I am perpetually fascinated by a creative business owner’s elevator pitch. Most start with the obvious – I am a [you fill in the blank – designer, photographer, architect], then move on to a specialty – high-end residential, luxury destination weddings, commercial work, then, maybe, comes the style statement – my focus is modern, or lush or posed.
For meetings with strangers, I suppose the strategy is ok, while still being wholly lacking in the spirit of creation. However, for potential clients, it is just plain silly. These are the things that put you in a box that almost never helps you. It is like saying you are a restaurateur. What does that actually mean? Do you run a McDonald’s or are you fine dining or somewhere in between?
If you believe your work is about process as much as it is about the end product (which I wholeheartedly hope you do), then you have a word or two that encapsulates you, your art and your creative business. The question is, are you willing to dig for it and, more importantly, when you have found it, own it?
Here is an example, if you are an interior designer that enjoys a one-on-one relationship with clients, working from idea to plan to production with a very specific attention to detail, you might call your process intimate. So why wouldn’t your elevator pitch be – my work is all about intimacy. When asked to define what that means you can then move on to discuss how your process is like peeling an onion to reveal what is meant to be in the space. How you move from idea to plan to production to reveal. In the end, all creative businesses are about The Four Transitions and how you discuss them with your clients, employees, colleagues and the press is almost always based on one or two words.
Please do not cop out though. You cannot use words like high-end, luxury, professional, detail oriented, service oriented, anything that makes it easy for the listener to categorize you and understand, through their eyes, what you are. That is not their job, it is yours and the word has to have meaning to you and you alone. If intimate is not your game, then how about nuanced, explosive, layered, awe-inspiring, subtle, high-impact, storytelling?
How would you build your creative business if only the word mattered? Surprisingly, it would be a lot easier than what you are probably trying to do now. Being a chameleon sucks because you never really know who is in front of you and what you have to be in that moment. If instead it were you who were doing the work of defining the space you occupy, refusing to let your clients do the work for you, then you would own what you are without ever having to compromise. Then you would set out to operate in the way that works best for you, your art and your creative business. Own your world.
Or you can live in the box you allow others to put you and your creative business in. Your choice.
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I always get a bit nervous when anyone suggests that a company, organization or professional boils their brand down to one word…UNLESS they treat that word exactly as you suggest in this great post.
Identifying the one word — the one concept, idea or ideology — you would like your brand to be known for can be a valuable exercise, but only if you think about it in terms of what resides in people’s perceptions about your brand and not what you would say about it. The mistake people make with this exercise is thinking that all they have to tell people about their brand is that one word and that alone. They must, as you suggest Sean, be prepared to build upon that word with richer meaning and storytelling, bringing it to life and, in doing so, further cementing it into the hearts and minds of their audience.
You are so right Bill. The pebble is important but the ripples are what really matters.