Selling your Swag - With Swagger

A consistent lightbulb moment for our Artist’s Strategy clients comes after we design their first holistic marketing plan together. Usually, after some squeamishness or hesitation, they finally get comfortable posting regularly on social media and creating content for their personal blog. In other words, they become comfortable selling themselves for the first time. And that is amazing progress!

Michael Kaiser, the former president of the Kennedy Center, used to say that all arts organizations must have this singular mission: “Good art, well marketed.” So while your social channels and blog posts are an excellent foundation for audience engagement, we need to be on the lookout for new and memorable opportunities to get your brand out there. One creative, personal, and perhaps even controversial way to elevate your marketing to the next level is through merchandise.

Wait, like Taylor Swift tour T-shirts and Metallica bobbleheads? Well, in a way, yes!

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, though, let’s first dispel the myth that as an up-and-coming artist you have no business selling branded merchandise of your own. Just about every business—and don't forget, you are a business—proudly cultivates its brand through memorable, physical keepsakes. Whether you’re Elizabeth Warren selling “Nevertheless, She Persisted!” mugs or the real estate broker whose face has been frozen as a magnet on your refrigerator for years, merchandise is yet another way for a brand to make a personal connection with audiences and to ensure the experience is memorable and top-of-mind.

So let's challenge the snobby notion that merchandising is cringey, unnecessary, or a cash-grab reserved only for mononymous superstars. Perhaps our aversion to the whole concept comes from not understanding our brand or value proposition well enough, or from not having enough confidence in what we're trying to sell in the first place. If we had faith in the quality of our creative product and the resonance of our message, why wouldn’t we commemorate and share it as a physical memento?

Part of our work at Artist's Strategy is not only teaching you the nuts and bolts of personal marketing, but persuading you that you have something noteworthy to market in the first place. The hard part is convincing yourself your brand may be worth immortalizing and selling as a physical good. Once you've done that, the question is: Where do you start?

By this point you should have identified your unique value and perspective as an artist. Part of that definition may include some fun catch phrases you're known for, as well as colors and emotions that are associated with the stories you tell. From there, you will need to decide if you want merchandise specific to your line of work (e.g., a clapperboard, paint brush, or notebook) or something more applicable and abstract (e.g., a pin, tote, or wine glass). Either way, your first foray into personal brand merchandising needs to align with the following three principles:

• Vibe with your energy. The look and feel of your branding and merchandise needs to reflect your unique energy as an artist. If you’re known in the community primarily for your Shakespeare and Ibsen, beer koozies with the Bard’s greatest zingers in Comic Sans might, perhaps, feel off. But if you’re coming up as a cabaret singer, for example, greeting cards that play a short recording of your mushiest torch songs could be a bona fide hit for any occasion. Get creative, but make sure your merchandise vibes appropriately with your tone as an artist.

• Make it useful. How many crappy keychains and janky pens have you collected over the years from conferences or festivals? How many of them have ended up broken or directly in the garbage can? The Venn Diagram here is basically a total overlap. To avoid creating merchandise that contributes nothing more to the world than global warming, consider closely the value and practicality of the item. You want something audiences will return to again and again, and actually find some reason to use. High-quality tote bags, soft cotton crew sweatshirts, well-built phone cases, or even limited-run printed products are not only practical to use, but aesthetically pleasing as objects to wear or display.

• Align with your marketing objectives Once you’ve manufactured your merchandise, consider how you’ll distribute it. Are you an artist who primarily engages visually or through performance? Consider selling through your Instagram account, where many of your followers are already interacting with your work. Are you an actor who doesn’t yet receive consistent outreach through your website? Well-positioned and engaging merch may go a long way in transforming your website into an actual destination rather than just an obligatory stop-through for contact information and resume. Do you give these pieces away to achieve widespread exposure? Or do you take an exclusive approach, prioritizing your semi-famous friends (if you have them) who can wear your merch and generate some slow-simmering buzz? There’s no right or wrong answer here—so long as your distribution is aligned with your brand and audience habits.

If you’re someone who has never even considered merchandising, it could be a fun exercise to just give it some thought and run your ideas through the above three steps. If nothing else, it’ll get your brain thinking about the power of extending beyond your couple thousand followers and potentially bringing your great art into the literal hands of many more.