Creative Products are different than consumer products. As an artist, I find it very challenging to advertise for my services. This is a challenge that most people in nonprofit organizations who are dedicated to produce creative products.
Demand is uncertain. Unlike consumer products and other services, it is difficult to calculate the demand for an art product. This makes it very risky for the artists and the management personnel to decide on their production. For example, we cannot run a test to see if people will like a show before producing it fully and investing in it financially and artistically.
In the previous blog post, I talked about the advantage of the research for some organizations; most art related organizations do not have a chance to get any feedback until after the show has premiered, or after their works have been displayed in the case of visual artists. As a result, there is no financial guarantee for the artists. Some artists’ works might not get published because of lack of money.
The other challenging part is the value placed on the creative products. Creative works are produced because of the inner need of the artist, and not because of a consumer need, so it is very difficult to advertise for it. However, the more concerning issue is that the value for creating a piece of art might be much more than the price that the customer is willing to pay. With some artists, they are ahead of trends or tastes in popular culture. That is one of the reasons that artists are forced to change their products to be appealing for a larger number of people to stay employed. For example, symphonies play a lot of pop concerts to attract audience, instead of the new repertoire that is not as popular. This takes the main component of artists away from them, which is the creativity.
-Sinella
