Steve Stoute Talks About Branding and the Recording Artist

I was cruising through Brandmakernews.com and came across, a post on Steve Stoute. Steve Stoute is the founder and CEO of Translation. Translation is a successful advertising agency whose purpose is to match celebrities with brands that properly complement their image. Steve recently did Influencers In-depth Series and was interviewed about the concept of cool. The video was featured on the post.

About halfway through the interview/ documentary, Stoute begins to talk about branding and recording artists. Stoute formerly worked in the record industry for many years so being in advertising he has a fresh unique perspective on combining advertising with artists. He talked about how today branding with artists doesn’t make sense. Seven years ago, the industry was not declining and before then, artists would not be branded with a product/ service that did not complement them.  An example of a bad combination he gave: Tiger Woods and Buick. Most did not believe that Woods would drive a Buick considering his wealth and the ad failed. He stated: “Artists would only do things that make sense to them, things that shared values”. Since the decline of the industry, “A lot of artists are aligning themselves with brands that they don’t have shared values with”.

For Stoute, an unnatural combination between artist and brand is a one-way relationship by which the brand is using the artist. His purpose and belief is that truth must come out within the branding; with that truth, the match will be received well by consumers. As a consumer and a music lover, I agree that when artists are paired with products /services I can’t imagine them using, it seems very fake and can ultimately destroy the personal brand of the artist. I encourage you to watch the video. Stoute knows what he talking about; his quest for natural partnerships between celebrity and product/ service has led to much success for his company.