Art

Introduction
Art fairs have become the new aggregator of the twenty-first century art world. In 2009, there were 275 art fairs scheduled around the world, compared to 55 in 2001. Art fairs have evolved their identity from venues where collectors buy artworks to cultural events where all art-world-players, such as artists, dealers, curators, critics, museum directors, collectors, and general audience gather for exchanging ideas and enjoying arts. This transformation is attributed to their marketing and communication practices designed to satisfy the needs and interests of the audience. In addition to the basic marketing strategy, branding, visual strategy, educational and public programs and sponsorship are used as tools enhancing the accessibility and visibility of art fairs. This article examines those practices that art fairs carry out currently and studies essential strategies in tomorrows world.

The new environment of art fair
In todays social and media environment, visual arts presenters have difficulties in attracting audiences and customers. Though the number of consumers of visual arts has soared due to education and affluence, expanded entertainment and leisure industries like cinema, sporting events, and the like are threatening the current picture. Besides, the client demography of art business has been rapidly changing because of globalized market and wealth growth from all parts of the world. It includes groups from the young and from the emerging market in Russia, Asia, and Middle East. Moreover, the advent of electronic media has altered the way people communicate and acquire information. The influence of existing media like TV and newspaper has decreased. In the flood of information in the mass media, Internet is viewed as the new platform for sharing cultures and opinions such as social networking, blogs, and UCC. In this new circumstance, art fairs have adopted their communication and marketing strategy to reach a sufficient of number consumers.

Art fairs communication and marketing
In examining marketing and communication strategies, it is required to review the mission of art fairs because cultural marketing begins with the mission of the cultural enterprise. Art fairs have been designed explicitly as trade shows with profit goals. However, art fairs managed to reinvent themselves as new types of cultural events with the combination of commercial and cultural goals. Now, an art fair has a mission of promoting art, expanding in importance and position. To achieve this mission, the adopted strategic measures are the four Ps of marketing, branding process, visual strategy, public and educational programs and sponsorship.

The Four Ps of Marketing Product, Price, Place and Promotion
As every marketing strategy is composed of the same components, which are price, product, price, and promotion, they are critical in examining art fairs marketing. The major product of art fairs as trade shows are artworks and dealers. To obtain product quality, competition is very important. The dealers presenting at Art Basel came through a competition of 3 to 1 to get their vendors. Art fairs selecting committees even drop a well-known gallery if it did not bring exciting works or works that are fresh. While dropping outdated dealers, art fairs are enthusiastic about including emerging and young galleries from all over the world to adjust to a globalized and fast-changing world. In 2010, the dealer base of Art Basel will be from 36 countries on six continents.

Pricing is an important strategy for managing successful art fairs, which can be considered in two ways. First, admission fees for an art fair are effective because of the willingness of people to pay based on a tiered-ticket pricing. For example, tickets to enter the Armory Show at 5 p.m. cost 1,000, entry at 530 p.m. costs 500, and 7 p.m. costs 250. Second, pricing can also arise from the price points of artworks that dealers sell in the fair. While the Armory Show and Art Basel showcase more high-profile galleries, fairs like Scope and Pulse provide platforms for emerging galleries and appeal to younger collectors aiming to purchase their first piece of art.

Place is a significant factor in positioning. The major art fairs are scheduled in different cities and times. They build their own market as far away from each other as possible. However, satellite fairs use different placing strategies. They shadow major art fairs to take advantage of the visitors, their promotional efforts, and status.

Promotion is the last components of the 4ps. Each art fair has a promotion campaign in major international art and lifestyle media. Some fairs build partnerships with media sponsors, such as the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Art Newspaper, and Art Forum, that guarantee extensive and worldwide reach. To be featured by more media, art fairs publish their press releases months earlier and the media campaign emphasizes the participating star artists and dealers. Marketing alliance of promotion among art fairs can also be seen easily where special promotional materials indicating schedules and locations are created.  

Art Fair and Branding
Encounters with branded art fairs entail expectations of high product or service quality. Branding is the art of communicating. Brand tells a persons identity and mission and plays an endorser role conveying credibility. There is a name game of branding in art fairs industry. The Armory Show benefits from the reputation of its name and evokes the 1913 Armory Show. Similarly, Frieze art fair is the branch of Frieze brand which started its business as the leading magazine of contemporary art and culture. Art Basel deals with its name differently. With a powerful brand that it has established, it presented a sister brand, Art Basel Miami Beach, which brought about a synergy effect. Art Basel could reinforce its brand image due to higher visibility, and ABMB easily built its market with less efforts. Yet, balancing of branding on the global and local level was the key of success. ABMB has different features from Art Basel. To utilize geographical positioning, ABMB has received a large influx of exhibitors from Latin America.

