When I’m coaching my artist clients we do what is called a blue sky session.   We think of different art marketing strategies to help them sell their art.  Not to be confused with a blue ocean strategy, our ultimate goal.

During this creative session there is one very simple rule. Record every idea and negate none.  Simple?  You’d be surprised.

When artists get out of their own way and pause their self-limited thinking, the sky is the limit, pardon the pun.

We can hatch big ideas during these blue-sky sessions.  Or it can be a time when even seemingly positive artists kill opportunities before they are even born. “That won’t work.” “I hate this or that.” My constant response.  “Just focus on the exercise, pretend, have fun. There’s no right or wrong.”   Self-doubt and lack of confidence become very evident.  Sometimes they play along during the session and then their attitude kills the ideas later.

Artists who really engage in this creative process, kind of like you do when you make art, win.  Because the blue sky strategy is simple and it works.

This is a creative exercise that many marketing strategists use.  The good news is that artists are in a particularly good position to come up with creative and new marketing strategies.  But they have to stop thinking about themselves and think about what value they can create for a target market.  Why?  Because your compensation is in direct proportion to the value you offer.

Most artists have been told to craft artist statements to explain their work as a way to sell it.  These statements are all about them and their process.  Unfortunately I have rarely read an artist’s statement where I didn’t cringe and say “Oh, please.”

If you want to sell your art, ultimately it’s not about you. It has to be about the unique value you offer to a specific target market.

The other good news is that you are free to create this value and assert it any which way you please, kind of like you do when you make art.

Marketing is a creative process like making art.  And that’s why I love it too.

Pacific Ocean Deep, Ann Rea, oil on canvas

by Marc Acito - a regular commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”.

“Don’t compete with rivals, make them irrelevant.”

So say W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, authors of the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, a paradigm-shifting look at building your business.

“In today’s overcrowded industries,” they write, “competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody ‘red ocean’ of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool.” Instead, the authors urge businesses to seek untested (and uncontested) “blue oceans,” “designing new products or services and linking them to what buyers really want, even if they don’t realize they want it as yet.”

At a time when it feels like you’re competing for jobs with some guy in India who’s calling himself Kevin, the concept has its appeal.

That is assuming you can understand the rest of the Blue Ocean website, which is full of multi-syllabic business school jargon that might as well be in Hindi. From what I can gather, blue ocean strategies created Cirque du Soleil, which reinvigorated a moribund circus industry by appealing to adults and corporate clients. Or iTunes, which figured out customers didn’t want to buy a whole CD to get one or two songs. Or Curves, which assessed women’s desires and gave them the health club without mirrors or men.

Or painter Ann Rea, who discovered an untapped market in painting landscapes of Northern California wineries, where “everything sells better when you have alcohol in your system.”

Rea’s story is every cubicle dweller’s dream. After working in “a variety of anxiety producing jobs” in high tech, investing, and disaster relief, an encounter with two stage IV breast cancer survivors made her realize that life is too short not to go for her goals.

But how?

“My brother was the dean of a business school and he was useless,” Rea reports. “So I sat with a friend and threw out every possible way to make a living as a painter – we wrote everything down without a filter.” Rea ranked the ideas 1 through 3 based on how profitable they were, whether she had any experience with it, and did she know anybody who could help her.” Then she scored them.

Realizing that what mattered most to her was rendering color, Rea formed a strategic partnership painting the landscapes of vineyards. Not only could she make a profit selling originals and reproductions at the wine-tastings, but she learned that oenophiles were natural collectors.

While Rea’s story provides a model for entrepreneurs, it also gives something more important: hope. Hope that there’s a way to cut through the noise of a world in which everyone is now a media personality. Hope that there are still opportunities not just for work, but meaningful work. And hope that beyond the crowded chaos of the red ocean lies a wide open blue horizon.

And that, my friends, is The Upside.

I founded Artists Who THRIVE with a new paradigm, that of the artist as an entrepreneur.  “Artist and entrepreneur?”  Yes, that’s right.  Define your market, own your platform, and keep all of your profits.

I did this very intentionally.  I had ample access to traditional art representation but there was a problem.  I needed to make a living, a good living, quickly.  I just moved to the beach in San Francisco and it’s very expensive here.

So I had a different view.  I wasn’t interested in showing my work.  I was interested in selling it.

The fact is that there are many talented painters, and the art market is oversaturated, so I defined a target market, a passionate “tribe,” and created unique value. I “celebrated” the tribe, the food and wine enthusiasts of a particular ilk.

This is a blue ocean strategy; eliminating the competition by not competing.  Why aren’t you competing?  You’re offering unique value to a targeted market.  And this is a lot more rewarding, profitable, and less exhausting than waiting in line for an art gallery to care more than you do about selling your work.  They can’t and they just won’t.

Let’s take a look at one of my clients, Melissa McDaniel, another dog photographer.  No, that’s not all.  She is a dog photographer who aligns her work with a passionate cause, animal rescue, a distinct market. She leverages the internet and strategic alliances. Melissa has made it much more than just about Melissa.  I advise my artist clients all the time.  It’s not about you, it’s about your collectors.  Make it bigger than you.

Now if you’re thinking, “I like dogs.  I like animal rescue. I’m going to do that.”  My advice?  Did you hear what I just said? The challenge is to create “unique value.”

How do you that?  Who is more unique than you?  Start with your individual passions, values, and your particular creative inclinations.  That is what artists must do.  Then think who you can serve and how.

This is really not new.  Michelangelo, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock all had unique value and a target market.  The art historians just don’t talk about it much because they are historians not market analysts.

So you art Puritans might want to fire roast me at the stake but I say, “Make art for the love of it and for the money.”

By sharing our success, insights, and resources we cultivate a positive and productive on-line global community of thriving artists.

The Artists Who Thrive manifesto.

* We believe that we have shaped our artistic voice and that we have something to say.

* We believe we offer creative expression that adds value to the world and therefore the marketplace.

* We believe that we are creating and growing thriving businesses.

* We articulate our unique selling proposition to our defined market.  We know our tribe and we celebrate our tribe.

* We believe that we will not be discovered but our value can if we promote it.

* We believe that the traditional model of artist representation is too often broken and is not sustainable.

* So instead of the permission based scarcity model, we develop our own platform and go for the Blue Ocean Strategy.

* We believe in getting a nice piece of the pie in the art market.

* We are confident and optimistic that we are in control of our destiny.

* We know that in the new economy “the right brainers will rule the world.”*

* “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink

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