August 15th, 2013

THE ARTIST IS IN CONTROL Artists are being drowned out by marketers and advertising. Advertising and Product Placement hide what is truly important: THE ARTIST. Recording Industries and high-profile labels are stealing Artist Brand Equity.

If we search music videos on YouTube and choose Selena Gomez’s “Come & Get It”

Immediately we see advertising for a movie and

Katy Perry’s music video Where is Selena? What are

we marketing here? Who are we really working for?

“Where is the ARTIST branding?”

The Problem:

The Example:

“Good brands reflect the histories of the time and the group of people that made them. They can not be copied. They can not be recycled.”-Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group

The industry has changed. Gone are the days of publicists and mass marketing. We are living in a Digital World.

Social Media and Niche Marketing have become more powerful than ever. The consumers build the brands.

Engagement is the driving force of today’s digital marketing campaign. Measuring and Analytics are more important than ever.

“We know that artists aren’t marketers, but that doesn’t mean they should lose control of their brand.”-Cindy Pond, CEO Taylor & Pond

Digital Marketing: Artist First

Key findings from Gartner U.S. Digital Marketing Spending Survey, 2013E

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The Problem:

With a Big Digital World comes BIG DATA “According to IBM, 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last 2 years

alone.”

How we attain this data, How we decipher this data and How we use this data to promote success is what we call ANALYTICS

Every brand is different because every artist is different. There are key metrics for successful digital marketing as well as key metrics for each particular brand. Our Favorite Metric: Return on Investment

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”-Albert Einstein, Physicist

Success is Always Measurable

The artist is in control of their brand and their investment into strengthening that brand. With dedicated ROI reporting we not only show, but prove that their investment is worth every penny.

Yamaha Entertainment Group

YEG was unique in that YAMAHA is already a well known brand. They were entering the recording industry for the first time and needed a direction. We established a Digital Marketing Strategy with combined Web Site and Social Media geared at positioning them as a premier American Record Label. LEOGUN was their first artist.

Challenge: An unknown label without an artist and a powerful brand without a position.

YEG: Analytics

Yamaha Entertainment Group came to us with under 3,000 likes. This is especially small considering the strength of the Yamaha brand. With positioning brand strategy and engaging content we brought total page likes to over 20,000 in less than 6 months. Unfortunately YEG is no longer a client and we can see new likes leveling out.

Challenge: Expand and track our digital audience on Facebook.

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LeogunChallenge:An unknown band with a small audience. No digital presence.

LEOGUN was signing with a record label for the first time and had zero digital presence. We established them along with YEG, but made sure to focus on the artist. Notice that YEG is not mentioned on their Facebook. We built the LEOGUN brand image separate from YAMAHA. This is what creates a loyal fan base of listeners who we then engage within Social Media.

Sarah Mclachlan

Sarah suffered from a serious lack of size in her digital audience, although she is a wonderful artist with a loyal following. We took over digital marketing and developed her social media accounts to offer more engagement. Now her followers can be a part of her journey. This also allows Sarah to focus on her music and both sides benefit. She has over 1 million Facebook fans ready to listen to her upcoming album.

Challenge: A small audience that has nowhere to engage

Sarah Mclachlan: Analytics

Engagement was the main focus on Sarah Mclachlan’s Facebook account that already had a large audience. Using Facebook Insights we can chart the unique users “talking about” Sarah’s Facebook page. These include Likes, Comments, and shares. The numbers are averaged over six month periods to show long term growth of close to 100% in 2 years. This is a lot of engagement when you consider she now has over 1 million fans.

Challenge: Measure Success of Increasing Engagement

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