Essay of Marie Käige

Marketing Arts in a Changing World

Throughtout history there has been endless discussions and different viewpoints revealed about what is the content of art and what kind of function it has or should have in our society. Different periods in development of human society and plurarity of oppinions makes it quite impossible to sentence a certain definition of art. Therefore people are usually impelled to accept the fuzzy formulation of art  defined as individual and subjective form of expression.

According to existing reasearch findings, the earliest forms of ancient art were visual images like cave arts, crafts and tools design: human figures, animals, tools, weapons and symbols which date back to at least 38 000BC in Europe, Africa and Austalia (Kerrigan, Fraser, Özbilgin, 2004).  People used this kind of signs to  communicate and document their identity and social life. This kind of story telling and record keeping can be seen as fundamental tools of marketing (Kerrigan, Fraser, Özbilgin, 2004)

We can recognise early features of marketing arts and culture from historical perspective as indiginous people´s aspiration to emphasize their cultural identity, social development and personal beliefs. In that case art can be a marketing tool to emphasize certain purpose to wider audience. For example Buddism influenced arts especially in stone funerary sculpture, silk, bamboo-paper and canvas paintings can be seen as marketing tool to communicate religious identity (Marceau, 1998).

Development of marketing as a science can be dated back to industrialisation period when people´s well-being and living standards raised steeply. People moved to cities and many started working in fabrics which numbers had now encreased rapidly. During the ninteenth century, supply clearly created the demand. At this time, the avarage consumer did not have circulating income and small manufactures could barely satisfy the basic needs of the population (Colbert, 2000).

Industralization is definitely a revolutsionary change in human society, because it changed the world in every aspect of people´s lives. It was a huge transformation both form artist´s and  society´s perspective. Until 18th century most of the artists had been working mainly as a freelance artists, looking for different opportunities to accomplish their desires and reflecting surroundings. Their actions were guided by inspiration and success mostly depended on their own wisdom and hard work.

During industralization, art was aslo turned into industry just like all other areas in life. There was now seperate  industry for music,  theater industry, and entire industries that came into being as a result of the technological innovations of industrialization, like the film industry and the video game industry (Nielsen, 2011)

This changes the hole content of creative fields as artist´s could now work as hired hand which can easily confine creative work and limit the quality of result. Clusters of different manufactures started  to use creative  potential to produce and sell art as a commodity. Manufactors realized that consumers with encreased spending capacity wanted goods that would satisy not only their needs but also their tastes and desires (Colbert, 2000). Competing companies caused the development of marketing as highly attentioned part of making art.

Huge stride in productivity growth had led to greatly reduced costs of production and markets have grown largely over national boundries creating global internatsional  comsumpsion. Heavy competition is causing prices to fall to a marginal cost of production. At the same time,  monthly salary in developed countries have influenced people´s habits and living standards in a way that many goods and services which were earlier only reachable for upper classes are now intrinsic to all ordinary people. For example air traveling, foreign holidays, eating out, sound systems, home cinemas, central heating and eventually personal computers which enables access to theretofore unreacable amenities (Sadler, 2010).

We are in early stages of a new era where people realise the vast opportunities they have to enjoy even greater abundance. Its growth in being driven by technological innovations which have changed the world rapidly.  More and more people regard the

virtual world as a place where they can establish and maintain safer, less demanding relationships on their own time. Social media, flexibility, and relative anonymity will continue to be three key components of our social and private life (Brown 2011).

Social communication spreads quickly, as virtual restaurants, movie theaters, concerts, and even wedding chapels are established. In addition to using virtual worlds as test markets for real-life products and services, as is done now, businesses will offer a much wider variety of virtual products and services.  Businesses could use game applications like Mall World or Café World on Facebook as platforms to advertise various specials that occur in virtual space, such as vouchers of special offers in bars and coffeehouses to discounts for two to “live” streaming concert events. (Brown 2011).

As this occurs to be ineluctable change of twenty first century and people find it rather impellent development of human communication in a whole new level. On the one hand it can seem like a baneful trend for  art centres and landscape artist, because it is harder to flatter people to attend but on the other hand it enables every artist to advertise and promote your activities in a hole different way.

That means that the importance of smart marketing has even encreased. People are more concious about their choices and in order to catch the audience you have to turn people in to the art itself: increase both enjoyment and familiarity to your spectators. And today´s marketers have even more tools for successful and very cheap promotion.  Personal webpages or social media enables directors and actors can talk directly to the customer via Web video and e-communities of our own audience members can help to spread the emotion in forums and social media groups . Today’s new ingredients include focus on learning about customers: communicating in newways with new media; and turning people on to the art (Snead 2008).

The diffusion of modes of life, globalization and a concept of being a world citizen has intensified the impact of the arts. Our world has become more indepentent and personal as ever. We have to face the fact that art and culture are the most powerful tools to hold the social, cultural, tecnological, political and economical innovations balanced in order to indentify yourself as part of certain culture feature and society member in a changing world.

Works Cited

Brown, Arnold. Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society

The Futurist. Washington: Mar/Apr 2011

Colbert, Francois. Marketing culture and the arts. 2000. Montreal.

Kerrigan,F. Fraser,P.Özbilgin,M. Arts Marketing. 2004.GBR

Sadler, Philip. Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World: Comsumption and the Poverty Penalty.Dec 2010. GBR

Snead, David. „Subscribing to the New Century“. Ametican Theatr. Nov 2008, p68-73