Branding Dallin

IN THE SPRING OF MY SOPHOMORE YEAR, I TOOK A CLASS WHICH FOCUSED ON ARTIST BRANDING. FOR OUR FINAL ASSIGNMENT, WE HAD TO WORK WITH AN ARTIST AND CREATE A VIABLE AND ENGAGING BRANDING PLAN AND STRATEGY FOR THE ARTIST. HERE'S THE BRANDING REPORT WE CREATED:

I. Personal Brand Statement
Dallin is a powerful singer/songwriter, who can sit behind her piano, yet still fully reach out to her audience at the same time. Her music is filled with lyrical intricacies, which cry through her soulful yet gritty voice.

II. Brand Essence- Approachable

III. Brand Essence Rationale- On stage, Dallin
is one with her audience. She is not singing to them, but singing with them. Her strong value of the audience is what propels the audience to her. Offstage, Dallin is certainly a more subdued character than her passionately rocking artist persona, yet that same element of warmth and approachability is present. Dallin’s inviting aura—through both her music and her personality—is what sets her apart.

IV. Similar Artists- Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Joss Stone, Natalie Merchant, Sarah McLachlan, Sarah Brandeis, and Madi Diaz.

V. Dallin's Selling Points

* APPROACHABILITY- Incorporation of the audience
* COMPLEX & MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER: MULTI-LAYERED
* WELL-PRODUCED AND SELF-PRODUCED MUSICIAN
* ORGANIC
* FUSION
* STRONG VISUAL ELEMENT
* MATURE APPEAL
* POP SENSIBILITY, MAINSTREAM APPEAL

VI. "Model" Obituary

Icon known for relationship with fans

ANDREW NUSCA
BRANDING NEWS SERVICE

Dallin Applebaum, the innovative singer and pianist whose combinations of soul and electronica changed the face of pop music, has died. She was 78.

Applebaum died Sunday morning in her home in New York City, her publicist said. The cause was complications from a long bout with lung cancer.

Known for inviting audiences on stage with her, Applebaum first rose to national fame with her 2009 recording of “Chelsea Morning,” which gained traction after significant airplay on Philadelphia public radio station WXPN.

Singer Seth Kallen said in a written statement that Applebaum was a “true original.”

“She was a wonderful girl, full of honesty and compassion,” he said. “She will be missed.”

Applebaum was born in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1986 to a lawyer and a marketing executive. Applebaum began studying classical piano at age five, and despite being born with cysts on her vocal chords, Applebaum began singing to her music. She graduated Upper Dublin High School in 2004 and moved to New York the following summer to attend New York University for music technology. There, she started playing solo shows at local venues in Greenwich Village and Philadelphia, including The Bitter End and World Café Live. She also joined lounge fusion band Funky Butter in December 2006 with classmates and had a minor radio hit with the single, “Hard Day in the Rain.”

Applebaum toured regularly as a solo artist and with the band until her graduation from NYU in 2008, when she was hired by Avatar Studios as a studio assistant. Overheard singing one night by Avatar engineer Fred Kevorkian, Applebaum was given the chance to record her first full-length, Polaroid Memory, after her shifts. Applebaum peddled the album to record labels, and based off the strength of her live show and the single “Chelsea Morning,” Columbia Records signed her to a contract.

After playing a series of local shows in New York and Philadelphia, Applebaum recorded the album “Keys” in 2011 in a one week homecoming session in Philadelphia. Off the strength of the hit single “Deeds Done,” Applebaum eventually sold 300,000 copies and claimed major airplay on internet radio. She embarked on an 18-date sold-out tour the following year with Rufus Wainwright, and won the Grammy award for best new artist of that year.

Columbia released Live at the World Café Live in 2012, which featured a cover of Radiohead’s, “No Surprises.”

Applebaum was taken under the wing of pop multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion in late 2014 to record the album Worn Weary. The album was met with critical and commercial success and Applebaum went on to win 3 Grammy awards, including best female vocal for the title track of the album, in 2015.

