He Builds Iconic Artist Brands w/ $0 Ad Spend ft. Nick "Ruff" Ruffalo

If you are not gonna change anything ever, you're putting yourself at a big disadvantage. I'm an artist. What's the first step? Dive deep. What problem does your music position itself as the solution to? What are all the different components that make up an artist brand? For here, and then everything else is gonna start here. How can an artist build out a look? Can somebody dress up as you for Halloween? Oh where's the line with the art? This might take this conversation in a crazy direction, but spinning one box. Great song. Better marketing. Better marketing. Let's go. Let's go. we got rough on the podcast. Finally, bro. I've been seeing enough of your shit, Ruff, that we had to get you on the podcast. You are giving artists so much game when it comes to just all things marketing, but like the brand, the brand aspect of what you do, I love it, man. And I think that like it's not something that we've really focused on.

It comes in conversation like in passing, always, right? Like we we talk about branding and its importance, right? But I don't know that we've like dove into all things branding, and you're like full sin brand. I mean, that's like your whole, I feel like that's a big part of what your approach is, right? Oh, a thousand percent. The brand is everything. So did you always have that viewpoint, or was there like a aha moment that made you go like full send in on branding? Yeah, I mean, the way I've been kind of painting the picture and talking about it is I'm a football guy, but I talk about it in basketball terms. Like the industry's always gonna have their starting five. And like you got center, point guard, power forward, and like the role of that player stays the same, give or take, but like the player, specific player in that role is gonna have a little bit of uniqueness to them. And you look across the industry, genre by genre, there's always a starting five. Lady Gaga is now Chapel Roan, you know, Lana Del Rey is now Gracie Abrams.

Katy Perry is now Sabrina Carpenter. And it's like, okay, branding is really what that starting five is gonna keep, you know, in the public zeitgeist of like, it's just recognizable. So that's what's gonna make you stand out. Wow. Yeah, huge. The way he just blew my mind calling out like the legacy acts that have now transitioned to like spot on modern day acts, spot on, right? Holy shit. All right, so I'm an artist client who approaches you to get help with my brand and with my marketing, right? Like, what's the first step? Like, how do we even get started in that sort of engagement? It's all about the brand pillars first. So, what are the four foundational pieces of you as a person? Take the music out of it, take the genre out of it. You think Apple, you think sleek, easy to use, black and white, clean packaging. That isn't just an iPhone thing, that isn't just a MacBook thing, it's an Apple thing. So let's not constrict your brand pillars to like, oh, I'm making this genre right now, because that could change.

So, what are the four foundational pieces as a person, as a brand, as an artist, not tied to a specific song, album, or genre that we could build everything around? And that just comes from what we call brand therapy, where we just basically hammer the artist for an hour straight with a million questions that they've probably never been asked before to dive deep, dive beyond, like, yo, this is my visual aesthetic, and like it's retro future. No, no, no. Like, why are you making music? What problem does your music position itself as the solution to? And then we get we go from there. Can we get some more of those questions? Yeah, I'm interested in like what some of those are. I mean my favorite one to ask, especially for our touring artists, and this is what we'll do with everybody, but it's a lot easier when someone like has a bit of an idea is okay. First person that comes to your mind when we say grab someone from a show that you just like vividly remember. And it's like, okay, oh, I remember like this one guy who was front row at this show I did in Chicago last year.

Okay, let's go deeper. You know, what is let's give him a name, let's give him a place of origin, let's give him an age. Let's look at what in that age group, that demographic like what are the struggles that goes on? So if you're 18 to 24, likely you're gonna be going through a lot more breakups, a lot more life changes than somebody 35 to 44. You're probably married at 35 to 44. So you're not like gonna be hit as hard by very breakup driven lyrics. It's just you're like yeah I'm not gonna cry about my ex when I was 20 when I'm 44 now but some someone who's 22 is like oh this is my breakup anthem. I just went through my situationship and they fucked me over. So it's like who's your demographic who is that person now how do we position you as you know equal level to them because I think the whole like I'm an artist I'm so much better than my fans thing is so out. So it's like how do we position you equally in terms of like your music is positioned as the solution to what that ideal avatar fan is going through in their life.

So, how much pushback do you get from artists around like zoning in on that avatar? Because I feel like a lot of artists that I speak with, a big problem that they have is they want to make music for everybody. I want everybody to love my shit. Like, I can't just pick one guy, Ruff or girl, because everyone should love my shit, right? Like, how do you navigate? And also I don't sound like anyone? That's a big one we hear all the time. How do you navigate that type of uh I guess outlook from artists? I mean, what we'll say is like that avatar could change, but there needs to be somebody we're speaking to. It's the same philosophy as like, okay, if I gave you two options, go to SoFi Stadium, stand in the middle of you know, the field with a microphone, give a speech to 80,000 people. Could that stadium be impacted? Yeah, sure. But if you're walking out to the parking lot and you bump into someone and you have a one-to-one conversation, aren't they gonna feel a lot more connected to you and impacted a lot more because they had that one-to-one interaction? So it's like more of like a Mr.

Miyagi mind trick to where we also got to convince you as the artist to in your content speak to a singular person. Don't do the hey guys, yo. So I know a lot of you know that my song, like, no, one person let's speak to solely them, because that's what people are looking for in on you know social media. They're looking to feel spoken to. Bro, how much of this is psychology, honestly, when it comes down to it? Like, so much, right? All of it, all of it. It's very, it's very funny, full circle. Because like when I was in college, you know, I I didn't really try. I had to just keep my GPA at a certain level to keep my you know, scholarship. But outside of that, like I did not try, I was just making music, and now I'm like, shit, what were those psychology textbooks that they made us have freshman year? Like, can you buy it on Amazon and actually read it now. This dude's calling his old professor. He's like, I'm sorry I skipped class all those times. Like, could I come back and audit the class? Yeah.

