There is a saying that “Image is everything”. I disagree. This might a be weird place to start this post, but I’m gonna rock it. Image is everything, but it’s a lot. If you hear that a processing plant for certain brand of food has a serious bacterial outbreak that could make you very sick, you might be weary of eating that food for a while. If that company has multiple outbreak scares, then you might decide to never eat it again. This isn’t uncommon nor is it unfair. Understanding this is important. It’s ok to discriminate. I’m not saying it’s ok to discriminate on the basis of the color of someone’s skin, but a product or service’s image, brand, and the impression they make on you as a potential consumer is perfectly fair game.
If you are in the music business, then many people don’t get to know you personally although social media can definitely help with this. Most people however will probably get to know you from your business, product, services, etc. They get to know one part of you – the part you decide to make public, that face (unless you’ve got papa papa paparazzi digging away). The public part of you makes and impression and is a defining part of your brand. You can control this to an extent, but often the bigger your brand, the more susceptible you (and your brand) become to manipulation or other internal downfalls.
It’s a double-edged sword though and you can use your brand in many ways. You could for example build your brand into something that’s known for being very positive and loving and then use your brand to “break” other new brands either that you own, co-own, or would like to sponsor. This is how musicians like J-Lo sell perfume or how rappers-turn-label-owners like Jay-Z validate young artists they sign or how an artist like Dave Matthews pushed Farm Aid. Understanding your brand and how it works (or doesn’t) will make you a much more powerful force. This goes far beyond music and most musicians never think of their image as much as they should, but big companies like Pepsi, Mercedes, McDonald’s, Apple, Google, Starbucks, etc all do so much that they have whole departments dedicated to it along with more than just a few dollars.
If you want to chat about your branding/image, hit me up and we can dig as deep as you want to into the subject.
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