The following year, her version of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” with Silverchair’s Daniel Johns was used for the “Save a Child” HIV/AIDS awareness effort.

She married Funky Butter guitarist Daniel Tirer in May 2016.

In late 2017, Applebaum struck an unprecedented dual distribution deal with Columbia and Caribou Coffee to distribute her EP, Indre Sessions Vol. 1, and went on a 32-date theater tour across the nation, co-headlining with Fiona Apple.

In 2018, Applebaum released Ink Blots, which broke the Top 10 with the hits “At Peace” and “The Hours.” A 60-date world tour followed.

Following the tour, Applebaum made appearances on albums by John Mayer, Amos Lee and Muse and contributed to the soundtrack of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2019 film Figari.

In 2020, Applebaum decided to record an album of experimental electronica, Modern Sounds in Life, which was received with critical acclaim but failed to make a big splash commercially. That same year, Applebaum published a book of her poems entitled, “Scrawl Searching,” and had a minor role in the film “Deserted.” She also started her own record label, Alchemany, which signed keyboard prodigy Jack Samuels.

Through the years, Applebaum continued to experiment with different kinds of music and had minor hits, including “Speakeasy” and “Cop Out.” She also continued to work with new artists, including jazz artist Brock Daniels and R&B songstress Leona Gardner, and was integral in using her label to spearhead the creation of a new Philly “scene.” She continued to play club dates well into her sixties.

Applebaum had her struggles. In 2024, she was arrested in St. Louis for playing a show without a permit and in 2025 she was charged with a DUI in Fresno, California. She was also in a near-fatal bus accident after playing a date in Kansas during her 2017 tour.

In a statement on her website, singer Neveah Robinson said Applebaum was “an inspiration.”

“Her impact on the relationship between an artist and her fans was enormous,” Robinson said. “A true friend to every one of her fans. My only regret is that I never got to know her.”

Applebaum is survived by her son, Nicholas. A public memorial service will be held next week at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia.

VII. Brand Keywords

• Approachable
• Complex & Multi-layered
• Soulful, heartfelt realness
• Creative thinker, desire to experiment
• Passion
• Serene & Calm
• Natural & Organic
• Honest & True to Herself

VII. Target Market: Identifying a Persona & Psychographics

Dallin’s market is firstly, a local market. Though she attends NYU, she’s originally from Philadelphia, PA, and the downtown Philadelphia music scene typifies her target audience. The music scene has a reputation for being more accepting of various genres of music, mainly because of the diverse ethnic and racial makeup of the city itself. Additionally, Philadelphia venues like World Café Live embrace local artists, offering both Downstairs Live—for more established artists—as well as Upstairs Live, which holds about 100 people and frequently books local artists. One regular performer at World Café Live says in a USA Today article, “Here is where I find my market—other musicians and people who are going to listen to music for music.” Dallin’s market is the serious music listener, the kind of person who is constantly and actively looking for the newest and fulfilling music. One place Dallin’s market finds new music, as well as listens to their old favorites, is through WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania’s non-commercial radio service. WXPN’s playlist varies from indie rock to classic rock to jazz and R&B. The station plays music fairly continuously, and in between songs, talks music news among other typical radio requirement like local traffic and weather. The station’s programming and music selection could easily appeal to UPenn’s college crowd, as well as an older, post-college listener.

The World Café and XPN market is appropriate for Dallin not only because it is a local market of devoted, loyal, and serious music listeners, but because it also includes college students as well as adults in their thirties and forties. Dallin’s music can easily appeal to an older demographic because of her skilled musicianship and the mature content of her songs. Additionally, Dallin’s talent as a live performer is her ability to connect with her audience through feeding off of the audience’s energy. Dallin is an artist, who instead of talking to her audience, is talking with her audience. This approach to performance is what her World Café/XPN audience is looking for, meaning, depth, and ability to connect to music.

