By music-industry standards, I failed. Not as a musician, I want that on the record! I am a creative director. I designed brand campaigns for artists, which meant I was the guy saying 'brand' in rooms full of people busy deciding culture. You can imagine how well that went over.

 

I got this wrong. I was asking for too much, too early. I wanted the rollout to have a point of view, not just look cool. The album art, stage, and merch all needed to feel like they belonged together. I wanted to understand what the artist stood for and what the album meant to them. At the same time, the single needed to make an impact. That was the business. That was what paid the bills. Eventually, I left.

Then I did something worse. I came back...more than once. (Apparently I can't quit an industry that never asked me to stay.)

 

Every time I left music, I ended up learning something I hadn’t been exposed to there. Brand systems for companies that measure everything, marketing where ideas get put through spreadsheets and focus groups, digital work where the audience lets you know pretty quickly when you’ve missed the mark. I started paying more attention to the thinking behind the work, what it meant, where it fit, and why it needed to look the way it did. And I kept bringing all of it back to music. Like a cat leaving a dead mouse on your pillow.

 

But it went both ways. Music made me fast. You learn pretty quickly that you can't spend three weeks debating a headline when the record comes out on Friday. I also learned to look at an audience differently. They're not a demographic on a slide. They're people who can become fans and want to feel part of something.

 

That stayed with me when I moved into branding. Music gave me a pretty good education in taste, culture and instinct. Corporate branding has a lot of language around emotional connection. In music, you find out pretty quickly whether you've actually made one.

 

Music also taught me range. One day I was directing photoshoots with flowing dresses on a glacier in darkness and that same week, a shoot in a soul food shop in Harlem and a boxing ring in Jamaica then in the salt flats of the California desert. Artists and labels weren't looking for my 'signature style', they needed someone to figure out what made sense for them. I'd like to think some of me finds its way into the work, but that's not really the point. The work should feel like the artist, not the designer.

 

That's the same thing I bring to brands now. I check my ego at the door, learn the brand deeply enough to see where it really stands against its competitors and then stay out of the way until its own voice emerges. Try asking an agency to change worlds twice in one week.

 

So yes, the failure was real.

 

But every time I left, I learned something I could bring back and I got better at branding, strategy, and working with bigger, more complicated organizations. And every time I came back to music, I brought some of that with me.

 

I kept wanting more from from the music industry so I went out and learned how to do more.

 

(I'm not actually sorry. The apology just sounded better as a headline.)