What guides my branding efforts? Read On.

What guides my branding efforts?

Read On.

I would like to talk about my thoughts and philosophies of marketing, branding, and promotion.  I started making art, writing, and performing because it got me through difficult times.  In effect, my creative leanings drowned out the noise of a hostile environment in my childhood.  If felt like living the Stepford Wives’ with anger, resentment, and endless myopic domestic lives that one now views regularly on reality television.  As the situation grew worse so did my moving and expanding the scope of my art.  The creative thing replaced the above with joy and celebration.

But this is not my branding.  This simply is a part of life experience for some.  And so my branding efforts are not about hyping ‘me’.  My efforts are about opening up to an audience who is engaged by the music, about providing them with moments of joy and celebration.

So it doesn’t matter what happened back then in a sense.  It doesn’t matter what I wear, what kind of sneakers I wear, my favorite jeans, the kind of food I eat, and color of my hair.  Like Harrison sings, “It’s only a Northern Song.”  It doesn’t matter what my politics are.  Nor is it about my philosophical, cultural, or spiritual beliefs.

If who I am shows up anywhere it is always by way of the art.  And art communicates differently to each who experiences that art. 

So what is my ‘branding’ about?  It’s about the art.  It’s about change.  I am not the same person I was after writing this.  ‘

My real challenge is not taking my art and me and turning it entirely into a quantifiable static flavor of the day widget.  It’s about the art really.  Other larger business entities selling their phones, televisions, computers, sneakers, and what have you take a particular trajectory on their branding.  While the tools of branding may remain open as utility to those entire tools take on different meaning according to what the goal is.  And the artist, performer, writer or any other creative entity/individual should in my opinion ensure that their branding efforts are tailored to their aesthetic.  Not the record companies, not the distributors, not the publishers.  Good branding reveals us as we are:  constantly shifting human beings doing our best to make a genuine difference in the world.

In short, I leave the latter sort of branding to those who feel it works best for them.  Speaking for myself I would prefer a genuinely thoughtful audience with visions of their own completeness.  Does my version work?  Yeah, it works.  Ask Zappa, Cockburn, Radiohead, XTC, and PIL.  They have their audience and while they may not be walking red carpet circus spectacles, they entertain and inform to a substantial audience.  They sell their material and are successful.  Branding is not about acquiring fame.  It’s about communicating your world to others with integrity.  It’s about listening.  It’s about avoiding the typical hype provided more often than not by large campaigns. 

Neither style of this sort of thing is right or wrong.  But make no mistake about it.  Branding development is about choice that opens the audience to who you are.  And while many gurus will fill you with all sorts of templates for such branding, be careful to be willing take the best of those templates and discard the rest.  No one on this planet can provide you with a quick fix formula for branding.  The best person who knows how to tell your story is you.  No one else.  So yeah, break a few rules along the way.  But first know the rules of the game.    fracturecreations@gmai.com