The persona for a typical Dallin fan could be either male or female, but surely either an upperclassman in college, a graduate student, or a post-graduate. This fan has varied musical tastes, spends time searching the internet for music, reads the reviews in the Village Voice, and isn’t afraid to walk into a used CD store and browse through the selection. This is the type of fan who enjoys going to the Philharmonic, but was also nostalgically upset when CBGB, on the Lower East Side, shut its doors for good. This fan would prefer to listen to his music through his best speakers, rather than compressed files on his iPod. This fan also seriously listens to the lyrics of a song and admires them for their poetic form or wit. Besides music, this fan likes to read a book or two per month on the commute home from school or work, in addition to reading their daily New York Times or Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dallin had difficulty characterizing a persona for her market. To Dallin, the type of fans she has garnered seems random. When asking her who the first 10 people to buy her EP would be, she answered, her family and friends. Yet, she also described her fan base being men older than thirty, who caught her performance, liked what they heard, and who simply had the money to spend on music they liked. Even though she is a female singer/songwriter, she described her audience to be a mix of males and females. She explained that different aspects of her personality attracted an eclectic mix of people to her music; some of her male fans were drawn to the fact that she was a music technology student at school and some of her female fans related to her music’s telling of relationship frustrations. She did feel that her audience was also a Starbucks-like audience, people who liked to listen to good music while they sipped their second cup of coffee.

Her target audience widens from an older college undergrad to a graduate student to a post-graduate working person. Yet, her actual current market, for the most part, is college students in the Philadelphia and New York City area. The reason for this disparity is the fact that she is playing in venues like World Café Live and the Bitter End in New York City, which generally garners a younger crowd. The audience that she is capable of reaching out to is more the Starbucks-like, world-conscious, sophisticated crowd of, for example, New York’s Joe’s Pub. In order to reach this older demographic, yet still appeal to the older college student, attention needs to be paid to booking the right type of venues—Joe’s Pub being a great example because it draws both an older and college student crowd who both seriously care about music. Another reason for this gap between target and actual audience is the type of publications Dallin is being written up in. Dallin was covered, along with other young female singer-songwriters, in the Philly Edge, a magazine with a younger readership. Dallin could really use a sizeable feature in the daily newspaper Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer could be very interested in Dallin, especially for the maturity that exudes in her music and lyrics, despite her young age of twenty-one.

IX. Branded Bio for Press Kit

When her family sat down together after hearing the news that her grandmother had died, Dallin left the room…to play piano.

“My father got so angry at me because it was such an inappropriate time to play,” Dallin says. “But that's how I was dealing with the pain. That was my natural reaction to the tragedy and that's what I remember being comforted by.”

So when people ask Dallin what her first word was, she’s usually at a loss to explain. “I’d like to think that music is my first language because I’ve always heard it and spoken it,” she says, toying with a set of faders on a mixing board in a studio in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “Notes were my first words. That’s how I’ve always felt. I think being wired that way helps us all connect with one another.”

Like free-flowing verse, Dallin’s introspection proves to be the jump-off point into the lives of her listeners. Having already held her own on stage co-fronting the funk-fusion band Funky Butter, Dallin is rediscovering her way of translating the notes of life: as a solo artist. Her latest EP, King’s Highway, is an inviting blend of pensive soul and irresistible harmonic pop.

But her love for music wasn’t always mutual. Trained as a classical pianist and blessed with perfect pitch, Dallin began her understanding of music with a top-down approach, practicing the rigid compositions of Chopin, Bach, and Beethoven endlessly, playing until her fingers ached from the repetition. But discovering her parents’ love for classic rock such as The Eagles, Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin and others turned music into a two-way street of communication.

“Music like that, you know, it just reverberated within me,” Dallin says. “That’s what I’m trying to do – put passion into it.”

