arthur C. Clarke.

I was horrified. Surely the one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that we can’t be certain of it? And surely we’ve seen enough of the Brave New World to suggest that it’s not likely to be relentlessly “fantastic”?

As if on cue, Regine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art stepped up to offer a distinctly less Utopian take on the shape of things to come. If you’ve not seen WMMNA yet, you might not want to – it’s fascinating but not for the squeamish, a kind of avant-garde version of PSFK, tracking emerging trends in art and technology. E.g. Today’s top post is part of a series on Future Body Parts, featuring an artist who had a hymen grown in a petri dish and grafted onto his right nostril. Regine described a future in which the poor eke out a living by offering themselves as living platforms for the growth and harvesting stem sells while the rich ostentatiously display their unblemished bodies; where we keep the scalps of deceased love ones like pot plants in our homes and stroke the hair that miraculously keeps growing; and where hunger and vegetarian scruples are neatly disposed of with the mass production of “petri-dish pork”. Regine was charm personified, but by the end of her presentation I was frankly ready for another shot of optimism. Is her future any more likely to be the real one than Arthur C Clarke’s, or is WMMNA more of a postmodern digital freak show? “Well”, as Philip Larkin said, “we shall find out”.

The next session, about the Marketing Gap in Green continued to wrestle with the implications of the future for the present. I’ve been reading John Grant‘s books and blog for ages, but this was the first time I’d seen him presenting – I was impressed with the speed of his thinking, whipping out examples and counterexamples like rabbits from a hat. If you’re wondering whether ‘green marketing’ is an oxymoron you should check out his Greenormal blog, where he’s putting together a book on the subject. The other panellists are also trying to square the circle of marketing/environmentalism – Diana Verde of Clownfish, who offer environmentally responsible brand consultancy, Tamara Giltsoff who is introducing ‘eco-luxury private car service’ to New York via Ozocar, and Karen Fraser, who has developed an Ethical Reputation Index, tracking people’s perceptions of corporate ethics. It would be easy to be cynical about ‘green marketing’ but for me the most interesting thing about this debate was the sense that environmental change and social change are inextricably bound together – given that marketers spend their time looking for ways to influence mass behaviour, there’s an opportunity for them to make a significant contribution. The last word goes to Diana Verde for puncturing the illusion that we can buy our way out of trouble: “carbon offsetting is the morning after pill of environmentalism”.

Having started my career as a psychotherapist, I found Niku Banaie‘s presentation on basic human needs refreshingly familiar after all the macro-level talk of trends and strategies. He presented us with an engagingly naive question:

Where is the love in our connected world?

Niku pointed out that for all the talk of social networking and connectedness, the word ‘love’ is conspicuous by its absence from the Web 2.0 vocabulary. Yet the need for love isn’t going away soon, and we should be careful that we don’t substitute online ‘friends’ for real friendship. Other basic needs he highlighted were the need to learn, to give back, to play and the need for simplicity in a complex world. Niku is a managing partner at Naked, which has a formidable reputation for cutting-edge media-savvy brainpower, so the simplicity of his message was slightly unexpected and all the more welcome for that.

Of all the session chairpeople (-persons?) Steven Overman had the biggest challenge in chairing the lively exchanges between Simon Sinek, Beeker and Faris Yakob, which he accomplished with admirable tact and humour. Beeker and Faris were as interesting on stage as they are in their blogs, which I’ve been reading for a while, but this was the first time I’d come across Simon. He burst into the debate like a bull in a china shop, telling us that following trends was a dangerous activity (“terrible thing to say at a trends conference – sorry”) and hammering home his message that inspiring people with a sense of purpose is the most important thing a company can do:

“There are only two ways to influence behaviour, you can manipulate it or inspire it.”

I like that – brilliantly simple and applicable to all kinds of communication, from personal relationships to marketing, therapy, management, sales, coaching, politics, etc. Looks like there’s plenty more where that came from on Simon’s blog.

After that, we were all ready for lunch.

Thanks to Will Humphrey for the photos.

More about the conference from Will, Helen and the Punk and Northern Planners.

Technorati Tags: psfk, psfklondon

I’m off to the PSFK conference on Friday – if you’re going and fancy meeting up, send me an e-mail.

Thanks to Create KX for inviting me to speak at the British Library‘s Business & IP Centre last night, about blogging for creative businesses. And thanks to everyone who came along to make it a really enjoyable evening. It was also a pleasure to meet fellow speaker Paul Caplan and hear his enthusiastic take on the live web.

As promised, here are the slides from the talk, some technical explanations of blogging tools and RSS, plus links to all the blogs I mentioned in the talk. Enjoy!

If you…

If you were at the talk the links below will take you to all the tools and sites I mentioned last night. You can also get all my future posts about creativity, coaching and the people factor in creative business, via RSS or e-mail.

If you weren’t at the talk, I hope the slides and links give you some food for thought.

If you run a creative business in the King’s Cross area of London, you should get in touch with Sian James and the team at Create KX, they’re working very hard to help people like you.

If you run a creative business within striking distance of the British Library, you should check out the Business & IP Centre, it’s a fantastic resource for entrepreneurs – lots of business books, journals, reports, research etc. And you can get a British Library reader’s ticket for free, and access the entire library.

OK I think that covers everyone, on with the links…

Slides from the presentation

Here are the slides from my presentation – you can also download them as a pdf from Slideshare.