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Congratulations to one of my client creative businesses, Sparkle Media on their successful projects in Australia !
The visual effects and animation company has recently worked in Australia with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, producing video footage for the multimedia theatrical performance Minutes of a Separation.
Sparkle Media also worked for Reebok whilst in Australia on an 'advanced fitness' website project.
It's a pleasure to work with creative entrepreneurs like Glenn Maguire and Andy Cooper, who are the company's directors.
Over the several months I have been involved in their business growth, I have been able to advise them on matters such marketing, intellectual property and enterprise development.
Sparke Director Glenn Maguire said:
"Since attending David's workshop and then engaging him as an adviser, Sparkle Media has gone from strength to strength. The company now operates on a global level, going head to head with world wide agencies - and beating them. We've never looked back and have a lot to thank David for."
Working internationally from their base in Liverpool, Sparkle has worked closely with creative industries support agency Merseyside ACME.
Rob Kinsey is an artist with a passion for the sport of motocross, defining himself on his website as ‘motocross racer, fan and award-winning artist’. Art and sport have been important to Rob for many years. He qualified as a technical illustrator in the 1970’s and his artwork has developed in parallel with his participation in motocross. He competed in the British Motocross Championships from 1977 to 1981 and still rides in Vintage Motocross events. He specialises in painting with acrylic on canvas and produces high quality prints using the Giclée process, which ensures that the colours do not fade over time.
 Photo: Rob Kinsey with one of his motocross paintings. “They are all painted with a passion,” says Rob, and he combines his passions for art and motocross with business acumen. He sells pen and ink drawings, prints and original artworks through his e-commerce website to a world-wide customer base of riders, fans and motocross businesses. To help make his creative enterprise even more successful, Rob attended a business development course close to his home in Derbyshire, England. The ‘Focusing Creativity’ workshops helped Rob and other creative entrepreneurs to devise business strategies which combine their creative talents with smart business thinking. “I went on the course feeling that I should diversify my range of artwork away from just motocross because I felt vulnerable by having all my eggs in one basket,” said Rob. However, by the end of the course, after having considered a range of factors such as his competitive advantage, market segmentation and pricing strategies, Rob decided that his best option was to play to his strengths and focus on motocross art. “The course encouraged me to focus on what I’m passionate about and to capitalise on my position in the world of motocross” said Rob. “The message I came away with was ‘Believe in yourself and don’t worry about only working in a niche market – simply become the best motocross artist in the world!’ from the aptly named Focusing Creativity course” said Rob. Despite being a one-person enterprise, Rob’s business strategy is similar to that of some of the biggest corporations. Jim Collins identified that the most consistently successful companies use the ‘Hedgehog Concept’. (The hedgehog is supremely good at one defensive position, and it survives by sticking to its winning strategy.) Businesses using the Hedgehog Strategy have identified the one thing at which they can be world-beaters. This results from an objective understanding of what you can be best in the world at combined with the thing you are deeply passionate about. This focused strategy worked. Within a year he was appointed as the ‘Official Artist to the 2007 Motocross de Nations’ in Maryland, USA. This accolade will give him the opportunity to exhibit and sell his works of art in the VIP and Press buildings at the event, which is the ideal marketplace at the very heart of this international sport. Rob Kinsey has achieved world-class status by focusing on his niche market, concentrating on his specialist creativity and being driven by his passion. ---
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Download this article as a PDF document (PDF, 140KB) --- Let me know about other creative entrepreneurs who have focused on a specialist niche to achieve world-beating success.
Telling Africa’s story from Africans’ point of view is the mission of Africa Media Online, the agency representing African media professionals to the global market.
“In the ‘information society’, if we are to create some semblance of global information democracy, it is important that Africans are heard from their perspective,” says Africa Media Online’s David Larsen
His company has created systems to gather, market and deliver media to users and markets around the world. For the benefit of their world-wide customers, media from a comprehensive range of African picture libraries, museums and archives are available in one place, and managed in conformity with global standards. As well as using the latest digitisation technology, e-commerce systems make financial transactions easy, secure and quick.
The technology driving all this is MEMAT 2.0 (Media Market Technologies), which is an online content management system, developed in-house using open source technology, and launched in 2004. This software provides each member organisation with the facilities to organise their libraries and archives, backed up by training and technical support.
As well as being relatively inexpensive, it is highly scaleable. This means that it can power the collections of individual photographers such as South African news photographer, Rajesh Jantilal, but also the multiple collections of a media organisation such as Cape Town’s Oryx Media and the world-class Bailey’s African History Archive, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In addition to running their own websites, African picture libraries and media archives recognise that they benefit by working together in a form of ‘co-opetition’. They can do this by also offering their images through ‘africanpictures.net’, which David Larsen describes as an ‘online superstore’.
