Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Day Three of El Paso/Phoenix Trip
Day three is winding down. My brother Keith has finished practicing on his newly rebuilt Gibson Epiphone guitar. It sounds absolutely beautiful. He has many artistic talents. Music is just one of them. His main art form is painting.
Let me digress a little bit about the trip itself. The little red jewel of motor car is performing like a champ. The mileage is excellent, between 29 and 32 mpg. Not bad considering a cruising speed of about 75 mph. Thank goodness for cruise control. I decided to fill up about every 200 miles. I was able to cover a lot of ground that way. The trip took me past Topeka and Wichita in Kansas, Oklahoma City and then through Amarillo, TX. It took just about 12 hours to drive from home to my overnight stop in Santa Rosa, NM. It only took about 4 hours to get from Santa Rosa to El Paso. Is it ever hot here in the Southwest. In the low hundreds every day so far.
One of the reasons for my stop over in El Paso was to work out with him the plans to begin marketing prints of his works. As you might imagine there are a lot of details to be worked out. Our first effort is to develop a marketing plan. At the same time we have to research the best site for establishing web site for his work. We haven’t settled on a name for the site yet. We know it has to be unique and catchy and not one that will generate millions of hits on google. Suggestions anyone?
Btw, because of limitations of time I have not been able to read and leave comments to the blogs I usually visit. I will try to make up for that either in Phoenix or when I return home. It is interesting how much I miss the opportunity to learn how you all are doing.
I am also planning to capture some of the stories of my mother’s past. At almost 93, she is reliving some of the many events in her life. She has been known to make the comment that she should write a book about her life, but no one would believe it.. I think I will try to capture as much of it as I can. I may even have to start a new blog devoted to Jane’s story. Just a thought.
TTFN
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3 comments:
"Suggestions anyone?"
I'll put my brain to work and see if I can come up with something.
Great idea about stories of your mother's past, Jack, wish my parents were still alive so I could do that. But, my cousin is working on our family tree and I'm very excited about that!
It's good seeing your new post to know your trip is going well... take care. :-)
Dad- give Grandma and Keith my love, as well as Adrianne and the rest of the family.
Love you and be safe!
jack and keith,
first, i will start by stating the obvious. road trips rule. 'nuff said there. good on you!
regarding marketing plans:
almost every "begining" or first stage marketing plan fails for a few simple reasons:
1) too much marketing
2) poorly "thunk" marketing
3) methods methods methods
ALL of these are related. So allow me to ramble and answer them accordingly.
Marketing's main flaw nowadays is the huge (almost too many) method of how we can market. Sounds like a conflicting statement, i know, but bear with me.
You can advertise in hundreds of different forms of media, printed and digital, rent a godzilla balloon, use a call campaign, print flyers under car windshields and countless more... but depending on where Keith resides, it's word of mouth that still NEVER ceases to amaze me that generates traffic virtually or thru a store presence's front door.
Keith should be asking either fellow artists or even galleries what works for them. Community events? Bulletin boards? (again, physical or virtual) and even free postings in local newspapers, etc have virtual "store" sections where one can post new arrivals of sites, etc.
You can pay the googles and yahoo engines countless hundreds to thousands of dollars each month for word-based search "hits" that are broken down to anywhere from 10 cents to $5 bucks a hit if someone types in WATERCOLOR,.. etc. BUT unless you're getting a return on that investment (such as a lot of $1000+ sales on art, etc)then it may be a wasted investment.
technology makes business endeavors THINK they can easiy act big, and that's a deceiving reality. EVERYONE has to start small... just THINK big.
i could go on, but prolly shouldn't. EMAIL me or get my phone # off my past emails (jack) if you want to call, conference call someday and talk about this stuff. I'm always happy to assist good brudders and other artists.
Also, the NAME...
Has to be direct. If you're a watercolor artist for ex. and your name is "painted dog" you will receive more info on dog collars and questions about flea dip than you'd care to imagine. Keep it simple.
I'm a designer. Hence, trendesigns. (my site is about 6 months out 'cuz i keep changing sh*t around...) search engine widgets can pick DESIGN out of my name and key me in to more refined searches, for example.
Company or site names that are deep and meaningful to YOU are likely worthless to others. (i cannot tell you how many times people have asked me WTH cardboardpeople means, regrettably)
So, keep it simple.
ARTWORKS! (it's art, and it works.. get it! i'm genius!)
BRUSHES WITH YOU (deep, hints connection, and oooh... deep thoughts)
MY SH*T (one of my fav's... prolly not a good idea)
ART (not a name, but a statement dagnabbit!)
okay, i'm done. Sorry for the BOOK.
Safe Travels Jack.
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