I've recently been tasked with creating a personal brand for my Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) class at Western Washington University. The brand I created is simply titled as my name, "Hayden Radcliffe"! This brand, along with my personal website I'm creating, is about being a cross-section of marketing concepts, and my passion, which is music.
I am obsessed with music, particularly music in the Pop-Punk, Post-Hardcore, and Emo genres. These songs are fun, they're loud, and they're energetic. catchy guitar riffs, heavy-hitting drums, and memorable melodies all make up this type of music. A mix of harmonious and abrasive vocals bounce off of each other to help let out all the angst building up inside. These genres typically consist of bands over independent artists.
Many of the popular bands in these genres have unique things about them that make them stand out from other bands. Let's dive into some examples of bands that use repetition of brand elements in their marketing campaigns.
Bands like Dance Gavin Dance have featured the same type of font and lettering in all of their album titles, promotions, and website pages. Another band in the scene, Bring Me The Horizon began recently writing their lettering and fonts have a mix of sporadic and cryptic lowercase and capital lettering throughout the words. "tHis CoUld bE An eXamPLe". They have done this to provoke a futuristic, dystopian setting for their band image and album setting.
Some bands try and keep the same style of artwork when they release a new album. This keeps the fans comfortable that it's the same band delivering more of the music they love. It's entrusting and also makes the albums all share a feeling of connectedness. Two bands that do this are Silverstein and Dance Gavin Dance. Their album artwork is always created by the same artist every time, giving familiarity and repetition of their album artwork. Of course, it's a completely different picture, but certain elements make it feel connected.
Some bands carry distinct colors that represent them. These colors typically are derived from an album cover that became their most popular, or is the one they are currently promoting for. For instance, Blink-182's colors are typically seen as light blue, white and pink. Green Day is often seen as red and black. Paramore is typically orange, black, and white, and Machine Gun Kelly is pink.
Some bands give their fans a name to feel more included in the music and the band as a whole. Slipknot calls their fans "maggots", Sum 41 calls their fans "SkumF*ks", and My Chemical Romance calls their fans "Killjoys". This is not seen as offensive to the fans though, lots of them love having a name for the fanbase.
Similar to the album artwork, many bands try to keep their overall sound of their music relatively similar to their previous material. This could be by retaining the same band members, chord progressions, lyrical themes, melodies, rhythms, etc. Certain guitar tones and vocal deliveries will also create familiarity between the band's discographies. Keeping the same producer and engineer will also help with keeping the same type of sound. One band that did this very well is Dance Gavin Dance. Even while having 4 different lead vocalists throughout their 17 year lifespan, the drummer and guitarist have always remained the same, keeping their same style of sound the entire time. the guitarist's sounds are so distinct that a genre of music was created to resemble his type of sound, called "Swancore".
Another very important part of band marketing and appealing to an audience? Having a charismatic band member. Though this is typically the singer, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz is the bassist but is typically seen as the face of the band. Some charismatic singers would be Blink-182's Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, Paramore's Hailey Williams, Chiodos' Craig Owens, and Bring Me The Horizon's Oliver Sykes. These people are interesting and very engaging while on stage. They move around, they're loud, funny, or seen as attractive. They captivate the audience and make them want to watch and listen to them.
Creating a personal brand and sharing that brand with the world is all about consistency, repetition, and uniqueness. WWU's IMC teaches that repetition of brand elements is vital, and for bands in the music scene, it's no exception. Are you looking to create a personal brand? Repetition, repetition, repetition!
Thanks for reading my article! Be sure to subscribe to me on YouTube, add me on Linkedin, and follow me on Instagram. Let's Cheers to This!
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnK1sMUxSOET65acI9o1SBQ
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayden-radcliffe/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayden_radcliffe/
Creative Message Strategy Methods:
Goal: Achieve Awareness of this website through repetition of brand elements spread throughout the website.
Goal: Achieve Liking of this website through: Repetition of my unique value proposition.
Goal: Achieve Knowledge of this website through using the "feel good" method of messaging.
Goal: Achieve Preference of this website through giving reasons why, demonstrations, visible passion and dedication.
Goal: Achieve Trial of this website through incorporating risk reduction throughout my brand.
