Welcome to Episode 28 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the band. I've podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here once again with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you today, Matt?

I'm doing pretty stellar today, James. How about yourself? That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. And things very good here. I mean, we're recording this at the end of May, and the pandemic is somewhat holding steady. At least here in the States. Some states are worse than others. But in Vermont, we've been reporting about two new cases per day for the last two weeks. So we're very lucky here in Vermont. How is it over your way in Colorado? Well, last week they reduced the number of deaths by 25% from 1100 to 800 ish, so things air looking better.

You know, it's all who who knows anymore. There's so much misinformation out there that I don't care about what's happening. I just care about the implications of what happens. I just want people to stay safe and everything to keep moving forward. So we'll find out in another couple of months, I'm sure. Yeah, well, I'm I'm really glad that the death rate, or rather the amount of people dying is going down. And I can't wait till that hit zero because even one person gone from Cove, it is too many.

So we're going thio Totally shift from that dark note. Just wanted to let people know kind of what state the world is in while we're recording this in case it changes in flip flops. By the time this episode comes out in two weeks, today we're going to talk about two key marketing techniques that artists can use Thio boost their careers, and sometimes it might even seem that this is unintentional. But many times artists have set this up intentionally, and they're very, very aware off what they're doing.

So we want to kind of drill that into your brains that this is something every artist should be paying attention, Thio. Now, Matt, you're the expert here. I'm just gonna hand over the reins on this episode to you and let you go through it. And if I have any questions, I will pipe up Awesome from sounds good. So today we're gonna be talking about two different, uh, marketing techniques. Now, we've talked a lot about marketing in the past, and there's lots of different ways that you can market.

I know you've heard us use phrases like Put your best foot forward in past episodes and I really want to hit that home and talk about that in relation to image or visual marketing. One very powerful technique that marketers have started using in the social media age is using a photo to imprint on idea on the minds of their audience or their consumers. When you as a consumer or when you as a concert, gore or when you were a young kid and you went on to your favorite bands, social media pages, you look at their pictures and you'd see how they were dressed.

You'd see the size of the crowds that they were playing Thio, you know, a lot of the time these air emulated in things like music videos. You'll see a music video where a band records the crowd during one of their their awesome performances. Then they released these videos. You'll notice that very, very, very rarely do you see images off. Ah, hit artist playing to 10 people. Very rarely do you see a music video where August Burns. Red is on stage going hard and it plans to the crowd and there's nobody there that just doesn't happen.

You know why? Because it would be a mistake to release that footage that puts a bad visual in people's mind surrounding that band. So let's say you play 30 shows a year and 29 of those shows. You know you're playing Thio 20 or 30 kids. Well, then you have that one show in your hometown. Maybe it's a huge touring act is coming through on their you're playing a 1500 cap venue and it shows sold out. That's the show that you want to double down on. That's the show that you want to get your footage from.

That's the show you want your pictures from. You want as much marketing content as you could possibly get from that experience, because the reason those kids in those you know, the 20 or 30 kids air coming out to your other shows is because they're seeing these images of you playing in front of, you know, 1000 people. That mentality of other people want it. So therefore it has value is very, very prominent in visual marketing. You put out a picture that shows you playing to 10 kids. People think that all of your shows have 10 kids at them.

However, if you put out a picture or a small little DVD of you guys playing to 500 or 1000 people, then that's the presupposition. People sit in their head and this goes, I mean, this is the same way even when you go to a concert. I still remember when I was 15 years old and I went to go see Emory in concert. When I got there, I was blown away at how many people were not at the show. In my mind. I had listened to Emory, you know, I had listened to him since I was a kid, and in my mind they were.

They were huge, you know. I had seen pictures on the on their social media's of them playing toe tons of people. When I saw them in concert. It was underwhelming. And I realized years later that it was because I had this pre conformed bias. I thought, in my mind, Wow, these guys have this professional sounding record. They put out some images or videos that have them playing in front of large crowds. So in my mind, I think these guys, these guys, play in front of large crowds every night, which made me want to go even more.