Clearly this offers great customer benefits as the global audience can find most content in one convenient place.
David Larsen, a photographer and journalist, set up Africa Media Online Pty. (Ltd.) in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 2000, along with Paul De Villiers, an internet entrepreneur. Paul sold his shares in 2006 and new investors were attracted to the company, including Kabusha Technology Investments Pty. (Ltd.), a black-owned enterprise which now controls the single largest shareholding in Africa Media Online. This relationship demonstrates a clear commitment to social transformation, according to David Larsen. The investment structure brings financial resources to the company and at the same time creates an organisational structure which is fitting to the local cultural and political environment.
In its first seven years of business, Africa Media Online has concentrated on photographic images but its systems have always been designed for multiple media forms. The company is aligning itself to the convergence of media so that it will be able to also offer documents, sound and video files. This will mean an even better service for its global distribution partners and clients all around the world.
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Link to Africa Media Online
More about Co-opetition
More about Organisational Structures
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How can creative entrepreneurs benefit from using social networking systems such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, Second Life – and others?
Leanda Ryan is the director of Leanda Ryan Graphic Design, in Manchester, UK. Her story is an interesting one:
“Flickr was the first service I signed up for 2005. I posted a few pictures but at this point I wasn’t really thinking about using online social networking for business purposes. However there are no hard edges when you are a designer or other type of creative person, your leisure and professional worlds tend to be inextricably linked.
“I picked it up again in 2006, fuelled by a renewed interest in photography. I wanted to be able to create images quickly, publish them and get some feedback. At this point I realised that in order to get a response to an image I needed to join flickr groups and submit my images to those groups. From there my contact list grew – individuals and groups brought together based on affinity and mutual interests. flickr became, and still is, my online scrapbook. It’s a place to share visual ideas, new developments and trends in design and technology.
“Then I joined last.fm, a website that tracks what I’m listening to and connects me to users that have a similar music profile. Here users can recommend and discover new music, meet up at music events and join groups.”
Leanda says that she became an ‘online social network junkie’. “You name it and I’ve probably signed up for it”, she said. “The ones I find most useful as working tools are probably social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, flickr – which I couldn’t live without – and of course twitter. Twitter is the modern day water cooler. I work from home and can sometimes feel isolated, but with twitter I can throw out a question or a comment and get an instant response from contacts spanning several time zones. It’s become invaluable for sharing, learning, advice, and for finding people to work on projects with. “
Essentially, business takes place between people, and Leanda emphasises the importance of the ‘personal profile’ in social networking sites. This is the equivalent of the ‘small talk’ which happens in face to face business networking and meetings. It is these snippets of information which help people to bond, like each other and build trust between them. The message must be right for the medium and so in contrast with business websites, the information on social networking sites is more personal, the atmosphere is more ‘laid back’, and the etiquette much more informal. Significantly, Leanda says she is an introvert in real life but very much an extrovert online. Photos also tend to be more quirky and fun so Leanda uses the one below on social networking sites.
Leanda’s social networking through last.fm and other networks led to winning a contract to design a logo and hand tag for her first overseas client, Little Miss Inc., a lingerie company based in New York.
“I’m constantly asked about how I find time to manage all the online services” says Leanda. “It’s true that building an online social network takes time and those relationships have to be nurtured in much the same way as physical networking, but the rewards are so great that I would definitely recommend it.”
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Link to Leanda Ryan Graphic Design.
Link to 'The Message must be right for the Medium'.
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Download this article as a PDF document (PDF, 125KB)
*Let me know about your own experiences of online social networking for business.
TÉLO is the first public telephone especially designed for public transport vehicles. Using a card for payment, millions of people using public transport are already
using the phone on buses, trains and underground transport networks.
Founded in August 2004, by Paulo Lerner and André Averbug, Brazilian company PV Inova (Public Vehicular Innovations) invented the system and have registered a patent to protect their intellectual property, initially
in Brazil.
“Writing the patent was very time consuming, having lasted about six months”, said Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio, “we had the support of a patent lawyer for the writing of the patent itself, and of a respectable law-firm for the registration of it. We registered the patent in Brazil and internationally through the PCT”. The Patent Co-operation Treaty provides a standardised method of registering a patent, initially in the country of origin, and paves the way for easier registration of the same patent in 137 countries which have signed up to the Treaty. Despite the PCT, there is no such thing as an ‘international patent’ – a further separate registration is required for every additional member state.
