Over the last few years, ColorsxStudios has grown to become a staple of music culture. Like Boiler Room before it, the company offered a unique take on artist interviews and live performances. Their carefully curated content catapulted them to become one of the most influential music platforms today.


Kosta Elchev is responsible for the brand’s partnerships, often at the heart of collaborations between big-name artists and multi-million dollar brands. His talk was a deep dive into how humans connect with art. To illustrate, he took the audience back to Ancient Egypt, stating that hieroglyphs and large statues were great branding for the pharaohs of their time.

The brand expert did nothing short of dropping industry gems, stating humans don’t connect with logos and brands use artists to connect with and gain people’s trust. This, he explained, is a prime reason why AI content currently works with human faces so much: We trust and connect to the artists, even forming parasocial relationships.

Using famous examples like Billie Eilish and Jacob Collier, Elchev built a strong case for how artists elevate a brand into a trusted entity. The transfer of trust is what makes the collaboration worthwhile for companies. Rather than always be authentic, Elchev urges brands to be congruent.


“Humans identify themselves through association,” Elchev stated. “If you are trustworthy, people won’t mind you marketing to them. Audiences don’t hate being marketed to; they hate being manipulated.”

The COLORS brand collaborator used his own parasocial connection to R&B singer Aaliyah to explain why connecting to artists works, and how music brands can leverage that trust. This principle holds true even when using digital avatars, as Disney does—it all comes down to convincing the customer to trust the brand.