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How Marketing Justifies Its Own Shitty Existence
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This year marks our seven-year anniversary. First, I am a writer and I love communications and the way stories work on us. So we started Writers’ Dojo in 2007. Over the years to the degree possible, we’ve been patrons to serious writers in Portland. Artists have always taken patrons. Like Steve Almond shared in this interview here at the DOJO, most artists I know now have a University as their patron. The University system provides the resources artists need to survive. There are also plenty of politics involved so we would all prefer to be independent artists. For myself, I have always taken businesses as my patron. For years before we started Dojo Agency, I worked as a freelance creative to boutique marketing firms and as a travel journalist. This provided the independence that I valued more than money in those years.
To me, having a business as our patron means elevating the marketing creative process to the level of artwork. Art is a process of story telling that deeply and meaningfully connects with target audiences. To do it is not a marketing trick. We must deeply, meaningfully connect. In doing so, we can justify marketing’s own shitty existence by not participating in the din of useless noise. We work with organizations who want to stand out in the marketplace, who believe that they should not deny people the opportunity to take part in the message, so that we, too, as artists, can be inspired, charged with passion and professionalism.
Image Notes: This illustration is part of a set that we’ve used for the Writers’ Dojo brand since the launch in 2007. To be a literary artist is to share your heart on the page.