By the age of thirteen, Dallin gravitated toward the conscious, universal pop of Sting and The Beatles, and composed her very first songs. By high school, and with the support of family and friends, she gained a strong following playing to receptive audiences in neighborhood venues. Critical acclaim in local papers followed, and by graduation, Dallin was on the first train to New York City.

Dallin introduced her warm, communal shows to a new audience while attending New York University for Music Technology. Almost immediately, she gained popular reception in the Greenwich Village venues she frequented, including favorite neighborhood spot The Bitter End. With the professional sheen of her “behind-the-glass” know-how and the cozy intimacy of her live show, Dallin united her original hometown of Philadelphia and her adopted home of New York, connecting them with the same notes and words that connected her in her infancy. She hasn’t looked back – and she’s excited to bring everyone along with her for the trip.

“I’m really psyched to come out and play for people again,” Dallin says. “That’s what I love best – rocking out in a basement with everyone around me.”

While she completes her as-yet-untitled, forthcoming EP, Dallin is bridging the gap with her Kings Highway EP. You’ll identify with the road-ready, alt-country of the album’s title track, “King’s Highway,” and you’ll soul-search in the rollicking cinematic rock of “Save Me.” The Kings Highway EP also showcases Dallin’s diverse musical influences, from the lilting jazz-pop of “Send ‘Em Away” to the brooding, spiritual “Prelude.”

Wrought, honest confessions like those in “The Minefield” might just open up windows into celebrating the joys and triumphs that life brings each one of us every day. “Of course, I want to write a great pop song,” Dallin says. “But I want to use that song as a starting point for something bigger.”

In between touring this summer with jazz sensation Funky Butter, Dallin will be promoting her record by performing exclusive live shows in New York and Philadelphia, backed by local musicians.

Like other vivid pop storytellers (Tori Amos and Leslie Feist, for example), the affable Dallin wants to exchange stories with her audience. And they don’t mind one bit.

You could say she’s music to their ears.

The Kings Highway EP is available on iTunes and CDbaby now.

X. Brand Gap Evaluation: Summary

Dallin’s brand essence is approachability and she truly typifies the word. To further flesh out this essence, she needs to make an effort to stick around after her shows to sell CDs and any other material, as well as sign CDs. Even if her personality naturally shies away from selling her own music, it is important for her to realize that her “zag” is this ability to connect with her friends; she does it during her shows, and she would be extremely effective if she did it after shows as well. In addition, Dallin’s approachability would be best magnified if she carefully chooses her venues to be smaller and also with stages closer to the audience. She should also take advantage of this stage set up by inviting audience members on stage.

In addition, Dallin needs to separate her solo music artist persona with her Funky Butter persona. Though Dallin enjoys playing with the band because their musical future seems incredibly open, reap with opportunities to experiment, she still needs to realize that her solo music and the band’s music—as well as both of their brand essences—are completely different. To separate the two images, Dallin needs to make sure the same tracks are not being played on both her solo Myspace page and Funky Butter’s Myspace page. In addition, Dallin should not send out Funky Butter news through her solo artist mailing list.

Dallin contains a strong visual element while performing because of the passionate delivery of her songs. Yet, the brand gap here is that this strong visual element is lacking a specific style of attire. Even if Dallin feels that the music defines her, and not her clothing, it is important to realize that a clothing style is an opportunity to further portray her down-to-earth personality, her brand essence of approachability. We are suggesting a certain “hippie-chic” look that would basically make the statement of devaluing the clothing as the central focus of the music, yet at the same time representing Dallin in a polished way which is suitable with what her brand stands for.

Unrelated, but still important, Dallin should stick to her first name as her performing name, instead of her born name, Dallin Applebaum. The name Dallin is unique enough. Interestingly enough, after a look at thinkbabynames.com, it seems that Dallin is actually a “rare boy’s name.” Apparently, the name has Old English roots, and generally means “from the valley.” We knew the brand keywords of organic and natural were coming from somewhere inborn!

Check out Dallin's music here.

Above biography and obituary written by teammate Andrew Nusca.