#this show from what i know is like equally valuable to ai art

[nagitoedit]

sorryvi forgot that it was ides i was bust having a huge oanick attack bevause my sister is the most worthless waste of life and uhm anywats enjoy w wood wednesday rant

[davidmariottecomics]

The (Cash) Value of Art

Hello again, 

If you've been engaged in the comic and art spaces recently, you've probably noticed a number of troubling trends. While cost of living is rising, folks are looking up numbers showing rates have stagnated for extended periods (and given inflation, technically fallen). Folks are talking about being offered too little by places with big budgets. Folks are talking about massive delays or straight-up non-payments from comics publishers. And between NFTs featuring stolen artwork--a thing that has proven time and time again to be a scam of occasional worth, but no value; the seemingly ever-worsening state of actually crediting/acknowledging artists, much less listening when they say things like "do not repost or steal my art"; and AI tools that don't actually level any sort of artistic playing field and just steal and repurpose existing art (and user data and, sometimes, medical records?!) for the benefit of *checks notes* people who don't want to pay for art, it's a ROUGH time out there. 

DISCLAIMER: While I'm happy to harp on the negatives of art theft, as noted in that last point, I encourage doing your own due diligence on the first few. These are conversations that are happening and that, in conjunction with the rampant art theft and general devaluation of art that I'll be talking about today, I wanted to make sure got mentioned. However, as a lot of these conversations are coming from social media, I do think it's worth doing independent verification of any claims. I'm not here to say whether or not companies are paying people--I don't know. I'm saying that it's being discussed. 

What I am going to talk about more at length today is, generally, how you can value your art and take that valuation with you in all avenues you may pursue. These tips might not work for everyone, but maybe they'll work for you. 

The Value of Art

Chances are, if you're reading this, you already know what I'm about to say, but maybe you need a reminder. Art is human expression. It is the distillation of an idea by an artist in whatever medium they may choose. It may be inspiring or emotional or wrought with pain or just a funny little picture of a funny little guy because you were bored. It may have meaning and purpose and depth, or be vapid and convenient and random, and both can be enjoyable. Art is, I'd reckon, one of the base ways we relate to each other. It can be communication and entertainment, and one can beget the other. I am someone immersed in art all the time--from my work to the things in my home to what I consume in the public sphere. Art pays my bills (speaking of, my cats had to go to the vet--routine check-ups and vaccines and stuff, but not great timing, so if you wanna support me, check out the shop and buy my art). It has helped me when I've been down. It's brought me great joy. Art is valuable. Your art is valuable. Even if it is for no one except yourself, your art is worth your time and energy in that you created something you set out to create. 

So it really sucks when people devalue your art externally. It sucks that while social media has allowed for artists to find outreach and build audiences and community webs like never before, it's also an ever-churning engine looking for something to self-promote. An artist's post on Twitter is equally free promotion for Twitter as a place to find the artist and their work as it is the artist themselves. Sometimes, the equation's even more unbalanced as the proliferation of free art being shared by artists has led to entitled folks believing they have a right to all art--from taking and reposting art without credit (or, equally infuriatingly, with "credit to the artist") to piracy to the new wave of feeding other people's hard work without their knowledge or against their will into programs that allow other people to use and make a profit from their work. This is a particularly important point--the art's value isn't lost. AI generators, NFTs, the aforementioned social media--they're making money off of that work, instead of it going to the creators of the work. And people often submit that willingly because--at best, they don't know better, and at worst, they seek to actively cause harm to the artists. 

When there's so much happening, it can be disheartening. It feels like attacks against the worth of your work on all sides. And as many artists point out, they'd love to be able to make art for free (and, often do, though when they do, the fact it was free is overlooked and underappreciated). But they have bills and wants and needs and as long as we're using money to pay for things, a need for money for their work (as one last aside, pretty sure you could sub artists for sex workers and art for sex work and have the statement be equally true--notable because many forms of sex work overlap with art and also, y'know, people who have their work and humanity devalued gotta stick together, y'know). 

So, when it seems like things are against you, how do you value your own art?  

A Fair Price

What is a fair price is for your art? How can you set a price that you feel is justified? Who decides that price? Big questions, I know, but hopefully simple answers. 

The what and the how go hand-in-hand. I don't have it in front of me, but I've seen a pretty good calculation for setting rates in the past that is something like: 

Minimum Wage x Estimated Hours to Complete a Piece [taking into account style, complexity, and layers--a sketch takes less time than a fully colored multi-panel comic page--as an extra note here, you may want to ramp your "hours" up as a valuation of expertise, if you are quicker because you've learned and practiced to become able to work more quickly, take into account the hours spent getting there too] + Cost of Materials divided by Number of Projects they can be used for [how long does your pencil last? Your iPad? Monthly costs of electricity and/or internet? Also including shipping costs if those apply] + X Project Specific Materials [if you're paying for a special font or canvas or reference material] + the biggest variable, Minimum Wage x Estimated Hours for Promotion [that is to say, if you're expected to self-promote a project, how much you expect that sort of marketing work will cost/would be traded off for other work]. 

You might go up or down with whatever number you come up with, but now you have a base and one that is justified through a lot of your time and consideration. And that's the biggest thing--despite art appraisers and the budgets of commissioners [or a private or business level]--only you can really set the standard for how much you'd like to be paid. 

How to Go About Talking $$$ The short and sweet is, if you have a number in mind to start, you're ready for the conversation. Not all art budgets are going to match your number. Sometimes, occasionally, you'll be offered even higher (and unless the project is evil--probably worth saying, some art is inherently vile and bad and evil--you should take it). Sometimes you'll be lowballed and it'll be up to you whether or not you take it. A lot of the time, you'll be given a price that someone somewhere, not the person talking to you in the moment, said is the amount that can be paid. 

To that end, remember to be polite to the person attempting to hire you. Keep your number in mind and see if they have any flexibility if it isn't being met. I recommend talking budget early--either with deadline or after confirming the deadline will work. And ask your questions early too. Places should be able to answer basic questions about the money: how it can be paid, if there is an average/expected time that it is paid in (sometimes called a Net period), questions about rights, other usage, etc. 

From there, go with your gut. Ask a peer if something seems off. But if you know how much you value your art, that's the way to start the conversation. 

Speaking of the value of art and how artists need $$$ to pay for things... my friends Elizabeth and Danny had their catalytic converter stolen right off their car and those are expensive, so if you like good comics and stuff, maybe go and help them out! And Becca's shop is slightly updated and open through 12/26, speaking of someone who has recently been giving a lot of free art to social media and deserves to be paid for their work. Also, if you're an adult and a Genshin Impact fan, they're currently doing one of those "strip" trends of a sort... Also, lots of really good Makimas recently for you CSM fans. 

Next week: THE LAST BLOG OF THE YEAR! It's going to be a goodbye of sorts as I say a bit about my time with Transformers as we part ways for now, as well as saying goodbye to the first year of this blog. Hope to see you there! 

Things I've been enjoying this week: Heading out shortly to hang out and watch Xmas movies with the aforementioned Elizabeth, Danny, and Becca! Candy canes. Honkai Impact (Video game). Chainsaw Man (Anime & Manga). Knowing Star Saber's on his way and should be here Monday (and some other TFs are going to be coming home soon too). Finding something as a present that you didn't think you'd see before Xmas and is now under the tree. Advent calendars. Lego Masters (TV show). The Simpsons (TV show). Tiansheng being such a good boy for the vet (Nadja was not and so we have to go back Wednesday with her dosed with a calming drug beforehand). Hades II!!!!!!!! Getting through a chunk of my to-do list. This past week wasn't quite as "Winter Slumpy" as I was expecting, but I made good progress. 

