Cheyenne Butcher: thinking outside the postcard

The idea of straying away from sending basic emails and postcards came into my life while attending Angela Faris Belt's Fine Art/Marketing class almost a year ago at the Art Institute of Colorado. She forced us to actually be creative with our marketing, who would of thought. As photographers, graphic designers, cinematographers, etc., we put so much effort and thought into the final product, we sometimes loose sight that our product is only as good as we market it. If you plan to get that incredible job that everybody else and their grandmother wants, you need to stand out.
While in class, we looked over examples of marketing pieces that would make your contacts give you a second look, become curious, or even find you too funny to not look spend a second on your website. That's the goal in the end, isn't it? You can send out emails to 100 people and odds are that maybe 7 will actually click your link and check out your work. not really good odds.
My point is that you have to do more and think more. You may have breath taking work, but if you don't do something creative to get your name out there, who cares. I have been really interested in marketing lately and researching what other people have done to execute a strong, creative and successful marketing plan.

And honestly, even if their not successful, they're still trying. But again, be careful, you don't want to put something horrible out there with your name out there. No matter how big this world is, the art world talks and news travels fast.

Clint Davis
Photographer, ex-art director.
http://clintdavis.net/

Here’s an excerpt from Davis’ blog –

Hello? Hi? Can you hear me?!? HELLO!!!!…. (crickets… frogs… distant coyote howl)

Sometimes it may feel that no matter how hard you try, getting a client to look at your work can feel like whispering in a circle of vuvuzelas. Introducing my trojan horse; a brick-sized-self-promoting white box.

Fortunately my previous job as an Art Director for national magazines put me in the position to receive self-promotion mailers from aspiring photographers. Most of the promo pieces were 4×6″ postcards with a picture on one side, and printed addresses on the other side. Stale, non-personalized, and probably frayed at the edges, the postcards rarely made it from the mail room to my desk. But a box?!? A freakin’ box??? NOW you have my attention. Maybe it’s just me, but when I get a box in the mail with a hand-written address, a slow fuzzy feeling comes over me and my eyes open 43% more than usual. YOU good box are coming back to my desk for a thorough dissection.

Above all I wanted to make a self-promotion mailer that wouldn’t get tossed in the trash right away. Considering the caliber of ad agencies, magazine photography editors, athletic teams, and select others that will receive this mailer, that is a tall order to accomplish.

Danny Cohan
Photographer
http://www.iwanttobeyourassistant.com/

I Want To Be Your Assistant from Danny Cohen on Vimeo.

Timothy Bailey
Phographer
http://www.timothybaileyphotography.com/

In his own words,
For the last 6 months I’ve been working on creating a promo that would turn peoples heads… AND ITS FINALY DONE!! It all started by sitting at coffee with my sister Hillary Bailey and trying to come up with a concept to introduce myself and get my work in front of some people that might like to work with me. Haha so we came up with a book safe concept cause I shoot humorous and epic narratives… So we thought a book would be a good way to tell a story!!

So I started doing research on how to get all the items for the promo and started designing the logo’s and layouts and figuring out all the different pieces needed to make this happen. So one of the the main things I needed was drawings of some of my images but since I can’t draw I asked a good friend Dylan Reeker who happens to be an amazing illustrator to make some drawings of my images for me. After a lil back and forth we came up with the look of the drawing and I couldn’t be happier with what he came up with!!

Once I finally got all the items needed I called a good friend of mine Jeik Catlin Ficker Williams of TANLINE PRINTING (tanlineprinting@yahoo.com) (who happens to be an amazing screen-printer and came up with amazing solutions for the problems that come with having a big imagination!!) So I explained the project and he was in… Luckily for the price of homie-hook-up haha so I made several trips to his house were we screen printed the cozies, books, sunglasses, stickers, and boxes!!! I think we did something like 2500 prints all together!! It was pretty crazy and a tedious task…

After finishing all the printing I started packaging each book which included… sunglasses, a cozy, two ice coffee packages, a call to action free t-shirt postcards, 7 postcards with my images on them, 4 tattoos, and a business card. Everything I put in the book is was meant to tell people a lil bit about myself… For example I only drink ice coffee, I have Tattoos, I drink beer, and I like crazy sunglasses!! So I started the daunting task to package all these packages and I couldn’t have done it with out the amazing help of Michelle Casey after three long days of packaging building boxes and labeling each package we finally made it to Fedex at 3am on the third day and sent THE CRAZY BOOK PROMO out!!

Now I guess I wait cross my fingers and hope that people are interested in working on some sweeeettt projects in the future!!

TIMOTHY BAILEY