I first wrote about the Topps Project 2020 in May, and I recently did a podcast update on the project which you can find here.
I had a chance to sit down for a conversation with Artist Blake Jamieson. We talked both about the project as a work of art, as well as how he has approached the project from a business perspective. We discussed what he has done to intentionally engage with his audience, market the product, and develop a way to create revenue well beyond the lifecycle of the project itself.
I have transcribed and paraphrased portions of the interview in the following article, and you can listen to the full interview in this podcast episode.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
The Interview
Mike: Blake, Welcome to the show. Maybe we can start by getting a little background from you. I know art has not been your primary focus your entire adult life. How did you get started with sports art?
Blake: Sure. Art has not been the primary focus of my career for that long. I’ve been doing this full time now for a little over 5 years. I grew up in a creative household and my parents were always encouraging me to create art, but I had convinced myself it wasn’t a viable career path so I went to UC Davis to study economics and eventually went into digital marketing. It was fun because it allowed me to be creative in certain ways, but ultimately it wasn’t as creatively fulfilling as I’d like. So on my 30th birthday I decided to quit my corporate marketing job and pursue art full time.
When I started painting full time, I didn’t start by doing athletes, but I did do portraits. Because of my network I actually was focused on doing art for offices. Eventually, I met a former NFL player who currently manages other players. He liked my work and helped me get my foot in the door with the NFL, and as soon as I got in there I haven’t looked back.
Mike: How did the relationship with Topps begin?
Blake: So Topps reached out to me through the contact form on my website. Late last year Jeff Heckman reached out to talk about the project. I was actively trying to find a way to work with Topps, I grew up collecting baseball cards, and I had seen some work that another artist Graig Kreindler did with Topps and I thought it was amazing. I thought it could be a cool way to reach new audiences with my art. While my outbound efforts to get in contact with Topps came up fruitless, coincidently they reached out at the same and said hey we have this project and I was excited to get on board.
Blake’s Jackie Robinson card was fittingly #42 in the set.
Mike: We’re about three quarters of the way through the 400 card run, and you are about 14 cards through your own 20 card run. That leaves about 6 cards to go. How many of those six have you already completed?
Blake: Right now out of the 6, I still have 5 to paint. In general, each artist has a new card dropping every two weeks, and we have due dates about a week before the card drops. So my next card is due Friday, it’s Derek Jeter, and I will literally start painting it tomorrow. I work under deadlines a lot, I’m used to it, and it how I like to work. I like to have a lot of focused effort on something until its done, right before it’s due.
Mike: I would say you have been a case study in how to build a following and engage a fan base. This one of the things I admire a lot about your approach to this effort. How did you develop that strategy you’re taking?
Blake: I definitely think it’s from my background in digital marketing where I was working on behalf of other brands which sold all kinds of things. Sometimes they sold a product that was cool and sexy that sells itself, but more often than not you have to convince them they need this widget that solves a problem. Through that marketing experience, really, the one constant across every client I ever worked for was that at the end of the day, if you can build relationships on a friendship level with your potential customers, the rest sorts itself out.
So I’ve always tried to take that approach through my own art practice and art business. I do treat it like a business and I consciously make marketing decisions that I think other artists aren’t thinking about. One of those is definitely community building. Fortunately, the Topps Project 2020 has amplified my platform and has allowed me to reach more people. From there, I want to bring them into the fold and get them involved more in this relationship and this friendship. Where it is more than just a transactional nature of being seller of things and a buyer of things.
Blake Jamieson’s engagement with fans has built a following that will last long after the project ends.
Mike: One of the main talking points of the effort has been the crossover between art fans and traditional collectors. Have you seen examples of people who were primarily fans of your art prior before the project who have now entered the hobby world because of the project?
Blake: I have. It never gets old to get that message from someone who was a patron of my art or maybe a friend from high school who was supporting me from the sidelines. The Topps project does a few things. It allows people to get a pice of my art for as little as $20 which is something I’ve never offered before.
