creativity and marketing

In these tough economic times marketing yourself or your product effectively becomes more crucial and more difficult at the same time. There are more and more outlets for making those connections, but doing it the wrong way can be far more devastating than missing a few opportunities.
Here is an example. I belong to a group of artists whose work is sold through a particular outlet. the group of people that runs the outlet occasionally sends out an email with news about the shop or monthly events and classes. By accident one day they sent out their email without the bcc protection on everybody's email addresses. I personally barely noticed this glitch. however one person whose product was marketed there took all those email addresses and began a marketing campaign. Spam hit everyone's email accounts. and while it was not voracious amounts it was a little disconcerting to get offers for products I had no interest in. The folks who made the inital mistakes have been trying to get the spammer to give up the use of these addresses. Since they have refused the store has recommended that people block the incoming email address. but I will probably do more. I had seen and heard of this tea shop before the spam started and had even talked about joining my coworkers on a little shopping trip there, but now I will very likely share this story and encourage them not to give their business to an operation that would take advantage of such a mistake.

So then the question is where and how to use as many tool as you can to reach the audience you want. There are lots of options to consider and that will be the topic of my next essay eventually.