Pop- Up Anyone?

In today’s world, more and artists are rushing to get their work on all social media platforms in order to promote their work, however, there is still no substitute for personal interactions with potential prospects and buyer at a trade show or pop up store.

Since ‘Pop- Ups’ are taking London- if not the world- by storm, and the reason people choose to exhibit at them is to increase sales and create awareness for yourself as a brand. Pop- Ups are a cost effective way and simple task to meet hundreds of potentials face to face, rather than getting lost in the vast ocean we call the internet.

If Advertised correctly- and this is where social media comes into play- an artist has the chance to meet with the right people, a Gallery owner looking for new talent, a journalist looking to fill the cultural pages of their magazine and even potentially meet other art professionals.

Following an article I picked up from Art Business, writer Kathryn Peck discloses information for artist who wish to exhibit. Although she refers to Trade shows, the article is simply translated, no matter how you choose to exhibit.

Exhibiting 101 – Kathryn Peck

Do your homework beforehand.

Start planning for the show in advance. Note all deadlines and communicate with show managers and show service vendors, who can be helpful in explaining rules and answering questions. Attesi suggests assigning one person to oversee this process. Giglio advises early planning, including selecting booth spaces, booth design, graphics and construction. It will “help keep costs under control and will also help keep you from last-minute craziness and exhaustion,” he says.

Make your booth space open and inviting.

“Product is king!” says Peter LoCascio, who has been helping companies market themselves for more than 35 years and today runs Trade Show Consultants (tradeshowconsultants.com). “The exhibit booth should be designed to transform suspects who walk the aisles of a trade show into prospects.” This advice means that exhibitors must pay close attention to the layout. For example, they must leave plenty of open space for visitors and be sure that the lighting highlights the art on display.

“Lighting is critical for artworks,” says LoCascio. “The exhibitor should design his or her exhibit utilizing as much illumination as possible on each of the pieces displayed.”

Attesi adds that overstaffing or understaffing a booth can create an unfriendly layout. “You need two people for every 10×10[-foot] space, plus some extra staff to rotate in so everyone gets a break,” she says.

Consider your booth a store, too.

Use a trade show not only to exhibit your latest artworks but also to promote and sell other facets of your business, such as prints, calendars and cards.

Build contacts and mailing lists.

Social-media websites make it easy to build a following, but trade shows offer the opportunity to make a personal connection with those who admire your work and may be future clients. “Sales-lead management is key to maintaining contact with booth visitors and should be a major focus,” says Lo- Cascio. “Get visitors’ names, addresses, cell phone [numbers] and e-mail addresses with a synopsis of discussion topics in a form that allows effective post-show communications.”

Promote your events.

Use the time you have at a trade show to promote other events in which you will be participating. Consider printing a list of upcoming shows or workshops, dates and locations for visitors to take with them.

Consider show specials and reduced show prices.

Show specials may help stimulate prospects that might seem to be wavering on price, says LoCascio. He suggests marking each piece with the regular price and the new special price. “The show special should be advertised in the booth and only last until one week after the show before the prices on selected items goes back up,” says LoCascio.

Stand up straight and smile.

Personal presentation at a trade show is important. Never leave your booth unattended, and those tending the booth should not just sit or “look uninterested,” says Giglio. “Always greet and make eye contact with passersby; you never know who is walking by your booth.”

“I see more 10×10 table shows where exhibitors put the table in the front and sit behind it and then check their e-mail,” says Attesi. “This does not send the message, ‘Welcome. Come into my exhibit. Relax, look around, have a seat, and learn more about our products!’ Walking up to an exhibit where the staff is checking their phones or in a circle chatting to each other can be intimidating for attendees and is the best way you could sabotage your investment.”

LoCascio also advises against exhibitors’ eating in the booths. It “deters visitors who don’t want to impose,” he says.

Hope this Article was helpful and we at BOTS look forward to seeing our invites to you exhibition soon!

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Romy

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Marketing Yourself- The DIY Way

Working with Be On The Scene, I am faced with a lot of questions from performers on how to market themselves in the ever growing industry. Now as I am no expert, I thought I would share an article written by Carina Westling of Imagem, who appeared as a guest author on DIY Musician Blog.

Imagen is an independent music publishing company that manages artists like Vampire Weekend and Justin Timberlake.

Carina explains three tips on how to successfully market your music in a step by step article focused on the musician as an individual. I hope you find this as insightful as I have and you are one step closer to achieving your goals.

lets begin-

 How do I successfully market my music?

