Your band as a brand
How savvy artists are redefining partnerships in the post-streaming world.
Right now, there are likely more people in London that have seen Jorja Smith on posters than heard her debut album. That’s an impressive feat considering Smith’s Lost & Found, a contemporary take on neo-soul that’s ushered in a new purple patch for U.K. R&B, is on high rotation pretty much everywhere. You hear it in gyms, in cafes, at the tills for John Lewis. For an independent release whose big hit is over two years old, it’s remarkably omnipresent. But still, we see Smith more. She’s the new face of Air-Force 1, having collaborated with Nike on a cleverly titled ‘Force is Female’ campaign and we all know what the sneaker behemoth’s media spend looks like.
I stress the word ‘collaborate’; Smith is an artist that many brands love, but makes them work for her. The social spots for this campaign feature new edits of her music. She has designed her own events to expand upon the promise of the ads plastering every tube station and was directly involved in their styling. You could almost say Smith is a creative director.
At the very least, someone in her management team is.
The ways in which musicians make money is changing fast. By surveying the cream of the crop currently making waves in the culture, it’s easy to see which artists have figured out how to make this brave new world work for them. On the flip, it also throws into sharp relief those still at the mercy of bad deals and non-existent strategy.
In 2018, if you want to earn enough to eat as a full-time artist, you realistically have three options. (This presumes you are not at the level where streaming has an impact on your income, which frankly, unless you’re someone like Jorja’s Canadian mate, Drake, it probably doesn’t.)
The first two of these — touring/merch sales and synchronisation — are already being rinsed by every stakeholder in an artist’s career. Both also have a ceiling; a band, singer or producer can only tour so much in a calendar year before they have an actual breakdown and really, nobody wants to hear the same M83 or Temper Trap song on every mobile phone ad.
The third avenue is branded partnerships.
Labels, publishers and managers are all aware that this is the fastest growing revenue stream available to their charges. It’s also the most controversial, particularly if you come from a genre that traditionally values ‘authenticity’. Ironically, the vast majority of these are white and male.
I’ve had many conversations with artists over the past few months, and what’s astounding is not only how reticent many artists from folk, rock, electronic and alternative backgrounds are to even entertain the idea of branded partnerships, but how bad the campaigns are that are usually offered to them when compared to their contemporaries in hip-hop or R&B.
Play this show sponsored by a beer company. Tag us on Instagram. Act natural for this six-part web series set in one of our budget hostels. Hold an acoustic guitar and read this awkwardly scripted manifesto about the importance of health insurance.
That sort of mundane, uninspiring shit.
A brand partnership doesn’t only have to mean flogging your song in an ad for McDonalds or wearing a hoodie with a gigantic logo. The best in show fuse the artist and brand together so closely that it takes a while to figure out who’s actually in control. They treat the artist as a brand — just like the one contracting them. There’s less of the top-down dictatorial client-creative relationship that we from the advertising world are well-accustomed to.
While Jay-Z and Diddy got the ball rolling by realising the power of their personal brands back in the late ’90s, it’s the new generation of hip-hop and R&B musicians - especially in the U.K.- that are enjoying a renaissance of ownership in an increasingly commercialised arena.
Leading the charge are grime artists, who actively design or call the shots across every brand campaign they are involved with. It should come as no surprise that those at the top, like Stormzy and Skepta, have their own full-time brand managers. The former has just launched his own publishing imprint with Penguin and frequently collaborates with adidas, while the latter just sold out his third sneaker line, held a star-studded concert in Nigeria and worked with Levi’s to build a new recording studio for underprivileged kids in Tottenham.
Both are managed by incredibly savvy, take-no-prisoners women that are fiercely protective of their charges’ IP, but not averse to using it to make additional income when the fit is right. Skepta’s incredible manager, Grace Ladoja, is a former filmmaker who unapologetically consults for legacy brands like Supreme and Barbie. She recently received an MBE from the Queen and has even starred in her own client’s campaign. That’s about as authentic as it gets.
Critics will say that having finally cracked tricky overseas markets, grime is simply having a moment; the same sort of moment that alt-folk had 5 years ago when you couldn’t step into an airport without hearing Avicii’s ‘Wake Me Up’, The Lumineers or any bearded bro with a banjo. But that’s a lazy trend analysis that discounts how much work the current crop of artists have put into their own brands, allowing them to confidently work with others.
Skepta is not yet making bonkers Calvin Harris money. Jorja Smith is not counting cheques like Lady Gaga, or even Florence Welch for that matter. In order to fund their wild dreams for live shows or inspiring videos or setting up their own label, they need the extra income as much as the next guitar-wielding kid. The reason they know how to do it with panache is not because they’re ‘urban’ or make the ‘sound of the streets.’ It’s because they work with teams that understand that art and commerce are about as realistically distant in 2018 as editorial and advertising.
True artists occupy an interesting space for a potential client. They’re both creative and the product. Sometimes they need an agency, or sometimes they are their own. What’s clear is that simply employing them as talent in the way we currently use actors and directors for a 60' is not working. Nobody becomes a musician because they enjoy being told what to do. It’s a rough life by anyone’s standards, even at the upper levels, but it affords a certain level of creative freedom that ideally shouldn’t be sullied by a fat cheque.
The future of recorded music continues to change. Despite its current market dominance, Spotify may not retain its top spot and Apple could still be wiped out by another challenger we haven’t even heard of yet. Lord knows it’s happened before. Brands, however, are not going anywhere, nor is their interest in hooking into the main vein of youth culture.
I believe independent U.K. artists are leading the way for how effective brand partnership arrangements should look and feel. The real question now is whether others will follow suit. In most cases, what’s missing isn’t the desire to collaborate, it’s a creative, strategic approach to working with what is traditionally considered the enemy.
I know, I know. MCA would be rolling in his grave. But then, Beastie Boys were selling millions of albums at $30 a pop, a good ten years before Jorja Smith was born.
Even the worst client on Earth loves music. Help them enable your artist to make it — the right way.
Jonno Seidler is a freelance brand creative and strategist for artists.
