Marketing or meaning? Emotion. Storytelling. Design. Luxury. Beautiful. Tasteful. Elegant. Sophisticated.
None of these words really mean anything without context. It is up to you to make them valuable or banal, rich or colloquial, layered or trite.
Throughout my career I have seen creative businesses take the easy way out. Rather than own the idiosyncrasy and beauty of art, these creative business owners reach for labels that will define them as something from which they might profit but which they are clearly not.
Let’s talk about the word “design”. To me, design is technical term in that it means you, the designer, are asking your clients for a decision – yes/no and/or pay me money. What it does not mean is what you think about the purple sofa. A true designer stands in the light of her convictions and will go a long, long way before giving up the vision. Yes, you have to be willing to fight for the purple sofa if you believe it is the right thing for the space. Calling yourself a designer does not make it so. Pedigree and exposure might provide access, grit, integrity and clarity is what will keep you there.
So what does it mean for your creative business? Our post-COVID world will not let you hide anymore. You have to live to the truth of why you do what you do and when. You have to deliver value and get paid specifically for the value and then you have to earn the right to move on to the next value point. Rinse and repeat until the project is complete.
Which brings us to Crazy Eddie. Tax evasion and cooking the books aside, Eddie Antar built a very big business at the dawn of the consumer electronics age in the 70s and into the 80s. Anyone of my generation from the East Coast remembers the actor, Jerry Carroll, screaming that consumers should come to Crazy Eddie’s because his prices are INSANE. How did it work? Just like a car dealership. If Crazy Eddie’s wanted to sell a VCR for an average of $125 to make a profit, it would price the VCR at $175. Some customers would just walk in and pay the $175. Others would negotiate and pay, say $150. Some would go crazy and even get the VCR for $100.
Remember, this was pre-Internet and there really was no expedient way to figure out what a VCR should sell for. Really the only way was to go to a bunch of stores to find out. Most people just did not want to do that and trusted, wrongly, that Crazy Eddie’s prices were fair. And it worked, sort of. But then came the price guarantee from Circuit City that meant if you found the product cheaper, they would match the difference. Circuit City was effectively CarMax (which was started by Circuit City) offering better information on real pricing.
What does this have to do with creative business? If you earn a percentage and ultimately are in the throw it at the wall game as so many are, you start at say $100 but design to $400 hoping all along to wind up at $200. Any dollar above $200, you win. Sometimes you might have to go down to $150 but, on average, you “value-engineer” to a number above $200. Then came the Internet but really COVID. Grandma learned Zoom and how to shop online. Better information blows the car dealership shuffle to bits for just about every designer in every creative business out there. You are left with only conviction and faith in you do what you do with a pre-agreed amount of clay.
However, it is hard to flip the switch when you have built your business on buzzwords that have no there there. Storytelling only matters if you can hold tension and risk losing your audience. Emotion means there is only feeling not “rational” understanding. Beautiful is not pretty but a manifestation of emotional resonance. Truly, it is beautiful when it is done. Tasteful matters to those who appreciate your wisdom, talent and experience. Same with luxury and elegant.
It is beyond time that you do the work of idiosyncrasy; to care about what you do simply because you do, without apology. Make your entire business about getting paid for the idiosyncrasy as what matters can only matter because you say it does. That makes it your truth and it is beyond time for you to own it with a conviction that matches why it was you thought it possible to start your business in the first place.