It was this subliminal marketing where they used images of them playing toe large crowds to incentivize me wanting to be a part of that event. You know, very rarely do people say, Wow, I really want to go to that concert that has two people at it. The artist might be phenomenal, but in reality they want to go to those shows where, you know, like you could go get in the mosh pit, everybody shoving each other around, being respectful. If you're packed shoulder to shoulder, you know, those are the memories that you walk away from concerts with You're like, you know, I'm sure we've all met that diehard 40 year old metal head guy who's like, Oh, man, Back when I saw a slip knot, I got elbowed in the face and kicked in the ribs and Oh, I'm gonna remember this concert forever, you know?

And it was these really weird things that that they end up remembering it was sweating too much, getting elbowed like crowd surfing. You know, it was all about the event. So your visual marketing, when you enter the scene, you're starting off by building this pre confirmation bias in their mind that they are going to be able to create a moment at your event. If I think there's nobody gonna be there, I'm less incentivized to go there. If I think there's a ton of people gonna be there, I'm mawr incentivized to go, especially if I have one of my friends.

Are you gonna go to the new Emery concert like Oh, yeah, I totally am sweet. Now you have somebody to go with now it feels even bigger. So now you definitely want to be a part of it. The bigger the event, the more people like to be a part of it, you know? And this is true of anything you can look it, you know, price tickets of any event. You know, the few of the price tickets, the more expensive they are, The more popular the the event gets, the more expensive they become.

You know, this is why I e. D. M. Festivals. You know, people are paying 3 to $500 for a ticket. It's gonna be packed. Everybody's, you know, they're probably gonna be over capacity, and it's going to be the event of a lifetime. And that's how they market it, you know? And everybody wants to look at these concerts and go Holy cow, Look at those lights. Look at the size of those stacks. I could literally sit inside of that subwoofer, thes air visual triggers that really are tipping points in people's mind.

Not everybody wants to go to the same style of show. And so when you're you know, when you're posting pictures, there's different things that you can use as a way to trigger this visual marketing. This is why people wear nice clothes like I'll be the first to tell you that if you honestly think rich people or social influencers or instagram models or any of these people, if you honestly believe that they wear Louis Vuitton every day or Gucci every day like you're jaded, it's a very bad thought because chances are these guys air, like getting paid to where those products or they are very heavily pushing into this visual marketing platform where they're trying to portray themselves is rich, powerful, and ironically, the things that end up coming from that is the money and the fame.

I've said it for years. It's always funny to listen to a rapper rap about having lots of money or doing lots of drugs or sleeping with lots of people. And then, for some reason, that makes the mass mentality. It triggers those things. So, like Drake is a perfect example. Where he made a song about sleeping with Nicki Minaj. It wasn't even a song. It was, ah, rumor. They started this rumor, and so, and he did so by posting a picture of him with Nicki Minaj. This started a rumor that perpetuated into this actually happening in them having a relationship and what's crazy is I honestly think Drake is one of the best visual marketers that's ever walked the planet.

Because Drake was the number one selling artist, he went from nowhere to being the number one selling artist. And he did so by recording a song that had three A list names on it besides himself. And after that he went around and he took pictures with everybody in young money. So he took pictures with Little Wayne with Nicki Minaj. He posted those pictures and guess what he said in his marketing. His marketing said Young money signs new artist. He starts posting these pictures everywhere, and what does that do?

It gets people talking. Well, then everybody's saying, Oh my gosh, young money signed this guy. Well, let's listen to his music. Well, then they listen to his music. He had hit songs. He had a list artists. He had visual marketing that went along with his narrative, where him It posted pictures of him with all the people under, uh, little Wayne's label. Lo and behold, young money signs him. This was something that he perpetuated a rumor using visual marketing. All he did was post a picture and a simple little phrase.

And then what happens? It actually happen because enough people start to believe it, that certain people in the industry realize, Oh, there's a lot of money here. Look at how happy the people are about this guy being signed to young money. Okay, well, let's actually sign him. And that's both. A smart business move on Drakes part and also a very smart move on Little Wayne's part. He saw an opportunity, and he capitalized on it as well. Drake uses visual marketing time and time again, and lo and behold, I think we all remember when Taylor Swift was really hidden the height of her career and Taylor Swift Taylor Swift still never became the number one selling artist when she was doing the best things that she had ever done in her career.

