Band Promotion via Personal Branding
Image via Wikipedia
Hey guys,
I’m taking a break from the BOTB topics to share a cool video blog post by a dude who goes by the name of Brian Thompson. I heard of him a few weeks ago completely by accident and was pleasantly surprised that he’s a fellow Canuck, heads up an indie record label and is a music marketing consultant.
In this video, he talks about personal branding and what it means. What exactly is personal branding and how can you use it to promote your band?
Lots of us tend to compartmentalize our lives: “This is my work life, this is my personal life, this is my family life, these are my hobbies” etc. What personal branding does is incorporate other elements in your life and using that to promote other projects – like your band.
Brian cites Duff McKagan (best known as the bassist for Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver) who also writes a financial advice column for Playboy magazine. Our initial thought is that writing about what the band members do outside of the band will take away from the band – but it can actually get you more exposure.
Maybe Velvet Revolver doesn’t want to promote Duff’s Playboy column on their website, but you can bet Duff gets a small note at the end of his article that mentions that he is/was a member of G N’ R and Velvet Revolver – and he’s exposed to a totally different audience with Playboy (okay, exposed is a bad word choice – but you get what I mean).
I agree with Brian when he says that the internet is huge and there are hundreds or thousands of subsets of music fans out there. Believe it or not I’m sure there are professional accountants out there that are also big into hard rock – in this case Duff is going to be a very appealing person to them because he represents two main interests in their lives.
Anyway – before I bastardize the concept of personal branding any further, check out Brian’s video below and see if it inspires you to incorporate a little more personal branding into your band promotions.
P.S. In Brian’s case – personal branding worked. From discovering him on a podcast I eventually subscribed to his Youtube channel and checked out the band called Art of Dying that he happens to represent; one month ago I didn’t even know that he existed.
This personal branding stuff works!
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