Do you have that textbook still by chance? Could you mail it? to me? How do you spell it? That's funny, man. so what are all the different components that make up an artist brand? Brand pillars, brand archetype, those are like if we're ranking it in level of importance, it's like pillars and archetype are here, and then everything else is gonna start here, all the visual stuff. Because if you're not honed in on this, then like saying my color is brat green, that like brat green is just a byproduct of the message and archetype and pillars of Charlie XCX being so solidified and strong up here, to where Brat Green is a byproduct of her knowing her target audience, speaking to them, and then feeling like they they get the message. Oh, so people do you think a lot of artists, I guess, emphasize the wrong like what else is down here, right? Because that's kind of like color, like are there, you know, what are the other things that are kind of not as important as pillars and archetype that maybe artists overemphasize or think are a bigger deal?

Visual look, fashion, font, color palette, pillars, like that's my favorite. My favorite is yeah, no, we've got our branding down. We brought on a creative director. Oh, cool. Can you send what they did? Yeah, we did this photo shoot. That's my brand. And then it's like, okay, now let's ask you all our brand questions. And you're like, oh wow, I've never been asked these before. And it's like, yeah, because you're focused on the wrong thing. Grabbing four, four Pinterest mood boards of Dune 2 and being like, yo, let's do a Dune 2 photo shoot. I got my brand. We're we're so off kilter right here. But how important is visual identity, right? Because I mean, it does play a role. Oh, it's wildly important, but only important after you've got your pillars archetype message and foundation dialed. Sure. So what does the what does the visual identity approach look like, right? Like how how can an artist build out a look? Right?

Like what Halloween? Halloween's where it starts. Okay. Can somebody dress up as you for Halloween? Even something as simple as the Ariana Grande like ponytail that starts like here and goes up and back. How many girls have done that for Halloween? They've just put their hair in that ponytail and then like I'm Ariana Grande for Halloween, and everyone's like, Yeah, you are. With any clothes. It's crazy. Yeah, literally. Post Malone face tattoos, flannel. Boom. Halloween costume. Drake. Marlboro Red. Boom. Halloween costume. Yep. Wow. Who are some of your other favorites as far as visual identity goes? I mean, there's a reason why the top-selling Halloween costume for kids, which is his demographic and his target audience for like the last decade is marshmallow. He's like the top-selling Halloween costume for like the eight to fourteen demographic for like as long as he's been around, and that's his target demographic. And you could tell in the way a lot of his content's position, like gaming with marshmallow, cooking with marshmallow, super Mr.

Beast, like clickbaity editing on YouTube. Because he knows the demographic. He knows the message. He's got the visual identity and pillars dialed, but he knows who he's speaking to. Can can that approach still work? Like the faceless visual brand. Like, yes and no. I mean, you've got to be like for the faceless thing to work, you've got to be so dialed into like who you're speaking to because all you really have to work off of is like text hooks. Give us an example of what you mean by that. So, like, if you're if you're gonna be an artist who you're not gonna talk, because that might like give away your identity, and you're like maybe like a shadowy figure in the back of the the room in the in the video, or you're like wearing a mask or something. It's like okay, so we don't have a lot to work with to connect with people. So we've got to have like some sort of text on screen. And we don't work with any faceless artists, thank God. But we've got to have some text on screen that relates to you and relates to the song that speaks to this target viewer, to where they're like, oh, I'm still connected to them.

Like I still feel them, even though I don't know who they are or what they look like. So so this is gonna be a weird question, but I think about this a lot. Like, how real? I I don't even want to use the word authentic, because then you know I feel like it's skewed it like biases the question, but like how real does the the character, like can an artist like play a character almost? Like, should they be playing more of a character or should it be their real self? Like, or is it just like an embellished version of themselves? Like, just you know, because I feel like that's where a lot of artists struggle that I talk with is like they they're like, Well, my real life is like this, and uh you know, I mean, like how yeah, to your point, should it be embellished or can it be totally normal. Fictional, or can it be totally normal? Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, I think Chapel Roan's, like a great example of that in the sense that she's playing a character, but like she's spoken about she's playing a character because she feels like that's the only way that she could be that persona, but at the same time, like that's clearly you. Like you still have that innately, that personality in you.

It's just taking a visual pillar switch to bring that out. But it's still you. Okay. So the like the message and like the core values of the brand should be the same, authentic to you, but maybe how we the frills package it up and like deliver it can be a little bit caricature, I guess, like more of a caricature. Characterized. Characterized. Yeah. Exactly. Like even like Lady Gaga, like that is a character, but like, and she's maybe a bad example because she's now doing movies, but like you're if you're getting into the music industry as an artist, like unless you're an insane actor actress, like from day one. How are you gonna play a character that's like so far off from anything that you have as a like who you truly are? How are you gonna do that consistently and not mess up unless you're an insane actor? So, like, even if you are playing a character, if you're embellishing, you're still pulling from something that exists in who you actually are.

You're just ramping it up, throw on a different costume. Now you feel like you can lean into it more. Now you're all the way there. Okay. So you know, what do you see as the most common red flags when it comes to artist brands, right? Like just shit you see all the time. Hmm. I mean, I think even just outside of branding, like the biggest red flag is the word viral. Okay, what what's what's so red flaggy about that? Sounds good. It's just don't I want to go viral? Yeah, it's I mean, I think that's what has like at least set our company apart. Is we like I have yet to ever say, you know, we could we could track it. I've never said viral in a video and I never will. Because it's so what's yo, fact check that for sure. Okay, going to website after this. For sure, expeditiously, cause it's this it's just the wrong way of thinking, because it's like, okay, when you think when you think with this mindset of like go viral, you're like, okay, how am I gonna reach as many people as humanly possible? And like a viral moment is so rare to where if that's all you're chasing, everybody knows you're chasing it.

Like it's so obvious. Like, oh, someone went viral saying I just made the song of the summer. Now everybody who's trying to do that, it's like, oh, you're just fucking trying to go viral. Like, you're not giving me anything to pull onto. And like, can big moments, big videos, big songs happen? Obviously, but it's not gonna happen if you're going into it trying to make that happen. Wow, kind of a hot take. I like that though. Who was the first artist to say, I just made the song of the summer? That is quite cool, Matt. who did that, yeah. Some TikToker. I don't know. I would love, I would love to know. Dude, we gotta ask ChatGPT who did that first, because like they ruined it for everybody. Like, I know. Oh my gosh. All right. Um, okay, so yeah, I actually had Chapel Roan on here, but um, okay, so if an artist doesn't have a strong visual identity, right? I, you know, I know that the brand pillars and the archetype gotta come first, but then once we are working our way down into like colors, because you have posted stuff about like color psychology before, it is important, visual identity for sure.

