TOOLBOX
CREATING A BRAND
WITH STEVEN BRAINES / CO-FOUNDER OF HE.SHE.THEY. INTRODUCTION I’m Steven Braines co-founder of HE.SHE.THEY. – an international event series/record label/ podcast series/social media app fashion label/consultancy – and more besides. Essentially, HE.SHE.THEY. is a brand name, an umbrella name, for all the different activities that my co-founder Sophia Kearney and I do that have a shared ethos about disruption and making different disciplines more inclusive and diverse. We also have other brands like the Weird & The Wonderful, and historically, other brands which I made for others, sold to others etc. IN THE BEGINNING My particular method to starting songs up in the demo process is
to not be precious and just make as many as possible. All in one burst of energy. Doesn’t matter what I’m feeling, I just grab a guitar or bass, plug into garage band (cue boos and hisses from the crowd but I lovvvve garage band IOS), I might try a few of my fuzz pedals in the chain too for chaotic wonkiness. For every 20 demos, I make there’s typically one or two that go on to become a proper fleshed-out song. It’s just a numbers game. It’s kind of inevitable you’ll strike gold with that ratio. I’ve always hung on to something I once read that either Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen said (I forget which… LenBo?) - they would write 20 or 30 verses of a song just to get the best 3 or 4. Mind - blown! WE’RE ALL BRANDS I also manage musical artists – 14
they too are brands, even myself or you are brands to others. I basically think that a brand is what you are seen to stand for by others. As a person, that can be communicated by what we are wearing, what we post on social media, and what we say. I’m a queer, left-wing, Goth music fan – in a nutshell, I tend to post about queer and minority rights, I wear almost exclusively black clothing and I post about this. I also post a lot at being at gigs or artists I like. That’s not the entire sum of my parts by any means but I think a lot of people who know me or indeed don’t know me that well. Would describe me as that. I’m also a huge wrestling fan but I don’t post about that often so people don’t know that – so most people wouldn’t include that as part of my “brand” because I don’t communicate often by