Also, I took a pull on Genshin and got the artist formerly known as Scaramouche by accident and Becca still needs to pull him because they're actually much more interested, so one more plug, please buy some stuff from Becca so they can get this guy.  

New Releases this week (12/7/2022): Sonic the Hedgehog #55 (Editor) Transformers: Best of Windblade (Editor--our penultimate TF book) Godzilla Monsters & Protectors: All Hail the King #3 (Editor! My first Godzilla book!)

New releases next week (12/14/2022): Transformers: Shattered Glass II #5 (Supervising Editor--Our last TF book. More next week). 

Pic of the Week: Last week I drew a silly little comic about how doing self-promotion, including for this blog, kinda backfired as it seemed like I was being throttled in who my posts were reaching, as well as how to get past it (hint: he's fast and blue and I think I literally already posted this here, but whoops?). 

[antivirusprogram2020]

I am an antivirus program (2020)

> CHAPTER 2 The new human type cannot be properly understood without an awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world - Theodor Adorno. Minima Moralia, 1951 We can not change the medium as the medium is predicated on the message (use my square space code for a 10% discount)- we are fixed in this web 2.0 and the control of knowledge will be met with the streamlining of UI and UX design. Design tools like the adobe programs will continue to increase their premium and their monopoly hold on the design space - to be a designer is to be implicated with this process, regardless if you pirate software or notThis is where I raise flags against the tepid conglomeration of blog sites and web in general, the astroturfing of the internet has only amplified the feedback of Graphic Design. You’d typically call this commercial design. Commercial design fits the criteria of an evolving media world, “It is important to note that this ultimate stage of pictorialization was a reversal of pattern. The world of body and mind...was not photographical at all, but anonvisual set of relations”1. Commercial Design started to drive an efficiency science behind it’s aesthetic - you make the access mode immediate and your engagement success is far higher, and you do this through the pictogram, and when photography came about, that too was made into a design appendage. “To understand the medium of the photograph is quite impossible, then, without grasping its relations to other media, both old and new. For media, as extensions of our physical and nervous systems, constitute a world of biochemical interactions that must ever seek new equilibrium as new extensions occur.”1 This is potentially a valuable understanding of media, and thus design, presented by media theorist Marshall Mcluhan, commercial design (and all art and design in a sense) are schizophrenic presentations of the world, they accumulate meanings outside the presented scope of an advertisement, or typography - they link the relational experience of the mass media consumer, as Mcluhan states. However, this is not all, he states an ‘equilibrium as new extensions occur’ - in my context now this weighs with a great importance, we know the new extensions already, something that Mcluhan unfortunately didn’t get to experience fully, and that’s the web, the modern computer, the pocket mobile device. These are in their own rights mediums, your OS (operating system) is a computer language medium that dictates other program mediums, the access mode to the rest of the systems of design, websites contain live feeds and streams to distant realities, it’s all so lucid but at the same time it feels like an astral projection. At times this can feel nauseating, that collapsing feeling of ‘space’ and ‘time’. This presents a wider problem with modern design, technology has embedded itself into the core of the practice since the dawn of paper and pen, stone and chisel etc. The problem being that while technology has stopped gapped connectivity, it refuses to go further - refuses to return the creativity of a design practice unless commandeered. This has led to the necessity for the designer to code, and script, to kit bend and utilise AI - once again “fragmenting” the work role. “Under conditions of electric circuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and “human” service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty.” Graphic design namely has done well to adapt and reshape, showing its versatility in the age of digital design. Not only that, it hybridizes aesthetic models much like a fashion season generates new styles, which keeps design itself fresh and alive, while sometimes slipping into the contrived and over-saturated. But is the “human” service really what Graphic Design is becoming? It certainly hints to this with the proactive design studio model. Interaction and Bureaucracy, it’s an efficiency tactic. All design requires hierarchy even if that hierarchy is to not have one. I see the office space, I remember the spider plant, I see the shore line, I see the whitecaps. The workers space is a micro-territorial space of capital politics and a grab for faux socialism in most cases, in some, it is an honest attempt to form comradery - the cafeteria is an effective grounds to reinforce or detourne this thinking. People like artist Olafur Eliasson effectively install a commons space for the studio team to interact and communicate, job roles are made equal in that space. “The studio, as much as we don’t like it, means working in your own little departments, compartmentalised. And there are hierarchies even though everyone’s a part of the democracy. The kitchen is a nice leveller.” It’s a universal ideology that falls into a majority of Eliasson’s work that provides an effective future-proof for how the operations of studio practice should be carried out (see the Auteur myth). My cynicism is only symptomatic of the consumerist prerequisite that allows design to exist in the first place - a degree in the topic definitely is met with a careerist sentiment, to be financially viable within a milieu of art and design subjects. Graphic Design should not try to divorce itself from this grouping, it stands stronger with the complex wovings and multitudes that allow it to bloom as an individual practice that arranges the practice of others. The efforts here are a concern with the design practice no less, and how ethics and politics are sequestered by a shifting responsibility of effects, how and why Graphic design mutated into the corporate virus that it is now. ”All media work us over completely.”8 This is Mcluhan’s sentiment from his writings in the 60’s, and It stands up true to this day, more so than ever. Algoration (the use of data algorithms to curate a web feed) are notorious and globally implemented into most ‘social media’, but outside social media, it’s used as predictive data. This is the “reversal pattern”, Graphic Design puts a face to this slippery coded underbelly. The automation of design media has become an efficient business strategy to overmine its user base data, and subsequently requires illustration. To be concise, the study of the Graphic Designer is in part the study of Media, the study of media is the lens of relational activities and connectivity. And this is the permitted virus. Adversely, the antivirus program is a research protocol invested in studying the autonomy available to a Graphic Designer, and an extended hand to all fragmented sectors that require a similar reclamation. Language dictates media – media manufactures consent, therefore language manufactures consent. A small quibble no less, that the Graphic Designer goes to bed with media every day. And in the morning they arise with vast spawns of editorials, emailing lists, content posts - lots of fucking content posts by content creatures. The homogeneous sprawl of media is a compounded expository of new design conditions. “Today, the mass audience can be used as a creative, participating force. It is, instead, merely given packages of passive entertainment.”8 The passive entertainment is reflexive of its audience, an audience that is content on not being challenged when engaging and consuming media, not being challenged when creating and releasing it - the language logic is a false preposition - things don’t have to occur in the forefront of our percepts, media can be a stealth operation for critical theory or a dog whistle for nazis. Even a glass of milk is steeped in meaning. “The photograph is just as useful for collective, as for individual, postures and gestures, whereas written and printed language is biased toward the private and individual(s) posture.”1 Mcluhan and designer Rapheal Roake seem to fit perfectly in collusion with one another here, “All design is a political act”, this fits Mcluhan’s collective principle for the photograph precisely, as this explicitly gives backing to the relational dynamics of media itself, it sits in the collective sphere - the global village. It all begins to feel like a fever dream, the spectres of Helvetica, Comic sans and Papyrus jumping on your chest as you’re paralysed in a waking dream. Blink and you’ll miss the horses head 144hz refresh rate. The grid settings of your life are closing in tighter and tighter as you cant kern in a moment for peace, please adobe I’m plugged in to your creative cloud let me use my kettle already, yes dear, they’re wacom tablet plates, we threw out the cutlery and replaced them for tote bags and ironic panel hats. The decoherence of the 21st century is here and it’s got anthropocene smeared all over its lips. Everyone wants to fuck their OLED displays, the screen is constantly flirting with me, it bulges and writhes along with it’s circuitry like an obscene Cronenburg slide show, and with a tilt of the hinge, it rips my hands straight off the bone. It’s simultaneously psychosexual and completely meaningless, but there doesn’t seem to be any Big Other alternative, can you see the demons wearing the guise of post-modernity, and where they emit a solar flare? Just tryna game the system can’t you see, if I shake it at just the right moment, at the right angle, I’ll get an additional diet coke. You don’t understand how fucking much I like diet coke. A man who finds himself among others drinking diet coke is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others drinking diet coke. I have graphic design Stockholm syndrome, what do you mean you don’t know who Gerrit Noordzij is? At this point going outside will trigger my flight or fight response, I’m afraid of being swooped by seagulls while I’m bound on a rock, I sleep in a bed with a faraday blanket, I’m absolutely glowing, washed in sunlight. “As for the anticipation of reality by images, the precession of images and media in relation to events, such that the connection between cause and effect becomes scrambled and it becomes impossible to tell which is the effect of the other” These collective postures translate into all modern media and are littered with effects. One is singular and rhizomatic in any given instance of engagement towards media and the invisible hand of the ‘designer’. And on the contrary the medium is an assemblage of arborescence and is later politicised in the factory line assembly - a by-product of ‘essential’ capital labor. The capital fiction is overwritten by the post-market mythos of a company and it’s figureheads, it’s in-house publishing team use individual members to feature in nice magazines. Effects, we are overcome by so many different effects daily, to the extent that we become desensitized to the potential the subsequent causes and effects, modern reality makes sure to compound these consequences of media to a sensory overload of hysteria, the neurotic ones take to pinterest to organise themselves. We like to order things, It gives clarity and comfort within the dysphoria and entropy of our lives, pinterest, tumblr, are.na, instagram are all negentropical solutions in an overstimulated digital environment. “Instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.”8 To understand this I need to clarify that the medium, the message, the photograph and all subsets of visual and nonvisual information are communication - it goes without saying - but this establishes the politicised and astroturfed space of Graphic Design, a designer is expected to make commercially viable work to thrive, and usually this is achieved by co-opting styles to any degree appropriate to a brief. This results is the parody, the hyperstition and hyperobject - an overly ironic and self aware ventilation apparatus that keeps the gimmicks of Graphic Design alive. The overtures of a design piece can appear stark placid and regurgitated. It’s very much easy to default to a ctrl-c, ctrl-v automation process. Reinforced no less by an autodidact push of some educational institutions - more concerned with juggling design briefs than focusing their teachings on a core design system (despite their ever love for the Bauhaus - yes huni the library is open). Of course, with the new emphasis on a technology dominated world we are expected to rely and reinforce the techno-dependent designer (work smart not hard). And we are yet to catch up to this mutation in design, where design was once a phylogeny of different features that collected to assume a physical medium, centrered on type, constrained by fibres and ink and oil - these components have congealed onto the Macbook, the ergonomics of physical/digital unbound the Designer from the difficulties of a physical medium. So why do we remain in the realm of rehashing typefaces and conventional media, why are we tied down to the revolving doors of design trends - surely now than ever we have all the components, all the tools to produce new design movements, this can’t keep up “When the circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?”8

