Brand Personalities with Real Personality: Strategies for Individual Brands and Branded Individuals in the Entertainment Industry

Iconic brands are a hallmark of the creative industries based on the commercialisation of figures from popular culture. With strong brand imagery associations attached to musicians, actors, and professional performers, branding is a key element of the pop culture industry. This paper presents an exploration of the applicability of the Aaker (1997) and Okazaki (2006) five factor framework to the creation of branded personalities (and personalities as brands) in the personality driven culture of the roots music industries. Although the music industry is worth ludicrous amounts of money, limited research has been conducted into the image consumption of music and associated music marketing (with the exception of Martin and McCracken 2001). This paper represents an exploration of the potential for the use of the brand personality concept for use in music marketing, and whether the components of brand personality are currently in use in certain segments of the Australian independent music scene. The paper finds support for the existence of conscious and deliberate branding behaviours by roots musicians in line with seven identified brand personality characteristics