Visual strategies Prints and Graphic Designs
To build distinctive image, art fairs use visual strategies such as brand logos and certain graphic design scheme. The recent design trend of fairs logo involves highlighting the name with its signature color and font, which helps in suggesting themes to be either elegant, modern, old-fashioned, and delicate. Also, repeated usage of the same visual image help increase recognition of art fairs. Once the visual identity is established, it is featured across many different media. For example, ABMBs dot printed graphic with a pink color Scheme is so distinctive that we know that it is ABMB even before seeing its logo.

The Experience Economy of Art Fair Educational and Public Program
Art fairs experimental marketing allows it to be connected to the customer in a memorable experience. Educational and public programs are effective ways for visitors to engage and integrate. For instance, lectures and forums can change audience from a mere visitor to a role player by offering first-hand information on important aspects of the international art world. The surprising success of ABMB can be understood in the context of experience economy. ABMB provides customer with experience surrounding a buying art pleasant weather, fun atmosphere of beach, non-stop parties, music concerts, artists discussion, and keynote lectures. Influenced by ABMB, the Armory Show launched its public program in 2010.

Sponsorship
Affiliated sponsors are carefully chosen in order to maintain the image of art fair. Association with well-established brand names attracts the public attention. When supported by corporations, art fairs arranged the numerous paybacks including publicizing a corporations name in promotional materials and offering invitation tickets. The strong relationship between UBS and Art Basel is a representative example of corporate sponsorship. They are a major platform for demonstrating our commitment to art, and they give us international exposure, says Anton Glogger of UBSs global-sponsoring department. In conjunction with sponsors, various VIP services can be offered by art fairs. The significant marketing effect generated competitions. Deutsche Bank has signed as a lead sponsor of art HK, already supporting Frieze Art Fair Cologne fairs. ING bank is sponsoring Art Brussels.

The evaluation
Through communication and marketing strategies, art fairs developed their services and experiences that increased attendance and popularity. Art fairs have become lively, vivid and interesting cultural events. However, expansion of roles and activities resulted to tradeoffs. The success of art fairs generated its proliferation. In the first week of March, there are a number of satellite fairs to coincide with the Armory show, including Scope, Pulse, Volta, Pool, Fountain, Red Dots, Independent, Verge, and Critical Design. This epidemic of fairs has created fair fatigue. An art consultant, Thea Westreich said, its virtually impossible to see everything.. A lot of the art will not be seen by a critical audience.

The growing size of art fairs also generated problems. The great number of booths in a limited space tends to make it look like a commercial space. They have been described as the best example of seeing art in the worst way. In 2010, The Armory Show expanded to include 285 dealers - 50 more than last year, which created a terrible viewing experience because of awkward floor plan, excessive bright lighting, bad acoustics, awkward floor plan, and dearth of food and drink. Improvement efforts from art fair management are only directed at the VIP-designated lounges.

The ineffective use of Internet is another weakness point in terms of communications. Web contents are scarce and designs are clumsy. There is a gap between how people wish to use the Web page and how it is actually designed. Most of them scanned any new pages they came across. In websites of art fair, there are just a few visual images, and lots of texts describing how excellent they are. Besides, the web page did not develop their channel to communicate with the audience.

How Art Fairs Reach Tomorrows Audience
Approaching tomorrows audience in changing world, art fairs should develop techniques with awareness for its economic, social, cultural and media environment. In the competitive market, with over 250 art fairs in the world, it should find its niche in the marketplace. The culture and commerce of the 21st century are about niches. There is no more monopoly of hits and the demand of niches market has been growing consistently. It is hard to enjoy fairs like Art Basel with 300 galleries to visit or when you form a part of the swarm of 210,000 visitors to ARCO. The small and clearly positioned fairs hosting 40 to 60 galleries will remain in the collectors mind.

 To complete fairs experience, art fairs need to enhance their physical environment. Spatial-architectural dimension can be developed with the help of architect designers and multidisciplinary staffs. Art fairs can generate more comfortable and fresh atmosphere. Otherwise, physical and visual manipulation such as color accents can help people find their ways in endless corridors full of booths and enjoy the artworks and to find their ways in endless corridors full of booths.

Art fairs should actively take advantage of new media digital implementations. More viewer friendly and communicative web sites should be built. This not only increases the visibility to younger generation who newly entered art market, but also enables art fairs to overcome the limited physical accessibility of short-term events. Also, art fairs should activate their blogs or social networking sites in order to be accessible to tomorrows audience. They already have Twitters or Facebook, but the usage remains relatively low. Posting a viral video, empowering directors or staffs to write blogs, and responding user-generated-contents can be effective strategies.

Conclusion
It is required for art fairs marketing and communication strategies to be developed in todays fast evolving world. The new media environment and the diversification of consumer base altered art fairs practices. They adopted diverse strategies such as the marketing mix, branding, visual strategy, public relations, and sponsorship. Yet, the art fairs strategies are still weak in that they showed complacent attitude to the new social, cultural, economical circumstances.