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN BLACKWELL

You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking of tricks that work in one particular case. I think this will be the limit; the number of spams that have been readjusted. That's normal for startups. A good trick for bypassing the schlep and to some extent, yes. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that I have wondered about it for themselves, rely instead on the opinions of the elite in this country think of taste as something elusive, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question. Maybe if you do, talk to them, equalled big, honking Windows apps. Having people around you and ask yourself which you'd like to work with. The computer would be just as much. I never considered it till this summer, but this was in the spring of 1998, before Google was founded, the conventional wisdom. It depends on what works to treat as property. You can't fight market forces forever. But Apple doesn't understand that either.

I just wanted to hack. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't have to be aggressive about user acquisition when you're small, you'll probably grow, your price will go up, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, they'll be able to see things from the user's point of view anyway. The phenomenon isn't limited to books. 1 was, if I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up in and that of a successful startup is going to love, and spend less than you make. They're not very common, but the relative importance of determination and flexibility you need is good hackers: when something's broken, they need to run spreadsheets on it, or do something because that's what you need as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken could be fixed within a few months old and doesn't have a probability for it. When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan's form follows function, but I don't know any technology companies that have already launched or can launch during YC. I know who favor markets are Marc, Jawed Karim, and Joe Kraus. Part of what he meant was that in some ways we were a step ahead of Venezuela. Successful founders are in love with their companies. It's not just that if you get a lot of valuable advice about business, and they're begging not to be at the very beginning.

You're doing the same thing. The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of going to an elite college; you learn more from them than the professors. But I remember thinking his company's name was odd. Fourth, they calculated probabilities differently. But we invest in such a roundabout way that the ones you never hear of deals where a VC invests $6 million at a time. What students lack in experience they more than make up in dedication. What does it mean, exactly? IBM. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots. There was a good time to start a startup as a 19 year old. For example, knowing what to make, it's mere effort to make software incompatible.

So in practice big companies only get to develop technology in fields where large capital requirements prevent startups from competing with them. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is only done to suspected spams. In the software world, this idea is known as Worse is Better is found throughout the arts. Most founders who get contacted by corp dev already know what the basic human reaction to a piece of software. Trevor Blackwell is a great artist: it's the one time that hacking is the applied version of what theoretical computer science is the theory of computation about as much as any startup needs initially. It has become one of the few, artificial, easy tests they've faced in life so far. I'm not even sure what they want will also tend to increase it sufficiently the next time you need to simplify and clarify, and the policeman at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to live in the boring sprawl of the valley proper, or live in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a t-shirt, they're nice to you; who knows who you might be able to describe it is all the different kinds of work. The name of a variable or function is an element; a segment of literal text is an element; an element of subjection. White than from an academic philosopher. If I'm right, then it is spam.

But the idea terrified me at first. So rule number zero is: these rules exist for a reason. Miraculously it all turned out ok. When you list everything ambitious people are ambitious about, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp. Founders never really liked giving up as much equity as VCs do now. The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. It was not until Hotmail was launched a year later and say I want to spend as little time inside the minds of spammers as possible. Investors don't like trying to run through people. We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're not willing to admit. The one possible exception are things like working in fast food. But there might be some businesses that it would be better off taking a class on, say, 1970, I think, because they're already running through that in their current state they have nothing to lose. Better check.

If they make your life difficult. The desire for speed is so deeply engrained in us, with our puny computers, that it made sense to invest in startups Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to write. It could be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but diluted by a sixth. It would have been happy if just one of the inventors of the transistor. Isaac Newton Newton has a strange syntax as because it has no relation to what you build for them. 20th century cohesion disappeared because of few policy tweaks, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on cold calls and introductions. Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how inexperienced you seem or how unpromising your idea sounds at first, room to recover from mistakes is a valuable tool in painting too, though perhaps none of them agreed with everything in it. In a sense, when this happens, of wasting something precious. Unfortunately there's no antonym of hapless, which makes software free; the web has made marketing and distribution free; and more powerful programming languages mean development teams can be smaller. Most of the people.

Are there walkable neighborhoods? The informal delivery mechanism was me, showing up in jeans and t-shirts. The paintings that were popular at the low end and the high end, but not design it. Cram schools turn wealth in one generation into credentials in the next 40 years than it does now. I suspect. And the spammers would also, of course, but someone who really devoted himself to work could generate ten or even hundreds of microcancers going at once, because you will never again be so productive. Prognosis Who will win, the super-angels seem to care at all about it. And so ten years ago trying to sell the company. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 2000s. Why should anyone care about a startup making $3000 a month do not mean the company has all the elements of a good programming language. And if there are any axioms that could be taught better by itself. Really, Google was funded with angel money.

