Business and Art! How and Why?

Coming to the end of this series of Blogs, where I share my views on Business and Art, as a Marketing student I shared my views on how Fine Arts, Objects, Music, and Films are marketed. I also shared my views on how is a business itself an Art.

I would like to conclude the series of blogs by understanding and sharing how marketeers use various art forms to reach out to customers in creative and strategic ways. To name a few, advertisements, graphic designs, posters, banners, websites, landing pages, literature content, radio streaming, and product placement in any film: They all revolve around different ways to capture consumer attention. We notice how having our emotional connection via different forms of art is as crucial as creating customer value and rationale. 

Depending on the target group that a brand or a business is trying to focus on, marketeers use different targeting strategies to capture the minds of the consumers. They might use Above the line, through the line and/or below the line marketing techniques.

 In the Above-the-line strategies, the brand or the businesses uses mass communication media platforms like radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines. Here they focus on targeting consumers as a whole, where their focus stays on increasing their market share and reaching a huge market population. They usually use above the line techniques where the products are consumer goods, regularly used simple goods or services. It is difficult to measure the success of these campaigns and the effect on sales observed in a long time.

 In Through-the-line technique, the brands are the business use web marketing, social media, and different types of fairs and events. Brands and businesses use this when they try to engage with the consumers at different layers of reaching out to them. Through-the-line techniques focus on omnichannel experience for the consumer where they are fed consistent messages to position the brand through multiple platforms.

 When we talk about Below-the-line marketing techniques, brands and businesses focus on targeting their consumers on individual levels. They are specially targeted depending on their target group which is very specific to what the brand is selling. Below-the-line marketing gives the business the chance to customize their message according to the audience. That effect on sales is usually immediately measurable because the final output is easy to track and close. Examples of BTL techniques are Sales Promotions, direct mail, public relations, sponsorships, personal selling, and telemarketing.

 The question that arises now is what the brands specifically do, in terms of using Art to capture the minds of the consumers through various marketing strategies. In fact the retail channel, be it Malls or Standalone shops, all are designed in structured aesthetic way to keep the consumers involved longer. Depending on the target consumer, businesses develop different ways by which they can incorporate art and creativity into the advertisements, product packaging, product labeling, to capture the interest of the consumers. Starting from TV commercials to billboards, to designing attractive emails and branding and merchandising of products, a lot goes into the aesthetics of what the consumer minds appeal to.

 With the growing traction in digital marketing via mobile marketing, app marketing, and search engine optimization, we can see how small tweaks to the aesthetics of an app or a landing page can significantly help a business have a better turnover and conversion rate from their businesses.

Hence we understand that at every stage of marketing, starting from awareness to final purchase conversion, aesthetics play a very important role in capturing the minds of the consumers and pulling them towards buying their specific products.

 Happy Selling! Or, should I rather say Happy Designing?