A businessman, Felix Darko, has disabused creatives of the belief they must only focus on creating and not be involved in the marketing of their works.  

The founder and technical director of Electro Darko House Ltd, Felix Darko spoke during the 2024 Annual Conference of the Performing Arts (ACPA), organised and hosted by the National Theatre, Accra.

A playwright and author had asserted a creative person must be left alone to create while marketers also focus on marketing.

While, Mr Darko expressed appreciation for the sentiment, he argued it was not practical, especially for a startup.

“For a startup, you need to do a lot more [as founder or CEO]. So it’s not a case of you know [very little of] marketing, or finance because you’re just a creative person and that’s my focus,” he pushed back.

“If you don’t have those elements at play, it’ll be challenging to [succeed]. You need a sponsor to bring in money and if you don’t understand what it takes for that sponsor to bring in money, then the money won’t come. The sponsor is looking for a return on the money they are putting on the table, and so whatever you’re doing as a creative should be able to generate [per KPIs) awareness, demands [etc] for them.”

He underlined he had worked with both multinational companies and startups, prior.

He said without “all the functions” of an established company, “in a startup, you’re virtually doing everything by yourself”.

“You’re not a finance person but you must learn to keep your books, you’re not an operations person but you need to learn the skill, you’re not a human resource person but you need to learn the skill. If you cannot, you need to look at persons who’ll be able to offer that service to you [which will come at an extra cost]. It won’t work if you don’t have all these functions coming together,” Felix Darko cautioned on the ACPA panel.

For his part, the founder and CEO of Roverman Productions, Ebo Whyte, said until a creative had arrived at a point of considerable success and or had a team, “you’ll be your own writer, director, promoter, PR, do your media runs, get tickets printed,” among others.

He bemoaned it was “typical of Ghanaians” to want to jump the humbling and knowledge-enriching process of growth, preferring the appearance and capital-draining mechanisms of unwarranted success.

To buttress, the theatre superstar cited an instance where some men visited a car dealership he once worked at, making enquiries to buy a luxury German car for their church leader. Meanwhile, he noted, these men disclosed they were part of a congregation which was meeting in a classroom in the Kaneshie community of Accra.