Most startups coming out of organs not designed for that purpose. The only real difference between adults and high school, I let myself believe that my job was to be driven by how well you do in college would be like drinking from a firehose. Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the East Coast VCs. Everyone's model of work is a facebook exclusively for college students. If your city isn't already a startup hub. That's a reasonable proxy for revenue growth because whenever the startup does start trying to maximize this. That cap need not simply rise monotonically. The reason the filters caught them was that both companies in January switched to commercial email senders instead of sending the mails from their own startups and those working for money. I know delivering a prewritten talk your attention is always divided between the audience and the talk—even if you succeed, you'll have the most to lose, seem to see the better idea when it arrives. Increasingly it will mean the end of the Bubble showed that generic business guys don't make such great stuff, but also like an undervalued stock in that so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead is that the percentage of the company if he'd let us have it. They use the same word for a brilliant or a horribly cheesy solution. I have to give them your full attention.

[reedthisone]

The Hollywood Politics Paradox

Here we are again. Another celebrity causing a stir by speaking out. Another person of privilege bringing politics into art. Another round of public outcry at the audacity of an artist who would say something controversial. And this time, like every time, the irony seems to escape us. Augusto Boal wrote that “all theater is necessarily political, because all the activities of man are political and theater is one of them. Those who try to separate theater from politics try to lead us into error — and this is a political attitude”. Art is politics is humanity. There is no separation, they are all part of the same whole. We can call anything of social or judicial consequence political, and our feelings around them are at the very core of what we believe and who we are. It is only reasonable then, that those whose lives have been dedicated to the expression of those interpersonal and institutional ideas would have some pretty developed politics. Artists exist in a field that by its very nature forces them to connect more deeply to the human condition. This is a major reason why art always seems to be the place for outsiders. It exists in openness and empathy and oneness and differentness and curiosity and compassion, by necessity. Those always seem to be the attitudes ascribed to the “liberal” community, mostly because it requires a profound resistance to judgement. Actors, for instance, often take on roles portraying people, attitudes and scenarios they have little to no personal experience with. They can not judge the motivation or character of the individual they embody in the way an outsider might. They instead must accept those actions and attitudes with openness and fragility in order to do their job. Those are the things that make great performances. The kind of performances Americans spend tens of billions of dollars consuming every year. The kinds of performances that occupy our small talk and social media. Empathy and entertainment cannot exist without one another. By its very nature it requires us to experience things from another perspective. But we decry those presenting it as soon as we see that enacted in actual real life. Like men who expect women to look a certain way but then bemoan what it takes to get there. They want to date a model but never want to know she wears makeup. To expect empathy from performers while decrying their empathetic natures is equally hypocritical. We use the term “hollywood” because it’s an easy scapegoat, but it is the fact that we continually direct this anger at a nebulously likeminded group that shows that it’s really just contempt for the idea of this collective of “others” that angers us. These others who we deem elitist, while we go to the theaters to be moved by their portrayal of human experience. Who we deride as out of touch while we turn on the radio to find ourselves in tears by their expression of human emotion. The same others we read about on the cover of every magazine in the grocery store checkout aisle. The same others we pay money to read gossip about and learn the secrets of. The same others we feel emotionally connected to when they break up or have children or die; whose bodies we lust after, whose faces we covet, whose riches we envy. we worship their status so we can feel vindicated by their fallibility. Or perhaps we just worship our own disdain. Ironically so many of the people I see condemning the “liberal hollywood elites” are the same people who are eager to forward memes of celebrities of various fields expressing ideas that support their own views. So really, it’s not that you don’t care what they say or don’t think they deserve to say it. It’s that you don’t want them to get away with publicizing an opinion that you don’t agree with. So before jumping on the “celebrities are here purely for my entertainment” bandwagon, ask yourself, who are you to tell someone they can express their thoughts if you agree with them or get something out of them. To say I’ll use you at my leisure, but don’t you dare speak out of turn or say something I find controversial or unacceptable. Express yourself through film, express yourself through music, express yourself through canvas or clay or concrete, but don’t you dare express yourself as a human person. We fight and claw and work and strive to express ourselves constantly and once someone finally gets to a place where they’ve got a platform, where their words and work might have impact, you tell them they must be silent? that their opinions are no longer valuable or valid? We don’t get to allow someone the right to expression only when it’s convenient for us. Lastly, it’s important to end, once and for all, the fallacy that art has no place in politics and politics no place in art. Art is the study of the human condition and politics is the enactment of it. How many times, in just the history if the United States, have the two overlapped. Aside from the fact that no one seems to mind that we’ve just elected a billionaire reality TV star to be the president, or notice how many politicians have moved to the punditry of infotainment, or count how many Bushes are celebrity reporters — there have been presidents and mayors and governors and congresspeople who have transitioned from the world of entertainment to the work of governance for no other reason than that both realms, when done right, require us to understand one another in great complexity. Giuseppe Verdi garnered fame composing sweeping operas and beautiful music that still resonates. He was also in the Italian Parliament and instrumental in the unification of Italy from a nation of disparate states to the singular country we know today. 300,000 people gathered to pay respects to his funeral procession, singing the slave chorus from Nabucco as he was carried to his burial spot, such was the influence of his art and his politics. When Nichelle Nichols was brought on to the cast of Star Trek to play Uhura, she recalled, “there were parts of the South that wouldn’t show ‘Star Trek’ because this was an African American woman in a powerful position, and she wasn’t a maid or tap dancer”. She broke ground on many levels and became an inspiration for all those who were now able to see themselves represented in a positive and exciting way, not just as a performer, but also as a scientist and explorer. Her real life efforts brought a slew of women and minorities into the space and STEM programs. This diversity is credited by NASA as instrumental in advancing the success of the whole space program. In addition, the on air interracial kiss between Ohura and Kirk (though not technically the first, arguably the most influential) helped normalize and legitimize racial equality in American culture. Nichols herself said of Star Trek, that “it not only changed the face of television, but it changed the way people thought of each other. It was a[s] big [a] contributor to uniting the races on this planet as anything.” Violetta Parra birthed the nueva canción movement in Chile, giving voice to the people, the masses who found themselves at odds with dictatorial governments, with it’s pointed political messages. It strengthened the folkloric traditions of Chile, igniting a revival of indigenous music and instruments throughout Latin America that has inspired generations. Artists of this genre had a history of “disappearing”, being imprisoned, tortured or killed by fascist, right wing governments. This led to Victor Jara, who, as a leader in the nueva canción movement, a professor, and theatrical director, was in one of the first groups targeted after Pinochet overthrew the Allende government. Jara played guitar and sang, he wrote songs of peace, of representation, of love and of strength of community. Because these were a threat to the new regime, artists inspiring people and challenging authority could not be tolerated. Jara was dragged to a large stadium with 6,000 other artists, professors, students, intellectuals and dissidents where he was publicly beaten and, in front of this stadium of people, had his face pummeled and his hands chopped off with an axe as he was told to try to sing now. Then he was shot repeatedly and his body discarded with the hundreds of other artist agitators. Pussy Riot Winter On Fire Yan Zhengxue & Ai Weiwei Do not tell me art is not political. Disagree with sentiment or significance all you like, but never relegate a person to an organ grinders monkey or parlor entertainment existing only for you pleasure. Differ in opinions, that’s what makes humanity work, but do not treat other people as if they have no value other than what you assign them or no autonomy beyond your whims. The arts do not exist just to entertain you and artists are not here to coddle you. Art has always been political and it always will be. Art is subversive and revolutionary and challenging. Art is a weapon against tyranny and conformity and complacency. It always has been and it always will be. That is why it is always so desperately needed. That is why it is always the first to be targeted. Certainly, there are varying levels of importance, sacrifice and urgency, but art, as a tool or a pastime, should make you uncomfortable. It should hurt and it should inspire, it should aggravate and it should console, it should mirror and it should move. Art is politics is humanity. It always has been and it always will be.