What does the ideation process look like? Like, how do you think Chapel Roan, even using her as an example? How did she arrive at this, like, you know, visual character that she's now portraying? You know what I mean? Is there an approach that you like to use? Yeah, I mean, I think if we use her as an example, because I've done so many videos on her, so I'm very, very well versed in the chapel Roan lore. This guy's a chapel stand, bro. At this point, like, how can I not be we all are, bro? I know for real. But I think like, I think from what I've gathered, it's like, okay, she grew up in Missouri, yeah, Missouri, I believe, where it's like, okay, she's gay and that's not accepted. So she felt like she's gonna move to LA to be who she, you know, who she is and who she wants to be and be our authentic self, but in immersing herself now here in LA in the culture of who she is, she also realized, like, okay, to take it a step further, I gotta put on this costume and kind of like embody my community. Her songs are about that, and now that visual identity is like that added layer, but the message of like leave wherever the fuck you are and find your community, and like you're you'll be accepted for who you are.

That's her brand message, and then that costume character is just the icing on that cake for her. So it's still gonna come down to the brand message and really figuring out like who are we speaking to? What makes up you as a person? And then how are we gonna get there and then connect it to something visual? Do all the biggest artists in the world um do you think that they like had this, I guess, inherent, like I don't know, like vision for their brand, or can brand be worked on? Oh, it's gotta evolve. Okay. So they didn't How many times is Drake's brand changed. A lot. A lot. Yep. Okay. But but do you think that he like I guess let me rephrase this? Do the biggest artists need to be the ones that are kind of like controlling that evolution of their brand? Or can outside influences be like, hey, maybe we should try the, you know what I mean? Like, do they need to be in charge and like in the driver's seat and know this inherently, or can it be, you know what I mean?

Like coached, if you will. I mean, it could definitely be coached internally by people like us or their label or their management, but also like the feedback of the fans is always gonna drive everything at the best, like that's the best use case for social media and the internet is like you can literally stand on the corner in your town in Pennsylvania and busk and not even see a human being walk by. You record that of you playing your song on the side of the street, throw it on TikTok or Instagram, and like you might get four comments, and they're all like this sucks, and you're like, okay, now I know it sucks. At least someone told me. It's like taking that feedback from the world and like applying it, you know, diligently at a level where you feel like, okay, I'm hearing what the people are saying, I know what I am and what I'm trying to be. How could I kind of meet in the middle? Bro, that's the he just used the term busk, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Henry used the term busk recently, and I was like, bro, no one has said the word bus. There it is. In like a century. That's huge. And Ruff's out here talking about busking. Free marketing. And then you, yeah, you film it, and then you get even more free marketing. I mean, I I agree with the strategy. It's just the word for some reason makes me giggle. I don't know. One of the days busk. I'm not sure why. I feel like what you said though about like, you know, just it's a big topic that I think about all the time is the willingness for an artist to potentially, you know, change their art or make modifications based on like what someone else told them, what a fan told them, what their label told them, their manager, like, you know, are the people are the people you work with, are they pretty open to that? Because I know some real stubborn artists that are like, you know, in our comment section, you mean everywhere. I mean, like, this is my art, this is what it is, figure out how to market it. And I wonder if like the maybe the more adaptable people are winning quicker, or like, are the purists, you know, is that make them stand out, and then that works for them.

Like, where's the line with the art? That's a good question. I mean, I could I could really bust the lid open if we want. Let's go, baby. Come on, man. Let's go. take this this conversation in a crazy direction. Let's go. I'm not gonna say this is everybody, this is how it is operating. There's a pocket of the song creation world right now at a high level that is churning out Suno AI song starter, and I've heard them, and they're you would never know. Like, people are dialing in the AI tech to where someone could play it and be like, that's Katy Perry's next single. She just hasn't recorded her vocals on it yet. And you'd be like, hell yeah, it is. That's a banger. So, like, that is there's a factory going on that is churning out volume of hits. And artists are gonna scoop that up, release it, scoop it up, release it to where, like, am I saying every artist has got to go start running the Suno AI factory? Absolutely not.

But like, there's so much adaptation that's gonna be going on and is going on to where, like, if you are not gonna change anything ever, you're putting yourself at a big disadvantage. You're you know, someone who's gonna go the full AI Suno factory route, like they might start. If we picture a football field, they might start on the 20-yard line. If you're like, okay, I'm not gonna do any of that, but you know, I'm open to feedback, I'm open to working with other writers, other producers, having multiple people in the room. Now you're starting at the 10-yard line. If you're like, I write all my stuff in my bedroom on my own, no, no outside opinions, no help, no co-writers, nothing, you're starting at the goal line. So now you got a 20-yard, you know, drop back to where, and people will cherry pick, Billy Eilish, or like people like the cherry pick, you know, one, two, three artists to justify their means of doing things is like me thing. Playboi Carti.

But it's like, okay, but now let's look at the grander scale. How many writers were on the Tate McRae album that just dropped? How many writers are on a Drake song? Yeah, and now that's being elevated to another level at the Suno AI. So you just gotta you gotta find what makes you happy, but also like if you're really serious, what's gonna generate results? Where do you fall in that ecosystem? Bro, people aren't are not gonna want to hear what he just had to say, bro. And that's why it's gonna be a cliff. Holy shit, man. It's huge, man. I hate to interrupt this episode, but guys, I got one thing on the mind right now, and it's data. I can't stop thinking about it. All the artists in 2024 are winning because of data. They know who their fans are, they have access to their fans. Do you? Spotify's not telling you who your fans are. Apple Music ain't telling you who your fans are. But our friends over at DistroKid created a feature called HyperFollow. Every single release, you can set up a pre-save campaign with a HyperFollow and get access to every single fan's email address. Now you can let them know when you have a show coming up, when you're dropping exclusive merch, when you're going live.

