Ask an Art Buyer: Mailing Lists

Wednesday is Ask an Art Buyer day. Send your questions to heather@heathermorton.ca with the subject line Ask an Art Buyer. I’ll answer as many as I can every Wednesday.

Though I am much too busy these days, I used to do photographer consultations (I do have some people I can recommend if you’re interested in a consult) and occasionally a photographer would ask me for a list of agency contacts. This was not something I was ever very good at but more to the point, this question doesn’t really make sense.

First of all, there are some good services out there like Adbase which provides customizable address lists and lots of other neat stuff too. Increasingly agencies are loath to give out creative lists- the barrage of promos can be overwhelming to even the keenest of creative secretaries.

Now, tailoring your off-the-rack mailing list (or making your own) is a great idea and here’s a place to start:

Make a list of:
1. The agencies who’s work you really like
2. The AD’s who’s work you really like
3. The accounts for which your work is best suited, and the agencies that handle those accounts
4. All the AB’s in town

And then base your mailing list around that.

Another little tidbit from my consultant days which could help with the mailing list question too: I always ask photographers to tell me what campaigns they think they should have/could have shot that they’ve seen recently. I push them to be really honest about this. If a photographer couldn’t come up with anything, it made my job a lot harder because it meant that the shooter didn’t have a strong vision and/or a realistic path for themselves.

While we’re speaking of Adbase and photographer consultations, check out their fantastic line-up of Art Buyers & sundry interview sessions. There’s some great info here- in fact, I’m listening to two podcasts right now (explains the jilty sentences).

That’s it for tonight, I’ve got to rest up, turns out HeatherMortonArt buyer is the only registered Canadian media presence at NYPH. And yet there’s a nice Can Con presence. Congrats to Finn O’Hara, Christopher Wahl and Ryan Carter on their NYPH09 award nominations (and apologies for all the Canucks on that list that I missed- I’m listening to two podcasts for heaven’s sake).

So drop me a line and let me know what kind of Canadian/NYPH angle you’d like HMAb to explore.