LOGO

Most pop artists have a logo. Some have a voice beyond their singing one. A few even have an alter ego – Eminem is the real Slim Shady…

One of the biggest music brands right now: Lady GaGa. She rose without much warning, quickly defining her place, style and behaviour into a global brand. Her very own brand. And a perfectly balanced off-beat/on-beat one at that. (Anyone see her performance on X-Factor a few weeks back? Bizarre but mesmerizing.)

But how can a pop performer – a person – be a brand? There’s more to it than a logo. This type of brand is human, and, with that, is more authentic than most product or service brands. Fundamentally, a pop act brand is whatever it says it is. Its values, design style and behaviours just are. They tend not to be made-up values forced to live and breathe, as when a marketer assigns values to a product brand – instead, they’re based on a certain truth.

Whilst managers and publicists do undoubtedly have some part to play in how pop brands behave (or how the pieces are picked up afterwards), the opportunity for a pop act to have a public voice beheld by the likes of Twitter now removes that filter. We hear, or read, in 160 characters, the act’s personal voice – how they want to talk and what they want to talk about. The world of music manufacture seems to have been twisted into semi-self-manufacture, aided by Twitter.

It is this voice/behaviour that consumers buy into, just as much as the music itself, although the artist must deliver on the latter to be worthy of a voice.

A pop brand is essentially a Creative Platform for a marketing campaign. In fact, the artist’s personality often delivers the Big Idea too. And it’s from that point – provided the market is there for the music, the artist and the lifestyle he/she showcases – that a wide range of brand opportunities can be leveraged.

This is the point at which marketers step in, and waste no time to print T-shirts, pencil cases, and condom wrappers with the smiling faces of JLS – all true, and available to buy now. Or how about aftershave by Cliff Richard? Also true!

But whatever the spin-off merchandise, it’s the brand’s persona that the target consumer aspires to be. And it’s that sense of ‘be’, rather than ‘have’, that makes a compelling pop brand.