why i'll never think of marketing in the same way again

3/14/2015

 ... of taking time to gaze at the intricate worlds inside tiny flower heads

"Authentic marketing".  It is a phrase I’ve used before.  I’ve used it when I’ve been trying to convey the importance of finding the joy in what you do as performance artists and colouring your communications with rainbows of that joy.  I’ve also encouraged artists, when trying to project their work, to dwell for a while on real examples of the things that have worked, because these are the clues that describe your authenticity, who and what you are.  Often those clues lie in the unplanned and unexpected successes that every project reveals.

I’ve just experienced one of those – big time!  And I’ve got to share …

The Squilometre concept is finding its place now on the park bench of performance arts endeavour.  It’s wriggled its bum into a little space between psychogeography and ambulatory performance and found a natural partner in Placed Based Education (who knew!).  All of these realisations are indeed joyful.  It’s fun to find out where, or indeed if, you fit.  But that’s not the particular joy I discovered.

No, I’ve found out that when you define a place, in the way that Squilometres does; that is through land and sky, trees and water … all the things that we commonly own.  When you create with those ingredients, then the people who inhabit and share it, they become an integral part of the mix.  

So instead of “targeting an audience” you get to meet with them. 
Instead of “developing an audience” you share with them and cherish them. 
Instead of “putting bums on seats” you get to talk to faces!

And the depth of this glorious revelation really became clear to me when I decided to deliver invitations to the Sweetbrier Lane performance through all of the 879 letter-boxes myself.  This was partly because I didn’t like to ask anyone else to do it but mostly it was because I’d made the decision to create the first Squilometre project in my very own neighbourhood.  It was so convenient, it made sense.  But, yes, it was a little bit scary.  These were, are, my neighbours.  If they really don’t like what I’m doing, they literally know where I live!

I slowly realised though that I was completely loving it!  I was braced, to tell you the truth, for brusque no thanks yous and angry scowls.  At first, I skipped quickly down paths, after delivering, to avoid confrontation.  But it wasn’t like that at all.  Turns out that people in the big, scary, outside world are really nice.  Pleasant, friendly, ordinary people who, if caught at their door, politely take an invitation with a smile.

It was more than that though.  I was thoroughly enjoying the physicality of it.  I was out of doors doing something useful.  Normally, for me, useful is defined by a chair and a keyboard.  This was different.  I could feel the muscles of my legs responding to the journey and the cold of the gathering evening shrinking my ears and nose.  As I watched a startling range of greens, purples and every shade of orange in the western sky I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw the sun set.

And the scents!  Do you remember, when you used to play out, that wet pavement had a smell?  I found myself, as I made my deliveries, transported suddenly back, by the sharp and herby scent of a shrub, to endless hours of just being out of doors.  Of taking time to gaze at the intricate worlds inside tiny flower heads, to examine exactly how the paving stones fitted together and work out how many stones you could actually fit in that gap at the bottom of the wall.  Taken right back to a time in my life when being out of doors was just what you did and you didn’t have to rush on to anything else until your mum called you in for tea. 

Glorious, glorious revelation indeed.  So, this was marketing was it?!  What’s more, I found as the week progressed, it got easier and my legs complained a little less.  The ridge of landscape I’d chosen to fashion my first Squilometre performance to was paying me back, actually rewarding me, for taking the time to walk it. 

And now, when I stroll down my street, I know a few more faces.  Where I used to pass without a smile, I now lift my head and nod.  Where I would have smiled, I stop and talk.  My Squilometre is rewarding me in all sort of unexpected ways and I can’t imagine anything more wondrously authentic than that.

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