Cow Puncher is a tour merchandising campaign to promote more creative design in band merch over profit.
Currently, merchandising companies promote their services to musicians based on profits, rather than product design. This results in a lazy design for a quick turnaround.
My solution to this is to design a line of merchandise for a hypothetical band, to demonstrate the type of creative freedom within the design that is lacking in contemporary band merch.
The target audience for this line would reflect the genre of the band, indie, which is primarily young adults between 16 to 30.
The geographical location of this audience is Victoria-wide, as the band is a smaller Australian band based in regional Victoria.
Secondary research found that fans are more inclined to buy band merchandise if they are passionate about the artist, this is heavily suggested by multiple articles looking at merchandise and tours, both specific bands and festivals. Contemporary merchandising companies have found that design is secondary to profit, Event Merchandising director Jeremy Goldsmith stated, “In terms of a scoring system, I think profit is the most important part, then creativity and then delivery of service.” Companies often do not pitch to bands based on their designs but on how they distribute products.
