How Artists Can Successfully Work with Their PR Firms

The first step is to realize that marketing is a necessity, not an option.

The second step is to understand how important launching a PR campaign for your art and a career as an artist can be.

If you’ve made it past those two steps. Congratulations. You’re ahead of the game.

Although PR and marketing are integral to establishing yourself as an artist and developing your brand, marketing is generally not a skill that artists are taught. In fact they’re usually encouraged to ignore it. Some savvy artist who loathed competition probably was the one to push that theory.

For many, the very thought of marketing one’s work is anathema, yet, throughout history, the most successful artists have realized how vital it is to a successful career.

So, let’s say, you’ve successfully overcome the initial hurtles, you understand the importance of marketing and PR and you’ve actually taken action, and have hired a PR firm or PR consultant to work with.

Now you figure you must be done, right? The universe can’t possibly expect more from you. You can now forget about your marketing, work on your art and wait for the media to start beating down your door.

Well, you were doing fine until we hit that last paragraph.

A successful PR campaign involves teamwork. Your PR representatives know the media, they understand how to pitch the media and can give you invaluable advice on how to best structure a campaign. They can also implement the campaign once all of the pieces are in place, but they can’t do all your work for you. They’ll never know your various stories, angles and pitches unless you tell them. They won’t instinctively know your vision and they won’t have stories, angles, shows, exhibitions, to point the media to, unless you work with them to help develop venues, exhibitions, stories, angles, …you get the idea.

Creating your art and then sitting at home and waiting is not a PR strategy although there are many who try to take that approach.

We once worked with an artist who was taking an extended stay in a foreign country. He wanted us to land media for him while he was there. But, apart from the fact that he was going to be visiting, there was no story. He had not brought art with him, he was not exhibiting, nor was he appearing somewhere we could direct the media to. He was simply there. That is not a story.

PR and media relations can expose your art to new markets, galleries, and collectors, take you to the next level and establish your brand as an artist, but (as with so much in life) for it to work, you not only need patience, preparation and planning, you need to do your part.

Don’t simply wait, do your part. If you do your work and your PR representatives do theirs, then you’re working as a team with common goals that you can focus on and achieve.