Transcription
Today we're going to talk about world building and storytelling. This is the biggest secret weapon used by all your favorite artists. They have mastered this skill and are deeply clear on their project's story and the world it exists in.
If you want your music to reach millions of people, you need to know how to build out your brand's universe. Many artists will think that as long as the music is good, that will carry everything else. But in a modern world that is oversaturated with art and media, this is unfortunately no longer the case.
I would argue that brand, which I call the movie or the show that the audience is watching, is equally as important as the soundtrack. They need to work seamlessly together to grab and hold someone's attention. World building is how you can psychologically engineer connection with your audience. Human beings are genetically preconditioned to pay attention to good stories and memorable music, as it's part of the survival mechanisms in our brains. The more people you are connected to, paired with the value that you're giving them with your art, the bigger your brand becomes.
Building community around your brand and music is the number one way to grow your artist project. If you can create a defined universe and compelling story for your brand, the sold-out shows, international tours, and creative and financial freedom could all be yours.
So, who am I to even talk about this topic? I have a longer video on my story on the Neighborhood Art Supply channel if you want to go check that out. But I'm Chris Alba. I own a niche creative agency called The Colt Creatives. We work primarily in the spaces of music and fashion, building brands for artists and creative companies. We've done tens of millions of dollars in business over the last 10 years, and we've worked with many household names in the music industry, as well as Fortune 500 companies. It's been an absolute blast working on this company over the last decade because mainly, I love artists. They're my people. It's like how Jerry Seinfeld says he only wants to hang out with other comedians. That's the way that I feel about artists.
So I wanted to use this channel to give all the information I could from my experiences over the last 20 years working on all sides of the creative arts, and I wanted to build community through Neighborhood Art Supply with like-minded individuals. I felt like I had been given the gift of winning early in my life, but after a while, you don't want it to just be about you all the time. But once I started Colt and I started helping other people, there was no diminishing returns. It only got better, and I got addicted to it. So this is my life's mission now: to help artists tell their stories and gain clarity around all aspects of their projects to help drive them toward success.
So today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay out the exact method by which we build brands with Colt, a step-by-step process of how to build your brand's universe. And if you can follow this method and build an authentic, compelling universe, the sky is the limit to how far you can take your project. So let's get into it.
Step One: Define Why You're Building the Universe.
Okay, so you're ready to build out your artist project universe. Before you can begin, it's good to get aligned on a few different things. First, what's the big picture, long-term vision that you have for this project? What are you trying to do with all this? Why are you trying to do this? What's at the heart of what drives you? Is this more of a creative endeavor, something that you're doing to fulfill a creative itch you have, things that you want to make and share? Is it more of an entrepreneurial exercise, you want to build a revenue-generating business around your music talent by creating the project? Are you trying to build community around like-minded individuals? It may be all of these things, but if you had to choose, which one leads?
It's important to be clear on exactly what it is that you're trying to do because, for example, if you were leading with creative freedom as the primary driver and you wanted to create a legacy around your work, you might be more protective than someone who is doing it to try to grow a business. The more business-minded person, if the number on the check is right, they may be willing to collaborate on a certain project or different brands because they know the more money the business makes, the cooler, bigger stuff that they can do for the project. Clarity here is crucial before you start building, so you have a system by which to make decisions that will come up in both the build phase and the growth phase. So the action for step one is to have an internal journal session where you're asking yourself these questions and getting clear on the answers.
Step Two: Define If the Universe is Built Around the Brand or the Person or People.
So I've said in previous videos that I believe that modern brands are movies or ongoing shows that the audience is watching. And when you're looking at the high level of writing your movie, you either play the brand or you play the man, woman, or group. What I mean by this is a group like Gorillaz or an artist like Anima or MF Doom. It's all about the universe and the characters. It's very conceptual and it has detailed characters and settings, just like a movie.
Now, on the flip side, when you make it more about the person, an artist like Taylor Swift or Steve Aoki or Dylan Francis, the brand is about them. It's almost like a reality show about their life. So step two is defining what this movie will be about. Will it be a universe filled with fictional characters, or will it be more based in reality and be about the artists themselves or the band? Having this understanding is key to begin, but without the next step, making this decision won't mean much.
Step Three: Define the Universe Rules.
