Merchandise Marketing Lesson from Katy Perry

With the decline in recorded music sales, now more than ever, artists must take full advantage of the other revenue streams available to them.

Merchandising can play a huge role in an artist’s overall revenue stream; for many artists, the income generated from merchandise sales is their second largest source of income, next only to the income generated from live performances. Taking the necessary steps to activate this additional revenue stream is especially important for independent artists as merch income can allow them to fund new projects like albums and tours. Of course, merchandise can also act as a promotional tool for artists.

As integral as merchandising is to an artist’s career, I see very few artists putting a great deal of effort into marketing their merch beyond the basic methods (promoting it on their sites and MySpace pages, setting up attractive merch tables at their shows, etc.). So, I thought I would do some investigating to find examples of artists whose merchandise is being treated as a high priority and is being marketed in interesting (and effective) ways; the best example I have found so far is Katy Perry.

As with most artists, Katy’s merchandise is promoted on her MySpace page and on her official web site. However, her merchandise has also been promoted in some particularly interesting ways. For example, she sells heart-shaped sunglasses, and wears these sunglasses (or very similar ones) herself at a number of her live performances - a great way to promote them to her fans. Here’s a picture of this marketing tactic in action:

She also sells “Katy Perry Slept Here” t-shirts. These shirts were cleverly promoted when Katy and Travis McCoy (her boyfriend at the time) were both part of the 2008 Warped Tour. At one point during the tour, Travis performed with Bring Me The Horizon, another artist that was part of the tour. During this performance, each member of Bring Me The Horizon wore one of the “Katy Perry Slept Here” t-shirts, leading to a significant amount of awareness and buzz surrounding the shirts. Here’s a video of the performance:

To sum up, the tips we can extract from this example are:

1) Wear your own merchandise.

Wearing your own merchandise is an extremely effective way to make your fans aware of it (just don’t go overboard with certain types of merchandise or you may come off as being too self promotional). Wearing your merch during a live performance or in a Youtube video are two ways you could implement this idea. When doing so, make sure your fans are aware that what you’re wearing is, in fact, your merch and be sure to let them know how they can purchase it (for the Youtube video, you could include this information and a link to your store in the video’s description).

2) Get other artists (or public figures) to wear your merchandise.

Getting a popular artist (or anyone in the public eye) to wear your merch is also an effective way to create awareness for it. Obviously, it’s easier for a well-known artist like Katy Perry to make this happen… It also helps if you have buzz-worthy merch like she did (i.e. “Katy Perry Slept Here” tees). However, independent artists can still do something similar on a smaller scale. For example, if you know another artist (or if you’re touring with another artist), they might be willing to wear an item of your merch for one night if you return the favor, or if you expose them to your fan base in a different way.

Hopefully you’ll find the above tips useful when creating your next merchandise marketing plan.