Creating a Brand
Heard the term branding a lot but don't know where to start? Well, here you can find out what a brand is, how to make your own as an artist and how much branding can have an impact on your career.
What is Branding?
Branding is the process of creating a distinct identity. This is done through visual aspects such as colours and design but also includes your values and your tone of voice. Branding is an important asset that all artists or their teams have created to assist their audience in recognition.
Step 1: Finding your brand
When creating a brand as an artist there are three main ideas you need to take into account. Firstly your music, this may seem straightforward, and I'm not recommending putting yourself in a box as an artist, but you want to communicate the vibe and ideas around your music to your audience through your brand. Think about the genre in which you create and think about how you picture your music looking, are you seeing any stand-out colours or themes?
Step 2: Creating your brand
Now we have your vibe as an artist and maybe some visual ideas around colours and design we need to start thinking about your 'why' as an artist. Why do you make music? Why do you value the creation of your music? There is no wrong answer here. These questions are to help give your brand some more depth. Allowing your audience into the person behind the music. The answers to these questions will help you keep your brand aligned with you and are ideas to fall back on when feeling lost in who you are in the music scene.
Step 3: Who is your
brand for?
So we have our vibe, visuals and values outlined let's talk about who this is all for. When you think about all these factors together who do you see listening to this music? When considering your genre what does the demographic often look like? Knowing your target audience is essential when creating your brand. Trying to sell Dora's latest album to heavy music lovers might not go too well if you don't understand who your brand is for. When reflecting on who consumes your music you will often find a bit of yourself, this is completely normal in many areas of music and branding as they can both be rather personal.
Step 4: Now I have a brand... What's next?
You've created the basics of your brand! Congratulations! Now let's discuss what your brand is for. Your brand will be an identity for you and your music, something your target audience can recognise you by. Whether that is at a live show, a poster or on social media, they can recognise the vibe and sound and know who it is. Having an audience that can recognise you helps build a relationship with trust and loyalty which is essential to success in this field.