If you want to get anywhere as a songwriter or a performer, it’s crucial that you learn how to market yourself and your music. The issue is, occasionally a songwriter will get a “lucky break” with his or her music and fall into fame and fortune without having put in much effort. When that happens, every other songwriter on earth thinks that’s the way to make it happen. You just have to be lucky. After all, we all want a quick fix, right?

However, if you’re serious about being successful with your music, that’s not much of a strategy. I want to give you three important pointers on how you can be much more likely to achieve your songwriting goals, based on how you market your music and yourself as a musician.

1. Speak to One Person

Of course as a songwriter you want to appeal to the masses. You want a ton of people hearing, sharing and loving your music. I get that. But one thing you have to realize when you’re marketing yourself is it’s best to address a single person to increase the odds of getting their attention.

For example, let’s say you signed up for a band’s email list at one of their shows. Which of the following opening email lines would be more likely to grab your attention as a reader?

A.    “Hey Guys – We wanted to thank you all for coming out to our last show. We appreciated you guys being there and hope you can make it out to our next show at…”

OR

B.    “Hey Bob – We wanted to thank you for coming out to our last show. We appreciated you being there and hope you can make it out to our next show at…”

Doesn’t the second one feel much more like it’s directed at you, specifically (well, assuming your name’s Bob)? The second one’s much more likely to get your reader’s attention. There’s a subconscious detachment that happens when we read phrases like “hey all you guys.” It makes us feel like just a face in a crowd, and we zone out. But when we’re spoken to directly, we’re much more likely to respond.

To get good at this technique, a great marketing approach is to create an avatar of your typical fan. Write out the name, age, gender, occupation, etc., of one of your fans. It can be someone made-up, who you feel represents your fan base appropriately, or it can be an actual fan of yours. Every time you write an email, tweet, or Facebook post, keep that person in mind. Pretend you’re writing to him only and not to everyone on the internet. It’ll help you keep your writings engaging for everyone who reads them, because while saying things like “Hello Cleveland” is kick-ass on-stage, it just doesn’t apply when you’re marketing yourself.

2. Give Value

Another big mistake a lot of songwriters make is they don’t make their promotions all about their fans. They make them about themselves. They say things like “We would really appreciate it if you came out to our show. It would mean so much to us.” That’s inwardly focused. It may work on their mom and siblings, but it just won’t appeal to someone who’s a casual observer of the band. In fact, it’ll probably turn that casual observer off, because it’s such a self-serving statement.

Another phrase I see a lot of songwriter’s write when promoting their stuff is “hey check out my songs, and let me know what you think.” There are two reasons this phrase is a bad idea: 1. Again, it’s self-serving. It’s all about the artist who posted it, which means other people aren’t likely to care. And, 2. It’s disingenuous. They probably don’t really want to know what you think, UNLESS you love it. If you hate their music, they’re not going to want you posting that on their page. I recommend staying away from that phrase altogether in online postings. It does the exact opposite of giving value.

Instead, talk about the benefits they’ll have by coming out to a show or buying one of your albums. Let them know why it’ll be a positive experience for THEM. People respond to what makes them feel good, so make them feel good. Don’t just talk about yourself. Everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. Not someone else. Use that piece of information to your advantage when you’re inviting someone to a show or to buy your music.

3. Build Relationships

One of the best ways to market your music is to build relationships. This applies not only to people who can help advance your career, like club owners and bigger bands, but with your fans as well.

As far as building relationships with your fans, if you were in the crowd for a band’s show, wouldn’t you be much more likely to come to another show if the band members engaged you in some pleasant conversation afterwards? If you get your fans on your email list, you can continue the relationship, by offering them cool stuff in your emails.

And as far promoters, bigger bands, etc., who can help your career along, building relationships with them, is key as well. You’ve heard the phrase “it’s all who you know.” Well start knowing people. But again, it’s about them. Don’t try to build relationships with people by seeing what they can do for you. No one will want to deal with you. Just be cool and get to know people. Later on down the line, you might able to ask for things, and it’ll be okay because you’ll have that relationship. But start out just by getting to know them, and even see if there’s anything you can do for them. If people like you and get to know you, they’ll be much more likely to want to help you succeed.

The opposite of building relationships would be to spam people online. This includes sending emails to people who didn’t ask to receive them and posting your music on sites that weren’t looking for it to be posted there. Things like that will only aggravate people, and possibly even get you blocked from the sites you want to be on. You’re doing the opposite of building relationships.

