avatarFlavie Halais

Summary

Music artists benefit significantly from collaborating with brand strategists to create a cohesive and compelling brand narrative that aligns with their creative vision and resonates with their audience.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of brand strategists in the music industry, highlighting how they bridge the gap between an artist's creative vision and the business aspect of music. A brand strategist's role extends beyond mere marketing and creative direction, as they develop a comprehensive narrative for the artist's brand, ensuring consistency across all platforms and touchpoints with the audience. This strategic approach addresses common issues such as lack of coherence in visual elements, difficulty in fan retention, and challenges in communicating the artist's vision to the creative team. By establishing clear brand guidelines, strategists enable artists to make informed decisions about collaborations and directions, fostering deep emotional connections with fans and aligning the brand with current cultural trends while maintaining authenticity.

Opinions

  • The music industry often overlooks the importance of a strategic brand narrative, focusing too narrowly on short-term marketing tactics and album design.
  • Artists frequently struggle to communicate their vision, leading to frustration and disjointed brand expressions.
  • A strong brand strategy is crucial for long-term fan engagement and retention, beyond the initial buzz of a release.
  • Brand strategists act as a bridge between the creative and business sides of music, translating an artist's vision into actionable guidelines.
  • Every artist inherently has a brand, but without strategic management, aspects of the brand may be left to chance and not fully leveraged for success.
  • Authenticity in branding is paramount, and brand strategists help maintain this by ensuring that all elements of the brand align with the artist's core values and vision.
  • Collaborations with other brands or creatives should be strategic, based on shared values and the brand narrative, rather than opportunistic or disconnected from the artist's identity.
  • The involvement of a brand strategist early in the project ensures a unified approach and avoids conflicts or duplication of effort among the creative and marketing teams.
  • Brand strategists should possess qualities such as artistic sensibility, empathy, storytelling ability, research skills, and project management capabilities to effectively support an artist's branding efforts.

Why Music Artists Need Brand Strategists

SPRLUA members Samito and Haig V, with dancers Shanice Vincent and Pascale Chroné, on the set of the music video for “Saraevo”. Photographed by Bliss Mutanda.

When the artists behind SPRLUA (Samito and Haig V) approached me to support the release of their project, I didn’t realize how uncommon it is to hire a brand strategist to team up with musicians. Yet the idea makes total sense.

An online search for “how to build a music brand” will mostly return advice about the importance of album design and social media. The problem is that those elements only are expressions of the brand. What’s missing is an overarching narrative that will guide your decision-making so that you know how your album cover fits within the broader vision for the project, and align all the elements of your brand to amplify your message. In essence, you need more than tactics. You need a strategy.

A lack of strategy can lead to frustration and misunderstanding among your team. It can show up in the following ways among others:

  • You’ve had to answer the same questions from your creative director/publicist/marketing team about the project’s vision and narrative, and wonder why this information isn’t being communicated;
  • Your label/marketing team over-emphasize short-term tactics, focusing on creating buzz around release day without nurturing your fan base in the long term. You have difficulty retaining fans once the attention dies off;
  • There is a lack of aesthetic coherence between the visual elements of your projects. Your music videos, social media, album cover, etc. are all over the place;
  • You don’t know what to talk about on social media, beyond promoting new songs;
  • You’re having difficulty communicating your vision to your creative team, e.g. video directors, stylists, creative director. The resulting work is often disappointing and doesn’t live up to your expectations.

I’m seeing a lot of artists expressing frustration at their marketing teams because they feel their work isn’t being promoted well. My opinion as an outsider is that the music industry is currently structured around a rigid binary between business and creativity. Marketing is essential to releasing music, but it’s a discipline that’s mostly focused on performance, numbers, and tactics. Brand strategists are the missing link between the creative and business sides of music, translating an artist’s vision into actionable guidelines for all of the points of interaction with your audience, including social media, PR, visuals, and more.

Samito and Haig V, photographed by Bliss Mutanda

What does a brand strategist do?

While responsibilities depend on the project’s nature and scope, brand strategists are generally responsible for developing a coherent narrative for the project. They’re in charge of defining the core elements of the brand’s identity, building an in-depth understanding of the target audience, and coming up with guidelines for the team members who will then execute on the different elements of the brand (i.e. the graphic designer, video director, etc.). They tap into the audience’s core needs, beliefs, and aspirations to forge deep emotional connections between the artist and their fan base. They use market insights to make sure the brand comes across as relevant in the current zeitgeist (vs. outdated or too avant-garde, unless that’s what you want) while remaining authentic.

In my experience, artists are great at developing a vision, but have difficulty communicating it to others (this is actually true of many entrepreneurs as well.) Having strong brand guidelines helps every collaborator understand what the artist is trying to achieve, and translating it into their own line of work.

