 Being a mysterious artist has its pros and cons, but nobody ever talks about it. In this video, we're going to talk about not only the pros and cons of being a mysterious artist, but how do you implement those strategies and, more importantly, when. What's up? I'm Brandman Sean and my agency has helped over 100 artists grow their fan base and do millions of streams. And I don't say that to sell anything to you, but to let you know where this information is coming from. Let's get into this video. Alright, so one of the biggest problems that most people have when it comes to mysterious branding and branding in general is not understanding that branding can change. Your brand can change over time and when they think you have to be stuck as a mysterious artist, stuck as an artist that has all this visibility and you're oversaturating the marketplace, they don't understand branding. You're always only one or two moves away from rebranding yourself into something completely different. There's been artists who have done it time and time again and we're going to talk about the entire step ladder that you can go through and what moves to make when. So this brings me back to the whiteboard where we map out mystery, known, saturated, but that starting point that so many artists begin at, right, everybody, unknown, right, unknown, unknown, unknown. So when we go through the levels, we're going to talk about a beginning artist and established artist, a superstar artist and a legacy act. There's these levels and even though you might already be on one level, acknowledging and understanding each level will help you understand everything. So even if you're like a beginning artist, you haven't even got popping yet, it's worth watching the entire spectrum so you can think ahead, plan ahead and if you're somewhere else, you know, your head looking at other parts of it will just help you understand where you are a little bit more. So let's talk about the unknown artists you're trying to get popping. You cannot try to be mysterious. No way, no way, no way, almost said no way, Jose, which I've never said in my life, but there we go. I just said it. Unknown artists have to get known. That's all you need to be focused on. Get known, get known, get known. Not in a way that's corny to you, right? Everybody has a different definition of corny, but you have to figure out how you can get known. You can't worry about being mysterious just yet, right? Because it's just two different gears. You can't put your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time you can, but the results ain't necessarily going to do anything for you, right? Probably more damaging than anything. And that's what a lot of artists go through. That's what you're trying to accomplish. So what does this mean? Get known. Now the pros of being mysterious as a new artist, I'm not even going to write anything on a board. It's basically nothing unless you have a budget and resources. So let's separate from an indie artist and an artist with a hell of a lot of resources, maybe at a major label or something like that. An indie artist, you have no career. That's the result of trying to be mysterious at the beginning, which means you're not going to have a career in the first place. But the pros, if you happen to be an artist who is at some type of label situation or you just have resources for whatever reason, the benefit of immediate mystery at the moment that people begin to find out about you is conversation generation, right? You get conversations generated really quickly. We can go back to her, right? She came on the scene, she had the label, I think it was RCA, right? They put the budget and you start seeing this artist and there's this silhouette. You don't even see whose project this is. Literally, her first project, the cover was a silhouette and you don't know who her is. That's like a name that no one can really associate with anybody in particular at that time. Mystery, who is this? Who is this? Who is this? This person's dope. Do you know who this is? Everybody's trying to figure out who that is, right? That's a great part about it. It generates conversation that becomes viral and it begins to work for you. But the problem is that it's very short lived. You can capture that lightning in a bottle, but you have to move on as a new artist because people still don't care enough yet, right? Knowing and caring, it's a dance. It's a dance. The music being great enough like her situation, that makes people care a lot more, but still the lasting value, they have to continue to care. And I've talked about before, it's hard to uphold that level of caring that violates the mystery, right? Now, so you move on to the next part and let's just say you get known, right? Once people know you, can you be mysterious? Yeah, you can start to add some mystery, right? What happens is you begin to go down this direction though, right? And the con of the moment you start to get known and you pull back and start generating mystery is you begin to lose the momentum of saturating the market, right? I'm not even talking about over saturating. I'm talking about getting known by more and more people. You cut off a certain set of moves when you decide to slow down in that way. And ultimately what happens then means you stunt your growth. You can't take advantages of serve as many opportunities. And now you are basically settling in with this size of a fan base, whatever that is, right? It's relative. But like if this is your size of fan base, even if you continue in career in most cases, you're probably only going to grow incrementally versus killing that momentum and growing exponentially at a short period of time. So mystery oftentimes is a pullback that creates a plateau, right? If you try to pull back. Now this can be good for a niche artist who honestly doesn't desire to be super saturated known by every single person in the world or to make the type of music or moves that that requires, right? I mentioned Playboard Cardi in the video. He's somebody who matches that mold where his niche loves the hell out of them. But there's a lot of people who don't listen to his music, don't even know who he is, right? But his niche, he's a legend in his niche, right? Mystery, especially when you're only at a known level and you're doing it within a niche can make you a legend. It's one of the easiest ways to become a legend in a niche in particular, right? Because you still only have those people who know you, who almost value being ahead of the game and no one else knowing you. So they get to maintain that inside inner circle feeling forever, right? Now, with that being said, doesn't mean you can't ever get a big look, right? It just means it won't come at the same amount. And overall, you won't have as many opportunities as the artists who have continued to saturate the market, right? Now, saturation over saturation, all that great stuff. Let's say you become a superstar, like everybody knows your name, right? Where everybody knows your name. I can't remember where that's from. I think