Ryan MacMillan

Recently we’ve been discussing the various persuasive merits of broadcast versus interaction. Last week I came a cross a lovely comparison of the two in one family.

Charles Saatchi (the one who does art) has launched Your Gallery, a sub section of his gallery site. It’s a logical and interesting brand extention that combines Saatchi’s art profile with his populist approach to making art available to audiences.

Your Gallery allows artists and galleries to upload pictures and videos onto the site. Nice. Saatchi’s taken his established and high profile brand and used it to create a forum for unknown students and lesser known artists and galleries to reach a global audience.

The hundreds of galleries listed include one of my favorite hometown galleries, the Dogget Street Gallery in Brisbane.

While Doggett Street has a great site of its own filled with lovely work, I don’t know that it’s reputation streaches far beyond Australia. Placing the gallery’s profile and samples of artists work on Saatchi’s Your Gallery takes advantage of his marketing clout and the resulting audience. It’s already gaining traction in search; a Google for ‘doggett street gallery’ brings up the gallery’s own site first but the next two are for their work on the Saatchi site.

Your Gallery is a great example of relevant user generated content to create a something of real value and interest. There is a chance however that this might be the victim of its own success. One of the advantages of going to a gallery is to take advantage of a curator or dealer’s editorial role. Saatchi has cerated a gallery where any artist can show their work. So it’s just down to the consumer’s taste to determine what is good art and what is not. Now wouldn’t that be shocking?

By comparison, his brother Maurice has recently embarked on an initatlve for his global advertising network; “The Word”. For those not familiar with the concept, it was launced at Cannes this year and discussed at length by various media, including a commentary and Q&A in the FT.

There’s been considerable discussion in the blogoshphere by those who think that convincing people of a message requires more than just talking at them. The initiative and it’s one way web site is brilliantly dissected by Ashley Freidlan’s piece on E-Consultancy so I won’t repeat here the litany of online sins the site commits except to say that it can all be neatly summed up by the polite request on the first page to “please disable popup blockers”.

Suffice to say that by leaving advertising Charles seems to have gained some insights that Maurice has failed to grasp; audiences want to be engaged rather than talked at - even if it’s with a mercifuly short one word message.