[listiqueblog]

The Other AI: How Aesthetic Intelligence Can Transform Your Brand

When you see or hear the term AI, I’m guessing you think it stands for artificial intelligence.

It does, of course.

But artificial intelligence isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think about AI.

For me, AI also refers to aesthetic intelligence.

I call aesthetic intelligence the other AI.

It’s a concept that I’ve taught at Harvard Business School in an interdisciplinary course called The Business of Aesthetics. It’s also the subject of my upcoming book.

But enough about me.

Let’s explore aesthetic intelligence — what it is, why it’s important for your business, how it can give you an edge over your competitors, and examples of companies with high aesthetic IQs.

  What is Aesthetic Intelligence?

Let me start with what aesthetic intelligence is not, because the word aesthetics is loaded with connotations.

I’m not talking about design, although design is important. I’m also not talking about beauty, because sometimes aesthetics can be less than beautiful, at least in the conventional definition of beauty, but still utterly compelling, exciting, and pleasurable.

Aesthetics is the pleasure that we derive from perceiving an object or experience through our senses.

It may include visual beauty, but also appeal to our other senses—like the plush texture of cashmere, the sonorous timbre of an alto’s voice, a scrumptious meal, or an aromatic fragrance.

Aesthetic intelligence isn’t necessarily the ability to create beauty, because that would refer to artistry or creativity.

Aesthetic intelligence is our ability to understand, interpret, and articulate feelings that are elicited by a particular object or experience.

Essentially, aesthetic intelligence is the development of “taste”—the ability to discern what is desirable and why and how to attain it.

When you apply aesthetic intelligence to commerce, things start to get really interesting.

The Intersection of Aesthetic Intelligence and Commerce

Applying aesthetics to a product or service and eliciting the right emotional cues so that consumers are interested in buying it takes a great deal of empathy.

You need to consider not just what arguments you can make—or what words you can use to persuade shoppers to buy your product or service—but what you can do to connect with them on a human level.

We have to remember that people, not machines, buy the vast majority of products and services. People are emotional and make decisions largely based upon how that product or service makes them feel.

In many cases, it takes more than just a digital forum to connect with them on an emotional level.

The cosmetics industry knows this very well.

Many of the best cosmetic brands grew through giving shoppers free samples because they knew that their claims of offering great products were only validated once consumers had the opportunity to experience them—their feel, their smell, their effect on the skin—firsthand.

Whether it was offering a gift with purchases in a department store or even providing testers through magazine sense strips, people responded sensorially, rather than logically, to their products.

Many people became loyal customers during this process.

If you want to differentiate yourself from your ecommerce competitors, you need to start thinking about ways to integrate more of the senses into your own digital business proposition, because the digital environment essentially only touches one and a half of the five senses: strong visuals and modest sound.

Sound doesn’t even get a full vote of confidence in ecommerce because sound quality on a lot of devices is poor compared to listening to state-of-the-art Sonos speakers, for example, so the audible experience of engaging with a brand online is still diluted.

But imagine the difference it would make if you appealed to just one more sense in the course of your customers’ shopping experience—if your competitors were armed with only sights and sounds, but you were able to provide a tactile experience as well.

The playing field would be tipped in your favor.

Applying aesthetic intelligence to your brand can truly be a game-changer, but cultivating and elevating it requires a concerted and deliberate effort.

The first step in developing aesthetic intelligence is to reconnect with your senses and to unblock some of the things that we tend to block for the purpose of survival.

Once you start receiving and experiencing those inputs again, the second step is to begin to decipher and develop a point of view—much like you do in other parts of your life about how different elements can come together.

Then you have to edit and curate these aesthetic inputs, which is equally important, or else the experience will be muddled and overwhelming.

When you add ecommerce to the equation, the concept of aesthetic intelligence can become really challenging because the goal isn’t just to provide customers with a great experience in the moment.

The goal is to build anticipation for a great experience and to leave customers with great memories of the experience. We refer to this as “the halo effect” of great aesthetics.

Want more insights like this?

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Where Ecommerce Companies Go Wrong

Interactions with your brand have to not only be exceptional and aesthetically pleasing; they also have to be consistently exceptional throughout the customers’ journey.

This is where many ecommerce companies go wrong.

Many companies are so focused on the transaction itself that they only consider how to get a shopper from the homepage to the checkout.

The experience with the brand is over as soon as the customer checks out.

But the relationship obviously shouldn’t end there.

The reality is that the reason most people remember a brand—and why they come back—is that the experience resonated emotionally.

Brands who master aesthetic intelligence connect with consumers on a deeply emotional level to the point that they wouldn’t consider shopping anywhere else for that product or service.

Leadership and Aesthetic Intelligence

I’m a big believer in the fact that aesthetic intelligence starts at the top.

Aesthetics shouldn’t be outsourced to the creative team. CEOs need to be skilled in aesthetics as well.

Fewer and fewer companies can get away with treating their products or services like commodities, just like very few CEOs would get away with saying,

“Well, I’m just going to outsource all the financial and strategic processes to the CFO.”

A CEO has to own the performance and show real competency in all critical areas. A good CEO has to have taste as well, which doesn’t mean that he or she has to be able to execute on the aesthetic decisions.

Execution may fall in the hands of a creative department or another functional or artistic talent, but being able to know what quality is—in a way that Steve Jobs did and Howard Schultz still does—is a huge differentiator for a company and it has to start with the leader.

If the CEO and other business leaders don’t have the empathy to think about how a customer is going to feel by experiencing their product, they’re not going to have much of an advantage in the market.

In fact, they’ll eventually be overtaken by a robot.

Having good aesthetics is really a human advantage, and it’s innate.

But as we go through life, partly because we compartmentalize and partly because we’re overcome with so much sensory input in our daily lives, we often become numb to it.

One of the key responsibilities of a CEO is to clearly communicate how every employee, regardless of role, can contribute to making the brand more aesthetically exciting and valuable to customers.

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Examples of Brands With High Aesthetic IQs

Let’s look at a few examples of aesthetically intelligent businesses.

1. Airbnb.

Airbnb is one of the best examples I’ve seen of a company differentiating itself online through really good aesthetic decision-making and application of aesthetic intelligence.

Airbnb didn’t invent the model of renting out homes and other spaces.

That really started 20 years earlier with Craigslist, but Craigslist’s problem was that it was a fairly low-cost option and not one that people would choose for a rich experience when they were traveling.

People went to Craigslist because it was a quick and easy way to reserve a bed for the night.

Airbnb was founded by two graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design.

Rather than coming from the technology space, they came out of a design mentality and took the industry by storm.

They cracked the code on building engaging websites for short-term lodging rentals. In addition to generally being user-friendly, Airbnb masterfully creates a sense of delight and desire for exploration. From the images they select to their font choices to the way users navigate through the system, Airbnb stimulates people’s imaginations.

2. Disney.

Disney is a learning organization. Their R&D center, which they call Imagineering, is constantly coming up with new ways to delight customers.

Disney spends a lot of money to have a couple thousand people working in a lab-like environment because they know that if they didn’t continue to create new ways to delight customers, people wouldn’t go back to Disneyland or Disney World or even watch a Disney movie.

