Refusing to be defined by any single genre, Durlin focuses on channeling his creative vision into music that allows listeners to interact with and explore the unique manner in which they experience music. This week, the official launch of Durlin's brand seeks to do just that.
Durlin has relied on Brain Candy to play a prominent role in implementing a larger marketing strategy via website construction, video editing, and brand development. All of these components work together to ensure that the world was waiting with bated breath for the release of Durlin.
THE ONLINE WORLD OF DURLIN
The first critical factor that our graphics master and Brain Candy Overlord, Ayla Kress, stresses when cultivating a brand is consistency. In a world ruled by algorithms and short attention spans, consistency is the key to standing out against the thousands of hours of content uploaded every minute—and the key to consistency is a killer go-to logo and color palette. With a color palette and logo chosen, creating branded content becomes a much more approachable feat.
To further develop and communicate his brand, which revolves around cultivating the subjective experience of the listener, Durlin’s website is made to be an immersive and interactive experience.
Upon first entering the online world of Durlin, users are met with the landscape of a dark, dystopian alleyway. From here, users can choose where they would like to ‘navigate.’ Perhaps they would like to explore the store—which is formatted to look like an actual store with merch displayed on shelves and hangars—or maybe the newsroom, which features Durlin's social media. Either way, the website is built around the concept of individual experience: the user chooses what they would like to interact with, and in doing so begins the journey of cultivating their subjective experience Durlin-style.
Featured at adventure’s start (on the homepage) is Durlin’s mission statement to the world, carefully stylized in video form to align with the branding and worldbuilding so diligently woven into the website.
DURLIN IN VIDEO
Brain Candy’s wonderful Amber Solheim is responsible for Durlin’s tactfully crafted mission-statement video. Because video is such an expressive, illustrative, and infinitely customizable/controllable format for gazing into the mind and music of an artist, painstaking attention needs to be paid to its creation: every single element must align with the artist’s overarching brand and message.
“Music is telling a story,” says Solheim, “And the visual elements that are paired with music can either enhance or take away from the power of their stories.”
To ensure that videos function as an extension and communicator of an artist’s message/brand, we like to focus on creating a piece that cultivates the vibe an artist wants to project and the experience they want their music to create. In Durlin’s case, this means highlighting the subjective experience. The video contributes to cultivating subjective experience by contributing to the 3D depth and worldbuilding of the website.
The video is created to be incorporated into the alleyway as a billboard; this allows a longer body of text to be presented in an otherwise small space without disrupting or negating the immersive effect of the website graphics. Actually, the video adds to this immersive effect. Style elements like television distortions and grain are implemented to emphasize the dystopian atmosphere of the alleyway. To really make the website immersive, the video is warped to look like it wraps around the billboard, which curves down-street from the user. This small but sophisticated detail adds critical depth to the 3D space of Durlin’s website, and thus enhances the communication of his brand.
Durlin’s second video project with Brain Candy is a lyric video that will accompany his new single “Blind.” Because it’s unreleased, our lips are currently sealed on the finer details. But. we can give you a taste of what to expect: the same electrifying, compelling color palette and aesthetic featured on Durlin’s website will also be seen in the video… but in a never-ending, neon-colored tunnel of light.
Stay tuned for the drop of this video...but until then, find Blind here!
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
A killer website and impeccable video promotion are a great start, but much less potent when an artist’s marketing plan isn’t effectively strategized.
Durlin’s marketing strategy, headed by Brain Candy’s incredible Kristen Davis, pushes Durlin’s brand to the brink of its potential as a marketing mechanism. The strategy incorporates the groundwork that Kress and Solheim established with their branding work, a keen understanding of the target audience, and a mastery of social media and their algorithms. Davis focuses on social media management, providing templates for pitching to blogs, identifying ways to create longevity from fans, and promoting all new releases appropriately and effectively.
“Honing in on the exact vibe, colors, and message that Durlin wants alongside his music,” Davis noted, “created the road to keep this vision going—I focus on incorporating it into more platforms so that it can reach more people.”
Overall, Brain Candy has worked tirelessly to ensure that Durlin's brand and its releases are everything that he ever wanted it to be.
“I’ve spent a long time trying to get good at making music,” says Durlin. “After dropping my first single, I realized the music business is more about the business than the music. Brain Candy has helped me tremendously by filling those gaps and pushing me past the plateaus I was experiencing in my career. Working with them has been the best move of my career so far.”
