Bands and Brands
Jason Ruby
||
December 1st, 2021
“A band’s name is irrelevant because it’s their sound, songwriting, style and stage presence that defines their brand.”
Bands and Brands
My favourite band name has always been the Grateful Dead. It seems simple and unassuming at first, but it becomes darker and multi-dimensional the more you think about it. But the Grateful Dead’s name is also a bit misleading, with a name like that you might expect them to sound like a heavy metal or alternative rock band, but they are an eclectic mix of folk, country, blues, rock and arguably a touch of southern gospel. Mötorhead, who topped Spin Magazine’s list of Best Band Names of All Time – sounds like the music they play – a distorted mix of heavy-metal and punk. Then there is Judas Priest, on the other end of the spectrum. If you didn’t know better, you might think Judas Priest is more fitting for a gospel or Christian music band, but they are best described as thrash-metal, with no religious or Christian connection at all.
The point is, a band’s name is irrelevant because it’s the consistency in their sound, song writing, fashion, style, and stage presence that defines their brand. Success in the music business, like every other industry, requires strong brands like any other product or service in the marketplace.
Branding the band
What defines a band’s brand? It’s everything really, but the most successful bands have found a way to amplify those specific qualities that make them stand out. I just finished watching a documentary about the Go Go’s. Surprising and unknown to me, they started off as an all-female, punk rock band, touring the UK with bands like The Specials and Madness. When they finally got a record deal, it was their song writing and sense of melody that stood out and made them appealing to the masses.
The Go-Go’s chose to define themselves and, in doing so, created a new approach to music that allowed women to stand-out in a male dominated genre and industry. Rather than trying to heed the expectations for what an all-female band would look and sound like, Beauty and the Beat (their first album) instead, forged the Go-Go’s own path as rocking females who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. The proof of the success of the niche they created for themselves was a climb to the top of the Billboard charts – a first for an all-female band.
Some artists spend an agonizing amount of time on every detail of their band’s image including whether to use the word “the” in front of their band’s name. While you might be inclined to dismiss the importance of this uninteresting article of the English language, some artists take it quite seriously. (While I would love to write a blog post about that topic, I’ll let you read on your own about why ‘The Cure’ is completely different from ‘Cure’ as a band name.) Needless to say, this simple word in the English language actually has a significant meaning to a band’s name.
Some artists might want to pretend like branding and the business of music don’t matter to them, but it’s impossible to be a commercial success without having a clearly defined brand. Many artists that drastically change their look or genre of music have difficultly gaining traction in the marketplace (although there are a few exceptions like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift etc.). If I loved Opera and enjoyed Pavarotti’s music but then I listened to an album of him singing country music, it wouldn’t fit his brand. It would make as much sense to me as Tesla releasing a gasoline-powered car. I wouldn’t have gotten what I thought I was paying for.
Plugging In
The most successful musical brand evolution in modern music occurred when Bob Dylan set aside his acoustic guitar. The folk music powerhouse dismayed his fans at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when he started playing an electric guitar on stage. While it didn’t sit well with fans in the short term, (he was booed throughout his entire electric set) his most creative and successful albums were still to come, and he won over an entirely new audience over the next few years and he’s still going, almost 60 years later!
Aside from an extremely prolific and successful career in R&B pop music, Prince is also well known for a clumsy career re-brand when he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. In 1993, he was battling Warner Brothers, his record company, and wanted to be released from his contract. Their refusal forced him to get creative. He changed his stage name so that any new music wouldn’t be attributed to “Prince.” It became a logistical nightmare for Warner Brothers. Among other things, the symbol was not available on a standard keyboard or in font packages. They were forced to mail out floppy disks to all the media outlets so they could replicate the symbol in their news releases. It was a brilliant publicity stunt to aggravate contract negotiations but not without negative repercussions for the superstar. His brand took a hit, and was the butt of countless jokes, for almost seven years until he was finally released from his contract and could resume with more control over his music and reassume his original brand.
Branding. It matters.
What does any of this have to do with B2B marketing? It’s a simple message. Branding is important to your business regardless of your industry. It’s easy to dismiss – if your business is already successful, why waste money on marketing? Even now, with modern digital marketing and social media, a company can succeed without marketing or having a properly defined brand – but it’s often that exclusivity or elusiveness that propels their success and inadvertently defines the brand for them. You can’t escape being branded, and so it’s best that you control how you are perceived by investing in a proper brand and strategy and then living and breathing that brand in everything you do.
It was 40 years ago that MTV first began broadcasting. The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video that station ever played and forever re-defined what a brand image meant to musicians around the world. You couldn’t just stand on stage and sing and roll the camera anymore. There had a be a story. It had to be sexy, creative, fast-moving, glamourous, and cinematic. But then, bands like R.E.M. came along and bucked that trend, shooting low-budget videos that rarely showed the band playing instruments. Instead, they used art and creativity to keep the focus on their more intellectual music. To them, their brand was the music and only the music, and their thrust into the video world forced them to get more creative with how they were going to present it. It didn’t change who they were. It enhanced it.
One of the most famous ice cream brands in the world, Ben & Jerry’s, aside from being known for delicious ice cream, is also famous for the creative names for their flavours. Cherry Garcia, (named after the Grateful Dead lead singer, Jerry Garcia) is their biggest seller. While on the surface it seems like a simple clever play on words, it goes deeper than that. Like the band, Ben and Jerry’s values are based around peace and love, illustrating the truth about bands and branding – there is so much more to it than just a name.
