Beyond the brand and in tune with reality

Posted on 23rd Jan 2012 by Kateryna Topol in Blog

This is not another article that will school you on how to properly do your own job.

There are already a lot of opinions on what the right way of branding is and how one should go about promoting their product. Some are better than others and some brands do it really well. The ones that succeed do it not just because they are good at promoting who they are - they succeed because they are good at what they do.

Over the last two months every minute I was not working on a campaign I was immersed in the music industry. Today is the day when the parallels finally blurred.

Music is a culture. People spend outrageous amounts of money on it, travel for it, share it at their own will, build fan clubs, buy band t-shirts and to this day, some would sleep in a tent to get a chance to stand in a sweaty crowd to watch their favorite performer.

Bands, very much like brands, have to promote themselves and make a profit. The difference is musicians are in it for the love. There is something genuine in music that people flock to. It brings crowds together. It brings peace to a warzone and party to the party. Some bands create a cult following by just doing what they do best.

Any promotion done on behalf of a band is to announce that they are around with something new.

And then people come.

Coachella is a music festival that on average attracts over 160,000 people over three days. This year it's six days and both weekends were sold out in a matter of hours. These thousands of people fly across continents to spend three days in a desert or wait in line for hours to dance in the freezing cold at events like Igloofest. Yet no one calls up all of their friends to fly over to Chicago for a Harvey Nichols sale or road trip to LA to buy another Shamwow.

When it comes to creating a movement brands could take a lesson from the music industry where the only goal is to produce inherently desirable content.

So ask yourself - is what you are making capable of filling at least a concert hall with a simple message?

This is not a lesson.

It is an example. Hopefully it will inspire you to think different. Hopefully it will drive you towards creating a movement of your own.

Photo credit: Robert-Philippe Masse, Igloofest Montreal, 2012