Image branding and artist promotion

While record com­pa­nies con­tinue to strug­gle with with­ered profit mar­gins even with the new 360 deals, more music artists are step­ping up and tak­ing con­trol of their own des­tiny, rather than leav­ing their fate in the hands of a record company.

The premise behind music image brand­ing isn’t new, how­ever the way it’s being done, is. Brand­ing is the process of increas­ing the per­ceived value of a musi­cal artist through pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tions to the brand name (the band or artist). The goal is to max­i­mize brand equity – a term used to define what your stake is in the minds of the con­sumer; which in your case, would be your fans.

Many think of equity in terms of real estate. If you have equity in a house, this means the house appraises for more than what you owe. You can sell the house for a profit. This holds true with build­ing equity in you.  It increases your value in the mar­ket place.

In the past, a record com­pany would break a band by choos­ing a sin­gle, procur­ing one of their beloved inde­pen­dent pro­mot­ers and buying…uh, I mean, obtain­ing air play. The approach was the same: the hit sin­gle and radio.

Your num­ber one objec­tive with brand imag­ing?  To cre­ate com­pelling rea­sons for peo­ple to pur­chase what you offer. –Hugh Hession

Now, artists under­stand the value on build­ing their image to con­nect with their fans. Social net­work­ing, music blogs and other DIY resources are equip­ping the artist to do cre­ate their brand, enabling them to DO YOU!

Mariah Carey is one of many artists who are tak­ing con­trol of their careers, suc­cessfully redefin­ing who she is to her fans, while build­ing brand equity. Though her model isn’t for every­one, it serves her well in estab­lish­ing her name on a global scale; not just her music. For exam­ple, Elle Mag­a­zine is ded­i­cat­ing an entire issue to Mariah. How­ever, first you have to pur­chase her CD to get it; cre­at­ing the “rea­son to buy” sce­nario. She also main­tains a con­sid­er­able pres­ence on social net­work­ing and con­nects with her fans by specif­i­cally tar­get­ing select fan groups with updates on her appearances.

Per­haps more note­wor­thy is her act­ing career. Mariah has shunned her sex appeal in the new movie Pre­cious, and get­ting acclaim for her role. That’s a big leap from Glit­ter, which almost killed her music career. Yes, it’s still about the music, but she is pro­mot­ing her name and build­ing her brand image around it.

So you may be think­ing, ok, this is all nice for some­one like Mariah who is a well-known celebrity. What can I do locally or region­ally as a musician?

1) Start think­ing in terms of how you can enhance your image and not just specif­i­cally the music

This is often the most neglected area of a local/regional band or artist. I’m not advo­cat­ing to neglect the music. Your music should already be top-notch. But if you think of your­self in terms of being an enter­tainer and a per­son­al­ity your mar­ketabil­ity expands.

2) What syn­er­gis­tic mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties can you cap­i­tal­ize on in your area?

Syn­ergy is when you team up with another orga­ni­za­tion or indi­vid­ual to cre­ate a win-win sce­nario for the end-result. Do you have a cer­tain appeal when you speak to peo­ple? Maybe you can MC a local beauty pageant. For vol­un­teer­ing, you will not only be enhanc­ing your brand, but you may get a spot in the pro­gram for your per­sonal bio where you can men­tion your band, and work out free adver­tise­ment on the back, com­plete with your MySpace or per­sonal website.

Don’t think so nar­rowly and close your­self off to oppor­tu­ni­ties. The goal is to expand your iden­tity, your per­ceived value; but your music needs to be asso­ci­ated with it. The ideas are lim­it­less and will take a bit of think­ing on your part. Get out of the box, grab a pen and notepad, and go for it.

3) Use FREE to sell

The word FREE is pow­er­ful and it can cre­ate rev­enue and enhanced brand equity. I went to see Prince at Phillips Arena (Atlanta, GA) on his Musi­col­ogy Tour. I paid for the ticket and they handed me a FREE CD at the door. Talk about build­ing the brand! Every con­cert­goer on that tour got a CD to bring home.

Chris Ander­son wrote an excel­lent arti­cle in the March 2008 issue of Wired, called FREE! He lists dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios where free works. It’s com­mon any­more, but it cre­ates per­ceived value. Cell phone com­pa­nies give you a free phone in exchange for a 2 year plan. Gevalia has been giv­ing away cof­fee mak­ers for years and focus on sell­ing their cof­fee. Record com­pa­nies used to pro­mote their clubs by giv­ing away 12 records in return for a com­mit­ment to buy a set amount of records in so many years. In the mod­ern age, dig­i­tal music sites like emusic.com do the same thing.

So is FREE used for sell­ing or brand­ing? The are com­pletely inter­con­nected. Remem­ber, brand­ing is the process of increas­ing per­ceived value and build­ing brand equity. Your goal is to cre­ate com­pelling rea­sons for peo­ple to buy.

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