And without the data, you're just bound by the algorithms of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. No more relying on those platforms. We're going straight to our fans. DistroKid is the best DIY distributor. You can upload unlimited music for a ridiculously low rate. And you're gonna have access to features like HyperFollow. OMTdistro.com, You're gonna get 30% off when you sign up for DistroKid, and you can start collecting your fans' data today. Henry, let's get back into it. It is changing so rapidly. I've I've stumbled across like so ever since the like Amazon Suno announcement or whatever. I think like that one really opened a lot of people's eyes of like wow, people in their homes with didn't even know Suno existed, but obviously use Amazon Alexa, like they can make songs like that, you know, instantaneously, no musical knowledge, expertise, experience. Like they don't need to know shit about making music, and instantly they can make a song. It's terrifying.

But they're garbage. The pseudo songs that are done that way are garbage. I'm just saying. but they won't be forever, right? And they're gonna get better. But that's for people who have no experience. So the people that have a lot of experience who are leveraging these tools, yeah, they're at the 20-yard line, right? Like, I'm not saying it's putting me. That's what everybody They're in the red zone. Yeah. Exactly. That's what everybody gets wrong. So like I've heard some Suno stuff that like my 12-year-old cousin plugged, and oh, it's terrible. It's never, it's never coming. But like, no, you haven't heard what producers who have been 20 years in the industry with 10 multi-platinum songs are doing with it right now. And then you're like, oh, wait, there is a there is a like a situation here. Yeah, bro. I heard like No Labels Necessary. Um did like the the uh Timbaland interview, and he played them some like AI inspired uh beats, and they were like fucking insane, bro. Timbo. Timbo's up on it, man. Yeah, like you take a veteran, you take a veteran who has made music in the fucking 90s, right? Uh like and he's using it to his advantage.

I mean, it's getting real real crazy, bro. Um we had a he randomly like called me a couple weeks ago, and we were just talking about like the Suno stuff for a while. Oh, really? It's Just the things that he was kind of saying and how he's utilizing it and his vision and what he knows to do. I'm like, that is such a clear, like, this is a legend, one of the greatest producers ever, who's just added another tool to the toolbox. Can you give us any tidbits from that? I was gonna say, wait, wait, yeah, like what was his what was the purpose of the call originally? Like we were just chatting about a bunch of stuff. He's he's the man. Yeah, well, yeah. Okay, say no more, rough. We get it. Hush hush, Timbo partnership. Um, all right. So let's say we got the brand pillars, the brand archetype. We'll say we're getting the colors and the visual identity. We're all we're all locked in, right? We we we got that shit going. Um, how does branding manifest itself into like the content marketing strategy, right? Because I know you have a like three-layer uh framework that that you kind of preach.

Can you walk us through like what that is and how branding like makes its way into that? Yeah. So I mean, all marketing is operating through a funnel lens. You've got quite literally like a funnel, boop, boop. It's an upside down triangle. Our editor will put a funnel on, on the screen, bro. You don't have to you don't have to draw it. They're gonna put the funnel up there. I got you, I got you. Upside down triangle, wide at the top, gets narrower as you work down the funnel. So it's like, okay, top of funnel contents driving awareness to the brand. How are we fostering eyeballs onto you as the artist, as the brand, not even the product? The product is what comes last. That's where the funnel trickles into product being song. So it's like, okay, our top of funnel is meant to drive awareness. That's why we call it discovery content. How are new people discovering you? Now we've got our middle of funnel. So we're starting to weed people out because we're now connecting them with the middle of funnel connection content to the music.

So if someone comes in top of funnel, they discover you because of a broad interest and they're aware of you, but they don't like your music, they're gone, they're out of the funnel. Because we've connected them in the middle of the funnel. People are like, oh, I do like the music. Okay, I'm still working down the funnel. Now the bottom of funnel, that's our conversion. How are we gonna convert that person from they're cool, I like their vibe, their music sounds decent enough? Give me give me one more push before I jump in the pool, and I'm a fan, and that's where the conversion content has to come from. And it's like, okay, let's just sell the song. Like, let's give them enough of the song, the artist that usually like conversion contents just what's what's a smash song that you have, and then let's post it in a live setting of you on stage. And it's like, oh, this artist is like doing it, their show looks lit, their song is great. I'm a fan now. Yeah, let's that that's kind of an example of the bottom of funnel content. Yeah. what are what are all the content look like? Yeah, yeah.

So Discovery Content, what are some examples that our audience can, can look at? Yeah. So if we talk like Discovery Content, we're driving awareness to the brand. So now that we understand your brand message, your brand foundation, it's like, okay, this is who you are. Who are we speaking to? And what is an a common interest between you, your brand, your message, your foundation, and who we're speaking to. What is that common interest? So I think the best way I could possibly break this down at an extremely macro level is let's talk Taylor Swift. She is dating Travis Kelsey. Yeah. She goes to a Chiefs game. She gets shown on the broadcast. You're somebody who does not know who Taylor Swift is. You have no idea, but you love the NFL. You're watching the Super Bowl. they show Taylor Swift on screen. The common interest thread there is the NFL.

You've now discovered her and are aware of her. So if your interest is piqued and you Google her and you see an interview, and she's talking not really about music, but more, she's showing more personality. She's talking about like why she wrote a song on the album. You're like, okay, she clearly now I've connected to her as a person, got to see her personality a little bit more. And I'm I'm aware of her. I've connected to her personality. I now know she does music. Next thing you know, you're at CBS, you hear her freaking song on the radio, and you're like, oh, I remember seeing her break down those lyrics and the story behind it. I like this song, add it on Spotify. She just went from the only thing you had in common with Taylor Swift was you like the NFL, she's dating Travis Kelsey. Yeah, you've gone through her funnel and you're a fan. Well, her funnel starts with being broadcast on the Super Bowl. Do you have an examples maybe like our community can use? Now that we've got that at the macro level.