Photo: Inova’s executive partners: Paulo Lerner (Technology), André Averbug (Planning) and Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio (Marketing).
In choosing further countries for patent registration, PV Inova will be targeting other countries with similar social profiles as Brazil, in Latin America, East Asia and Africa. In these countries, millions of people use public transport and rely on public communication networks rather than personal mobile phones. They will also register the patent in Europe and the USA for strategic purposes – to deter competition for as long as possible.
PV Inova has a social mission – to make communication accessible and affordable to the masses. They also have commercial objectives and recognise that these customers, though not wealthy as individuals, collectively have massive amounts of money to spend. The company has used socio-economic statistics combined with transportation data to analyse the Brazilian market. Instead of focusing on the wealthy elite, their income streams will come from the aggregated spending power of millions of ordinary people. This is a ‘base of the pyramid’ or ‘BoP’ strategy, selling services in high volume but at low prices.
Innovate in product design, Leonardo and his colleagues at PV Inova have used a novel combination of strategies to raise funds for their projects. Investors see the potential of the company and PV Inova has had two rounds of investment, firstly from a ‘business angel’, and later from an ‘investment club’ of seven smaller shareholders. 80% of shares are owned by the three executive partners, with the remaining 20% shared by 11 others. The company’s business plan forecasts an outstanding return on investment. PV Inova also plans to reinvest its profits in further technological developments, including digital TV.
Apart from the huge Brazilian public transportation market, growth will also come from international strategic partnerships with telecommunications companies, based on the provision of the service and the licensing of their intellectual property.
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Link to PV Inova website.
Please contact me with other examples of creative enterprises using interesting marketing strategies and intellectual property to develop their businesses.
Combining traditional Vietnamese fine art with pioneering technology has created success for VietnamArtist.com, a virtual online gallery based in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Tran Thi Anh Vu (pictured, right), an art gallery proprietor, set up VietnamArtsist.com in 1999, seizing the opportunities offered by e-commerce to develop her business. She engaged the services of an Indian web company and a design consultant from the USA to create one of the first websites in Vietnam to accept credit card transactions from all around the world.
The business currently promotes hundreds of works of art, at prices ranging up to $10,000, by 20 artists, including the most famous artists in Vietnam, such as Nguyen Thanh Binh, Bui Huu Hung, Do Xuan Doan and Ho Huu Thu.
One of the problems all art galleries face is that there is never enough room to display all the art available. However, in contrast to a walk-in gallery, the virtual world of the internet offers almost infinite ‘gallery space’. This means that all the artwork, not just a select few, can be promoted online. These other works form what Chris Anderson calls the ‘long tail', the many items that would never win gallery space yet can collectively achieve remarkable sales online. Unlike physical shops and galleries, online retailers can be ‘scaled-up’ without traditional constraints of space, cost and staffing.
VietnamArtist.com represents two galleries plus some individual artists. Anh invites other artists and galleries to join, even their competitors, because by working together to reach international markets, they can all benefit. “We have an open door policy” says Anh, “we call it co-opetition, friendly competition.”
By being creative with her business model, Anh has transformed her enterprise from physical to virtual – ‘from bricks to clicks’ – replacing old problems with new opportunities. 50% of sales are online. No longer local, it’s now truly global. Limited space is now infinite; previously seasonal trade is now perennial. Inventory is ‘virtual’ – artworks can be displayed without the gallery having to store or buy them until they are sold to a customer. Trading globally on behalf of local artists, VietnamArtist.com has turned competition into co-opetition.
Image: Schoolgirls with Lotus Flower 2 by Nguyen Thanh Binh
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Link to VietnamArtist.com
Please let me know of other examples of co-opetition, e-commerce and international marketing in the creative industries.
Cassandra Postema and Dong Shing Chiu (pictured) are in the business of selling hope, wrapped up in t-shirts called ‘Hope Tees’.
Their Hong Kong creative enterprise is called ‘Dialog’ because it embodies an exchange of conversations between marginalised Asian textile craft wisdom and modern western design. The result is an attractive and fun range of resort apparel, bags
and accessories.
Dong Shing Chiu was born in Malaysia’s Borneo, grew up in Malaysia and London, and studied fashion with printed textiles there at Central St Martins with Cassandra. She has won accolades throughout Europe and New York with her print designs. Cassandra grew up in Singapore, Japan, Vienna and other cities. She was a New Generation Award winner at London Fashion Week prior to returning to Asia.