So think of this process as being similar to writing your screenplay. Before any story happens, you'll need to define the rules of the universe. What is possible in this universe? What isn't possible? If you look at something like Star Wars, it feels like it's similar to our universe, but in the Star Wars universe, there is an energy and practice called the Force, where adopters can use all kinds of mystical powers. Interstellar space travel is possible, and there's a technology called light speed that allows spaceships to jump long distances in a short time. There is also a galactic empire that is trying to rule all planets and inhabitants with an iron fist. All of this was defined and laid out as the rules of the Star Wars universe before any of the stories or characters within the universe were fully fleshed out.
This is also why new series and shows for something like Star Wars are endless because as long as you stick to the rules, you can create new characters and new storylines, and it will still be Star Wars. Screenwriters will go deep on these rules, as well as writing backstories on different characters and places inside the universe. The more thorough you are with this and the deeper your understanding, the easier all the decisions will be going forward. Director Quentin Tarantino famously will write deep backstories on all the places and characters in his movies. This way, when he's on location shooting the movie, a set designer, costumer, or actor can ask him a question about the script, and he can give them a quick, concise answer. He can do that because of all the work he's done ahead of time to bring clarity around the universe and what he's trying to create for the audience.
But you may be thinking, "Okay, all this makes sense if it's more like Gorillaz or Excision or Eric Prydz type universe or world. But what if I'm making the brand more about me, more of a reality show type format?" So even with that path, the same rules apply, but you're setting the rules as existing in modern day, taking place in the city or cities that you're going to be in, and then defining what's possible in the real world. And all of this is up to you. For example, with Dylan Francis, his comedic brand, it's all about him and his various characters. But in his universe, a piñata can talk without the audience hearing, but Dylan can hear. And DJ Hansel and Dylan Francis can be two different real people in the same place at the same time. All this is possible in the name of comedy in the Dylan Francis world.
So if you apply this kind of thinking to building your own universe and do the work of laying out the rules and backstories ahead of time, it will make all the decisions you make going forward much more simple. But the next step is why people will actually follow the brand.
Step Four: Define the Plot.
So now, if your brand is a movie or show, what is your movie about? What is the audience actually watching? What's the story? There's a great book called "The Seven Plots" by Christopher Booker that lays out the seven main plots by which to tell a story. Those seven plots are: overcoming a monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. There's a lot of great videos and information out there summarizing this book if you don't want to read the 700 pages that Booker took 30 years to write.
But here's a few examples of plot and how you could apply that to your music project. Is this a rags to riches story where someone from the bottom is making their way to the top, like Eminem? Is this a hero story with villains and foes, like Taylor Swift in her story? Mean girls, mean boys, and bullies, including bullies from the media, challenge her rise to greatness. That's why her fanbase, her Swifties, will come to her aid when they feel a villain in her story is wronging her. Another example: Is this a comedic story, like The Lonely Island brand or Tenacious D? Is this a tragic story based on self-destruction or internal demons, like Kurt Cobain, Juice WRLD, or Linkin Park? Or maybe it's a rebirth story, like Demi Lovato and her personal journey with recovery, or Britney Spears post-conservatorship? Or maybe it's a voyage and return type story, like Daft Punk's Discovery or Pink Floyd's The Wall?
Understanding the plotline for your story is a major part of the brand build for your project. This plot would influence everything across the brand: things like content strategy, storytelling, what to focus on in interviews or press moments, copy for social media posts, and styling would all tie into the greater plotline. But every great plot is only as good as its characters, and that's what we're going to talk about next.
Step Five: Define the Characters.
I have a video I previously did on character archetypes and how they can play into your music brand. If you haven't seen that yet, I would suggest watching that video after this one. But basically, it explains that there's 12 main archetypes for a story. These are the archetypes that will need to make up the characters in your universe. If you are the main character, you'll need to be one of these archetypes. You can be more than one, but not more than two. And if you are two different archetypes, it needs to be an 80/20 or 90/10 type split. It should be very clear to the audience what your archetype is.
Then, if there's additional characters, you want to add them into your universe, and you can choose from the other archetypes. For example, in Gorillaz, 2D is a relatable everyman, Murdoc is the rebel outlaw, and Noodle is the innocent. Other examples are Post Malone or John Summit as the everyman, Travis Scott or Kanye West as the rebel, Usher as the lover, Kronos or Prince as the magician, Rick Ross as the ruler/controller, Fela or Childish Gambino as the creator, and Taylor Swift or Martin Garrix as the hero.