That's the idea. Sure. If we talk, you know, micro social media, it's still finding that common interest thread. Yeah, so even use like feel free to use one of your clients. I know you have like tons of case studies. You've you've helped people get hundreds of millions of views combined and driven almost a hundred million streams for these these clients, right? So like feel free to use someone that you literally like have like run this playbook for. Yeah, I mean, I think a great example is literally happening today. Like we we just wanted to crack it with this kid, Sam McPherson. Katie's older than me, but he's the man I love him. He was an EMT, you know, a couple of years ago, and he wrote a song called Church and State about you know the things he saw as an EMT and like the government and religion like failing these people that were like, you know, in the back of the ambulance with him. He writes the song about that. We tried a bunch of different angles. So the initial awareness interest driver that we thought was okay, let's like run text hooks and run videos around this theme of like when you no longer trust the church or government, where else do you turn? That was like our thing that we were testing.

Didn't land. Didn't land too broad. We thought that was pretty freaking niche, but it was too broad. So we recently honed in on like, let's just speak to EMTs. Like, let's quite literally like if you work in the healthcare field or are an EMT, like that is the common thread. And the discovery content was him on stage talking about being an EMT. Started to work down and now work that into the song. And one of his videos is now popping off pretty nicely on TikTok because the EMT target audience was reached. And all the comments are like a couple hundred comments, almost a thousand now. People like, I'm an EMT, this song speaks to me. I've seen all this in the healthcare, and like we've hit the target audience of EMTs because we spoke to them broadly. So now anyone who's an EMT enters the world. We introduce them that there's a song about being an EMT, and then we sell the song, and now they've worked through that funnel. I think the going smaller is a key there for sure.

Everyone wants everyone to hear everything. It's like now you can almost get more people to hear it by aiming for less. Sounds crazy. So so let me ask you this, right? Because I think I I struggle with this when I'm working with artists too of like, all right, how do we know that EMTs are gonna like our song? Because I don't know what you wrote it about. Okay. So then it doesn't so like genre fuck it, like throw it out the window then. Like, there's you know, I mean, how do you know what like music EMTs like? You know what I'm saying? Like, that's where I struggle is like because the interest group sometimes, like genre, I think is just so not as important as time goes on. I think there's it's not as many people that are just like, I only listen to country. Like, everyone listens to a lot of things, a lot of music, sounds like more than one genre, you know. I think that's just less important now. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. And I think like the easiest, the easiest way to like break that argument with someone is especially if they've been married already, is like, okay, if you only listen to this one specific genre, what was your first dance to at your wedding? What was the dance with the dad at the wedding?

What did they play at the reception? And then like I guarantee if you're someone where you're like, I only listen to EDM, your first dance was not to John Summit Deep End. I can guarantee you. It was like perfect Ed Sheeran. So you are exposing yourself to other music and you do connect with other types of music, even if you're like a diehard fan of one genre, it just becomes situational. So that's why it all comes back to the lyrics. Like when the lyrics can connect, it transcends genre. Yeah. Yeah, like it's deeper. And and because I'm just like thinking through this now. It's like, even if a subset of EMTs don't like your type of music, you really connected, right? And and like found common ground with the ones that do. So it's like you you you you met each other at the EMT world, and then you went down and you connected with even if it's 20% of EMTs that really love the music, right? Like move down the funnel and then to the point where you can convert convert them, yeah. It's still with that common thread, right?

That like brought us together. So yeah, fuck. EMT talk. EMT talk, bro. Is that is that a hashtag you use? EMT talk. We should. Yeah, you got to. bro. I'll call them right after this. Yeah, no, for sure. You can have that one for free. Oh so so what like had you always thought about things this way, or once again, I'm always interested in kind of like the aha moments. Like, was this obvious to you? Because I mean, you were making music. You were a fucking EDM DJ producer act, right? Like you were playing gigs all the time. Like, did this resonate with you from the jump? Or is this something that you kind of like learned and thought through from your own experience? Like, talk to me about how we even like came up with this uh methodology. Yeah, I mean, when I when I was an EDM artist, like I was in college, I was doing everything out of my dorm room, just throwing shit at the wall. And then when I dove into you know this world that I'm in now, like a lot of the origin of it was just me trying to reverse engineer, you know, any of the successes that I had done and try to figure out because no one knows you better than yourself. You just gotta you know revisit it from from a new perspective.

I'm starting to like reverse engineer a lot of the stuff I was doing and seeing like, oh, like that was a discovery piece of content. Like my biggest song was called Summer 16, and it was about like the summer of 2016 and all the songs from that era. I'm like, oh, I did a discovery piece because I was literally just like, does everybody remember all these songs from 2016? And then I niched it down. I'm like, oh, so I did do that. And then as you like connect it to, and I'm really trying to pull a lot of the methodology and psychology around like marketing, not from the music industry, because it's like no one really knows what they're doing in the music industry. Like, even me, like we're it's changing so much to where like there are tried and true marketing principles that exist elsewhere that like if you can understand those and know how to continuously adapt them because the music industry is changing so much, at least you've got your framework there to build off of. And the marketing funnel is like prevalent everywhere since the dawn of products.

Bro, I do think that like I think we do an okay job of this of like not living in even like podcast content creator world and trying to you know branch out into other industries and just understand general marketing and psychology, et cetera. But yeah, musicians could definitely take a page out of that playbook and just like look at other industries and not be so like I don't know that we love to almost like romanticize the music industry, right? Like it's this totally different that like music is so different than I'm a musician than everything else, right? And it's like, no, a lot of these general fucking principles that apply to selling toothbrushes, I don't know, like apply to selling songs. Now I tweeted today, like we're in the intention business. I mean, that's that's really what it boils down to, and so is Coca-Cola and so is Tesla, you know what I mean? Yeah. A thousand percent. And like I think required viewing for every artist and anyone in the music industry, like required viewing is take your pick, Seinfeld, How I Met Your Mother, Friends.

Three shows about basically nothing. So pay attention to how much they change the camera angle. It's like every two to three seconds, it's like this angle of this person talking, then there, then there, then there. Those shows, some of those shows are from the the nineties. So, like, even content creation follows the same principles as film and TV and songwriting and production, because you've got to change something in the production every four to eight bars to keep it interesting. So we got to change something in the video every one to two seconds to keep it interesting, just like TV and film is done forever. So Seinfeld Friends or How I Met Your Mother, which one's your your go to? This is completely unrelated. Okay, Seinfeld? Seinfeld for me too. Okay, yeah. I mean, I I they're all three so fucking good. Like I've seen all of them multiple times. Like I may have seen friends the most though, just because my wife has like rewatched friends. Since we've been married, we've probably crushed friends.

