Ditch the Poster
Build your brand instead.....
Today, a seasoned and battle-worn musician dropped this little gem in our comments:
“Re: Asking your bandmates to reshare the flyer—most of them do. It's the venues that are slack in this department. Nothing more frustrating than creating a poster only to check the venue's page and see they've got a generic photo with the words ‘Live music this weekend.’ And then they have the hide to ask, ‘Can you pull a crowd?’”
It’s a valid comment and a mirror held up to a wider problem: a complete misalignment in who owns what in the music marketing machine.
So thanks to you, we will unpack your comment and address the wider problem at play.
What Artists Think vs. What Venues Do equals the great poster illusion. Let’s clear that up once and for all. Posters—once the sacred scrolls of gig culture—are now more nostalgia than necessity. While they still have a role in hyper-local, boots-on-the-ground marketing, the digital landscape has changed the game.
We surveyed 200 venues across Australia. Here's what the data screamed back at us:
65% said they avoid physical posters because of “eye pollution.”
90% considered artist-submitted posters “low quality.”
85% said posters didn’t match their venue branding or style guides
85% only display posters for major tours or branded feature acts.
87% said their audiences respond better to a good photograph than a designed flyer.
That’s a chorus of rejection that even the most catchy bass line can’t drown out.
Here’s the truth bomb many artists don’t want to hear:
Venue Strategy vs. Artist Strategy: You’re Not Playing the Same Game. You are not the venue’s brand. You are the product within their brand experience. Their job is to sell their space, their atmosphere, their food and drink margins. Your job is to bring your audience—not tell the venue how to market theirs.
Most venues now work with digital big screens, curated visual content calendars, and strict design protocols. That DIY poster you lovingly slapped together in Canva just isn’t going to cut it for their public-facing channels.
And we get it—frustrating, right? That’s why, at Pushworth, we made the executive call to edit all artist photos on our website into black and white. Why? Because consistency is king, and most artist-submitted hero images just didn’t pass the sniff test. Low-res selfies. Oversaturated colour bombs. Outdated fonts. Zero white space. If you're not telling a coherent story in one image, the venue won't amplify it.
So What Actually Works?
Let’s break it down.
Posters are still valuable—but their power is situational, not universal. They work:
Inside the venue (if permitted),
In nearby local businesses that serve the same demographic,
On local gig walls (if they’re still active in your region).
But the real marketing juice? That’s in the following:
A Killer Hero Image
Your Hero Image is your visual handshake. It’s the thumbnail that stops the scroll. It needs to be:
High-resolution (minimum 300 dpi for print; 1080x1350 for socials)
Emotionally evocative
Professionally lit and framed
On-brand with your musical identity
2. A Relentless Social Media Strategy
Your fans aren’t walking past a bottle shop. They’re scrolling Instagram. They’re on Facebook. They’re watching TikTok while waiting for a latte. That’s where you grab them.
You need a strategy:
Countdown content 7–10 days out
Event pages created and shared on all platforms
Teasers, rehearsal clips, soundcheck shots
Collaboration tags with the venue (don’t wait for them to share—prompt them)
Let venues do what they do best: curate space and serve their crowd. Let posters serve their purpose: localized brand reinforcement when aligned to the demographic. And let the artist do what no one else can do: create a compelling brand identity and broadcast it like a rebel on fire. In short, stay in your lane but drive like hell. :-)
The real ROI for your gig? It won’t come from a blurry A4 poster taped next to the men’s room. It will come from your name becoming recognizable in a feed, shareable in a story, and memorable in the mind of someone who just clicked “Interested.”
Ditch the poster. Build the brand.
If you’d like a poster template that aligns with venue specs and boosts your brand visibility, Musoverse has you covered. But remember—branding is a battlefield. And your Hero Image is your flag.
Let it fly.
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Written by Nichola Burton. I work in partnership with Agents, Artist Managers and Event Producers, who juggle a diverse range of relationships in the Musoverse, to curate, manage and measure data in systems, experience, creative and content to support the entire Musoverse operation in my enterprise A Little Pitchy Copyright 2025
