5 marketing lessons from Ralph the artist

Life has intervened to keep me away my blog this last month. Two weeks have passed since I started writing this little story from my recent cruise, which is relevant to voice talent. Drew and I were sitting in lounge chairs on the promenade deck one evening when another man and his wife sat next to us and starting talking to us. We found out that the guy’s name is Ralph; I don’t remember his wife’s name.

Ralph seemed more interested in talking about himself than in finding out about us. We quickly learned that Ralph is an artist who paints geometric designs on large canvases. He handed me his business card, which had a picture of one of his paintings and the verbiage to look for Ralph on Google. I was a bit surprised that Ralph reached for his card to take it back from me when we parted company.

I told Ralph that I love art, and I asked him how long it took him to create a painting. He replied, “that’s my secret.” Perhaps I was just making conversation, but for all Ralph knew, I was thinking of commissioning him to create a painting for me.

As he talked, Ralph told us that he had sold his art in Beverly Hills galleries; maybe he thought we would be impressed. He then segued into a tale of a sale that made me want to bail on that male. (Sometimes I amuse myself.) A buyer at one of these Beverly Hills shows wanted to buy a painting that he had priced at $1200 and asked him to cut his price to $700. After he agreed to the price cut, the buyer wrote a check. It turned out that the buyer was Paris Hilton’s mother, and she planned to give the painting to Paris as a present. Ralph said that if he had known the identity of the buyer, he wouldn’t have cut the price.