Image is the perception of everyone else's reality....
Kelly Clarkson was the apple of America's eye during her run on American Idol. She was touring the world and was on everyone's television set from, VH1, MTV, and every other talk show that existed. She walked down the red carpet to collect a Grammy her first year as the best new artist and the image was she was a superstar. For all intensive purposes she was. The only deal is that in our minds a superstar equals big bucks and she was a broke joke.
Go ahead and look it up for yourself if you don't believe me. She was in legal battles with American Idol over the whole thing. They worked her to the bone and she didn't see a dime but in the end she finally started to reap the rewards she so deservingly earned.
It was so hard on her during that time in the beginning that she almost called it quits before she made it to the end of that long, dark,emotional, tunnel. My point is that our image of Kelly during those two and a half years was her living the glamorous life when in fact she was living out of mediocre motels, one suitcase with all her belongings and barely a penny to her name. She has been quoted many times in saying how she wondered if it was all worth it and was ready to quit and decided to do just that when AI decided to give their golden goose some of her own eggs she gave birth to.
American Idol had their image of Kelly projected through their show. She had the glitz and fashion producers made her look like a pop diva. She looked like a million bucks every time she stepped on stage and the world didn't know any other wise. Kelly's image was Gold! So the question is this. How do we learn from this as independent musicians and labels?
This is how.... We need to follow the advice my great Grandma told me, "Walk around like you have a million dollars in your pocket and no one will no the difference." The public buys into the image thing and here are a few things you need to know.
The power of television is everything to record companies. Without American Idol, VH1, MTV, movies and the televised award shows they would not have the superstars. The magic of TV has the power to create a larger than life image for anyone it seems. Disney understands this concept better than anyone. They have a television show for everyone of their artist and this is what makes their artist so successful. They out sale their adult counterparts but the BMI charts will not include them. I think they are a little embarrassed by the Disney kids.
Awhile back I realized playing the bars were not helping my image out. Although they were paying better than other gigs, being in a dingy bar on a floor with no stage, no lights and a poor P.A. system was making us look poor. So I looked into putting on my own show at nice theaters instead. Found out how much they required rent the facility made up tickets and pre sold the amount I needed to cover my cost. We had the big lights, nice sound and a sweet stage. We appeared larger than life to our fans and everyone thought we had arrived as artist.
I made sure we had two nice canon GL2 cameras to record the whole thing and made a pro looking DVD from the show. We put clips of the show on YouTube and it helped catapult us from the average weekend warrior to the talk of the town.
YouTube does not have the same power of the large networks but it does have some teeth. We now have to walk the walk and talk the talk to keep our image up. Everyone now thinks we are bonafide Rock Stars and keeping up the image is hard work. We try not to ever leave the house without looking like the image we have created. We have a motto now, "If we are comfortable something must be wrong."
We created a website that looks as slick as anyone from Sony Records and our own independent label and now we are a mystery to the public. As long as we don't let anyone know the truth we are using the same concept we learned from Kelly Clarkson we will continue to be superstars in the eyes of our fans.
We may not be millionaires yet but we are superstars!