Dialog’s fashion is purpose-driven and interwoven into their fabric designs are values which embrace both fair trade and recycling. Their design hub produces fashionable products which also help micro businesses in impoverished areas, for example a women’s empowerment project in Sham Shui Po, the garment district of Hong Kong.
Their fair-trade fashion label has also developed a recycled fabric trimming which is incorporated into the design of accessories. Some of the people producing the trimming are teenagers who have come off the streets, and drugs, to learn new skills in a ‘halfway house’ project. The enterprise ensures that producers are paid a price which covers the cost of sustainable incomes for them and provides decent working conditions.
Hope Tees is a Dialog project which began when Cassandra was inspired to design a t-shirt to raise funds for the children of the Asian Tsunami disaster of 2004. Hope Tees now design and produce a t-shirts to raise funds on a project by project basis, in limited editions of 200.
Simply by buying a t-shirt, customers are participating in a dialogue with the producers but this communication can go much further because Hope Tees also has a blog which links Dialog, its consumer and its suppliers.
When the customer spends £10, they are getting much more than a garment in the package.
Crucially, the consumer is also buying a ‘story’. Wrapped up in the t-shirt is a description of the project the Hope Tee supports. The benefits to the customer include a feel-good factor which is much more than the skin-deep feeling of the cool cotton fabric. Other consumer benefits include a recyclable packaging tube which is consistent with the values and objectives of the company and its customers.
So what Dialog are really selling, in this neat little eco-friendly package, is hope. Hope for the future of marginalised culture, hope for the future of the planet, and hope for a fairer balance of trade between producer and consumer.
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Link to Dialog Ltd
Link to Hope Tees
Link to 'What are you selling, really?'
Photos used with permission.
*Please contact me with other examples of What you are Really selling.
The four friends formed a band at college but it didn’t work out, so they call themselves ‘Autobahn’ as a tribute to the band that never plays in the film The Big Lebowski. Instead they focus on what they excel at – using their best creative talents to design publications and websites that have something extra. Autobahn are based in Holland with a studio in Utrecht and have achieved impressive success in their first few years in the design business.
Their style and values could be described as ‘bold’ or even ‘cheeky’. They like to be different and help their clients to get noticed, using innovative and edgy designs. Their team of four, despite different skills and approaches to their design work, is held together firmly by their shared belief in doing things differently. They are also held together in a corporate structure which gives each of them equal ownership, control and reward. 
Autobahn (left to right): Jeroen Breen, Maarten Dullemeijer (outside), Rob Stolte and Giovanni Grado (pictured – he wasn’t in when I visited!)
Clients gain from their unusual designs, and they have produced innovative publications for a mix of clients including Thea youth theatre, a university, a musical institute – and even the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
After spending a lot of time and effort using conventional ‘cold calling’ techniques to win new customers, they decided to used their ‘cheekiness’ to help their enterprise grow. They selected ten potential customers who they thought would be receptive to their style and would gain from their design talents. They then used ‘guerrilla marketing’ to win those customers in an inexpensive, direct and cheeky way.
Travelling by pushbike, they attacked in broad daylight, and with adrenalin pumping, they climbed up to the windows of target clients’ offices – and then attached their posters. A huge exclamation mark caught the attention of the people inside who then read the small print: “We want to work for you!” Two of the ten targets became clients as a result – an impressive 20% success rate. (The other eight were more amused than offended.)
Autobahn select their clients carefully and even in the early days when cash was short they were prepared to turn down business from a client who didn’t share their values and connect to their way of thinking. They pride themselves on helping customers by challenging the clients’ assumptions and helping them to draw up an even better brief that fits with the customers’ organisational objectives.
And obviously they work best with clients who value their bold, mouthy and cheeky style.
For the Autobahn guerrillas, cheekiness is profitable!
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Download autobahn. Ideas in Action. David Parrish. T-Shirts and Suits. 200407.pdf
Link to Autobahn website.
Please contact me with further examples of guerrilla marketing in the creative industries.
JAB Design, a design consultancy based in Liverpool, is a great example of a creative business using business thinking to make their creative enterprise even more successful.
JAB Design features as an 'Ideas in Action' case study in the book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity'.
This section of the book can be downloaded:
Download ideas_in_action. JAB Design. Excerpt from T-Shirts and Suits. A Guide to the Business of Creativity.pdf (PDF, 151KB)
The section features several important points:
Values
Transfer of Intellectual Property to Clients
Creative Alchemy
Business as a Dialogue with Customers
Working 'on' as well as 'in' the business
Link to JAB Design website
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