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Originally Posted by Blindkolor |  | | | | | | | | | 
just a sample of what im talking about. | |  | |  | |
not to slag you in any way, the design is cool and all, but if I saw your stuff up on
Fairey's site I would just assume it was totally his. I would never guess that another artist designed it, made it, owned it. The concept, the colors. the style. To me, none of that is at all original since SF made it famous over 15 years ago.
Concept:
So clearly, your "wrestler's bust" idea as your central piece is a direct lift from SF's same concept using andre the giant. Youre slight twist on it is that it is a lucha libre instead of a wwf guy. Nothing new there at all. Honestly, if im going to drop coin on a tee why shouldnt I just go to SF's site and get the same concept but done by a famous artist? He did it before you, and yours looks like a concept knock off to me.
So your concept has already been done by someone more famous than you selling the same product you are. (tees, posters, etc)
style:
Again, I see incredible similarity to what SF was doing earlier in his career to the logo you posted. Sure now SF has moved on and his style now is more refine and complex using patterns and such. (aside: sadly SF is basically now doing celebrity/personality portaits since the masses will buy them up quicker. funny too-- he's exactly mirroing what warhol did once he became famous with his celebrity portaits.)
So your style has already been done by someone more famous than you selling the same product you are.
marketing technique:
how did SF get his start? Graf, stickers. In fact his initial goal wasn't to sell shirts or merchandise his art at all, just get his stuff to his skater buds.
So your marketing tech has already been done by someone more famous than you selling the same product you are.
CONCLUSION:
Your art that youve posted isnt really original, frankly, it's very derivative. If people can go to a famous persons site, I.e. Shepard Fairey's, and buy essetially the same thing, a tee, for essentially the same price, but from someone famous with the original art -- where do you think they are going to go?
Try this: Ask all the 16 year olds in your hood that you can get your hands on (NOT YOUR FRIENDS OR CURRENT CUSTOMERS!) : "Would you rather have a tee designed by SF and autographed by him, OR one by Blindkolor?
Their answer will speak volumes to you...
...but to relate this all back to the topic you started with your OP:
How can your friends, homies, potential customers get totally behind you when your competing almost directly with SF's concept, style, marketing technique to sell your tees? Your concept is frightningly similar. Your style is almost indistingusable from his early works. And you are trying to use his exact same method to sell your stuff -- street cred, graf, stickers.
So from an outsider's perspective, there's very, very little originality going on with the art -- and that's where you need to apply your guerilla marketing strategy.
to put it another way: your arts cool and all, but if i got a couple of Jacksons to drop on a tee or two, Im heading over to SF's site to get the original innovation-- not to buy the knock offs.
d
PS -- Again, Im not trying to bust on you in anyway, Im sure you have far more artistic talent in one fingernail than I have in my entire family tree. Just trying to point out that you really have to have something unique going on to move to the top of the heap in marketing.
Just to show you Im a stand up guy-- I'll give you your first real guerilla marketing tip. Ok, so kill me, technically it's a guerilla 'direct sales' tip. You can use it to make some easy coin while keeping the "cool street cred" image for your biz without becoming a hopeless sellout like me--- making tees to youth soccer teams.
here's the tip:
Try to get get some art worked up in your style on a tee -- a portrait of britney spears somehow mocking her. Get that on a black tshirt. Now head over to all the online gossip websites selling tshirts in their sidebar columns. There are hundreds of these sites!
Try to wrangle a deal with a several of them to use of your art on their tees for $1 per tee sold. They have MILLIONS and millions of hits per day. If you can work that kind of deal I guarantee you'll be pulling six figures within one year.
Once you get that first foot in the door and that concept working, do the exact same thing for shirts with those creepy american idols kids on them every season. New kids new shirts. then do paris hilton, perez hilton, simon cowell, etc, etc, etc --- youre well on your way to your first $ mil. (dont forget to cut me a check for 10% for the idea, mmm,k?
)
The only thing stopping you is your sales skillz to those website owners. I know the concept would sell like hotcakes to all the poeple who like to see d-list celebs mocked -- basically 50% of those visiting online gossip sites.
FYI, "britney spears" is always in the top 5 highest 'googled' phrases-- that why the sites get such an outrageously huge volume of visitors and sales.
Google Zeitgeist 2007
act fast. others on this forum are already seeing lightbulbs pop, and huge dollar signs in front of the computer screen. And unlike me, they can mimic SF's art just as well as you can.
Re: guerilla marketing does it work? 