The problem is, most songwriters think in numbers. They think “that Facebook page has 20,000 fans. If I post my music there, SOMEONE will hear it, and I’ll get famous.” What’s much more likely to happen, is you’re just going to annoy the owner of the page. Think about how you feel when random people you don’t know post their stuff to your page. Instead, try to develop a relationship with the owner of the page. Maybe he’ll eventually promote your music to his page, if it’s good. And if not, that’s fine too.

Last Note

Marketing your music and yourself as an artist is crucial to your success as a songwriter. It’s just as important as understating songwriting, stage performance, recording and theory. Actually, it’s probably more important, if you want songwriting to be more than just your hobby. So use this information to avoid some unnecessary mistakes throughout your journey to success and have fun.

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Food Art

Ignore what you have been taught, forget alphabet spaghetti, there's  a new artistic movement in town!

During  my travels around Asia and North Africa, I was constantly surprised by the way the locals were grabbing the tourists attention, mostly to earn a few bucks or two, but nothing prepared me for what I saw when it came to Food Displays.

Watermelon umbrellas,  apple swans and  lemon dragon flys were some of the beautiful art works displayed. However, not for consumption, but for art pieces.

Take a look at the video above for some of the examples and new innovative (albeit wasteful) ways of creating art.

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Romy

6 charateristics of a succesful musician

 

 

Hey Guys,

As it is a Monday, I thought that I would keep this post short and sweet and let the video do the talking for once!

Jayme Lewis is a renowned bassist, author and educator and in this installment for MusiciansUnite, Jayme reviews the six important characteristics that all successful working musicians must have.  He talks about what you need to do to excel your musical career forward. No matter your age, style, skill or experience level, every musician will learn something valuable!

hope you enjoy!

x

Romy

romy@beonthescene.com

Musical Genious, A touching Story

He cant tell his left from his right and cant count to 10, but he can play every note of every song he ever heard. even if he only heard it once, 10 years ago.

Derek Paravicini, aged 26, was born 14 weeks prematurely and was within an heartbreat of death.

When Derek came along a few minutes later, the doctor presumed that he, too, could not possibly live. And yet just when his mother Mary Ann had given up hope, she heard the faintest of whimpers, the tiniest of muffled squeaks. He had made it. 

Three decades on, Derek no longer makes muffled squeaks. Instead, he brings a rapt audience in St George’s concert theatre, Bristol, to their feet again and again, with a dazzling range of music — an Oscar Peterson arrangement of Greensleeves, his own version of Bach’s Air in the key of G, a jaunty ragtime taste of Debussy.

You’ll have heard of perfect pitch. Well, Derek has absolute pitch — a rare gift, meaning that, when he hears a chord with ten notes in it, he can identify every one. Most professional musicians can get about five. 

He can master any melody on earth, has a databank of thousands of songs in his head and can play any one of them at will, improvising as he goes. 

Because he was born so early, Derek is blind. The oxygen used to revive him at birth caused certain vessels in his eyes to grow abnormally, damaging his retinas, in a condition called retinopathy of prematurity. 

 

As he is blind, he cannot read music — he can’t even read Braille. All his performances — his and the orchestra’s — is encapsulated entirely within his head. 

Remember, Life Does not Limit you, Only your own fear can

How Youtube is driving Innovation

Chris Anderson is an editor, journalist and a creator of a popular games website IGN and in this video he talks to TED audiences on how Youtube is driving innovation. He explains the rise of web video that is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls the Crowd Accelerated Innovation which is the self fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print.

How does this affect us? Well, taking an example from the video, as students we learn from age old history and research, but today lessons are available to us from the best teachers and audience. right on your computer screen. 

Please watch the video and share your thoughts and comments in the box below!

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Romy

Copycats

Last year, in the Daily mail I read an article on copyright laws for major designer labels and how Copycats are able to get away with making Knock Offs in this instance, Louis Vuitton Knock off Bags. Upon watching my weekly dose of TED talks, I came across the same topic being discussed and thought it is a sign to share it with all of you.  

The speech lead by Johanna Blakely touches on the lack of copyright laws in the fashion industry as opposed to the firm grip the law has on Film, Music and Software.

In the world we live in today, there are so many niches and groups of people who like different things and in most instances, different budgets. With the internet, we are able to get it twice as fast than in previous years.

Johanna touches on competition, so what does this mean for artists? Well everyone wants a bigger piece of the imagination pie or want to be the first in innovation at the same time keeping things fresh. But a quick search on Google on a certain topic or idea you are playing with will see this having been done before, in some form or another.

Creativity is defined as the ability to channel carious existing ideas and make them into something new and better. In simple terms, copycats are merely serving a need within a market in order to make money. A wise women once said, “Copycats are here to make money, Artists are here to make a difference.”

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Romy