In case you aren’t familiar with our WE ARE LISTENING platform, our aim is a simple one – to encourage and develop new female/nonbinary talent in electronic music. In November, we held our latest #wearelistening event here at Toolroom HQ. Sian Bennett, Strategy Director of Mustard Media joined us on the day as a guest to give advice on Marketing as Artists in the current social media climate.
Sian works with some of the world’s biggest events to help create sell out strategies and has over 8 years’ experience and has been a part of campaigns with Elrow, Afro Nation, Annie Mac Presents: Lost & Found Festival, Rolling Loud, EDC, Manchester Pride, The BPM Festival, Drumcode Festival, Parklife Festival, The Yacht Week, Camp Bestival, Escape to Freight Island and many more.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the session…
Sian started out with Mustard Media as an intern and has risen up through the ranks, recently becoming a partner in the business. When asked about the journey, this is what Sian said:
“I’ve always had a solution focused mindset and was determined to find the answers on my own. When I was an intern, I was asked to set up tracking pixels, and had no idea what that meant, so I Googled it and figured it out on my own as I was determined to look like I knew what I was doing! Having that mindset has actually played a huge part in the development of my career.”
There are a lot of Artists out there fighting for the limelight, being unique in today’s market is something many artists stress about and find complicated. Sian’s advice is to keep it simple and find one thing that makes you yourself and focus on that:
“Finding out what your ‘brand’ should be is actually really simple. Don’t feel like you need to create a 20-page brand deck, or go through a lengthy process of finding your brand values, brand purpose… and so on.
The best examples I’ve seen is when a festival or event takes one thing and really owns it. This could mean owning a tone of voice, owning the ‘experience’, owning a personality/face to the brand or owning a theme or a narrative.”
“My advice would be to start small, always. Give yourself room to grow. And think about what community or audience you’re going to either create, or tap into, before even thinking about a venue, lineup or artwork. It’ll be an expensive mistake if you launch your event and commit to the costs before you’ve figured out who and where your audience is. And why would they care!”
“The rise of TikTok, combined with a trend in social media ‘perfection fatigue’, has accelerated the consumption of short form, attention grabbing ‘lo-fi’ content. However, this isn’t just a TikTok trend, we’re seeing this content being heavily pushed in Facebook and Instagram algorithms too. This means a shift away from overly designed, polished videos and graphics, and a move towards short form, attention grabbing creative which often uses native platform features to retain your attention throughout (e.g., text captions in video).
People no longer want to be broadcasted to, instead you should think about how your content can provide value to entertain, educate or inspire. How are you going to capture someone’s attention and give them a reason to keep watching in the first 3 seconds? Adopting a ‘short form storytelling mindset’ is the key. And ditch two minute long, chronological after movies which are no longer fit for purpose on social.”
Drop an email to the below to find out more about the platform!
Carly@toolroomacademy.com
