Marketing and advertising guru Steve Stoute recently conducted a Q&A about branding and advertising at Billboard.biz and explained some of the pros and cons about partnering brands with artists. Check out some excerpts from the article below:
You brought in Chris Brown, Ne-Yo and Julianne Hough for a Wrigley’s marketing campaign. Are there any risks when artists put a brand’s name or jingle in their song?
Not when it’s done correctly or with honesty. I learned from the record business that artists working with corporations on projects that are seen as selling out are nothing more than a bad marriage. When artists do it right, it’s a perfect marriage. When you look at Run-D.M.C. and their deal with Adidas, it did not look wrong. When Bob Dylan is selling Victoria’s Secret or MC Hammer is selling chicken, then it’s a bad marriage.
There’s a whole seduction behind having a corporation say they want to be your partner. Sometimes artists do things to be more popular, not because it will help them be more of who they are. You’re seeing that with reality shows or guys being in movies just to be in movies. They’re just doing things to be popular. How you avoid that is by knowing who you are and who your audience is.
You went from the music business to the advertising business, two industries that are becoming interdependent. Will Translation ever start its own label?
I actually think about starting a label a lot and going back to my roots. Why I sit on the edge is because the music business still hasn’t figured out its core model yet. I do a lot of work with Interscope and Universal to help them define that. Maybe if the timing is right I’ll step into the record business. The ad business is not the record business. There’s not many YouTube stars and there’s a reason for that. Knowing how to build stars [A&R] is a unique skill set, except it’s been overpriced because record sales were exploding. When [A&R costs] come back down, maybe I will go back into the record business.
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Steve made some good points. I especially agree with him on the fact that “Knowing how to build stars [A&R] is a unique skill set”. I look forward to the day when these qualifications are made mandatory again.
I DON’T HAVE THE STRENGTH TO READ ALL OF THIS, MAYBE TOMORROW!
Steve Stoute is my idol.