She was still dwarfed by Drake, a random kid who posted pictures saying that he had been signed to a label that he hadn't actually been signed. Thio that right there is visual marketing used to the maximum. This is an incredible technique, and it's also, you know, there's definitely gray area with it because did he lie? Absolutely. Was he trying to manipulate people in order to gain fame. Yes, and you can dive into the gray area all you want. But at the same time, what I want to focus on is how that marketing literally led him to being the number one selling artists of all time.

Like That's incredible. You should never post a picture that makes you look like a lesser artist. So if you have a picture of you plan to 10 people, delete it. You don't need that. You know, if you have a picture of people crowd surfing to try to get on stage while the lights air coming down, it's like, yeah, post that picture. That's what people want to see. They want that moment. And so you use this visual marketing, you use your image, and this is directly correlated to your brand, because how you dress on a regular basis is your brand.

We all know what Post Malone looks like. And why do we know that because of how he dresses his face, tattoos, his grill? He has very I don't want to say unique traits anymore because there's a lot of people in the rap world who are using Ah, lot of those imagery techniques, but he definitely stands out. I know that. Probably. You know, seven out of 10 modern day musicians would be able to identify Post Malone in a crowd. Same thing with, uh, whatever that snitch guy 69 or whatever.

You know, everybody. Everybody hates him, but everybody remembers. Like even if you don't know his name, you're like, Oh, who's that snitch guy who has rainbow colored hair? That's double visual marketing because one everybody remembers that this guy has covered from head to toe in rain bows. But they also remember seeing him in a suit testifying in court, and that is the worst visual marketing that he ever had. It literally cause so many people to talk about him say, You know, he's a snitch. He's horrible. He's gonna get killed by these gang members blah, blah, blah.

This which might all be true. Who knows? That's all conjecture. What I do know is that the song that he released after he was released from prison had the most views in a 24 hour period. I think e I mean, since the last crazy huge viral song, and this is a guy who really was only known in the rap world. You know, 69 was not. I don't even know how to say his name. That's how I don't know if it's 69 or 69 or what. But this visual marketing perpetuated his career.

Sometimes it could be negative. Sometimes it could be positive. He has an image, so you instantly recognize him when you see him. And then he also had some visual marketing that caused a lot of people to talk about him. Those two things combined are a powerhouse now. Hopefully, people are talking about you for good things. But in the world that we live in psychologically theatrics person will tell 10 people about a negative experience that they have or a negative thought. The average person will tell 2 to 3 people about something exciting in their life, So positive emotions upon being, you know, dissected.

They realized they don't go as far as negative emotions. This is where we get phrases like there's no such thing as bad press because even bad press has a tendency to go a lot further than good press. And a lot of the times people are then going to make their own opinions in their own judgment, from whatever you're posting asking Alexandria's lead singer, Danny War Snap had a drinking problem and his drinking problem put them on the map, he literally would get hammered, and it would be an embarrassment, and the videos would go everywhere.

There's there's still videos of them at their first show. They sound awful. You can probably google Danny War, snap drunk and still find tons of content. He got sober. Then people stopped talking about them. And so they're manager actually staged a video where he got Danny drunk before one of the shows, so drunk to the point where he was passing out on stage. That video went viral, their show horrible. But that terrible news that visual marketing off this performer, being too drunk to stand on stage went everywhere asking.

Alexandria has had a successful career ever since. Now the method is questionable and it honestly, really stinks because, you know, Danny then had years and years of of bad press, you know, and it was literally exploitation of somebody's weakness. And so, you know, I don't think that's a good way to do it. But again, my point is not to focus on the bad thing or the struggle. You know, somebody was subjected to something that's bad. But the marketing that came around from it and the way that it was marketed ended up causing more people to see it than ever would have.

This is powerful and if not used correctly, is risky and can be very irresponsible. It's all about how you're going to portray yourself. This goes back to brand. This goes back to your image. You know, this is all one tight package. You use this visual marketing to portray something, and then from there, if you have bad news, people that can then go in and watch a video or, you know, I say, Oh, look, this guy did this terrible thing in this video and somebody says, Oh, now I wanna watch the video to see what terrible thing he did because people are naturally curious.