Armed with those guidelines, artists can make decisions about which directions to take and which collaborations to seek out. For example, I worked with SPRLUA to define a handful of themes they wanted the brand to be associated with, and which they could explore through film, social media, and other channels. One of those themes revolved around honouring the historical relationship between Black people and Nordic spaces. This informed our discussions with the film crew for “Saraevo.” We wanted to portray the Black characters in the film as naturally belonging to those spaces, and the stylist suggested using clothing that communicated comfort and warmth. With that in mind, we reached out to Montreal-based slow fashion brand Odelayo for a partnership. They immediately understood the value of a collaboration based on shared values (Odelayo is all about comfort.)

A still from the music video for “Saraevo”, directed by Christian Boakye-Agyeman and styled by Dayana Matasheva. Dancer Shanice Vincent wears Odelayo clothing.

What is a brand?

A brand is combined of all the elements that contribute to how your work is being perceived by your audience. A brand is not a logo (although it’s part of it), nor is it confined to graphic design. It’s how your project sounds, looks, talks, and feels to those who come into contact with it by hearing the music, checking posts on social media, reading interviews in the press, attending live shows, buying merch, etc.

Every artist already has a brand by virtue of existing in the public sphere, whether they’re aware of it or not. Branding is the process of taking control of that brand so that nothing is left to chance. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust was primarily an artistic creation, but it was also a distinct brand whose various elements (storyline, visuals, clothing, etc.) served to differentiate it from the rest of his work. Many of the world’s greatest bands can be tied to recognizable logos, fashion styles, attitudes, messages, and behaviours — all of which have helped them become memorable in people’s minds.

Brand strategy ≄ marketing ≄ creative direction

Music artists are increasingly turning to creative directors to create powerful imagery and ensure coherence between all visual elements of the project, including styling, graphic design, and video. That’s great, but it doesn’t cover all the other elements of the brand. The risk of developing a strong visual identity without a strategy is, once again, to miss the mark when it comes to reaching the audience with the right message and creating meaningful connections.

How to work with brand strategists

Brand strategists should be brought on as early as possible once you start thinking about releasing your project. There are many overlaps between their work and what marketers and creative directors do, so it’s important to make sure those team members are regularly engaged to avoid duplicating tasks and to settle disagreements on key issues before the project moves to execution.

It’s always a good idea to host a few brainstorming sessions with key team members to get their input on the strategy and anticipate hurdles. Once the brand guidelines are established, other team members can come in to execute their part of the project. The key here is to get the communication flowing between everyone.

A strategy brainstorm based on Jungian archetypes

Depending on your level of involvement, a strategist can shape a brand that feels more or less authentic to your creative vision. Many artists don’t want to have anything to do with the ins and outs of how the music is being released, and that’s fine, but the risk is to have a brand that is perfectly functional, yet completely disconnected from who you are. I’d suggest working with a strategist with whom you have a good connection, and feel comfortable discussing your creative process. You’ll feel a lot more engaged and satisfied with the end results.

Ideally, strategists stay on board to oversee execution in order to ensure that all elements of the project stay “on brand.” Involve them in key early meetings with video directors and other creatives to make sure the brand guidelines are being communicated well.

How to find a strategist

Most strategists work for agencies that focus on commercial projects, and it’s likely you won’t have the budget for that. Look for freelance strategists whose portfolio intrigue you. Some of them may have experience working in arts and culture, but not necessarily. Alternatively, look for other types of profiles who could take on the role of brand strategist for your project. It’s possible that someone on your marketing or creative team could multitask if they have the right mindset.

A good brand strategist must demonstrate artistic sensibility and a deep sense of empathy, which are essential to understanding the artist’s vision. They’re also great storytellers, top-notch researchers, occasional data nerds, and skilled project managers.

A few more thoughts

  • The more collaborators you have, the more difficult it is for everyone to know who does what. It may be good to appoint someone to the role of project manager to keep track of deadlines and deliverables and centralise information so that nothing gets lost in translation.
  • Unless you specifically give them the responsibility to hire talent, brand strategists don’t have a hold on your budget, so the responsibility is on you to make sure that you can deliver on whatever is being discussed as part of the strategy. Be pragmatic about which resources will be available when it’s time to execute.
  • A good strategy becomes useless if poorly executed. Many brands fail to deliver when it’s time to move to action. It’s perfectly normal to be confused about how to implement the various guidelines and recommendations. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your strategist to ask for guidance.

Have a question about strategy? Reach out at [email protected]

Music
Brand
Music Marketing
Brand Strategy
Branding
Recommended from ReadMedium