it's cheers or something. The pros of mystery and mystique in this particular case is when you have superstar level of saturation, anything between known and superstar, right? You've saturated at least. When you have that level of saturation in the marketplace, people know you, people beyond know you, and there's people who know you that don't even care. So you have everything you need to then create mystery, right? People who care, care, care. People who don't care at all. They hate you. They're mad. They even know you. All you have to do is pull back, right? And keep going. The problem is a lot of people don't know what to do when they get there, right? There's different ways and moves that you can make, but pulling back actually is a part of survival. Creating some level of mystique is actually a part of survival once you hit that place. If you don't get strategic about the moves you make, you'll just fall into known, right? Which is kind of purposeless when you are coming down, right? When you come up, it's purposeful, right? There's an intent. You're driving upwards. You're getting known. There's a buzz being created about you, but once you hit that point and then you don't have strategic moves, you fall into this lull and it's just whatever the public begins to think. You're loose and that's those brands where we know that person who was a one hit wonder or they had a nice run, but people don't really care beyond that. The next generations don't have as big of a connection with them or you don't even have as big of a connection with them. They were just reflecting that period of your life, but not one of those artists you continue to follow and continue to value, right? So, what do you want to be? The period party artist or do you want to be that artist that has a legacy with whatever your fan base has? That's kind of the difference of that, right? Now, why do I say survival? Because no one can maintain over saturation for an extended period of time, even like decent saturation for an extended period of time because even when you're at saturation and not over saturation, the people who already know you and actually do care about you inevitably are becoming over saturated, right? So, not even thinking about the people who don't care about you and that you get forced on that level. The people who already know and like you are following you so it becomes easy for them to be over saturated with you, right? So, you pull back your activity, then you fall into mystique, right? That's what you want to be. Mystique, not mystery. Hopefully you can read that, right? Mystique because mystery is hard to maintain. You fall into mystery for a moment as a pullback possibly, right? Where you just disappear and people don't know for where you are for just a little period of time, but then you have to pop up strategically and be a part of certain things, whether that's letting them know about what you're doing, right? And again, this is often times for third parties in this period, right? Can't be from you directly. It might just be, oh, that person's working on this particular project and it's about to come out, right? Oh, this is Jay-Z in the studio. Oh, this is Jay-Z did some business deals. So, you're still hearing about the person, but they're not outwardly trying to promote themselves. It doesn't appear that way because be aware that all that stuff is known by you because they put that information out there. And that's what you would be doing at that level. You will be putting information out there, right? So, people can be aware of you. You stay on their minds, but, right? It's not coming directly from you. It's not self-promotion. And that's what allows you to have this mystique. So, it becomes survival once you're at that level. A legacy act, right? It's the same thing, right? It allows you to have survival where people took care over time what you're doing, right? When someone has mystique, when you step out, people think there's a purpose to what you're doing. They know that you're not out all the time. If I'm just seeing you all the time, oh, I just saw you another day, right? But if I decided to fall back, you don't see me for a while, the next thing you know, I show up, you're like, why are you here? He must be here because this event is important. He must be here because he actually has something to say. So, now you capture their attention. This is what Kendrick Lamar does so, so, so well, right? He captures people's attention by simply pulling back enough and then coming back. And now, people are listening to what he says, trying to decode what he says, even if he's saying something really basic because they figured the fact that he's out, it can't be for no reason, right? Everything he does, there has to be something to it. And of course, he does reward people with those type of Easter eggs where he is saying more than the service level thing. But again, even if he wasn't, people would assume and they're always going to find something anyway. That's the beauty about having mystique. People care. But again, mystery, it's too deep of a game. If you haven't seen my other video talking about the value of mystery being depleted in this particular time, then watch that as well. I will put that in the description. But just know mystery is something that you want to fall into for moments of time and create mystery, something that they desire, something that they want that they don't have enough of. But don't stay in the mystery box. You really want to stay in the mystique area for extended periods of time. Mystery, you dip in, you dip out. You dip in of oversaturation and then you dip out. I'm marking in the hell out of this project and then I pull back. I'm marking in the hell out of this project. I'm going on tour. I'm doing interviews. I'm pulling up to some random YouTuber's page and I'm on this page and now it's news that I got enough fighting and whatever happened. I cut my hair and then I pull back. I step away. This is why you see the abs and flows of certainly celebrities that have lasted for so long. You look at Beyonce, I'm dropping a documentary on my life and I'm letting you know my kids' names and I'm dropping a project and I'm going on tour of my husband and then bam, don't hear for a second. And then come back with something else. That is the ab and the flow. This is why I try to make people understand that one brand does not have to exist at all time. All of these things are actually devices. Once you get past unknown, you can't really use that too heavily outside of the element of surprise while you're there. That's the one pro that you completely have on your side. It's harder to do after an extended career, but all of these are devices to use. You can be saturated or oversaturated and it's the dance between this and moving on this spectrum that creates your overall brand. Nobody stays here, stays here, or stays there. All right. That's it for this video. If you want to know more about mystery, branding, and how you can apply it to yourself, check out this next video right here. Peace.