That's actually what has perpetuated a lot of our marketing, uh, world in general. That's why when you're scrolling through your Facebook feed, you see videos that say, like you won't believe what happens. At two minutes and 38 seconds. You know they're using these marketing strategies to try to get you to watch at least two minutes and 38 seconds of their video, because that's probably when they received their maximum amount of payout from YouTube or whatever corresponding streamers moving their product. I recently just saw a video where a guy was talking about how passive income is a myth, and I thought it was hilarious because this was a YouTube video where people were watching.

It had hundreds of hundreds of thousands or millions of views, and he's sitting there talking about how passive revenues a myth. Meanwhile, he is literally making passive revenue from this video. And so he was appealing to this pre conformed bias in people's heads, like people who are struggling to get ahead monetarily or thinking. Oh, I read this self help book. It says. I need to work on passive income. Oh, but I'm not really sure how to do that. And then here comes this video that says passive income.

It's fake. Well, that naturally makes people curious. So then they want to go and figure out what's going on. Well, they watch this. It's this appeals to their pre conformed bias. And meanwhile, this guy is making passive revenue by telling you that you can't make passive revenue. It's a crazy world we live in. This is all part of visual marketing. It's, you know, image, how you portray yourself and how you look to the world. Eminem and M G. K. We all know about the kill shot wrapped double beef.

Now, what a lot of people don't know is that both of those songs were co writes. They had ghost writers, and that ghost writer was not. Onley featured on both of their songs. But he was also the producer who produced both of those songs. Ronnie J. A. K A. Ronald Spence Junior. He was a ghost writer and a producer On both of those tracks. He knew exactly how to take an image or take something that somebody did and immediately give this pre conformed bias to everybody in the world.

It was really easy. Eminem put out an album, and 24 hours later, M. G K put out a music video for most of us at the professional level in the music industry, we all know that it's very, very hard to write a song, get a beat, made, get into the studio and make a music video in 24 hours. As a matter of fact, I would say almost all of us say that that's impossible because your video editor is gonna need more time than that. Your producer is going to need more time than that.

You will probably need more time than that writing this song. I mean, even finding a beat might take you a longer period of time than that if you don't already have somebody who consistently makes beats for you. And so 24 hours later, perpetuating, you know, literally following off this cascading trail. Everybody's talking about Eminem's album, and so he drops this song and instantly everybody's like Oh my gosh, m g K Let him have it. Well, then Ronnie J says, Yeah, wait like a week, and then you drop your song, and then it will seem like you guys are like the apex of writing, because when you released these songs and then on top of that, everybody's gonna think that you guys really hate each other, but you don't mean you literally work with the same producers the same songwriters.

You're in the same circles, but people are gonna think that you hate each other and then one step further. I'm sure when everybody remembers when m g. K went out on stage at follow boys concert wearing the kill shot, uh, image are on his T shirt with his middle fingers up. That image that got released to the world made it look like so many people were on M G K side in the battle. But really M g k just showed up at a Fall Out boy concert and wrapped a couple lines, and people thought it was cool.

Then he turns around. He gets this picture, and a bunch of people are actually really irritated at it because a lot of those fans were Eminem fans, but he was using all of these people here to show fake support for his cause. He used visual marketing to literally trick everybody in the world. Meanwhile, the two of them are sitting back together, accounting there stacks of money. It's how you portray yourself. If you take pictures every day of you sitting around stacks of cash, people are going to think you're rich.

If you spend every single day making videos of you, like feeding the homeless people. People are going to think you this, you know, altruist. It's how you portray yourself. It's how you brand yourself that people are really gonna hold onto. Visual marketing is awesome. It's powerful, but it's dangerous. You have to make sure that what you're doing is not only going to further your brand, but it's also, in my opinion, it shouldn't tarnish your name. And if you want to run your own name through the dirt, that's one thing.

But ah, lot of us that Aaron bands you have to think about. You know how you represent everybody that's in your group is well, And so if you guys are going to take some sort of marketing approach like that, it's very important for you to sit down together and work on everything. All right, Well, Matt, that's awesome. Thank you so much for the insight into visual marketing and all the examples. I think that will really help to paint a picture in our listeners minds of what exactly they should be doing and what they should not be doing.

