Frustration

Everything in life is uncertain and a choice.  Regardless of what your position is on the COVID  vaccine (though I sincerely hope it is pro), the dichotomy of how those who are unwilling to take the vaccine versus marketing of dangerous products is amazing to me.  For those who say marketing and storytelling do not matter, you have to be living under a rock.

Well into the late twentieth century, tobacco manufacturers fought the idea that cigarettes could cause cancer, let alone be dangerous to your health.  The first warning label mandated by Congress in 1969 was “The Surgeon General has determined that smoking is dangerous to your health”.  Not that it might cause cancer or lead to death from other diseases.  I was not until 1984 (1984!) until the comprehensive warning was mandated depicting all that could happen from smoking cigarettes.  And yet, today, in 2021 there are still more than thirty million smokers in the United States, the vast majority of whom know (or can know) the effects based on the warnings on every pack.  Think about that — about one in five adults in the U.S. know that what they are doing will likely cause serious disease and/or death and they still do it.  Marketing.

On the other side, about one in five (maybe the same adults, dunno) are refusing to take a vaccine that virtually guarantees you will not die from COVID or even need to go to the hospital if you get it (as of today, 99.7% of current deaths from COVID in the United States are among unvaccinated people, and 97% of the people in the hospital for COVID are unvaccinated).  The reason — the vaccine might cause health concerns we do not yet know about.  Marketing.

Why does this matter to creative business?  Marketing.  We have a singular moment.  An opportunity to define culture against the forces that have come before.  Forces that persuaded all of us that business practices that simply do not work any more are still viable.  Think Telex more than even Fax.  Anyone in creative business talking about supply and demand needs to exit stage right.  Yes, some businesses are at scale but when tech companies seek to serves millions if not billions, we are not in the same conversation if what you seek is ten, twenty, even a hundred, never thousands let alone tens of thousands.

Simply this: do you really want to be known as product salespeople?  Driven by all things price? Or do you want to be the expert you really are.  The very reason we characterize professionals as professionals is their ability to impact our lives powerfully when we need them.  And yet you are more interested in raising your prices ten percent than upending perception of who you actually are — the most important person in the room, just like any other professional when they are asked to be there.

You can go to your fancy and non-sensical business events, consider yourself learned when taught by fools.  Complain about those who have judged you to be insolent and entitled.  Worry that you are too expensive or that the good times will end in an effort to be greedy today.  Simply, you can pretend the world has not yet shifted or that COVID was an illusion.  Marketing will grab you to keep all things as they are.  You are just not paying attention if you do not see that power is not easily bestowed or shared.  Those who have it wish to keep it and will do just about anything to make it so, including telling you that what you need is to double down on your Telex.

Or you can seek out other.  To learn what could be, to listen to those pushing the boundaries of just about everything.  To dig in with responsibility that now, with everything on the line, you dare to go another way because you must.

I wish, truly wish, that those destined to upend culture, to redefine all that matters to those patrons who seek out creative business to shape their lives would be winning the day, but I am frustrated.  Their voices are loud to be sure but they are not as loud as the carnival barkers that represent the marginalization that was yesterday.  Uggh. My hope then is this:

We should all chart our own course much deeper than simply a strategy to find uncharted territory. Be true to your soul as an artist, where there are no boundaries of possible only the imagination of what could be. What would your creative business look like then?  Who says you have to charge any way that someone tells you to.  Fifty years next year.  1972 is when HBO launched. The first premium cable channel.  Who would pay a monthly fee for premium content?  We all know how that turned out.  Today, your creative intelligence has deep and powerful meaning.  Just look at theexpert.comto know how much patrons will pay for your brain.  What will you do with that information?  Same old same old just a little more expensive. Please, oh please, do better.

The beauty of the world we live in today is there is an audience for everyone. Grandma learned Zoom and you can reach her if you dare.  If you own your voice as an artist, a creative business owner, those who care will find it. But only if you stand up to say who you are without apology.  not what you do — the world does not need another wedding planner, interior designer, architect, we need planners, designers and architects with an authentic voice that matters.  Do not disappoint us all by looking exactly like the next creative business in all ways except for your art. Be iconic as a business with the understanding that you actually do not have the choice not to be.

You can charge a little (or a lot) more, tweak things, put lipstick on the pig all the way into oblivion. The issue with doing that today though, post-COVID, is that you are perpetuating power to your own ultimate demise.  Like saying you know smoking will kill you but it is just worth it.  Maybe vaping is the answer.  Umm. Sure.

Or maybe, just maybe, you can look inside to the artist you actually are, the one who had the courage to start in the first place, and live that truth. Be fearless in the notion that, if you can imagine the possibility, it exists and will be valued as you need it to be. Live the fantasy we pay you to dream for us. In your world, let “creative” rule “business” in the context of creating your business. Be disciplined in the outrageous and confident in its value for your business above and beyond your art. Let this be your voice.

I am afraid, well terrified that if you do not use your voice and convince all of the artists around you to use theirs to redefine how we all are to be seen — paid for creative first, stuff second — those voices, your voice, will be muted for a very very long time to come.  Should that come to pass, we all will lose.  The very reason Steve Jobs was fired from Apple was because he refused to let Apple become the purveyor of a commodity.  When is the last time you went shopping for vintage K Car?  Not a world any of us wants to live in ever again.  The choice to whether that world ever comes to pass again is entirely yours. Today more than any other day. Marketing.