I work with a lot of small entertainment companies. Often, there are too few staff members to separate the brand from the product.
Earlier I wrote that the brand is how people perceive the personality of what you’re selling. So, even though you’re selling the same thing, what that thing means to different people is different.
When there are a lot of people in a process, the messages get seperated and filtered. It’s easier for each person in the chain to connect with the needs of the next. The farmer is not dealing with beauty on a regular basis. She’s dealing with what fertilizer, hydration, and PH balance is best to make a lot of carrots. You don’t want your carrot package to say “Now grown in really alkaline dirt, watered with an a390x irrigation system, fertilized with three different types of animal shit!”
Cut the shit!
So, it’s hard for a small entertainment business selling directly to create a brand that is effective. We’re deep in the weeds of day-to-day. We’re thinking about the gears, not about the watch.
To start, realize that your brand will probably FEEL like lying.
I encourage you to not lie, but because of your perspective, your marketing message will not be…
- complete : you won’t be able to get in every detail of everything you think is great about it.
- direct : you will focus on the positives of the experience of it. That’s not the product.
- what it is to you : you’ll be speaking from the voice of the customer.
Your goal is to not disappoint
First, make a good thing. Then, get people to consume that good thing without being disappointed with how they got there. You didn’t lie to them or trick them, you gave them a simple message that helped them understand that they would like it if they buy in.
Crash Course
I had a weekly cooking show, Crash Course, in a theater in San Francisco. To me, the show was about cooking, cleaning, video editing, promoting, and writing jokes. Doesn’t sound that entertaining, probably.
Handed out lots of fliers to people in person to promote it. The phrase that they most responded to, that ended up sticking was “Cooking, Juggling, and Getting Hurt.”
The show was different every single week. I didn’t guarantee that every week I would cook, juggle, and get hurt; but if someone was drawn in by that slogan, they wouldn’t be disappointed. That phrase signaled exactly the feel of the show.
The customer conversation
A good lesson from Crash Course is have conversations with people who will buy your stuff. As many as possible. You get practice in talking to them from their perspective and leaving the garbage of your grind out of it.
Even having conversations with a friend where the friend pretends to be the customer helps a lot.
If you have something that’s a true service the customer needs and desires, there is always a way to market it.
You might deal with the whole supply chain
You might be the person making a video game, selling it to a publisher, selling it to game stores, and making the packaging to sell it directly to customers. If this is the situation, each one of those customers has different needs and your game will have a new brand for each level of buyer. It can be a lot.
Get started
It’s easy to get spread thin, so don’t act like you’re a big marketing agency deliberating for months on a brand. Start taking bold stabs at it and having conversations. You don’t need a perfect carrot story, but you don’t want to be talking about your tractor.