You know, I'm sure there were cases where this was done and it really was bad. Like if you think about Fire Festival, that was all visual marketing, and it was a total disaster. So artist should be able to back that up. And obviously artists typically aren't planning giant festivals in the Caribbean. Moving on. Can you go through trigger marketing for us? Absolutely. Trigger marketing is kind of a newer term. It surfaced mawr after viral marketing started becoming, ah, common thing in the digital world. And, uh, what trigger marketing is You're using specific triggers in order to market your music, Which another kind of sounds circular, But let's use the example.

It's my favorite one, the song Friday by Rebecca Black, and we all know they got to get down on Friday. This song was ridiculous. This is why it went viral. Some people thought it was catchy. Some people thought it was funny. Everybody kind of thought it was ridiculous. Half the community wasn't sure if it was a joke or not. I don't know if Rebecca Black and her family even thought it was a joke or not, or if it was really just a opportunity for rich kid toe feel like a rock star.

Whatever it waas, it doesn't matter. A lot of people saw this as all this song went viral because a lot of people were making fun of it. Humor does go a long way and is an activating emotion, so that is a very, very good theory. But if you actually study a little bit closer, the analytics of the song Friday on a week to week basis it has a jump in streams. Guess what day it's always on Friday always, And that's because even the people that thought it was funny they put that song on.

And it's this wonderful sense of camaraderie. It's it really is a moment kind of like what I was talking about earlier. You really want to give people a moment? Well, in people's lives, that might be Wow, This was hilarious when this song came out. And so, like, I'm gonna play this joke song every so often. Same reason people play weird house. Still one of my personal favorite songs. I am very much so. A product of this is well, every morning when I'm going outside to do some work, I like listening to the song Good Morning by Max Frost.

It is a slap in track that you know his lyrics or baby, it's a brand new day Ain't no cloud coming over me. And it's just like a song about not letting anything get in his way for, you know, for the day and it's awesome. And so it's like this wonderful mantra of, like, positivity in the early morning, and the song is literally called Good Morning. It's a trigger because I want to have a good morning. So I play that song, and that helps put me in the mindset for it.

People On Friday they got to get down on Friday. They play Rebecca Black Saturday by Fall Out Boy Closing Time. How many people have worked at a restaurant or at a coffee shop who play closing time at the end of their shift? I know quite a few of them, and honestly, that song was popular when I was a kid, and it's still rakes in streams on a regular regular basis. The cure Friday I'm in love. That's another one that routinely sees an increase in streams, these air songs that trigger things in people's mind when you say, like, Oh, yeah, I got to get down on Friday most of the time that song is being played on Friday, and it is triggered by your knowledge of it being Friday.

But really, what you're what you're excited for is the thought of it becoming the weekend. So all of these things were marketed in an incredible way to where you don't even necessarily know that it's marketing. But just the word in the song triggers something in your brain. It's much more of a subliminal marketing. Then it's not super right in your face. It's not like Boom, flash sale, You know, this is a huge sale. We don't put banners up in the windows. We put little trigger words inside of our songs, and those trigger words end up, you know, simulating something.

Ah, lot of pop music in general is, ah, clever turn of phrase a lot of the time, your hook. I'm trying to think of a good example off the top of my head. Even in Max Frost. Good morning. You know, it's a brand new day. Brand New Day is a song by a few other artists, so there's like this slight homage that he's paying to other artists like Sting. And there's also there's a temporal marketing, because that song gets played mawr in the morning than in the evening.

People aren't getting ready for bed and playing, baby. It's a brand new day because guess what? It's not a brand new day. It is an evening. It's you're you're getting ready for bed. It might be closing time. You know, Closing time doesn't get played it opening. And so these subliminal marketing techniques really get people to play your music without even necessarily thinking about it. I don't think a lot of people really set out when they're writing a song to say, How can I subliminally market to someone?

I don't think people are saying, Oh, you know what? This song Saturday by Fall Out Boy. The song Saturday isn't necessarily even about Saturday. It's about him hanging out with his friends, and things start to get more fun in the wake of Saturday. His way is one of the lines that he has in the song, and so he's actually talking about experiences with his friends. But the song is called Saturday, so even I myself sometimes we'll put that song on on a Saturday. You don't have to think about that necessarily when you're writing, but it is always good to write with the end in mind.