These guys and girls are now get the nostalgia from getting a baseball card and start flipping through their binders. I’ve gotten so many of those messages saying, “wow I’ve forgotten how much fun collecting cards was, and now because of this project and your art I’m back in the game.” I’m not sure how many are full fledged hobby fanatics, but a lot of people brushed the dust of the binders and took a trip down memory lane. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of.
Mike: I think you could also argue the reverse is true. There are some collectors now who have been exposed to the variety of artists in the project that they otherwise would have never come across. They have developed a greater appreciation for art. One of the ways this has been demonstrated is by the popularity of your card art project. It launched earlier this year and has now had a recent second drop. Tell me about how that developed.
Blake: At the start of this project Topps sent me a care package that had some boxes of cards. The first one we opened was Heritage, and we did that live on a stream. I had fallen out of keeping up with baseball. As I was ripping packs, they were correcting me because I was saying the names wrong. When that was done, I was like now what? I was sitting in my art studio and had paint everywhere so I was like alright, lets just paint on them. At first we just started giving them out to people who literally just watched the live stream.
You’re taking a card that is a base cards that some would consider junk, putting some paint on it, turning it into a tiny painting which is a 1/1 that has a story behind it. When that started to get traction, posting them on social media and getting excited, that is when Tony and I saw a business opportunity that won’t stop at the end of 2020 when the project 2020 does. Series 1 sold out very quickly, and series two is over half way sold out. We’ve hit a good stride of price point availability and a bit of exclusivity.
Eventually, probably in series 3, we’re going to start incorporating other artists to allow cardart.com to be a platform to allow other artists monetize their art.
Mike: This project is so unique, it spans 20 artists, the cards are released over the course of 9 months. We have print runs ranging from 1,100 to 99K. Resale values ranging from $3 to well over 1K, some artists engaged with fans, creating spin off projects, and others who have never mentioned their involvement in the project. So what is something you’ve learned along the way from either an artistic perspective or a business/marketing perspective?
Blake: The biggest lesson I learned applies to both of those. It’s that you can’t please everyone. By nature, I want to make people happy. I want to tell people yes. I want to listen to feedback and implement it if I can. That’s has made it clear that you just can’t please everyone. Now that I’ve accepted that, it’s become a lot more fun.
Mike: Have there been some of the other artists who have reached out to you to gain insight on how you are approaching some of these ancillary efforts?
Blake: I’ve reached out to most artists, and it’s a goal to reach out to all of them before the end of the project. LIke you mentioned before there are varying degrees of people who are for whatever reason taking different levels of promotion to their involvement. Tony and I saw a lot of success early in the project with signing and selling our own cards we were buying from Topps and it really impacted our business in a positive way. I was actively trying to get ahold of artists to say there is a lot of opportunity here. I’m happy to share how i did it, how i priced it, and the mistakes i made at the beginning. A lot were receptive and implemented with their own spin. I like seeing artists win, so if I can help that happen it is a good feeling.
Mike: There’s been so much that has changed and evolved with the project over the first 3/4 of it. Do you have any thoughts on where you think we are headed in the final 120 cards?
Blake: I think and hope that the last 50 cards will be more of the gold rush we saw early in the project. As the set develops and evolves and we see the player sets and how cool they look or the artist sets and how cool they look, people will start to fill gaps. I hope that effects the secondary market for even the earlier cards. I would love to see the print runs come up. I’m not sure if it will happen because where we are in society because of the COVID situation. A lot of people are unemployed or underemployed and these are a luxury good. I feel fortunate when people spend money on my baseball card, and that is awesome.
Mike: Blake, thank you for getting together!
if you haven’t heard, I started a new Podcast called the WaxPackHero Sports Card Minute! It’s available here directly on the site at the Podcast link at the top of the page, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and TuneIn! Check it out, let me know what you think, and tell your friends!
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