You Are Not A Brand
illustration by Greg Chinn for Outer Voice
Brands Ain’t People
You’re not a brand. You’re a human. Thank goodness.
Celebrities, influencers, marketers and magazines spend a lot of time talking about building a “personal brand.” It’s a sexy thought, and it adds an air of credence to the amount of time some people spend taking selfies, making unboxing videos and naming things after themselves.
But a brand is a collection of things, not an individual. A brand is first and foremost the manifestation of people’s opinions of a product, service, or entity. It’s that entity’s values, that entity’s distinguishing attributes. It’s all that wrapped up in a package with a logo, tagline and general feeling pinned to it.
And that is incredibly valuable to a company.
But you’re not a company. You’re a solo creator or a member of a collective of humans working together.
Cramming your work, your online presence and your relationship with your audience into an idea of a “brand” minimizes your work and the time you put into learning a craft and creating.
However, you can leverage the tactics and strategies of brand building in how you hone your voice and connect with your audience.
Below are some key successful steps taken from branding and design, reframed for the individual artist.
Rather than gearing it to selling sneakers or garnering likes, this framework is built for you to more successfully reach your audience by creating space to examine and communicate your individuality, your authenticity and your personal situation.
KNOW YOURSELF
Interrogate why you do what you do. What drives you? What keeps you going after rejection and criticism? What keeps you pushing past gatekeepers? What helps you ignore the trolls, or what about the trolls feeds you? Why do you get out of bed on a bad day and make what you make?
Really dig into the why of you and your work. Write it down. Clarify it. Learn to communicate it.
KNOW YOUR WORK
Have you put in the days, weeks, months and years necessary to consider yourself knowledgeable and skilled? What does your work say? How do you want it to change people? How is it different from other work? Are you sure you’re not copying or appropriating? Is your work honest to who you are?
Hold your work under the microscope.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Who are your audience as individuals? How did they find you? What do they watch, listen to and read? Do they follow artists like you? If so, which ones and what do you have in common? Do they follow artists who are not like you? If so, which ones and what can you learn from that knowledge? How do they interact with you, and how do you interact with them?
The difference between the relationship of brand to audience and artist to audience is that you have the opportunity to create a one-to-one relationship. This doesn’t mean you have to answer every comment or email, and it doesn’t mean you have to meet every one face-to-face. It does mean that the interaction you do have feels more intimate to your audience. Why? Because they feel an intimate connection to your work.
If you’re just starting out or looking to build your audience, ask yourself “who is my ideal audience?” Then look at the questions above and build a profile of who you want your audience to be. It’ll help you know where to find them.
Preserving and deepening that authentic connection is key.
INTEGRATE YOUR STORY
Look back at what you learned when you distilled why you work and what your work is. How does that intersect with your audience? What about your motives and values is shared with your audience?
Communicate the why behind your work. Communicate what’s important to you. Your audience will draw closer.
PAUSE
Stop. Look at your work. Your audience. Yourself. Breathe.
Before you hit send, before you post, before you react … pause. Everything you say carries weight with your audience. Be honest. Be tactful. Be kind.
Need help defining your voice or reaching your audience? Give me a shout. I offer consulting and services for all kinds of individual artists and arts organizations.
