 Want to sell your creative? Consider your audience.
Years ago, we attended a gallery opening and the curator gave a talk about the works on display. The works were amazing. The talk wasn’t. Here was someone who was trying her hardest to impress us with her knowledge by citing the kinds of references that can only be found in the footnotes of an MFA thesis. Bad decision. Had she let the powerful artworks take the spotlight in her speech, their glow would have reflected better on her. If you’re working in the creative business, you know there are two sides to any creative challenge: 1) creating the new material, and 2) selling it. In this article, we’re going to help you ensure that your artsiness (required for 1) doesn’t drown in fartsiness (and thus torpedo 2). Heal thyself “But wait!” you say. “I’m not artsy-fartsy like that!” Or, you say, “But wait! I need to make obscure academic references in order to fully explain my concepts and my thinking!” Glad you spoke up. Let’s examine both of these arguments and then counter them. Argument 1: “I’m not artsy-fartsy.” Oh yeah? It’s a matter of degrees. If you assume that your reference to “Lichtenstein” will be interpreted as “That cool pop artist who blew up halftone dots in comic-style paintings” and not “Some country in Europe,” you may be sorely mistaken. This leads to the big lesson of this article: Consider who you’re selling to. Note that we’re leaving out a huge part of this process. This article is not about creating new material, or honing your chops to create the best material possible. (Want some tips for brainstorming? Or overcoming writer’s block? We’ve already got articles on those subjects.) No. This article is all about selling your creative. And it’s not just to the client. In some ways, that’s easier. Because to the client, you’ll be selling a well-executed concept that’s easy to grasp, whether in words, layout, beta site, or whatever. The harder challenge is selling creative internally, when you don’t have the time/luxury/budget to fully execute upon an idea. Which comes back to: Who are you selling to? If you’re selling your creative ideas to a senior Creative Person, you may well not need to dial down your “fartsiness” (pardon our crude vernacular). They’ll know a Caravaggio from a Kandinsky, and understand the architectural meaning of the word “plastic.” If that’s the case, you don’t need much help. But that case is rare. You may well represent the pointy end of the creative spear in this process, and you’ll need to blunt your explication for whoever’s in the room. If that’s the case, know it in advance, and embrace it. If there’s anything worse than flying your pitch above the heads of your audience, it’s talking down to them. Do neither. Let’s say you’re doing a Lichtenstein-inspired graphical interpretation for a project. Find a picture of a Roy Lichtenstein painting. Show it as part of your pitch: “You’ve probably seen paintings like this from the 1960s, and we want to tap into that style.” You could even add, “They were done by a really cool guy named Roy Lichtenstein,” and--ta-dah--you’re not artsy-fartsy. You’re cool, and you’ve just underscored that point by serving up a neat bit of Jeopardy-worthy trivia. You can quickly move on to your cool layout, and the context will have been established to an audience that now feels rewarded, addressed as equals, and fully on board. Argument 2: “I need to make obscure academic references!” Excuse us, but No you don’t. If you can’t pitch your creative without talking about stuff that’s absolutely unknown to your audience, you need to take a good, hard look at your own vulnerabilities. Do you really think your audience will respect you more by tacitly implying that they’re dumber than you are? The answer seems pretty obvious when the question is framed like that. Make no mistake. You can, and should, employ every ounce of your brainpower and every abstruse connection you can weave, when you develop your creative material. But that doesn’t mean that you need to drown the head of Sales in the arcana of your process. Simply wow your audience with what you’ve created, not how you’ve done it. Pitch perfectly The benefits of this approach are twofold. First, you’ll vastly increase your odds of selling your creative work, which is the primary task at hand. And second, if you downplay all the sweat and academic horsepower you’d marshaled to create it, you’ll look even more like a wizard for seemingly pulling these miracles out of thin air. Need help with creative concepting and/or pitching it to stakeholders? Contact us. We do this all the time, and would love to help.
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