Introduction
In June 2019, BBC launched its out-of-the-box promotional campaign for Peaky Blinders Season-5. BBC announced that it needed fans of the cult show to submit their show-centric art pieces. Soon fans popped up in large numbers to show their love for Tomy Shelby and his gang in the form of creative billboards. With this amazing branding, a bigger audience welcomed the fifth season of the show.
Similarly, when Northampton’s Slowthai was about to release his album “Nothing Great about Britain” he placed billboards showing grim facts about climate change, homelessness in the UK, and the likes around London and invited his fans to find them, take snaps and send them to the artist. Thus, his unique strategy created a buzz about his upcoming album. And when the album was out, it was received by an even wider fan base.
Both these examples showcase how artists try to engage their fans in unique ways to increase their fan base. They make effective use of every existing communication medium like the mainstream media, social media, community engagement events, and volunteering for social causes, among others. These creative ideas fall under the scope of public relations (PR), but what exactly is PR?
What is PR?
The field of PR is nothing but an effective communication strategy to build a positive reputation and to limit the damage in any reputational or other crisis. A comprehensive PR strategy is composed of varied components like employee relations, community relations, governmental relations, media relations, and crisis management.
Almost every PR campaign of an organization contains these components to some degree. Employee and governmental relations are more relevant to PR plans of both public and private organizations, but community and media relations that focus on engaging the public and wooing them are more relevant to PR strategies of professional individuals like artists. Yet the last PR component — crisis management — is relevant to both organizational and individual PR plans.
The success of any business entity and credibility of every governmental organization almost solely depends on effective PR campaigns. Likewise, the success of professionals like artists (and their art) is heavily dependent on effective branding and PR strategies.
Significance of Public Relations for Artists
In this era of hyper-competition, out-of-the-box and effective PR helps the artist build their credibility and trust, thus enhancing their authority. A phenomenal PR campaign can not only retain the existing fan base but also widen it, which means they’ve engaged more fans and attracted more from the public. In addition, good PR strategy has the potential to help an artist secure more contracts, which can lead to financial success.
How Artists are Making Use of PR
Artists all over the world understand the usefulness of PR and are increasingly making use of it to climb the career ladder.
For instance, Taylor Swift, one of pop music’s biggest stars, consistently uses effective branding techniques for her new albums. Before the release of her album “Reputation,” she deleted her entire Instagram feed and teased her fans with images of snakes. Similarly, Scott Cleary — the LA-based designer — completely transformed the music band Paramore’s 2017 release “After Laughter,” moving from pop-punk an ’80s vibe.
In 2015, the singer Ed Sheeran informed his fans via his social media platforms that he was taking a break, but after one year, Sheeran posted a simple blue square on social media. This blue square was an indication of his new album ‘Divide.’ The branding campaign of ‘Divide’ is now one of the artist’s most successful branding campaigns.
With millions of Twitter followers watching and waiting for what came next, Swift and Sheeran certainly knew what they were doing. But Swift and Sheeran aren’t the only artists with large followings. Katy Perry has 110 million Twitter followers, Justin Bieber has 90 million followers, and Lady Gaga regularly tweets to her 79 million followers. With numbers like that, PR using social media can have an enormous impact.
Just like musicians, other artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang, best known for his use of fireworks and gunpowder; Jenny Saville, popular for her dedication to the large-scale paintings of female nudes; and Kara Walker, well-known cut-paper silhouettist, have huge social media followings. Artists across a variety of genres rely more on social media for their success.
Research supports the use of social media. In June 2018, Asim Ansari and colleagues published “Building a Social Network for Success” in the “Journal of Marketing Research.” They found that a comment from an artist lead to “9.23 additional song plays in the short term and 25.40 incremental plays in the long term, on average. Similarly, one friend request resulted in one additional song play in the short term and 2.40 additional song plays in the long term, on average” (Asani et. al, 2018, as cited in Kurczy, 2018). Furthermore, a strong fan base has a positive effect on the success of an artist.
Over to You
If you are working with a museum, collaborating on an exhibition, or planning an upcoming album or movie, then an effective PR campaign should be part of your recipe for success. For devising an effective PR campaign, you must hire a professional PR team, as PR is a multi-faceted and complicated phenomenon. Those PR teams that focus on artists can be most helpful, so let a professional PR firm help you stand out from the competition.