I've actually never seen friends. Whoa, okay. I know. Um, all right. So of all the different types of marketing, I know you're huge on on content marketing, content marketing. Where do you think that that ranks in the grand scheme of like marketing approaches? It's the most important, but it's the least impactful at the A-list level. Okay. Well, uh, can you unpack that a little bit? Like what I guess what are the most impactful at the A-list level? Fan pages, theme pages, ad spend, promo. Like you need the foundation, just like the brand's the foundation of the artists, the content's the foundation of the marketing, and it has to be there and it has to be killer, but like you can only get so far if you're only gonna rely on organic content. Like you could sure as hell make a living off of music, you could sure as hell tour, but like to jump from you know that category to like the top 25 most streamed artists on Spotify, you've got a psyop elsewhere. Like Tate McCray going on Saturday Night Live, for example.

Yep. like all yeah, exactly. Yeah. So are are you do you dabble in like paid ads? Because I know you've like touted, you know, a lot of your campaigns have gotten millions and millions of views and converted millions of streams and you've spent $0 in ad spend. Like, do you do you pride yourself on that? Or are you like playing in the ad spend world, like the the paid ads world? Oh, we do no ads. No ads. We're all organic and we're very prideful of that. Yeah. Wow. And I think that has to be that has to be the philosophy, especially for what we do, because if something doesn't pop organically, just dumping money into it isn't gonna change that. Okay. Like something gets to five million views with no ad spend behind it, like that's a great video. And if you want to go hire another company that does specialize in ads, now you've got the winning creative. But if you're like, yo, I don't even know if any of these videos are good, let's throw like 200 bucks a day behind them and see. You're just burning money.

Yeah. So we're here to like give you that foundation of like, yo, this video's a banger, it converts, people are commenting, people are going to the song on Spotify. If the label or the team or the management has the budget to pump into it, like we should know you're you're spending it wisely. And that's like what we want to give people before they go into ads world. Yeah. So now that we've like, you know, got the brand on lock, we've got the content marketing on lock, right? Like, what are some of the metrics that we should be looking at to see what's working? If it's right, is it just straight views? Like what what metrics do you like to to monitor during your campaigns? So there's two two metric categories you want to look out for. You want to look out for on a video by video per per basis, a certain metric, but then on an artist whole page perspective, or just even creator, like anyone who makes content, there's a different metric you're paying attention to. So if we start with the content in the videos, a like is like so easy.

Like it's so easy for someone to give you a like. People like shit without even watching it because they're like, oh, it's Guilty. How's Rihanna? Guilty. Guilty. I like Rihanna, so I'll like her post, but it's a 42-second reel, I'm out of here. But she's still got my life. True. Yeah. But how do we how do we really see what you know what people are taking the extra step? And that's shares and comments. What if you could rack up comments and shares, that thing's gonna move. What are some like tips or tricks for, for artists that are making content where maybe they're struggling to get their comments and shares up? Right? Is there any like formula or just you know advice you could give them? So there's if we start with comments, right? There's really there's really three ways to get the comment section blowing up. And it's just falling on the spectrum of love hate. So if something is so universally loved, like a Mr.

Beast donating a hundred thousand dollars to you know, charity, like that's still gonna probably get hate, but like there's gonna be so much outpouring love in the comments that that'll drive that up. I'm sure we've all seen how many bad artists and bad music goes viral because everybody blows up the comments and is like, yo, this is fire on mute. Like I love the stack up. Like, I'm sure you're thinking of like the four people that like go crazy viral right now. Yeah, yeah. Because their comments just stack up with, with negativity. Yeah. But the best way to do it is how can you split the middle? How could half the comment section chime in and love you? Half a comment section chime in and hate you. And now they're arguing with each other, and it's all developing around your video. Polarizing content. And yeah, so is there any example, like a specific example you've seen recently with recently with one of your clients where they've been able to do that perfectly? With our clients, absolutely.

I think what comes to mind immediately though is me, because I literally just had this happen where I made a video about Dochi right after the Grammys, and it blew up, and the comments are like just people fighting with each other about how like half of them think she sucks and half of them think she's amazing. So now like the Doechii fans and the Doechii haters are just fighting each other in my comment section, and now it's got like over a million views. It's like it's and like that, but that video brought us like no business. Like that's why I'm like, don't focus on going viral, because it like it wasn't even the right audience. Yeah, it was too wrong. Oh wow, interesting. All right, so so what about shares? Any any like cheat code for shares? I mean, this is what we tell everybody with shares. It's like go through your DMs. What do you send your friends? What do you send your significant other? What do people send you? How much of that is not music? Probably all of it. Or not like no one sees like a mini music video, lip sync video, and they're just like sending it to people. That's just like who, like, unless it's already like your favorite artist and it's a shared interest with your friend, but like random artists you've never heard of pops up, and they're just like standing in front of a blue background, just lip syncing into a mic, you're not gonna send that to anybody.

So shareable content needs to be that top of funnel content. You need to hit like with Sam. I'm sure a lot of the shares that are popping off on the stuff right now is EMTs or someone who knows an EMT, like my wife's an EMT, so I'm gonna send her this because I know she'll relate to it. So I like to either humor, like what's gonna make someone on the other receding end of the shared video laugh, or what's gonna make them relate to it? Like, how many times would you get the the meme sent to you that's like this is so you, or like this is so us? And it's very easy to take that format of content and apply it to your music and have the music be there, but the message is what's being shared. Yeah, the music is almost it's kind of more sneaky, you're kind of incepting the music underneath this overarching thing that is because when I think about my group chats, my DMs, like, yeah, it's pretty much all haha. Like, you know, I thought this was hilarious.

I wanted to make my friend laugh, kind of thing. So or it's me sending you some rough posts being like facts, like, yeah, he's crushing. Do you see this shit? We should get it, we should get him on. We should get him on the pod. Dude, he's on my like personal page, he's on one more time algorithm. He's on I made a secret uh social media account. He's just research stuff. You popped up. He's there, bro. He's everywhere. Yeah, it's that dochi post, bro. It's that dochi post. Um, all right, cool. So um, last thing I wanted to touch on and really get your advice on because I think this is like this is a thing that we struggle with, bro. Is like how much time should an artist be spending trying to acquire new fans and new eyeballs versus like making content that is super serving their base. I think everything should be geared towards the new new fans. Really? And I'll explain why. Everything, bro. That's not what I was expecting. Henry loves to romanticize this, like, oh, but our audience will understand the inside joke and the this, that, and the third.

