Are you psyching yourself out with your PR and marketing?
Hello, my friends. Quick post today–the day job has been kicking my ass lately!
But your brain has been on my mind a lot lately. Specifically, your psychological barriers to PR and marketing.
Since I launched The Smarties Solution, I have had a number of conversations with different people about the DIY aspect. A number embrace it, and a number are ambivalent.
But it is now abundantly clear that a creative’s role in marketing and PR is a necessity. Producer Ken Davenport blogged about the importance today–citing Billy Joe Armstrong’s willingness to go on for a week in American Idiot, to the Next To Normal creative team taking charge of the Twitter account.
So, I am working on a series of articles that focus on the psychological barriers that may be keeping you from moving forward in your marketing and PR efforts.
And I need your help.
I want to hear from you! Why aren’t you doing it? What’s holding you back? Not enough time? Money? Experience? Talk to me, tell me in the comments. Or, if you prefer to keep it between us, email me.
Let’s tackle this head on and get some real work done!
Hey– thanks for asking. As a “creative” who does the marketing, my biggest obstacles is the distance between these two things. As an artist, my goal is two-fold: first to find and portray/reveal a truth (which happens at the writing table), and second to convey that truth “an audience.” Marketing isn’t, actually, the latter: it’s a tool that ALLOWS me to do the other. Thus it is removed from the reason I do the work. Doing theatre is hard. Writing is hard but rewarding; rehearsals are hard but rewarding. Those two steps of creation are more important than the third, delivery step, so my own priorities as an artist are my biggest obstacles. I need a producer/marketer’t hat with a strap so it doesn’ fly off. Once it’s on, the next biggest obstacle is time. Elbow grease, discipline, attention to detail, and follow-up are much more important than money at my level, and those are resource hogs. Those of us in small organizations where multiple hats that could belong to full-time people. Getting my work-flow down is key; when I don’t I’ve got a train wreck. And finally, branding. If you’re not producing constantly, your brand disappears and becomes fragile.
Mostly it’s time. As a playwright you have to be constantly marketing yourself anyway, but the closer to showtime it gets, the less time I have to do that.
Thanks, Ian and Mariah. Time is a biggie that I hope to address.
Ian, your first point is very interesting–for you, the two steps of creation are more important than the third, so marketing drops away. Also, I am curious–you talk about the writing and rehearsals as hard work but rewarding. Do you see marketing as hard work and not rewarding? Not hard but rewarding? If the former, what would make it rewarding to you?