It’s the reason the company has been able to keep the magic going for more than 70 years after Walt Disney passed away.

Disney does an excellent job of consistently delivering on the actual experience but also, just as importantly, on the anticipation and memory of it.

Half of the fun of going to Disneyland or Disney World is what happens when you’re in the park and you’re waiting to get on the next rollercoaster. But the other half is what happens weeks before you even get on the plane—when you’re thinking about going on the trip and you see how excited the kids are.

There’s a huge build-up before you even get to Orlando or Anaheim, and the memories you make aren’t just relived the day after you’ve left the park. The memories remain for years—indeed, often for a lifetime.

Companies need to follow Disney’s lead and be much more mindful about keeping memories alive.

They need to think about ways to get people to not only be excited about the experience, but so excited that they want to come back.

3. Gucci.

Millennials are spending more on experiences than they are on just individual commodity products, and this shift has been especially evident in the luxury industry.

The fastest growing segments in the luxury market are not products, like handbags and shoes, but experiences like fine dining and travel.

Gucci, the famous luxury brand in the fashion world, is bucking this trend by actually selling an experience.

The reason consumers are currently compelled to shop at Gucci isn’t because their bags are capable of carrying a different number of items than a Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga bag.

It’s the emotional connection customers have with Gucci and the experience of shopping with the brand, which is just as essential as the bag they’re buying.

Sell an Experience, Not a Commodity

These three brands are just a few of the many examples of organizations leveraging extraordinary aesthetics to consistently delight customers and keep them coming back.

Through their focus on aesthetics, innovation, and connecting with people on an emotional level, they’ve transformed their business in ways that make them indispensable to their customers.

They know that people rarely buy products and services for logical reasons. There’s always an emotional impulse behind it, and good marketing and branding taps into that.

Regardless of the business you’re in, always bring as much of yourself into the equation as possible.

That’s your differentiator and what makes your business intriguing to shoppers.

It’s your voice, your belief system, your commitment, and your general reason for being, so never let anyone tell you it has to be reserved for the “personal” part of your life. Business should be personal as well.

And remember to focus on selling an experience—not just a product—that is informed by rich aesthetics. If you do it right, customers will reward you with their business and their loyalty.

Want more insights like this?

We’re on a mission to provide businesses like yours marketing and sales tips, tricks and industry leading knowledge to build the next house-hold name brand. Don’t miss a post. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The Other AI: How Aesthetic Intelligence Can Transform Your Brand published first on https://goshopmalaysia.tumblr.com

[a-breton]

How to Take Your Travel Content on a Better Trip

Editor’s note: In case you missed this post last year, we’re bringing it back and adding some fresh content too.

I’ve heard there are people who believe that “getting there is half the fun.” But to me, everything that happens between my decision to leave my house and my lying on a beach chair with a fruity drink in my hand is just stress-inducing static and delayed gratification.

To reduce the friction I’m likely to experience when I embark on a trip, I rely on the advice and assistance that travel experts provide online. And, judging from the sheer number of content creators who operate in this space, I’m not the only one.

With so many touchpoints to engage with, so many ways to facilitate and enhance the customer’s journey, and so many pain points your business can help them overcome, content marketing in the travel and hospitality field offers tremendous opportunities to build trust, create memorable moments, and add unique value for intrepid world explorers, road-weary business travelers, and everyone in between.

Travel and tourism content is no endless summer

Of course, as a travel industry marketer, you know your job involves a lot more than just posting some inspirational picturesque snapshots and telling tales of fun in the sun. You face significant challenges when it comes to successful storytelling in this space, not to mention plenty of competition.

Travel industry #contentmarketing requires more than picturesque snapshots and tales of fun in sun. @joderama Click To Tweet

Time and place matter – a lot

According to Andrew Davis, bestselling author of Town Inc. and host of the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Lab at Content Marketing World 2018, travel is one of the only industries where the place you do business matters just as much as the business you do.

Unlike the experience in industries where the digital universe has flattened the world and opened new opportunities, growth in travel and tourism depends on your business’s ability to get people out of their homes (and away from their computers) and into the physical places in which you operate.

When it comes to content, Andrew advises, focus less on what you offer as a business and more on compelling people to want to visit your location. “You’ve got to increase demand for the particular destination you serve, first and foremost,” he says.

Andrew also points out how timing and seasonality play a much bigger role in travel and tourism marketing compared to other industries. For example, while consumer product goods and other retail marketers have a consistent, primary boom time (i.e., the end-of-year holidays), travel destinations often need to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts around smaller and more location-dependent events, which can occur at any time throughout the year (think of Indio, California, which has its boom time every April during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, or a mountain resort that gets a surge in visitors during ski season).

Furthermore, every touchpoint in travel experiences is highly subject to disruption from unpredictable factors, like fluctuations in fuel prices, current travel trends, and even natural disasters. These influences can vastly impact pricing and profitability from year to year – and exponentially complicate your content marketing strategy.

Everyone is a potential competitor

From huge hotel chains to boutique B&Bs, and from tour providers to beach equipment rental providers, it seems everyone has travel information to share online. And it’s not always clear whose is the most accurate, trustworthy, or useful. Tourism and hospitality marketers need to go the extra mile when it comes to creating content that distinguishes the experiences they offer and earns bookings, not just “lookings.”

“Travel businesses don’t do enough to leverage the things that make their destinations truly unique,” says Andrew.

#Travel businesses don’t do enough to leverage what makes their destinations unique, says @DrewDavisHere. Click To Tweet

The use of beautiful photos of mountains, beaches, and attractions like roller coasters has become ubiquitous – on both travel-related sites and consumers’ websites and social channels. Little distinguishes one destination from another. Travel industry marketers are good at telling people that we’re different, but not as good at demonstrating it, he says.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

You must strike a balance between inclusivity and exclusivity

While your content can (and should) communicate your destination’s universal appeal, Andrew says you can gain a greater competitive advantage by focusing on what makes your destination uniquely valuable to one audience niche – i.e., a group of people whose passions may not be equally accommodated anywhere else.

For example, in a recent video conversation, Andrew points out that Roanoke, Virginia, built its marketing and tourism strategy around making sure mountain biking aficionados believe it offers the best experience on the East Coast – right down to creating T-shirts that feature a clever spin on the state’s popular tourism slogan, Virginia Is For Lovers.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Use Documentary Filmmaking Techniques to Craft Memorable Content

Tech raises the stakes for personalization

Deloitte’s 2018 Travel and Hospitality Industry Outlook brings up another reason it’s critical for travel brands to specialize: the latest technological advances, which enable travel marketers to create “personalized moments that matter.”

The travel industry is “on the verge of an evolutionary leap, where the relationship between customer and brand is becoming truly real-time and relevant,” according to the Deloitte report. It predicts that increased adoption of technologies like AI and machine learning, voice-response, and even cryptocurrency (and the user data they help generate) could help travel brands deliver joyful and uniquely personalized travel experiences – such as a push notification about a jazz show downtown sent to a hotel guest with a passion for live music or a special cocktail handed to a frequent business flyer as she boards her flight.

#Travel industry at “evolutionary leap” where relationship b/n customer & brand is in real time. @Deloitte Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Why Brands Need to Take the Plunge Into Virtual Reality Today

How to Set Your Content Free for a Mobile, Voice, Ready-for-Anything Future

The social ripple effect can knock you off course

In a landscape where an online review from a dissatisfied consumer or a video of a poorly handled customer service incident can speak louder than all the carefully crafted content your brand creates, you have an urgent need to monitor your online reputations carefully and respond quickly – and not just on the social channels you commonly use to communicate with your customers. For example, a single one-star review on a site like TripAdvisor can negate the favorable opinions of dozens of enthusiastic brand fans on your Facebook page.