I thought that okay. No, I want to hear this. All right, let's go. What do you got? So when I say that, I don't mean alienate your current fan base. The inside jokes and the lore and all that is still existent, but it can't be so prevalent that it's alienating new people. So the example I'll run is the Star Wars, like the new Star Wars movie. Like the three new Star Wars movies to where, like, if you were a kid who was like 10 years old when those new ones came out last couple of years, and you'd never seen any of the other Star Wars movies, like they were marketing it a certain way to which like someone who had never seen the other six Star Wars movies could go and enjoy it, but they still embedded enough of the OG lore to where like people who grew up on Star Wars also enjoyed it. But if they went hardcore, like you if you've only seen the other six Star Wars, will you even want to see this movie and like put on the poster like for the biggest Star Wars fans ever? This is for you.

Like, then like no one knew discover Star Wars. So it's like let's thread that line. Let's embed it, Easter egg it. Let's not make our whole personality our own current fan base and like alienate everybody else. It's like telling a joke at a party, and then someone else walks in two minutes later and everyone's laughing, and you're like, ah, I missed the joke, I feel left out. And you just leave. You just keep scrolling in real life. Damn, so you gotta kinda gotta be clever to include everyone. Well, yeah, because I I just I I think I was explaining to you recently is like, look, I saw, you know, an artist that we're friends with, like almost every post, it seems as if they are talking to like new people, but to your point, I don't feel alienated somehow. It's like this weird like balancing act because like I and I I'm like real deep into this, so I'm like looking at it very like analytically, so probably more analytical than like the average just consumer of it, because I like love nerding out about this shit. But I did look at it and I was like, huh.

This is clearly built for people that don't know this person already, like the way that it's framed up, right? The the like text hook, etc. But me as a OG fan of this artist, I still was like, I didn't give a fuck. Uh I loved it still. Of course, liked it, commented it, you know what I mean? Like engaged with it, etc. I want to give Ruff an example from us. This is actually like this is gonna be good for us. Sure. Sure. Get some free advice potentially. I don't know where you're going with this. I'm nervous. We've gone back and forth on how to announce our new episodes on social media. Um at first, like, you know, we were just kind of posting a clip like that stands alone, right? And it just is a moment from the conversation that works as a clip by itself. Then I kind of like wanted to start doing like announcement carousels for people that like, you know, they know the podcast, and like here's the cover, and here's an intro of what it's about, and it's more like on the lore story side, and we didn't see them doing really well, even though I thought it was cool for people that actually follow us and like us, and now we're back to just like starting it, announcing it with a clip. We really we don't know what to do.

Yeah, we don't know what to do. Run it through the funnel, top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel. So your bottom of funnel would quite literally just be the announcing carousels because it's like that's that's already for people who are product and brand aware, product and brand connected. So to convert them to the product, they need to get the announcement carousel to know, oh, the new episode is out. I'm already aware of them. I've I'm already connected to them. I'm a fan, so I'm gonna you know take action based on your bottom of funnel. So announcement carousel is your bottom of funnel. So is it is it fair to say that bottom of funnel is clearly going to get the least like amount of views, like the least reach? Every yeah, pretty pretty much every time. And that's okay. And that's okay. Yeah, it's okay. I think we need to swallow. I'm talking to myself here. I that's what I've been saying. we need to swallow my pride, not even our pride. You swallow your pride.

Okay, don't swallow in anything of yours. Okay, pause. Jesus Christ. Oh, it's been a long day, Rough over here at the One More Time Studios. Oh no, I'm glad to hear that, man. I'm really glad to hear that. For sure. All right. Well, Rough, fuck, we've entered the final segment of the podcast, man. Shit. How are we? I can't. I mean, we could grill him with like a thousand. I mean, you know, he's got he's got important things to do. True, true, true. But not before we do the final segment. Rough, this is the rapid fire rampage. And it's going to be broken into three parts. I'll explain them as we go. It's just gonna start with some short answer questions. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Starting with Sup. How are we doing? How are we doing? Oh god. That was the most jersey shit I've ever heard. That's where you're Jersey. Yeah. Okay. He's not from California, folks. Moving right along. Um. What are the obvious signs that a music brand is good? Instant connection and Halloween effect.

Halloween one is big. Dude, the Halloween one's huge. Absolutely. We need a Halloween. We need a Halloween thing. Yeah. Well, I lost my red glasses. Yeah. I'm here somewhere. You, you, You wore some glasses. They're just they're not red. I know. I'll find them. It's Okay. Maybe. Should I go with the backwards hat thing? What do you think? I think you've already committed to it. Yeah. I mean, I just haven't gotten a haircut in a while. Really, that's all I'm doing. Keep doing it. Okay. Moving on. Rough, Trump has just appointed you to the brand new position of music industry czar. What is your first order of business? First order of business. Hmm. That's a good question. We're talking about the Trump regime. You could get away with basically anything here. Okay, we're not going. We're not going political on this podcast, dude. I'm just saying. Ooh. This is this is a good one. Um make fire festival great again. Dude, it's coming back, apparently, bro. They sold tickets. Is that real?

Is it real? Yeah. I think it is. No chance. No chance, right? No chance. Dude, the the fucking Islam uh mujeres or whatever, like president or I don't know, like the leader of the island was like, no, we have never heard of this. Really? It is not happening. Oh man. Fuck off Billy McFarland. Fair enough. Rough, uh, what was, if you can share the last business call that you had and what was it about? Let's kind of take a peek behind the curtains. Right before this was uh onboarding call. Branding, new new artist. How do you how do you convince someone to work with you? Or convince maybe is a bad word. Insist. We have an artist relations team that vets the applications, approves calls, takes calls, and then eventually they they get to get into the system and meet me and our COO Anthony once they're they're up and running. Bro, we totally bypassed that whole process.

