How do I build a brand as a musician?

Brand is the thing that can exist across multiple touch points. If you saw something country-flavoured in a big wig, you’d think, that’s Dolly Parton, and it’s that recognition underneath it, which comes down to a couple of consistent choices, repeated and celebrated over a huge career.

You don’t have to look at someone that big and think you’ve got to be Dolly Parton. Look at someone a level or two above you, not to blueprint or copy them, but to say, I love that, why do I love it, I want to make that part of my identity, and remember you wear the brand, rather than the brand wearing you.

The easier way in is asking what you don’t want it to feel like or look like. What makes you wince, what’s the worst it could be, and then what’s the opposite of that?

Tone of voice is part of it too, how you talk on Instagram and on stories, whether you type all in lowercase, which emojis you do and don’t use.

World building is how you participate in community and everything outside the album, the making of it and the people you collaborate with. It’s hard to do that artificially, so if you’ve already got a community, celebrate it, put a random song up on your story, or do a random cover one day because you wanted to learn it.

And ask people you trust what a song reminds them of, or what word they’d use to describe it, because outward perspectives help, and you at your core are going to be the brand.