Most artists in this business would agree that their goal is to someday be a “brand”. So have you spent any time picturing what that would look like? Visualization is a powerful tool for helping to achieve your goals – so lean back and think about it…if you were a brand, you would….

Define the essence of your brand. Successful brands are perceived by their customers as the best or even the “only”. But this is a lot more than just product awareness, it is an almost automatic recognition of what they are, or in your case what you do. Can you define that for your brand? No? Then most certainly your customers can’t either.

Know your category cold. How much data do you think Coke and Pepsi have on soft drink consumption? How much do the Radisson people know about business travelers? How much do you know about art licensing? About your customers?

Protect your territory. Do you think the people at Lee are Tweeting their followers at Levis about a great new distribution channel they found? Of course not. You may have noticed that the big names in this business almost never reveal client names or share specific opportunities. If you want to be a professional you need to act like one.

Nurture your followers. Brand followers believe that “their” brand exists for the benefit of the customer, and successful brands work hard at never giving them any reason to doubt that. Brand loyalty, and how to keep it, is primary in everything they do. If your client wants it tomorrow, send it tonight. If they ask for an alternative sketch, send them two. Happily.

Be consistent, and consistently excellent. A tall order for sure, but a basic building block of a successful brand. Whether you walk into a Starbucks in Seattle, Minneapolis or Miami, you know the experience will be the same – and it will be almost perfect. The same goes for a McDonalds, or an Apple store, or a Nordstrom…this is what makes them who they are.

Innovate. Constantly. Everyone expects the best from the best. Brands have a laser-like focus on making their product better and keeping it the best on the market. Followers look to their brands for the next big thing, and if you can’t provide it they will soon look elsewhere.

Believe in your product. The people at Tom’s of Maine know they have the best personal products on the market, at Method they know they have the best soap, at Ben and Jerry’s they know they make the best ice cream. If you know you are putting out the best art available for that product then your clients will too.

If not, well, go back to Starbucks and learn how they do it….

Years ago, farther back than I want to admit, I was an young and enthusiastic property investor just starting to work my way into the real estate market. Back then agents were full time professionals, the essentially secret MLS was printed out weekly on reams of computer paper, and commissions were pretty much fixed and non-negotiable. That was how it worked – tick tock the game is locked. But about that time things started to change: relaxed social norms meant women had been finding their way into the workforce, and in real estate that first manifested as an influx of part time agents, soon that became normal and very quickly the status quo had changed forever. Desktop computers made day to day operations easier but then along came the internet, and now everyone in that business is scrambling to predict an uncertain future.

Used to be that if you wanted to be a writer you had to commit yourself to a solitary existence marked by countless hours perched in front of a typewriter producing reams of paper, and years spent on investigation and research. Of course to get past the editors you had to be accomplished as well; it took real dedication and not many could make the cut. Enter the word processor. Suddenly manuscripts that previously had to be written, approved, edited and revised – numerous times – before they ever went to the print house could now be handed over on a floppy.  The barriers were going down, and with the arrival of the internet research could be done with the push of a button, and soon publishing could too.

 There are entire books written about the ongoing web-driven “mass amateurization” of skilled professions and the destruction of value therein, but this isn’t that discussion (and before you get your hackles up, I did not say women are the cause of it in RE, just a catalyst), so I will leave that alone …for now…

Perhaps you can see where this is going. Even though we are a new industry when compared to real estate sales or writing, art licensing had its own entry barriers which are now fading into history. This has altered the nature of the business, and the days of sitting down and showing individual designs in a book or on a screen are in large part going away. Licensees have unprecedented instant access to art and artists, so now many of them are looking for something more. A book of designs used to be the minimum entry, then it became a book of designs presented with associated product pages (commonly, but inaccurately, called “collections”), and now the bar has been raised to full blown design concepts that will connect with the retail customer. You gotta have a story to tell. The change has been downright startling over the last couple of years, and these recent shows have really brought it home – art licensing is alive and well but this is the new tune and we will just have to learn to dance it.