Build Your Band and the Brands Will Come

To Get Coca-Cola's Attention, Focus on Your Music Career, Not Marketers

Posted by Jeff Daniel on 06.18.09 @ 02:37 PM

Jeff Daniel is a great guy who we've sat next to on a couple panels, and he also happens to helm Rock River Music, a music-brand agency that pioneered in-store CDs and helped put together Banana Republic's ongoing "City Stories" campaign. He'll be contributing here from time to time.


Jeff Daniel

In the course of my work matching brands to bands, I am often asked to appear as a panelist, speaker or roundtable host at conferences. These conferences tend to be focused on music and technology, music and advertising, branded content or music-marketing in general, but somehow they all seem to attract one common demographic, among other groups specific to each particular conference: the developing artist.

To their credit, these artists tend to be driven and dedicated self-promoters, but perhaps that is the self-selected nature of artists who pay to attend these conferences. However, they consistently ask the same question during or after these panels: "How do I get you and your brand clients and agency clients to choose my song or my band for your next major ad campaign?"

The answer is complicated, but the short answer is this: There is no music-branding silver bullet that will skyrocket a developing artist to stardom and riches. Take your time and focus on your own career and we will find you. It's often not the answer these artists want to hear, but it's the truth.

Coca-Cola, Nike and Gap are not going to place your song in a national TV spot or your artist on their billboards or the print ads they are buying in Vanity Fair unless the brand or its agency understands your brand as an artist.

There, I said it. As an artist, you must become a brand unto yourself. It's only then that a major marketer will desire this transference of values. The values that you as an artist embody and express to your fans and your community must be clear to a brand and must match their own values. The brand will then be much more likely to desire your music and a relationship with you as an artist in order to express its values.

Build your artist-brand the same way Ford, Adidas, and Banana Republic have built theirs: through hard work, research, insight and innovation. Write and record often, tour incessantly, use all the digital communication tools at your disposal and build your own community and fanbase. Your fanbase and the community you build around your band is an asset. Cultivate your base -- monitor it, listen to it, converse with it.

If you grow your own community and have an authentic dialog with it, brands will want to work with you, not only for the transference of values, but to reach your fans and their customers.

Soon we will see more and more examples where brands and music-branding agencies like ours will pay you as an artist for your "inventory" (e.g., the space in your e-mail blasts, your website, your tweets) the same way we currently pay traditional publishers like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork or Imeem for their ad inventory.

Build your own brand as an artist, then understand, cultivate and protect your fanbase like it's as valuable as your music-publishing rights, and we will find you. At that point, a band/brand partnership will be one small part of your healthy artist-marketing mix, and both sides will see greater benefits.

See you at the next panel -- I'll be the one sitting behind a stack of CDs with handwritten labels.

~ ~ ~
Jeff Daniel is president and CEO of music-branding agency Rock River Music, which advises clients such as Banana Republic, Gap, Adidas, Ford and many others on music strategy, band/brand alignment, licensing and music technology.

3 Comments

By tcroberts | Glendale, CA June 18, 2009 11:15:06 pm:

I tend to agree with most everything pointed out here, except there are some problems that brands face in the same regard. 'How do I get Eminem/Britney/big name artist to sign on as our brand ambassador?' I am an artist manager and brand consultant, helping brands get their message across through music, so I have seen the issue from both sides. Brands typically try and align with artists that are already established, which are usually more costly and, I think, less effective for the brand in the long run. I've discovered and developed many young artists, both on the label and agency side, and have seen very few brands that have actually made the commitment to grow alongside the types of artists you point to. While brands are now being hyped as 'the new record labels' and/or talent incubators, I see way too many bands, with the same core values and audience appeal that is compatible with the brand's, get passed over, or worse exploited for something on the pop charts. If brands and their agencies don't take a chance on talent in bloom, they are going to find it harder and harder to cut through the noise out there.

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By joshua | Potomac, MD June 22, 2009 01:48:00 pm:

There is real truth in the fact that the music artist must be a "brand", a personal and focused model of intelligence that can speak to and engage its audiences whomever they are going to be.

Having been partly responsible for the creation of "music marketing" as a measurable marketing platform in the early '80's and seeing this all, in 2009, become the new label-- "branded entertainment" -- has made me come securely to this POV: The brand marketer wants to dimensionalize their brand personality. They want to find a 'style', a 'personality' a 'credible bridge' that will augment, expand, engage their consumer markets with a 'voice'. In some ways, 'music' can bring deliver that emotional connection at the right time. Sometimes, the music artist and their music, image and performance, put all together as one big "pop culture" package, can take the brand marketer message that much further.

Music artist today are being challenged. Some want the expanded voice that the commercial market offers in their careers. Yet others are not quite sure what will work, or whether it will work at all. A select few brand marketers, their AD/PR agencies, will, at times, make decisions that a select few music artists can truly serve the brand more effectively by making a strong emotional connection that a TV/Radio spot, a tour sponsorship, or a full music artist endorsement can be developed and executed to run for months or even years.

But their is a clear balancing act that must be understood. The music artist today is much about making music that entertains. Some music artist do it with their lyrics that are meant to say something 'important'. Other music artists do it because it is all about entertaining without having to deliver an important message. The brand marketer coupled with a music artist must work to find the right give and take. The music artist, without the brand marketer, must find their way to capture, sustain and build their music fan foundation. Sometimes with, sometimes without a brand marketers participation.

...and sometimes it works really well. ... and sometimes it really fails. It happens in the latter when neither party looks at the long tail.

Joshua Simons
yours! Ltd
www.yourltd.com

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By LeighHarrison | New York, NY August 17, 2009 04:14:14 pm:

This is amazing! For the last several years, that's exactly what I've been trying to do -- build myself as a brand. In addition to being a musician and singer/songwriter, I'm the author of poetry books, an artist whose paintings and photographs will soon be available in poster form, and a jewelry designer. (I even once created a perfume, and everyone who smelled it said it was gorgeous, and asked where I bought it!)

It's actually part of the concept that everything we create can be part of our product line, and that's what it's really about -- becoming all we can be as artists.

Leigh Harrison
SongCrew Music

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