Quote from: Vonkara on October 22, 2010, 22:27

What I know about marketing is.

Lying, embellishment, distraction and mistrust

Then I'd say you don't know much.

Years ago I worked at Sun Microsystems on the marketing team for programming tools.  A competitor was making a big deal about the quality of their compiler optimizations (which produce faster performance for your programs), and my marketing director wanted us to do something similar.  So I went to the engineering director in charge of our compilers' code generators to get the story.  She refused to cooperate.  In her eyes, marketing served no useful purpose; if your products were good, your customers would naturally find out about them, and if they weren't, all marketing could do was lie.

Both views were wrong.  A story's only as good as the people who tell it, and the ways they get it to you.  And no product is universally good or bad.  It's our job to make sure the customer knows about the strengths and can put the weaknesses in context.  Often people get caught up in features that don't matter, or that just don't matter to them.  Our job was to make sure they cared about the right things.

Marketing often acts as a translator between the people who create the product or service and the people who want to use it.  Those two groups rarely speak the same language, which is why they need us.  I won't say that marketing can rescue a crap product, but the lack of marketing can sink a good one.  Happens all the time.

Instead of whining about your 10th of a cent going towards the stocky award, maybe you should think about how much of the tax money is wasted by your government. Jeez...

If only you was in charge of the H2O Vac advertising, my life would be 2x better, since their commercial are 50% of what Canadians see everyday.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUd7qTF7rAA[/youtube]

Hate to tell you this, but it's unlikely any buyers will even look at those lightboxes. Well, maybe if those buyers are also contributors. But then they will only buy if they have the need for your illustrations. I think the "exposure" such contests generate is highly over-rated and may even be fabricated.

Yeah, seems everything is unsustainable except the parties.

Again, I don't know if people have done their math, but I find it naive if contributors think the shared wealth of $20,000 among more than 50,000 contributors amounts to much.

Quote from: caspixel on October 22, 2010, 23:27

Hate to tell you this, but it's unlikely any buyers will even look at those lightboxes. Well, maybe if those buyers are also contributors. But then they will only buy if they have the need for your illustrations. I think the "exposure" such contests generate is highly over-rated and may even be fabricated.

Not so sure about unlikely.

Before I was a buyer/contributor I was just a buyer and I often look through themed lightboxes to add to my private ones. But really the bottom line is self-promotion. If I get buyers (even if only a handful) to look at my illustrations and then my portfolio it could mean a sale, and I make so few sales that each one is still exciting to me.

You may want to be more specific about the "studies" you seem to be referring to. Besides, I'm not sure why this has turned into a "substitute" discussion. I have learned in management that recognition is important for employees, more important than salaries. People want to feel they are valued as employees. They want to enjoy their job. So your studies stand against my studies ;-)

Again, I don't know if people have done their math, but I find it naive if contributors think the shared wealth of $20,000 among more than 50,000 contributors amounts to much.