EG: I think about marketing quite a bit. I like to send emails and introduce myself to potential clients and other people who are doing cool work. You have to build your network in order for that network to pay off for you. I don’t have an established workflow for it, but if I find out about a new agency doing cool things from a blog or Instagram post, I try to find out who the art directors are and send them postcards. Maybe I’ll email them and try to set up a meeting. It depends on how much free time I have and how brave I’m feeling that day.
And that hits an important point. You have to be brave. You have to learn to put yourself out there and not get a response from someone. In general, you’ll reach out to 100 people and only 20 of them will respond, and of those you’ll only ever meet five of them in person and maybe one of those people hires you down the line two years from now. So you just spent several hours trying to reach 100 people and you failed 99 times. But that one person. . .
JS: Marketing takes up a lot of space in my world. My approach is intuitive, if I have a cohesive batch of photos that I’m excited about then I know it’s time to get them in front of people. Much like Emiliano, I spend a lot of time scrolling the popular mobile app, Instagram, and when I see a magazine or agency that shared some interesting work, I’ll do the deep dive to figure out who was a part of the project. Then I’ll figure out an obtrusive way to get my work in front of them. Since we’re still in a pandemic, I’m really only using email and social media to reach people. The important thing is to make sure that you’re sharing strong work and consistently reaching out to people.