Content opportunities in travel and tourism

Despite the significant challenges, your travel and tourism business has plenty of advantages when it comes to creating content. For one thing, your content has the power to put a world of travel experiences at the consumer’s fingertips in real and virtual settings.

The right content can make a traveler’s planning process simpler and all the steps in their physical journey easier to manage. And, beyond the practical considerations, there’s a high degree of emotional cachet up for grabs: Not only can immersive storytelling simulate the excitement of exploring a new destination, it can offer your customers an opportunity to experience their wildest travel fantasies from their desks – like the folks at Zenith Aircraft and StoryUp have done with their 360-degree virtual flight demos.

Here are a few more tips and examples on how your travel and tourism business can put content’s multipurpose power into play:

Embrace inspiration and interaction

People want travel content to inform, inspire, and entertain them throughout the dream-and-discover phase, just as they want their planning and booking requests to be accommodated. The attention earned by sharing inspiring ideas, useful information, and fun content experiences can help your business stand out when those engaged consumers are ready to book their travel.

Example: Travel Oregon – The Game

From its eight-bit graphics to its gameplay that recalls the gaming experience of the pre-internet era, this nostalgia effort captures the pioneering spirit of early Oregon settlers while promoting new tourism opportunities in the state – same gorgeous landscapes but far less dysentery. Travel Oregon – The Game proves that you don’t need fancy AR overlays, VR-enhanced graphics, or livestreaming video to create immersive storytelling.

Make adventure more manageable

The ability to virtually explore destinations from living rooms and laptops can be a powerful driver of consumer intent and action. Still, travelers need to navigate many practical decisions to make any journey (fantasy or otherwise) a success. Create content to facilitate a smoother planning process, find unique activities, or navigate their journeys with greater ease and you may earn the kind of customer appreciation and loyalty your brand can bank on.

Example: Louis Vuitton City Guide

Fashion designer Louis Vuitton is probably not the first business that springs to mind when travelers plan their next vacations. But, given the caliber of the content in the brand’s City Guide app, maybe it should be – especially for those accustomed to traveling in high style.

To create the content, LV brought in regional experts known for their strong design aesthetic and gave them a platform for expressing their love of the city. Through its app, the brand offers ideas to help users elevate their travel experience in over 25 popular destinations, the ability to send digital postcards to jealous friends at home, and expert tips to help them find their footing no matter where in the world their LV luggage might accompany them.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Build a Branded App (and Never Look Back)

Build experiences around the reasons customers travel

Andrew points out that people don’t book hotel rooms to motivate themselves to travel – they book them because they will be traveling. Focus your content experiences around the specific inspiration for a visit – like a business trip, a burgeoning interest in ecotourism, or a passion for world exploration – and you’ll take the first, critical step toward earning the loyalty of a niche audience that is well positioned to help your business grow. 

Example: Southwest Airlines – Hudson’s Big Day

One of Southwest Airlines’s most popular content pieces is based on a customer’s interaction with the airline from a vantage point that is about as grounded as you can get: the tarmac. Airplane-loving boy Hudson received the surprise of his life when a pilot stopped his plane to wave to him through the cockpit window. Hudson’s mom posted about the exchange on Facebook, and Southwest’s social listening team ran with it. It contacted the pilot, set up a tour of the plane for the little boy and his family, and recorded the touching experience to share with the internal team and fellow aviation enthusiasts, and, according to Brooks Thomas, social business advisor for Southwest, to train new employees about the power of going the extra mile for their customers.

Involve your destination’s community

One of the core tenets Andrew encourages travel and hospitality marketers to embrace is using your content to build support for your business among your fellow community members. This requires some give and take, so it’s important to highlight, promote, and engage with local visionaries, as well as other influencers who can help increase the appeal of your destination and your business. “Ask yourself, ‘Who are the people who are painting a picture of what the future will be like in your destination; and what are you doing to spread the word, share their stories, and get valuable feedback,’” he says.

Use your #content to build support for your business among your fellow community members, says @DrewDavisHere. Click To Tweet

Example: Travelocity – Gnational Gnomads

Travelocity set out to reverse the widespread perception that online travel agencies are purely transactional by creating a community of travel experts known as The Gnomads. These hand-selected national influencers champion travel by speaking to a variety of interests and travel styles, and representing diverse demographics.

Travelocity engages these influencers by giving them a direct role in storytelling, a pillar of its content marketing program. Unlike some influencer programs that require a high level of investment, Travelocity’s program pays for itself and drives revenue through its self-funded model. Gnational Gnomads are invited to visit travel destinations and document their experiences in real time via blog posts, social posts, and short-form videos. The program earned recognition as a 2017 Content Marketing Awards finalist for Best Content Marketing Program in Travel/Tourism.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:  2 Simple-to-Implement Checklists to Use in Your Influencer Marketing Planning

Grab a souvenir before you depart

In this video, you can see more of Andrew’s lively discussion on how to use content to increase the success of your travel and tourism business.

To receive the full benefit of Andrew’s expertise, you won’t want to miss his Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Lab at Content Marketing World 2018. This one’s going to fill up fast, so register now.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2tl2qyS

[hotspreadpage]

How to Take Your Travel Content on a Better Trip

Editor’s note: In case you missed this post last year, we’re bringing it back and adding some fresh content too.

I’ve heard there are people who believe that “getting there is half the fun.” But to me, everything that happens between my decision to leave my house and my lying on a beach chair with a fruity drink in my hand is just stress-inducing static and delayed gratification.

To reduce the friction I’m likely to experience when I embark on a trip, I rely on the advice and assistance that travel experts provide online. And, judging from the sheer number of content creators who operate in this space, I’m not the only one.

With so many touchpoints to engage with, so many ways to facilitate and enhance the customer’s journey, and so many pain points your business can help them overcome, content marketing in the travel and hospitality field offers tremendous opportunities to build trust, create memorable moments, and add unique value for intrepid world explorers, road-weary business travelers, and everyone in between.

Travel and tourism content is no endless summer

Of course, as a travel industry marketer, you know your job involves a lot more than just posting some inspirational picturesque snapshots and telling tales of fun in the sun. You face significant challenges when it comes to successful storytelling in this space, not to mention plenty of competition.

Travel industry #contentmarketing requires more than picturesque snapshots and tales of fun in sun. @joderama Click To Tweet

Time and place matter – a lot

According to Andrew Davis, bestselling author of Town Inc. and host of the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Lab at Content Marketing World 2018, travel is one of the only industries where the place you do business matters just as much as the business you do.

Unlike the experience in industries where the digital universe has flattened the world and opened new opportunities, growth in travel and tourism depends on your business’s ability to get people out of their homes (and away from their computers) and into the physical places in which you operate.

When it comes to content, Andrew advises, focus less on what you offer as a business and more on compelling people to want to visit your location. “You’ve got to increase demand for the particular destination you serve, first and foremost,” he says.

Andrew also points out how timing and seasonality play a much bigger role in travel and tourism marketing compared to other industries. For example, while consumer product goods and other retail marketers have a consistent, primary boom time (i.e., the end-of-year holidays), travel destinations often need to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts around smaller and more location-dependent events, which can occur at any time throughout the year (think of Indio, California, which has its boom time every April during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, or a mountain resort that gets a surge in visitors during ski season).

Furthermore, every touchpoint in travel experiences is highly subject to disruption from unpredictable factors, like fluctuations in fuel prices, current travel trends, and even natural disasters. These influences can vastly impact pricing and profitability from year to year – and exponentially complicate your content marketing strategy.