The more important thing here is, once you define the character archetype, you'll need to have a corresponding story element that makes it clear to the audience who the archetype is. For example, the hero will need something to be heroic against, so you'll need to define who the villains and foes in the story will be. If you create a rebel character, he or she will need to have something to rebel against. A lover will need something or someone to love, and so on. The character archetype becomes the primary motivation of the main character in the movie that the audience is watching. A creator is motivated to create, an outlaw is driven towards freedom, and a controller is driven towards status. This is what the audience should see in the movie, and it should be supremely clear in order to tell a good story.
I have another video on the Neighborhood Art Supply channel that's all about why people follow projects, why they care to listen to your story, and why they care to follow you. If you haven't watched that one yet, it may be worth checking out to help with this section because your story should be clear, and understanding why people might listen is crucial as well. For example, in Blake Snyder's book "Save the Cat," which is one of the quintessential books on screenwriting, he talks about how when you're writing a story, you should keep it simple for the audience and understand why they may want to listen. Blake Snyder quotes, "The rule of thumb is: Tell me a story about a person who..." and he goes on to fill in the blank here with various options: "A person who I can identify with, a person who I can learn from, a person who I have a compelling reason to follow, a person who I believe deserves to win, or a person who has stakes that are primal and ring true to me." And it can be more than one reason that somebody's following your project, but the story and characters should be simple and easy to follow.
If the character archetypes, what the story is about, or a lack of understanding why the audience may listen, if one of these things is wrong, it can poison the whole well and ultimately make for a story that's not connecting. And that's generally what I see when I'm hired by a client to assess their brand and collaborate with them: is they just aren't being clear with their universe, their plot, their characters, and the character motivations. They haven't brought the audience into a clear story, and it's usually all over the place. And this isn't coming from a place of judgment with my clients, as this exact thing was happening to me with my own artist project.
So, quick story: In the early days of Colt, I was still running my artist project. I had the knowledge that I have now, but I was making the same mistakes that I see when I work with clients. Even in the early days, we were getting pretty crazy results with the clients that we were working with. Once we elevated their brands and made the stories more clear, it would turn on their brand, and they would see all sorts of exponential growth and opportunities. But I would ask Lindsay, my then-girlfriend, who was also my partner in Colt, why this was so easy for me to do with other clients, but it was so difficult to make these decisions for myself. And when I asked her this question, she had absolutely the best answer. She said it was all about the point of view and the personal ties. She said when she would see me work with clients, I'd be more like a coach. I just wanted to get the client's results, so I was looking at them and their project in a very different way than they were looking at the project themselves. But then she said, when it came to my own project, I was bringing all of my own personal baggage, second-guessing, and perfectionism into the decisions that I was making. So instead of the bird's-eye view I had with clients, I could only see out of my own eyes.
So I 100% get it. It's hard to be objective about this and really get it right. But once you do, it can honestly be the difference between a good project with a small audience or a multi-million dollar, internationally touring, household name type project. The difference between these two levels is as simple as finding clarity.
Step Six: Create an Elevator Pitch and a Short Bio for the Brand.
At this point, you've got the high-level story laid out with the different elements, but let's define even further. So for this exercise, you're going to write a short elevator pitch that explains the full story to somebody who's never heard about the brand. Here's a couple of examples of music brand elevator pitches:
Taylor Swift: A relatable hero brand story where the hero teaches the audience how to deal with navigating love and heartbreak, challenge, and bullies as she ascends to the top of the music industry mountain.
Eminem: A rags to riches story about a relatable rebel from Detroit who is free to say what he wants, when he wants, and brings the audience into his experiences surrounding celebrity.
Fred again..: An everyman brand that is built on authenticity, creativity, and being real. Fred feels like your best friend from school who happens to be crushing it in the music industry.
And then, once you have the high-level elevator pitch, it can be a good exercise to try to write a short bio for the brand. When writing this, be sure to use the previous filters that you've laid out. If this was a hero's journey story versus a rebel or outlaw story, the way the bio is written and the words used will be informed by this. Say it was a hero and rags to riches, you'd want to be sure to talk about the humble past of the character and how they came from nothing and are now surging to the top of the mountain. Or if it was a rebel story about overcoming a monster, and maybe the monster is the status quo or society's expectations, you'll want to be sure to position the character as somebody who is rebelling against the norms and seeks their own independence and creative freedom against the terrible monster that is societal norms.