We got straight to rough We don't have to deal with any of that shit, bro. We're going straight to rough. I love it. I love it. Let's go. What emoji best represents you and why? I was used to. how quickly did he go straight to his? He knows it. Oh, that's it. I love it. Rough, what is one secret music marketing trick that you kind of held back in the episode, but you're willing to share now in the rapid fire rampage? Little tick trick, one one little tidbit. Give us something. This is like sauce. Sauce. Yes. This will make it this will will render it obsolete and not as powerful. Okay. Anyway. Yes. So the Billy Eilish close friends thing. So when you add someone in your close friend story, that story moves to the front of the line. So they just they just patched this glitch, like recently using like JavaScript. So we gotta find a homie on a fiber who knows how to do it, the new, the new method.

But we'll we'll take like the entire follower. First, we'll have someone vet an artist followers and remove all the bot followers. Like day one when they work with us. Get rid of all the inactives, get rid of all the bot followers. Then add all the followers to the close friend story and the close friends list. Because what we could do now is we could post a reel, we can let it sit for like 24 hours, then we could add it to the close friend story. Now it's gonna move to the front of the line. So like you're now kind of even if it's 20, 30% of your follower base. Now you know they're gonna see that reel. Whoa. God bless. I'm stuck on the whole removing followers thing. Like, so that remember I did that for a little period. I thought that was smart, man. Yeah, is I mean, is that something you'd recommend everyone do? A thousand percent. Yeah, wow. I know so many people's egos are just fucking like crushed right now. Mine included, no, mine included. I love it.

I think it's I think it's great. Wow. So why haven't we done it? It sounds like really tedious and tough. There's gotta be like software that does it, right? Or is it manual? How do you know how do you find a bot? We have uh uh proprietary shout out to the Fiverr gang, bro. Absolutely. All right, we're gonna find that homie on Fiverr. Indeed. Um share, have you had any like WTF moment recently? Something that was just perplexing or crazy. I w I wish, I can't, I can't say who, but somebody we started working with recently, and then I'm like, holy shit, like this is crazy. Big artist. I know, yeah. Yeah, yo. You say you can't even tell us and us believe it. You can tell us. You can tell us, Rough. You have to believe it. We will. We will. We've bleeped so many things recently, bro. Yeah. Damn.

Yeah, we had to bleep someone's something, and then they started giving away other like clues of like where they're from, and like all this shit to bleep. We won't we won't make that mistake. I mean, we didn't do it. The guests did, thankfully. That's fire, though. That's amazing, bro. Shout out to you. Congratulations. Fuck, bro. Last one of the short answer. What is your favorite curse word? I'm from New Jersey. Fuck. Dude. You know, Ruff's family is just like a bunch of fucking mafiosos or something. That was way too casual. All right. Um, moving on to the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You just have to pick one. And uh, based on our conversation, I probably don't need to say this first one. Go ahead. Let's do it. Do it. Organic growth or paid ads. Organic growth. There it is. Pancakes or waffles. Pancakes. Instagram or TikTok? Instagram. Singles or projects? Singles.

Luxury Hotel or cozy Airbnb. Cozy Airbnb. Ooh. Lots of teasers or surprise drop. Surprise drop. Big one there. Concerts or festivals. Fire festivals. Festivals. As a concert go, our festivals, the artist concert. Makes sense. I'm glad you clarified that. 14 great posts per week or four bangers. 14 great posts. Consistency people. Dude. I don't know. We go back and forth all the time. No, you just want to only do four. It's gonna take the same amount of work. Maybe. incredible. I just want to do what's gonna work. So that's good advice. Thank you for that. Yeah. Is it gonna take hearing it from Ruff to believe it? It definitely is impactful. 100%. God damn it. Moving on. Rich or famous. For me or for an artist?

However, you interpret it. Alright, we'll go for an artist, famous. Because you could parlay it into freaking anything nowadays. True. Facts. Small cult fan base or massive casual fan base. Small cult fan base. And finally become a full-time EDM DJ once again, or leave the music industry forever. I'd run it back. Oh shit. Let's go. He's got some left in the tank. Let's go. Damn. Do you ever make music anymore? I haven't in a while. I like I like burn myself out. I took on like way too many songs in producer world like around this time last year, and just it killed me. Oh wow. I was like scarred. I was like running like 14-hour days, like just in Ableton and I was like, oh, I can't do this anymore. Oh, wow. I think that's a little pause. I think it's underrated for artists to take like multiple month breaks, honestly. I think that can help a lot.

Just resets, big resets. Anyway, you should do it in chunks. Like you should have like Q1, make a bunch of music, Q2, like content should be going on the whole time, but like Q2, put more of a content focus, step back from the studio. That and like Q3, now you're back in the studio, Q4, you're more either touring-centric or content focused, but like don't just try to run the gauntlet of like touring studio content 110% in all three lanes, 12 months a year. You'll burn out. Q2. Q2. That's Seasonality. That's such a gem, bro. It is. Love it. Last part is the word association, Rough, I'm gonna say one word, and I just need you to give me the first word that you think of right off the top of your head. No thoughts. There are no correct answers. You're only judged on speed. Let's get into it. Music. Industry. Penguin. Feet. Label.

Record. Bald. Howie Mandel. Okay. Content. Marketing. Diamond. Rough. Oh, I like it. Did you think that was? Did you have that? I didn't know where he was going to go, Ben. That's what the exercise is. for. There we go. Viral. We do accept sounds and noises. Dude, he's like, he's like one of the most viral music marketers ever. It's just he hates viral. There's something beautiful about that. I know. AI. Taking over. Enchilada. Burrito. Brand. Foundation of everything. Crypto. Falling off. Podcast. Better than listening to music at the gym. Lil.

Pump. TBT. Great song. Better market. Let's go. Let's fucking go. This has been rough. Your favorite brand expert. Appreciate you coming on the podcast, man. If y'all did not soak up game from this, I learned so much, bro. So much. man. So much. Appreciate you coming on, man. We're here each and every week. We're here each and every week. Until next time, Henry, what are we doing? I'm getting out of here. Getting out of here. Peace, y'all. Thanks, Rough. Woo.