Everyone is a potential competitor

From huge hotel chains to boutique B&Bs, and from tour providers to beach equipment rental providers, it seems everyone has travel information to share online. And it’s not always clear whose is the most accurate, trustworthy, or useful. Tourism and hospitality marketers need to go the extra mile when it comes to creating content that distinguishes the experiences they offer and earns bookings, not just “lookings.”

“Travel businesses don’t do enough to leverage the things that make their destinations truly unique,” says Andrew.

#Travel businesses don’t do enough to leverage what makes their destinations unique, says @DrewDavisHere. Click To Tweet

The use of beautiful photos of mountains, beaches, and attractions like roller coasters has become ubiquitous – on both travel-related sites and consumers’ websites and social channels. Little distinguishes one destination from another. Travel industry marketers are good at telling people that we’re different, but not as good at demonstrating it, he says.

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You must strike a balance between inclusivity and exclusivity

While your content can (and should) communicate your destination’s universal appeal, Andrew says you can gain a greater competitive advantage by focusing on what makes your destination uniquely valuable to one audience niche – i.e., a group of people whose passions may not be equally accommodated anywhere else.

For example, in a recent video conversation, Andrew points out that Roanoke, Virginia, built its marketing and tourism strategy around making sure mountain biking aficionados believe it offers the best experience on the East Coast – right down to creating T-shirts that feature a clever spin on the state’s popular tourism slogan, Virginia Is For Lovers.

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Tech raises the stakes for personalization

Deloitte’s 2018 Travel and Hospitality Industry Outlook brings up another reason it’s critical for travel brands to specialize: the latest technological advances, which enable travel marketers to create “personalized moments that matter.”

The travel industry is “on the verge of an evolutionary leap, where the relationship between customer and brand is becoming truly real-time and relevant,” according to the Deloitte report. It predicts that increased adoption of technologies like AI and machine learning, voice-response, and even cryptocurrency (and the user data they help generate) could help travel brands deliver joyful and uniquely personalized travel experiences – such as a push notification about a jazz show downtown sent to a hotel guest with a passion for live music or a special cocktail handed to a frequent business flyer as she boards her flight.

#Travel industry at “evolutionary leap” where relationship b/n customer & brand is in real time. @Deloitte Click To Tweet

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The social ripple effect can knock you off course

In a landscape where an online review from a dissatisfied consumer or a video of a poorly handled customer service incident can speak louder than all the carefully crafted content your brand creates, you have an urgent need to monitor your online reputations carefully and respond quickly – and not just on the social channels you commonly use to communicate with your customers. For example, a single one-star review on a site like TripAdvisor can negate the favorable opinions of dozens of enthusiastic brand fans on your Facebook page.

Content opportunities in travel and tourism

Despite the significant challenges, your travel and tourism business has plenty of advantages when it comes to creating content. For one thing, your content has the power to put a world of travel experiences at the consumer’s fingertips in real and virtual settings.

The right content can make a traveler’s planning process simpler and all the steps in their physical journey easier to manage. And, beyond the practical considerations, there’s a high degree of emotional cachet up for grabs: Not only can immersive storytelling simulate the excitement of exploring a new destination, it can offer your customers an opportunity to experience their wildest travel fantasies from their desks – like the folks at Zenith Aircraft and StoryUp have done with their 360-degree virtual flight demos.

Here are a few more tips and examples on how your travel and tourism business can put content’s multipurpose power into play:

Embrace inspiration and interaction

People want travel content to inform, inspire, and entertain them throughout the dream-and-discover phase, just as they want their planning and booking requests to be accommodated. The attention earned by sharing inspiring ideas, useful information, and fun content experiences can help your business stand out when those engaged consumers are ready to book their travel.

Example: Travel Oregon – The Game

From its eight-bit graphics to its gameplay that recalls the gaming experience of the pre-internet era, this nostalgia effort captures the pioneering spirit of early Oregon settlers while promoting new tourism opportunities in the state – same gorgeous landscapes but far less dysentery. Travel Oregon – The Game proves that you don’t need fancy AR overlays, VR-enhanced graphics, or livestreaming video to create immersive storytelling.

Make adventure more manageable

The ability to virtually explore destinations from living rooms and laptops can be a powerful driver of consumer intent and action. Still, travelers need to navigate many practical decisions to make any journey (fantasy or otherwise) a success. Create content to facilitate a smoother planning process, find unique activities, or navigate their journeys with greater ease and you may earn the kind of customer appreciation and loyalty your brand can bank on.

Example: Louis Vuitton City Guide

Fashion designer Louis Vuitton is probably not the first business that springs to mind when travelers plan their next vacations. But, given the caliber of the content in the brand’s City Guide app, maybe it should be – especially for those accustomed to traveling in high style.

To create the content, LV brought in regional experts known for their strong design aesthetic and gave them a platform for expressing their love of the city. Through its app, the brand offers ideas to help users elevate their travel experience in over 25 popular destinations, the ability to send digital postcards to jealous friends at home, and expert tips to help them find their footing no matter where in the world their LV luggage might accompany them.

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Build experiences around the reasons customers travel

Andrew points out that people don’t book hotel rooms to motivate themselves to travel – they book them because they will be traveling. Focus your content experiences around the specific inspiration for a visit – like a business trip, a burgeoning interest in ecotourism, or a passion for world exploration – and you’ll take the first, critical step toward earning the loyalty of a niche audience that is well positioned to help your business grow. 

Example: Southwest Airlines – Hudson’s Big Day

One of Southwest Airlines’s most popular content pieces is based on a customer’s interaction with the airline from a vantage point that is about as grounded as you can get: the tarmac. Airplane-loving boy Hudson received the surprise of his life when a pilot stopped his plane to wave to him through the cockpit window. Hudson’s mom posted about the exchange on Facebook, and Southwest’s social listening team ran with it. It contacted the pilot, set up a tour of the plane for the little boy and his family, and recorded the touching experience to share with the internal team and fellow aviation enthusiasts, and, according to Brooks Thomas, social business advisor for Southwest, to train new employees about the power of going the extra mile for their customers.

Involve your destination’s community

One of the core tenets Andrew encourages travel and hospitality marketers to embrace is using your content to build support for your business among your fellow community members. This requires some give and take, so it’s important to highlight, promote, and engage with local visionaries, as well as other influencers who can help increase the appeal of your destination and your business. “Ask yourself, ‘Who are the people who are painting a picture of what the future will be like in your destination; and what are you doing to spread the word, share their stories, and get valuable feedback,’” he says.

Use your #content to build support for your business among your fellow community members, says @DrewDavisHere. Click To Tweet

Example: Travelocity – Gnational Gnomads

Travelocity set out to reverse the widespread perception that online travel agencies are purely transactional by creating a community of travel experts known as The Gnomads. These hand-selected national influencers champion travel by speaking to a variety of interests and travel styles, and representing diverse demographics.

Travelocity engages these influencers by giving them a direct role in storytelling, a pillar of its content marketing program. Unlike some influencer programs that require a high level of investment, Travelocity’s program pays for itself and drives revenue through its self-funded model. Gnational Gnomads are invited to visit travel destinations and document their experiences in real time via blog posts, social posts, and short-form videos. The program earned recognition as a 2017 Content Marketing Awards finalist for Best Content Marketing Program in Travel/Tourism.

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Grab a souvenir before you depart

In this video, you can see more of Andrew’s lively discussion on how to use content to increase the success of your travel and tourism business.

To receive the full benefit of Andrew’s expertise, you won’t want to miss his Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Lab at Content Marketing World 2018. This one’s going to fill up fast, so register now.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Take Your Travel Content on a Better Trip appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

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