Generate Powerful Publicity: A Sistine Chapel Mindset

The Thriving Artist

Todd Scalise is the founder and CEO of Higherglyphics, a creative placemaking firm that manages large-scale public art projects from start to finish: funding, art, design, construction, and merchandising. An artist himself, he knows the importance of generating publicity and brand awareness. In this 55-minute episode, he discusses the enormous economic contribution that artists bring to their communities, framing art as a service that's worth funding and publicizing.

How Art Benefits the Community

• "In 2012, arts and culture production contributed over $698 billion to the US economy, which is about 4.3% of the US gross domestic product."
• "It's a statistical fact that public art (creative placemaking) attracts potential investors in business to communities."
• "Property values did go up slightly, but also occupancy rates went up dramatically around these environments."
• "I learned to look at the return on investment aspect of the Sistine Chapel ceiling---I don't know what Michelangelo got paid, but he certainly did not get paid enough."

How to Approach Project-based Art

• "If you want to start doing public work, you have to start seeing it as a service first, which is consulting."
• "What switched for me was I began considering my audience at some point, not just what I wanted to make."
• "Other considerations that go into these projects---that probably don't go into creating studio art---are a division of labor, systems of logic, some level of incorporation, insurances, and working to budget."
• "With a client, it's a collaborative process, and they have to be brought into that process. Otherwise they don't feel that they're part of it."

Publicity for Artists

• "Whenever you have commerce, you have the need for publicity."
• "Publicity is really putting your message out there in a very unique way, so that people pay attention."
• "To me, publicity is a very creative act, and I think I remember Andy Warhol saying, 'business is art.' Well, you know, 'publicity is art' as well."
• "Repetition is boring, and people forget that eventually. That's the problem with traditional marketing, with the billboard concept.
• "Focus on your audience, not yourself."
• "The tipping point in my business was being able to educate people about why what I'm doing is different."