{"id":476,"date":"2013-11-15T11:25:23","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T11:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/povojournal\/?p=476"},"modified":"2013-11-15T11:25:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T11:25:23","slug":"image-is-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/povo.africa\/journal\/image-is-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Image Is Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We are now living in the future. A place where knowledge has increased (and continues to do so)<br>exponentially, where the Internet era ushered with it an abundance of knowledge, a time where so<br>many options are now available to the consumer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have grown up in Afrika all my life. I have been a part of the entertainment community for ages as a fan<br>of music and theater, a Hip hop personality as well as &#8220;the music video and animation guy&#8221;. I have<br>worked on multiple music projects (a total of 40 videos) as a Music video director as well as being a<br>recording artist as well. I&#8217;ve seen projects that were pegged to make it that soon crashed and burned as<br>well as some that tried to deliver but fell short somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After observing the Zimbabwean\/Afrikan industry for years to troubleshoot what the problems are, I<br>managed to pin point a few short circuits that I believe are causing the entertainment stillborns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Originality<\/strong><br>Having American and European hits fed to us by popular music channels like MTV have left Afrikan<br>artists in a situation where they are unable to create something unique because they still strive to first<br>achieve the &#8220;international standard&#8221;. Some get lost in the fake dreams that these channels peddle and<br>misconstrue that as reality when in actual fact, its all just marketing. True and unique Afrikan projects<br>are so few and far in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Business<\/strong><br>There are certain motions that entrepreneurs go through when they are starting up their projects. They<br>write up intricate plans, business proposals, registrations, cash flow projections and banking, marketing<br>and PR strategies amongst many other activities that go into making a profitable entity. Until a day<br>artists do these things or at the very least find someone who does, only then can there be true<br>progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Image Is Everything<\/strong><br>We live in a world where realistically speaking, we are probably selling the same product as everyone<br>else. This goes for all creatives and artists. whether it be a hit song, a performance, concert, designs,<br>videos, adverts, paintings or whatever, the products in the respective markets are in essence very<br>similar and abundant. managing a good image and brand is essential in positioning a product in a space<br>that other products don&#8217;t occupy. A case study in this would be laptops&#8230; technically the parts are all the<br>same but their image and branding and positioning make them personal to you and influence how you<br>relate to them&#8230; but they are all the same essentially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A solution then, would be to create really strong brands and images amongst the artists. Images that are<br>consistent and intentional and not haphazard and accidental. Images that people can grow to expect<br>and bank on over time, brands that your audience can relate to and in turn subscribe to. Images that are<br>well thought out all the way down to language and tone and words that one brand uses and even words<br>or phrases that a brand NEVER uses. Once the artists achieve such intense levels of branding and<br>imaging&#8230; only then could we see a great future for our industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In closing and in an effort to dispel the doubting readers amongst you, a group of Zimbabweans set out<br>to test these very issues I pointed out and you will find the result of that experiment<br>on\u00a0http:\/\/thisissynik.com\u00a0and hopefully, this may serve as a case study and a possible blueprint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are now living in the future. A place where knowledge has increased (and continues to do so)exponentially, where the Internet era ushered with it an abundance of knowledge, a time where somany options are now available to the consumer. I have grown up in Afrika all my life. I have been a part of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Image Is Everything - The POVO Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/povo.africa\/journal\/image-is-everything\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Image Is Everything - The POVO Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We are now living in the future. A place where knowledge has increased (and continues to do so)exponentially, where the Internet era ushered with it an abundance of knowledge, a time where somany options are now available to the consumer. I have grown up in Afrika all my life. 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