If you are an artist who wants to work with brands, the hardest part is not your work. It is understanding how decisions are actually made on the other side.
I have worked as a brand marketing manager, a digital marketing manager, and an influencer marketing manager. I have commissioned work, evaluated pitches, managed collaborations end to end, and started many projects from scratch. What I can tell you is this: brand collaborations rarely start the way people imagine they do.
They do not start with a perfectly written brief or a long list of artists under careful review. Most of the time, they start inside someone’s head.
How collaborations really get started
Inside a marketing team, there are always multiple things happening at once. Campaigns, launches, timelines, internal reviews, budget conversations, leadership requests. When a collaboration idea comes up, the immediate question is not “who is the best artist for this.”
The real question is much simpler. Who do we already know, trust, or remember well enough to move this forward.
That moment matters more than people realize.
In practice, the first name that surfaces is often someone the team has seen recently. Someone whose work appeared on social media. Someone who sent a thoughtful email months ago. Someone whose style feels familiar enough that the team can already imagine how the collaboration might play out.
This is not laziness. It is how human decision-making works under pressure. Marketing teams are constantly protecting time and attention so they can spend more of it on shaping the actual collaboration, not on searching endlessly for the perfect option.
If you are not in someone’s memory, you are not rejected. You are simply not there.
Visibility is really about memory
When artists hear the word “visibility,” it can sound exhausting or transactional. From the brand side, it is much simpler than that.
Visibility means you show up often enough that your name feels available when a project appears.
That might look like consistent posting, sharing your process instead of only finished work, or checking in occasionally without pitching anything at all. It can also mean being present in the same creative ecosystem as the brand, commenting, responding, and staying connected over time.
You are not trying to be loud. You are trying to be familiar.
If a marketing manager has to pause and think hard to remember you, the opportunity may already be moving forward. If your name surfaces naturally, you have already cleared the first hurdle.
There is more creative freedom than you expect
Another thing artists often underestimate is how much creative freedom actually exists.
Many marketing teams know what they need in a business sense. They understand the goal, the timing, the audience, and the constraints. What they often do not have is a precise vision for the creative execution, especially when there is no strong creative lead internally.
That is where artists have more room than they think.
The catch is that freedom only works when alignment is clear. When an artist understands what the team is trying to achieve, they can push creatively without creating friction. When that understanding is missing, even strong work can feel misaligned.
This is why mood boards, references, and multiple creative directions are so effective. They are not about asking for permission. They are about building shared language. Once alignment is established, the space for creative expression expands.
The better you understand what the team wants, the more confidently you can bring your own voice into the work.
What brands want, briefly and honestly
Not every collaboration is trying to do everything.
Sometimes a brand wants visual storytelling. Sometimes they want cultural or community alignment. Sometimes they want reach or performance. Often it is a mix, but rarely is it unclear internally.
Problems arise when the artist and the brand are optimizing for different outcomes without realizing it.
From the brand side, clarity is welcomed. Asking what success looks like is not a sign of inexperience. It signals that you understand how collaborations actually work.
A better way to think about brand collaborations
Brand collaborations are not mysterious or reserved for a lucky few. They are decisions made by real people, under time pressure, with incomplete information, trying to move good work forward.
If you want to be commissioned repeatedly, your job is not only to make strong work. Your job is to be someone a marketing manager can recall quickly, trust creatively, and collaborate with confidently.
That means showing up before you need something. It means understanding the team’s context, not just your own expression. And it means using alignment as a way to create more room for your creative voice, not less.
When your name surfaces naturally in someone else’s mind, the collaboration has already started.