Turning Bands Into Brands: Marketing Rock & Roll Like Breakfast Cereal

Minneapolis-based branding agency Mono (whose clients include Apple, Virgin, and General Mills) has decided to venture into the indie music scene. The company has teamed with local indie rock band Howler, and its label Rough Trade Records, to launch a large scale marketing campaign that attempts to promote a rock 'n’ roll group with an approach typically seen with big brand companies.

Entitled "America Give Up" (named after the band’s debut album), the campaign features a series of videos and ads of a disgruntled old man spattering off his frustrations about the decline in Western culture and society. The messages are in hopes of engaging audiences with the band’s personality, and effectively, turning the band into a brand.

"One of the big goals of this piece is definitely to bring out the personality of the band and the attitude of the band,” said Mono founder Chris Lange. “They like to push people’s buttons. They’re good old fashioned rock 'n’ rollers."

Even the band's branding elements have all been crafted to look as much like a brand, and not a band, as possible (notice how the America Give Up album cover strongly resembles the cigarette brand Lucky Strike).

Vice President of Marketing for Beggars Group Label (whom Rough Trade Records sits under), Adam Farrell, mentions that he and his team are interested in gaining insights into a potential new promotional model – to launch bands as brands rather than attempting to partner them with big corporations for dual promotions where one simply feeds off the other.

"I guess the lesson is no matter how hard you try to deny it, it’s all marketing,” Farrell said. “But hopefully what we are doing leading into SXSW is slightly smarter and entertaining to fans than some social-energy-subscription-cloud-lifestyle-browave-showcase on Red River and 8^th."

Interestingly enough however, members of Howeler were not involved with most of the planning elements of this campaign. Also, the band members themselves are nowhere to be seen in any of the promotional mediums (it’s just the angry old man).

The reason?

"Honestly, we’re pretty bad businessmen,” says singer / guitarist Jordan Gatesmith. “[But] I put a lot of trust into people who I do trust.”

Album and ticket sales, as well as web analytics, will be gauged to determine the overall effectiveness of the campaign. While eyeballs and interest are likely to achieve high stats, it will be interesting to see the amount of new fans that Howler acquires through running a campaign where they are, essentially, out of the picture. Further, how their current fans react to this big brand approach will also be of interest, as some may be taken aback by the "big corporation" aid that their beloved indie band is receiving. 

In a case where the artist is allowed to simply be the artist, and the marketing company is allowed to flex their branding muscles, it will be interesting to see how effective this campaign turns out to be, and if it shows any light of the next evolutionary step in artist marketing.

The “America Give Up” campaign videos can be viewed on Howler’s YouTube channel here. 

This post is by regular Hypebot contributor and independent music business professional & musician, Hisham Dahud (@HishamDahud)