Okay, so you've got your main elements. You've defined the universe, the universe rules, the plot, the characters, and you've written the story premise and elevator pitch. But now you're going to need to bring it all to life, and in order to do that, you'll need to be clear on the visual identity, which is what we're going to discuss next.
Step Seven: Put Together Visual Mood Boards.
So you've got all your pieces and your elements, and you're ready to put the movie together. At Colt, we usually go in on mood boards. We've had mood board decks sometimes filled with 40 to 50 pages of just reference images around the different elements that we're seeing for the brand. These mood boards would consist of things like overall universe reference images, photography or illustration style, motion references, colors, fonts, and styling. Every detail of every element of the brand should have a reference, and simplicity is key here. Even though we may have pages and pages of references, if I feel like I can show what I'm seeing in my head with one image for a given category, I'll do that. Sometimes having too many images for one category can make it too confusing.
Here's an example of some mood boards we created for one of the brands we built at Colt called ANNA, which is a duo project featuring dance music producers Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo.
Okay, so looking at the initial ANNA mood boards, this brand was actually pretty simple in terms of the design language and what we were seeing for the overall direction. What we called the direction for their brand was vintage UK rave meets contact sheets. So with Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo, when we walked through the process of brand therapy with them, we found that they were really keen on bringing their history and their background in the UK rave scene, both of them being from the UK. One of the creative directors I was working with at Colt, who goes by Ian Bixel, he had this idea of bringing in a sticker, specifically a yellow sticker, and having that yellow pop sticker live on top of all the different black and white assets that we were going to create.
Another piece of inspiration for this project was old photography contact sheets. So before digital, when you would actually shoot film for photo, you'd get back these contact sheets, and the images that you'd want to develop in the dark room, you'd call those out. We really liked the way that this was laid out and how you could storytell through a bunch of different shots in the one image. And we also liked the idea of doing our yellow color pop, which in these images, they're red, but we would apply our yellow color to the contact sheet.
And then, in terms of logo, when we spoke with Chris and Chris, we wanted to do something that was really simple and clean, not something that was overly stylized. And we also wanted to have a prominent icon or mark to go along with that minimal logo. And what we talked about as potentially being the subject matter for that mark or icon was using the Queen's crown, again, a nod to the UK and both of them being from England.
So for photography style, this is the same as the first page. It doesn't always happen like that, but the images that we had for the overall mood was where we wanted to go with the actual style of the photography. And this was another idea from Ian Bixel, who was the creative director on the project, of having this photocopy texture that would live on top of our different black and white images. So the idea is that you should be able to show someone who's never heard of you, your music, or your brand, these mood board images along with the story, and they should be able to understand the overall vibe of your vision.
We've actually had songs signed to major record labels for clients who are brand new, starting their project, all by having a compelling pitch deck that featured a well-thought-out brand story and compelling mood boards. And this is actually how it happens most of the time too, in Hollywood. There's a script, some mood boards or concept art, and someone who's committed to bringing the story to life. That's how many of your favorite movies got sold, funded, and made. And once you realize how vital these steps of definition are, you'll never go back, and you'll always build this way going forward. But similar to a great script in Hollywood that ends up flopping because of poor execution, the vision is everything, but how you execute that vision is usually what defines the level of success. And that's what we're going to talk about next.
Step Eight: Execute the Vision.
So why is it in Hollywood that certain actors get paid the big bucks to carry the movies that they're in? Why is it that certain DPs, directors of photography, who have won multiple Oscars many times over, have a waitlist and are in such high demand? Or why special effects team ILM seems to always be involved with the biggest blockbuster movies? Is it just because these people know the right people in the industry? Is it because of how long they've been doing it? No. The main reason these people get hired over and over again is because they can execute the movie's vision. Whether through experience, God-given gifts, or both, they have a reputation of doing high-level work again and again. They built a reputation and trust. This is why Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and Wes Anderson famously use a lot of the same cast and crew on their films. They want the highest quality craftsmen working with them on their vision.
You should approach building out your artist brand with the same kind of thinking. You may not have the multi-million dollar budgets the directors I just mentioned now have, but they all started from nothing too, and they had to be creative. And even in the early days of their career, they were hiring the absolute best people they could to help them execute their vision. The vision and story you've created may be all for nothing if it's not executed correctly. It's like the incredible script that didn't have the right team in place to properly execute, so ultimately, it doesn't connect with the audience. Hiring great artists and finding the right people to help you bring your vision to life is equally as important as the vision itself. I can't emphasize this enough. Ask around, do your research, find and reach out to people on social platforms whose work seems to be seasoned and lines up with your vision. It's all about building your team of collaborators.
