twenty one pilots: A Lesson in Branding
How transmedia branding transformed a small-town music duo into a global sensation
Back in 2012, a pair of 24 year-olds from Columbus, Ohio got signed by an alternative record label and released some of their songs. The duo, made up of singer Tyler Joseph and drummer Joshua Dun, called themselves twenty one pilots (TØP). Like most new bands, they played at small venues and gained some traction across the States over the next couple of months.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Fast forward to 2019: the band has 20 music awards, a complete Gold/Platinum-certified album and a growing fanbase with over 14 million followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
So how did they get there?
Transmedia Branding
Transmedia storytelling is the process of using multiple digital platforms to tell a single story.
Branding deals with the strategies you use to create an image of a particular product or business that’s seen by the public. That involves everything from company logos, colours to a solid mission statement.
Transmedia branding is the brainchild of those two elements.
Nowadays, a brand’s success heavily depends on a cohesive online presence and the type of narrative you build around your product. And though anyone can make social media accounts to promote a project, the difference lies in how you use these platforms to create content that complements your initiative and turns it into an engaging a story.
That’s what twenty one pilots has been doing all along.
While Josh and Tyler didn’t have much of a following at the beginning, the release of their third and fourth official albums, (Vessel and Blurryface, respectively) started leveraging transmedia branding to create a multi-platform social media experience that went beyond the music. Now with their fifth record, Trench, out, you can see this structure shaping how fans listen to and engage with the TØP brand.
And though anyone can make social media accounts to promote a project, the difference lies in how you use these platforms to create content that complements your initiative and turns it into an engaging a story.
The Foundations
The twenty one pilots transmedia branding experience can be broken up into four key elements:
- Colour Direction & Wardrobe
- Storyworlds & Gamification
- Music Videos, Concerts and Behind The Scenes (BTS)
- Fan Involvement in Content Creation
Colour Direction & Wardrobe
Each TØP album has a different colour palette and wardrobe associated to it. The point of this isn’t just for aesthetic purposes, but rather to form a new theme for every record.
Storyworlds & Gamification
The visual motifs in the clothing and colours work together with the duo’s music to create interactive experiences that form a fictional narrative about the band.
The Blurryface attire and palette introduced fans to the “Blurryface” character who is continuously referenced throughout the fourth album.
And then before releasing Trench in 2018, the band brought back elements of Blurryface, but also raised the stakes by transforming the narrative into a game.
They shared a series of cryptic social media posts and webpages (all hosted on dmaorg.info) that introduced fans to a new character named “Clancy” and began creating hype for the band’s new music.
In gamifying their upcoming album, listening to twenty one pilots was no longer just about the music, but instead the experience that came along with it.
The Clancy mystery became a community-based game across Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit mega-threads and Discord servers that engaged both new and old fans to decipher the band’s new narrative.
Navigating through the TØP social media footprint not only uncovered more information about their music, but also showcased the transmedia story elements that created the band’s persona (aka its brand).
Music Videos, Concerts and Behind The Scenes
When they’re not creating gaming narratives for their albums, Tyler, Josh and the marketing team behind twenty one pilots continue the transmedia branding approach through the band’s music videos, concert photos and behind the scenes videos/tour diaries.
While the fictional storylines introduced in each album create a persona for the band, the behind the scenes content actually humanizes the music duo and lets fans into the creative process of how Tyler and Josh make their music.
Fan Involvement in Content Creation
Branding is a two-way process. The product/company can create content, but there needs to be someone out there willing to consume and interact with it.
Though fans haven’t collaborated in the band’s music-making process (yet), twenty one pilots has made significant efforts in highlighting their fans’ (also known as the “Clique”) work and enhancing their concert experiences.
Whether it’s through fan art gallery events,
allowing fans to post/message them directly about their thoughts on recent concerts,
or playing games with them live during concerts,
twenty one pilots extend their transmedia branding to involve their fans. It’s a give-and-take process between creator and consumer.
Moving Forward
Even though they have done a phenomenal job in using social media to create a cohesive brand, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
Fan involvement in musicians’ work can extend beyond creating independent media works like fan art. TØP could take a page out of Logic’s recent project with HITRECORD where he actually made a song through crowd-sourcing:
Or like Fall Out Boy and Kendrick Lamar, they should follow their fans/other artists within their same music genre. Right now, twenty one pilots only follows two people on Twitter:
While searching hashtags allows the band to see fan content, following top content creators within the TØP fanbase would allow them to see what’s popular amongst the people who listen to their music and give them a leg up in streamlining and customizing their social media game for their followers.
Lesson
Big or small, having a social media presence as an artist today is critical to promoting your content and growing a fanbase. But a lot of the time, social media accounts are treated like items you get just to say you’ve crossed them off some standardized content creator starter pack.
So even if you don’t plan on being a huge social media influencer or a big band like TØP, learn from their transmedia branding strategy to create a more cohesive image for your product/business:
- Establish a consistent colour design that symbolizes your brand.
- Create narratives that engage with your audience across multiple social media networks.
- Regularly interact with your customers/fans and get feedback from them.
I know this article is hella long, so if you don’t takeaway anything or literally just skipped to the very end, just remember one thing about branding– it’s all about telling a story.
