Over on the Harvard Business Review blog “Managing Myself,” Rasika Welankiwar is discussing various methods she uses to keep her creative genius productively engaged.  When Welankiwar turned to the merits of the self-imposed panic states advocated by Shekhar Kapur in his (in)famous TEDIndia talk, I was reminded of the alarm trigger from Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate.  Either waiting until the last minute, or purposely making your earlier efforts unavailable as Kapur does, can work wonders for that final “get it done” rush of creativity.  I’ve do it myself all the time.

But there’s a dark side to all this thrashing.  As Seth Godin outlined in Linchpin, thrashing is the “apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops.”  The catch: thrash too late and you’ll inevitability delay delivering your value.

In my seminars for artisans, I talk about the “great wall of self-doubt” that stands between the core business processes of Sales and Value Delivery.  The closer to your deadline you thrash, the more likely your alert muse will turn all panicky, giving rise to self-doubt that’s very resistant to acts of completion.  Fail to breach this wall and you’ll earn the reputation as the flaky artist who talks a good game but can’t deliver the goods when it’s time.

An alert muse is a wonderful thing.  Just don’t let her get panicky or you’ll never reach the summit.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

Four of the main Mad Men characters—Don, Betty, Roger, and Joan—are set to be released as versions of Barbie & Ken dolls.  (Ok, they’re not really action figures in the usual sense, but fans of the show know how much “action” these four get so I couldn’t resist.)

In a New York Times interview Kevin Beggs, president of Mad Men‘s production studio Lionsgate, said that several “nontraditional” marketing methods were being used to increase the show’s audience.  Besides the Mattel dolls, other licensing agreements have been struck with clothiers Brooks Brothers and Banana Republic.

Your art may not quite have the audience of Mad Men devotees—if it does, we so need to talk—and dolls might not be the best fit for your product licensing.  But this story is another reminder of how important it is to explore and experiment with as many different marketing methods as you can.

In addition to marketing methods that simply attract people’s attention, the show’s producers are creating and delivering more of the show’s value.  The more ways an audience can connect with the value they cherish in your art—be it a sculpture, play, feature film, or TV show—the more opportunities you have to profit from it.

Story & photo via the New York Times.

According to projections by arstechnica.com, 2010 is the first year that more people in the US will buy their music digitally rather than physically.  Globally, this same shift is expected in 2016.  Make no mistake, we’re still buying music; what’s changing is how it’s delivered.  People still want to have real-time voice conversations with geographically-diverse people, but now we use our cell phones instead of our home phones.  People still want to be entertained by movies and shows, but we’re more frequently using our computers to watch them instead of using movie theatres, video stores, and cable boxes.  Don’t confuse content generation with content delivery.

THE BOTTOM LINE – Your audience will pay for content it values, no matter how it’s delivered