Creative Connectors - No. 1
Tom Sachs "The Handyman of High Art"
Creative Connectors is a series of examples showing how amazing creators are connecting with their true fans.
It’s also a follow-up tool from the free resource The Connection Blueprint by Stop The Starving Artist.
Each example in this series is made up of the creator (or artist), the vehicle (or art), and the 3 connection components - the belief, opponent, and story.
Use these case studies to see how you could do this with your own work, social media, and marketing.
Let us know in the comments if you have a creator in mind for us to use as a case study!
The Creator: Tom Sachs
Tom Sachs is an American contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City. He’s best known for his work inspired by icons of Modernism in both art and design. Using modest studio materials, Sachs' work produces parallel universes oftentimes incorporating semi-functional sculptures that are sometimes deployed by the artist and his studio assistants for interactive projects. For example, His fully functional McDonald’s and the Chanel Guillotine & Chainsaw are all built out of everyday materials showing remnants of the human hand.
The Vehicle: NikeCraft General Purpose Shoe
Tom Sachs was asked by Nike to design, research, and document the performance of a shoe. Sachs took it further to include his needs and the needs of his creative “athletes” or fans in order to create a minimalist shoe for the everyday person.
The 3 Components That Make It Connect:
In the Connection Blueprint, we outline 3 important components that allow your fans to establish a quicker and more compelling connection with you: Your Belief, Opponent, and Story.
See if you can spot them in his ads/posts and YouTube video:
Belief:
The Boring Ad-
Sneakers should not be the most exciting thing about you. They are tools. They do their job so you can do yours.
Their shoe is a“Do more, own less, show up, prove it, whole life, be-you sneaker.”
It’s not what you do, but how you do it.
Creativity is the Enemy Ad:
Resist the new
Practice incremental refinement
YT Video:
Versatility breeds durability.
Failure is an opportunity for improvement.
Opponent:
Shoe companies & Consumerism -
Companies that make overly complex, but limited shoes made for and tested by specific athletes to be consumed by the everyday person.
Our nature to collect and consume the new
Story:
The video invites fans to submit a request to participate in the testing of the shoes and report back. He wants to embrace criticism and suggestions to make the shoes the best they can be.
“Help us find the weak points” Call to action
“Wear these shoes to death.” call to action
His story in interwoven in this shoe: He has a special relationship with tools as a creator. He is simple in that when he likes a tool, he uses and fixes it until it’s unusable and only then will he purchase another, but of the same kind. The shoe becomes another one of his tools.
What’s not stated in these contributions:
The tag on the tongue expresses how the shoe will tell “THEIR” story.
What’s understood by his fans is that he reuses everyday objects to form his sculptures so Sachs takes this same understanding into the shoe by allowing the owner to send them back to get fixed by his team and then reused, minimizing their ecological footprint.)
To know more about Tom Sachs and his greater WHY, check out more of his videos or read through this interview in Esquire by freelance writer, Gerald Flores, where Sachs gives a more in depth explanation for why he made this shoe.
What else did you notice? Got another creative you’d like us to do a case study on?
Our mission at Stop the Starving artist is to give influence back to the original influencers (you- the artist) & re-connect the world through heartfelt creativity. No tactics or shortcuts, just authentic relationships built from creative individuality. If you are looking for support in building a community around your work, you can see more of what we do by clicking here.