And this could be a simple little thing. Maybe it's what you name your song. Song titles don't have to be the exact same as you know, the chorus or things like that. It might, you know, being analogy or represent a point or something to that effect on. So it's a little bit more of, ah, hard market. It's a hard strategy to kind of follow through, but when you have those little like I don't wanna say safety nets. But there's just a little extra buffer like nobody could have expected Rebecca Black's Friday to go viral.

Nobody could have expected that. That's what Vier ality means, but you can now week to week expect that she is going to have an increased number of streams every Friday. This is a fantastic strategy. It's hard to integrate, but it's something you should sit down with. Everybody in your band. You guys should all talk about it, say, like, Hey, guys, is there any way that we might be ableto put some of this trigger marketing into our music. Maybe we use a popular phrase or, you know, like cash me outside.

How about that? That's a turn of phrase that this girl has made popular. And guess what? That girl started within visual marketing. She made herself seemed like she was some sort of badass and that she didn't respect anyone or anything. And now she has a successful rap career. She is probably a multimillionaire. She's a social influencer. She's ridiculous. But that's because that's how she branded herself. She decided she wanted to take the negative approach and say, like, Oh, yeah, let's get all these people talking about me And then, you know, if everybody talks about me and then I started music career.

Well, then all the people who don't think that I'm a disgusting human being will solicit to my product. So sit down with your bandmates, talk about what it would look like to try and implement trigger words into your brand and your business, your music. Maybe it's just names of the song. Maybe it's, you know, lyrics in a song, but if you can, you know, find good ways to put that in its very, very beneficial and trigger marketing is, I think, in the long term I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more of this come up in the future, where people have really developed a strategy that makes their songs succeed long term and its trigger words like this that really helped music stand the test of time.

Yeah, I think those are all great points, and I really like what you're saying, because it's kind of something that's come around in the last decade or so, and it seems that it was inadvertent originally. But now artists are turning around and doing it intentionally and thinking back. I know shovel way back in the day, had a song called Saturday Are Saturdays Something like that? And you don't see that song popping up, but I'm sure that's because it's so old. If that song were released now, that would be getting plays every Saturday, and I'm sure I see a little bump, but it's not gonna be is popular is Fall Out Boy or Friday by Rebecca Black.

But then it's interesting to see the cure because that song is even older than the shovel song, but that's also kind of Ah, classic. Whereas Shovels Song wasn't one of their hits, it was like an album cut. So I think it's really cool to see how this all works out. And I guess I just wanna add that even for a smaller local or regional artist, this could still have a big boost. Because if you have 100 people listening to you or 500 people listening to you and they add a song that reminds them of something, whether it's a day or an action or who knows what to a playlist or they just play that song when that thing is happening, that's huge.

If even 10% of your 100 fans do that, that's an extra 10 plays a week. Just because you use trigger marketing, this is really something that's important. And I think, at least for now is the way of the future. Absolutely, You know, coming out of Cove, it it's really gonna be interesting to see what bands make it in one. What bands don't and really, the thing that's going to set them apart is how they market their product. I was blown away at how long it took me to find a single ad of somebody being like, Yeah, for every product we sell will donate some money to the manufacturing of covert tests or, well purchased the mask.

You know, for somebody who doesn't have one, it literally took a month and a half to find those ads, which I think was absolutely insane. Use whatever marketing opportunities you have in your favor, and you can really, really, really capitalize on your already established fan base, but also creating opportunities for yourself in the future. And that is it for another episode of the band. I've podcast toe all of you listening. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And we're really thankful Thio have our listeners who come back every single episode as well as anybody who just tunes in once in a while or are nearer listeners who are just getting started listening to this podcast.

Thank you so much to each and every one of you. If you'd like to stay in touch, we do have a free Facebook community that you're welcome to join, just search for banned hive on Facebook or go to Band. I've dot rocks slash group toe automatically be redirected to our Facebook group. I hope you all have an awesome week. We'll be back with another new episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time and, of course, as always, keep rocking.