\u00a0<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the way, marketing got framed as the enemy of art.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marketing is \u201cselling out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marketing is \u201cwatering it down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marketing is what you do after the real work is finished.<\/p>\n
These ideas are deeply embedded in arts culture. They\u2019re often learned early, reinforced quietly, and rarely questioned. And while they\u2019re understandable, they\u2019re also untrue \u2014 and costly.<\/p>\n
Believing marketing is opposed to art doesn\u2019t protect the work. It makes the work harder to share.<\/p>\n
What marketing actually does<\/strong><\/p>\n At its best, marketing doesn\u2019t change the art. It translates it. Good marketing creates context. It reduces uncertainty. It helps people understand what they\u2019re being invited into \u2014 emotionally, intellectually, and practically. It answers questions audiences are already asking: What kind of experience is this? Is it for someone like me? Do I need to know anything before I arrive? When those questions go unanswered, people don\u2019t assume the work is bold or complex. They assume it isn\u2019t meant for them.<\/p>\n Why the tension won\u2019t go away<\/strong><\/p>\n Marketing asks uncomfortable questions \u2014 especially for artists and arts organizations: Who is this really for? Why does it matter right now? What do people need in order to say yes?<\/p>\n These can feel like compromises, or worse, like pressure to simplify or justify the work. But in practice, they\u2019re clarity exercises. They don\u2019t ask you to dilute the work \u2014 they ask you to understand it well enough to talk about it honestly. Avoiding these questions doesn\u2019t preserve integrity. It just delays the reckoning.<\/p>\n The quiet cost of resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n When marketing is treated as a necessary evil, a few things reliably happen: It gets rushed. It gets under-resourced. It gets handed to the least-experienced person on the team. And when things don\u2019t sell, it gets blamed. Meanwhile, the work itself hasn\u2019t changed \u2014 and it still deserves an audience.<\/p>\n This is how good projects disappear quietly. Not because they weren\u2019t strong, but because no one helped people find their way in. A better way to think about it Art and marketing are not opposing forces. They are collaborators with different responsibilities.<\/p>\n Art creates meaning.<\/strong><\/p>\n Marketing creates access.<\/strong><\/p>\n When marketing feels painful, it\u2019s often because it\u2019s disconnected from the why of the work \u2014 from the values, questions, or urgencies that made it necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n Reconnect those, and marketing stops feeling like translation by committee. It starts feeling like an invitation. And invitations, when done well, are generous \u2014 not compromising.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Somewhere along the way, marketing got framed as the enemy of art.\u00a0 Marketing is \u201cselling out.\u201d\u00a0 Marketing is \u201cwatering it down.\u201d\u00a0 Marketing is what you do after the real work is finished. These ideas are deeply embedded in arts culture. They\u2019re often learned early, reinforced quietly, and rarely questioned. And while they\u2019re understandable, they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sueedworthy.ca\/marketingmadepractical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}