Once you've executed, getting all the elements together for the project, you're going to need to properly organize these elements, and that's where the next step comes into play.
Step Nine: Organize Elements into a Brand Guidelines Deck.
So once you have the assets, you'll need to launch the brand. Here's a quick example of how a brand guidelines deck might look using our previous example of the Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo ANNA project.
So here's the cover page for the ANNA brand guidelines deck, followed by the table of contents. Then we have our biography page, we have a page giving direction on personality, voice, and tone, brand themes page, mood board pages, logo page, logo usage, which is dos and don'ts of the logo, icon dos and don'ts of the icon, brand colors, fonts, design elements, brand example page, and press photo pages. And you can see with the ANNA brand how they were able to scale this creative direction against all the different touch points of the project.
So this deck will be used in a variety of ways. For example, you can send to contractors that are helping you create assets for the project. You can send to promoters for a concert or club that you're performing at, so they understand the rules of the brand. You can send to labels, management companies, or potential brands that you may collaborate with, so they understand what your story is and what you can and can't do with the brand. And also, as a note here, I was a talent buyer for almost 15 years. And when an artist or band would send us their brand guidelines deck, it immediately made them more expensive in my mind. It showed how serious they were with their project. They had done the work to lay out their story and their visual identity, and they were clear with what they were trying to build. In my mind, I'm assuming that how you do anything is how you do everything. So if an artist is taking the time and care to do this, they must be applying the same kind of intention to all the aspects of their project. That intention will help grow and firmly connect them with their audience, which in turn gives me confidence that they'll be able to sell tickets for the show that we're doing together. This conveyed to me that they were clear in what they were all about. And this clarity not only helps with basic branding decisions, but it influences the full universe surrounding the project.
Step Ten: Share Your Movie with the World.
So you've built the universe the project will live in, and you've defined the characters and story. And all that's left to do is to share the movie with the world. Every touch point, meaning every time someone interacts with the brand, is an opportunity to tell the story. Social posts, your bio, music videos, interviews, themes, and songs, EPs, skits, interludes are all good opportunities to storytell and show the audience a scene in the greater movie.
So in this step, you'll want to create an overall content strategy for your branding. Create a release schedule and organize all the things that you're going to do on a content calendar. There are endless ways to organize this, and there's a lot of information online about how to create a content calendar. The important part here is to build it and define it ahead of time, and then stick to it.
Bonus Step: Stay Committed to the Process and Stay Committed to the Vision.
What can happen with creative people is we like to chase shiny objects. It's part of our nature. But you've done a good amount of work to write the script on this movie and define and create all the elements around it. Lock into it for at least 12 to 24 months. You may have something that could not only change your life but could become something that people all over the world are deeply connected to. And if you end up switching after three months to something entirely new and different, you may never find out what's possible with this. Of course, you'll make adjustments and things will evolve with the project, but often, if something doesn't work in a few weeks or a few months, the artist will abandon the concept altogether.
The one thing I've seen that the bigger artists that I've been blessed enough to work with all have in common is they have conviction around their vision and what they're trying to build, and they stick to that North Star, and they let that inform everything they do. It's clear for them, and every day they're trying to get better and move closer towards their vision.
So I hope all this makes sense and the process allows you to create and build your universe. As I mentioned earlier in the video, it's my life's work to help artists tell their stories and bring clarity to what they're trying to create. And I've seen how insanely fast a project can start to move once the artist or artists are clear on their universe and they start promoting it to their audience. It's often night and day different. And I know from having my own artist project how powerful it is to have clarity around what the project is all about. For me, going through this process made everything 100x easier because it was all defined. All I had to do now was execute. And this exact process is why we're getting the results we're getting with our clients at Colt.
We do have all sorts of engagements with The Colt Creatives on ways to collaborate if you want to work with us directly to build your universe together. If that's something you're interested in, feel free to reach out. All things The Colt Creatives: thecoltcreatives.com. But even if we never personally work together, I wish you all the best with your project. The world needs more artists and great art, so keep doing what you're doing. Believe in the calling that you have inside, and until next time, peace.
Neighborhood [Music] Neighborhood [Music] Heat Heat.