Every once in a while I stumble into an article or discussion about art as content. Or conversely, about content as art. More often it's posed as a dismissal or a question, about what we produce as artists in a world where content reigns. And what is meant by content, really, since so much of what entertains or informs us could be classified as such? Youtubers and Instagrammers creating content for various niches. Television shows and Hollywood movies. Blogs and articles and aesthetic Tik Toks. And, usually the most important question, how artists especially work to make a clear line of distinction between what they do as artists and what "content creators" do.
I suppose we are all content consumers to some degree. Movies, shows, obviously, and for me things like plus size fashion and thrifting videos, design articles, and IG reels. Writers on Instagram talking about writing routines and publishing, or artists showing a day working in their studios. I've been a reader of long-form blog content, writing, and lifestylish things, since the beginning, long before short-form social media was a thing, Even before the internet, things like magazines and non-fiction books. All of it content--read to inform or entertain, or in some cases to sell something, because yo, capitalism. When I was first looking for freelance writing career guidance and watching a lot of, yes, content, on Youtube, there was much discussion of content vs copy, how the latter was to sell, but also how the former can also be used to sell. While less of my work has been overtly in the interest of commerce, some of it definitely is, whether its blogs or gift guides or design must-haves. Much of content writing is brand building, but some is definitely more driven toward strategically directing traffic in some way.
Back a decade or so ago when people first began to speak of brand building, things got weird. Not just creatives who make artful things, but people, just ordinary ones, going about their lives as presented for social media consumption. People branded their families, their weddings, their everyday life. They made logos to start blogs about household cleaning tips or DIY projects. Recipes and family holiday photos. Successful branding in turn led to more engagement which led to advertising and sponsorship and the things that make money on the internet. And of course, if you are at all creative, the idea of turning your passions and interests into money-making activities is the dream for all of us (well, unless we are rich already or have some sort of support).
Artists were quick to scoffingly say they weren't brands, they were artists, but still in many cases came across as brands (which I don't think is a bad thing if its genuine and true to who you are and what you're making/doing/love.) We are all brands, on the internet or not. It's expressed through what we were, what we do, who our friends are. What we read and watch and make. If its not online, its in person. I always think of figures like Anne Sexton or Stephen King, and how, through things like reading and interviews and just being in the world, they definitely were a brand. Sometimes it has to do with the work and sometimes nothing at all. It can be a conscious effort or not conscious at all. I think the internet got people thinking about it in marketing terms where they weren't thinking about it before, at least not the artists themselves. Pre-internet, it may have been left to agents and PR reps and other professionals if you were big enough to have them.
Of course, most of us don't have these. So we somehow embody a brand--good or bad, genuine or disingenuous. Assemble it through bits of internet ephemera, real life, and of course, the work, which is hopefully the path toward which all things lead. It's true of everyone from novelists and painters to big-name Hollywood actors. It's about work, but also about the YOU who makes it. Because ultimately, its seldom just about work. Culture has never fully been able to cleave the artist from the art, the writer from the writing, no matter how valiantly New Criticism tried.
When I was a baby poet and building my first website in 2001, I was so clueless and hopeful. Over the next few years I spent time agonizing over color and images, and yes, even fonts. I didn't know it, but that was a kind of branding. Every social media platform or book design or interview, also branding. Your author photo and how you come across in a tiny, tiny picture. This blog, is part branding, part brain dump, of course, which is also a kind of branding. I often hear writers bemoan that they are no good at branding, but I think if they really considered what they do and how they do it, they'd see ways it works in their life as a public artist. They aren't just doing it, they ARE it. Even if they're just making random observations or posting memes on Twitter.
The public you can be the same as the private you, the genuine you, the you when no one is looking. Or I suppose it could be something else..a Hannah Montana-like trick of mirrors. Or an artistic persona. Alternate versions with pen names and made-up pasts. But whichever part you re playing in the public sphere, that too is a brand. It may have very little to do with the art, itself, or it may be tied inextricably to it. But it's there.
What I also don't think gets mentioned enough is that branding can also be part of the art and not entirely separate from it. As someone who gets great enjoyment from re-engaging with my writing and art in how I put it out into the word--the websites, the video content and graphics and blogs--its becomes very closely tied together. The thought processes behind both are similar. Both are a kind of creation, but with different ends (or maybe not so different at all--as I plan to discuss in part two of this discussion.) Regardless, so many artists see branding and marketing as the antithesis of creating and get frustrated when they don't think they are doing it well or enough or it seems tremendously overwhelming. They forget to find joy in it, though there is surely joy to be had, however much time you choose to invest in it.
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