The Democratizing of Art and The Importance of Building Brand Perception with Everette Taylor, CMO of Artsy

There’s a growing concern bubbling beneath the surface of marketers feet. Third party cookies are going by the wayside. This has been a really effective tool that marketers have utilized for years to target specific populations they deem are more likely to be interested in and purchase the products they’re selling. Moving forward, marketing in the digital space is going to look a bit different. Some say it’ll be survival of the fittest, others argue your data strategy should already be so robust you shouldn’t be reliant on off-the-shelf data. 

Everette Taylor is the CMO of Artsy, an ecommerce platform that allows users to buy art from anywhere in the world with the click of a button. But while most marketers are doing a deep dive into their cookie strategy, Taylor’s focus remains elsewhere.

Main Takeaways

• Focus on What Works, Not What is Not Working: Marketers have a tendency to focus too much on the products and services they offer that are not working. While it can be a good idea to address areas of weakness in your marketing strategy, it’s also important to invest your energy into the aspects that are are doing well.
• Your Content Reflects Your Strategy: Your content has to be a direct representation of your target audience. This means you have to have a grasp on who your customers are, what they are buying, and what is important to them and make sure that your content reflects those pillars. When you create blog posts and videos around things that do not reflect your target audience, it diminishes your brand perception, which should always be your number one priority.
• Act Like a CEO, Talk like A Marketer: When you ascend to the role of CMO, you can no longer think like a marketer. While it’s important to have a grasp on things such as brand perception, and awareness, it's more integral for the business if the CMO has an understanding of how problems its departments impact the overall business.

Key Quotes

“Sometimes marketers get distracted by the things that aren't working instead of where things are really working. What we realized is that our biggest growth channel was through affiliate marketing. Believe it or not, there's a huge economy of courses, of people teaching people how to grow a business or do this or do that. We realized that those were some of the best affiliates because people are taking their courses, trying to build their businesses and our product was great for people trying to build their brands and build their businesses.”

“One of the things that I'm seeing in digital marketing is a lack of innovation, because people will become,so number focused. ‘We're going to do this thing. This thing works, we're going to scale, you're doing this way.’ People lose sight of how important brand perception, brand marketing, brand equity is in the grand scheme of things as well. It's interesting to see that shift, but it's, it's more than just the numbers for sure.” 

“There's a difference between being a great marketer and a great CMO. As a great marketer, you can grow the company. You can do things in the first year, but to be a great CMO, and be a great leader of a marketing organization, it takes longer.” 

“Before Artsy existed, no one was buying art online. People had to physically go to a gallery, and go to a show, or have the connection to a potential art advisor or a gallery. Now we've provided the ability that any, and everybody can collect art from around the world. Our average artwork gets shipped 3000 miles from gallery to [destination]. For us, the ability to really democratize the space, create a more open space for people to buy art, to make art businesses more fluid in the way that they do business and to reach new people....That just opens up the game for everybody.”

“At one point, Artsy used to write about everything, and create content about everything. Then we learned very heavily into the market and made sure we served experienced collectors. Now we're leaning into that middle point of understanding there's something about brand-building. Building brand perception and reaching an audience that may not be as savvy as the experienced calligrapher. So building content for that too, but our focus is going to be on the experience collector, and that data and that wealth of data that we have to share and the types of things that they want to see, but also understanding that content is also important for brand perception and brand building as well.” 

“People don't know what they're capable of until they do it. One of the things that I try to do with my marketing team is always inspire them to go outside of their comfort zone and realize what it is that they're truly able to do and what they're truly able to accomplish.” 

“We have the audience. Right now our top of funnel has been as strong as ever, even in a cookieless world. I'm not going to give away secrets, but we are crushing it. On top of that, the biggest opportunity for us is that we have amassed the world's art collectors. How do we re-engage them? How do we inspire them? How do we make them want to use Artsy on a daily basis? That's the biggest opportunity. I ain't worried about no cookies.” 

“People are getting saturated with digital advertising. The things that catch my attention are real world things, like out of home, direct mail, experiential, and cool partnerships. Things that you got to continue to hit the pavement with. Your digital marketing and paid acquisition and things that you have to do. But at the end of the day, it's really like 360. You've got to think about how you're going to touch people everywhere.”

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