I come from a background where I’ve played in bands, recorded music, toured and have created all promotional material that comes with it. I get it. Its tough to pay for everything and still cover the petrol costs for your next gig.
When you are a creative you learn pretty quickly that everything comes with a cost; your equipment, the marketing, recording, photos, videos etc. But if you are looking to be taken seriously by the industry you first need to take what you’re doing seriously too. At the end of the day music is money and you need to sell yourself not just to the next potential fan but to the industry too.
This is the photo of one of my first bands, it was taken on what I remember to be an old point and shoot and not a professional grade camera. We didn’t have the money to pay for a professional photoshoot! At the time we were happy enough with it, knowing what I know now however this just would be glanced over.
We had no idea at the time that we were signing up to essentially be a product we were just in it for the laughs (which is by no means a bad thing). But if you DO want to be taken seriously you need to invest money by setting up a band account and everyone putting money in each month or whenever you can so you can save equally to create your brand/image. This way you can budget yourself accordingly and start to look at taking your band to the next level.
You might notice every now and then there is a band that pops up ‘just out of nowhere’ and think to yourself “How are these guys doing this? What do they have that I don’t?” the answer? A good image and good PR. These bands have invested their time and yes, money to create a brand.
When I joined ASHFIELDS we created a campaign plan to push our new single and upcoming tour. We shot new promotional images, created posters,social media branding and we also enlisted a PR company to help spread our campaign to as many publications as possible so when published we looked like the complete package. Out on my shoots I had people asking me how we got so big so quickly and how it did look like we “came out of nowhere”. The truth is because we planned it. We put time and money in to create our brand.
Now I’m no longer performing in bands my time is spent on my photography business. I also offer the above services, if you aren’t photoshop savvy or need help with your upcoming campaign please get in touch with me at jay@jaysanderson.co.uk