Brand audit · v1.2 · 2026-05-17
followers · verified ✓ · @tattoosbyadamv · Adam Vecht
We pulled 200 of your last posts. Twenty months of your feed, end to end. 180 of them are yours, 17 are Boye's reels with you tagged. Here is what the numbers actually say about the brand layer.
Japanese Tattoo Artist · Contemporary Irezumi
@dropout_cph Copenhagen
Honoring tradition with a modern edge
Book: tattoosbyadamvecht@gmail.com
dropout.dk/artists/adam/
Perceived
Three formats. One workhorse, one upside-bet, one abandoned. The hashtag regime is clean and on-niche. The cadence is calm and professional. The Boye-tagged reels are not in this chart. They are not your reach.
Carousel
Reel
Image
n = 180 own posts · 2024-08 to 2026-05
Carousels are the steady performer. 109 of 180 own posts, median 155 likes. Reels carry a fat upper tail: the all-time top reel pulled 13,642 likes (the “Did You Know” on Japanese peony symbolism), the median reel sits at 133. Single images: 4 in 20 months. Functionally retired.
The all-time #1 is the Botan symbolism deep-dive. #2 is the same content re-pushed seven months later. #3 is a peer-collab dragon outline. The rest is bodysuit progress, healed-skin retrospectives, and personal narrative. The format that wins biggest is the format you have run twice in twenty months.
13,642
6,825
1,752
1,557
1,429
1,161
1,102
1,058
751
641
Long-run average: 9 posts a month over 20 months. Hard ramp at the start, calm cooldown mid-2025, December year-end spike, steady 2026 in the 6 to 10 range. This is a sustained creator, not a burst-and-burn creator. Whatever ships next has to ride this curve, not fight it.
Monthly post count · 2024-08 to 2026-05 (May partial)
2.17% likes-per-follower across your 180 own posts. Healthy band for a 15k niche tattoo account. The audience you have is alive. The infrastructure under it is not.
Voice profile: calm-craftsman on one side (healed-skin retrospectives, bodysuit progress, ukiyo-e-aware captions), reflected-glory on the other (Boye reels you appear in, 50k to 300k likes range). Two Adams. The brand has to choose which one to architect. 2.2% of your posts ship with zero hashtags, a clean regime that beats the niche average. “Link in bio” gets referenced in 0 captions out of 180. Yes, we counted.
Intended
“Japanese Tattoo Artist. Contemporary Irezumi.
Honoring tradition with a modern edge.”
Adam, IG bio · 2026-05
The bio is doing real work. “Contemporary irezumi” is a sharper Day-1 position than most tattoo artists ever land. The audit treats it as the brand spine and reads everything else against it. Caspar’s dinner notes (April 2026) line up: more bookings, an articulated ICP, a brand identity worked out beneath the bio one-liner, authority positioning beneath the visible craft.
Adam’s own words (received V1.2)
“I have a modern / contemporary approach to traditional asian tattooing. I specialize in custom-made large-scale work, that lasts a lifetime. I work with stories and symbolism as well as purely decoration. I love working in both color and black and grey.”
Style description · Adam V1.2
“First, because I’m chasing the story, and meaning behind the tattoo. Often there is one, even though the client might not be aware of it. Second, because my style is more rooted and therefore closer to traditional Japanese tattoos. I work from the core principles, and bend the rules without breaking them, and still enough to put my twist on the motives.”
USPs · Adam V1.2
Two implicit moves the audit reads off the content. One: you are education-positioned even when you don’t push it, the Botan reel that broke 13.6k likes is the clearest evidence. Two: you want to remain Dropout-aligned (you tag @dropout_cph in 48% of posts). The brand we build needs to coexist with that loyalty, not replace it.
Gap
Not flaws. Not failures. The architecture that wasn’t built yet, because the content layer was always doing the work. Naming them is the first move toward closing them.
When the public scrape returns your “biggest” posts, 8 of the top 10 are Boye’s reels with you tagged. Your own ceiling is the Botan reel at 13,642 likes; everything else in your own feed sits at or below 1,752. The 50k to 300k-likes range that appears beside your handle is not yours. It is Boye’s reach reflecting onto you. The brand spine has to be your own content reality, not the IG-search top of feed.
You carry one of the strongest authority moats in the niche: Royal Danish Academy training (Croquis, drawing, painting) plus daily ukiyo-e woodblock study. The Dropout artist page surfaces this in third-person. In your own 180 captions, “ukiyo-e” appears 0 times. “Academy” appears 0 times. The differentiator that makes you obviously serious is documented on someone else’s page and missing from your own.
Your only client-facing booking surface is the Dropout artist page. A brochure stub: bio, four placeholder images, no price anchor, no session-length info, no qualifying form. A serious collector cannot self-qualify. The bio also surfaces a Gmail address, marginally better than pure Dropout-only, but Gmail is not a CRM. Across 180 posts, the phrase “link in bio” appears 0 times. Even when traffic is hot, you are not routing it anywhere you own.
Your content speaks to two distinct collector journeys. Bodysuit / backpiece content (14% of posts) speaks to multi-session committed collectors. Educational “Did You Know” content (7% of posts) speaks to curiosity-driven viewers. Different pains, different urgency, different price tolerance. Today both flow through the same DM inbox and you triage at the head. The Botan-curious viewer and the bodysuit-ready collector get the same friction.
V1 flagged this as latent: every ingredient in place, zero deployment. Adam locked V1.2: not interested in shipping a teaching product or mentorship slot. Strictly bookings. The architecture honours that. No teaching rail reserved. The “From the source” content pillar still runs, because it serves Funnel A (authority + symbolism education for collectors), but its terminal CTA is always “send your idea” into the booking funnel, never “join the workshop.”
Hashtag regime, by contrast, is not a gap. Adam ships 2.2% of posts with zero hashtags. Boye ships 51.5%. Your discoverability vocabulary already names the right collector. We do not need to rebuild it.
Two Adams
We pulled 200 posts. 180 are yours. 17 are Boye’s reels with you tagged. When the public scrape returns “Adam’s biggest posts,” this is what comes back at the top.
Top 10 IG-search posts for “tattoosbyadamv”, by likes
Eight of your top ten by raw IG likes are owned by @boyetattoo. The 50,000 to 300,000-likes range that appears beside your handle in any tag-aware crawl is not your reach. It is Boye’s reach reflecting onto you, courtesy of the studio you share and the cross-tagging you both already do.
On the Botan symbolism reel, September 2024. Educational deep-dive, calm explainer voice, ukiyo-e source material. The format that wins biggest on your own grid. Run twice in twenty months.
Both Adams are real. Both are useful. They are not the same brand input. Calm-craftsman Adam is what an aligned collector finds when they go deep. Reflected-glory Adam is what they find at the top of the feed when Boye’s reels surface in IG search.
The brand spine has to be the calm-craftsman. The reflected-glory channel becomes a top-of-funnel entry point you can’t fully control (Boye decides when to tag you). If we let the borrowed reach drive your brand voice, we will architect a comedy-adjacent brand for an artist whose own peaks are mythic-symbolism deep-dives. That is a category error.
V1.2 decision (Adam): dial the cross-tagging quietly down. Casual cross-tags route to the meme page. Main grid retains 5 to 10% carefully picked sketches selected for brand fit. Caspar surfaces the change to Boye as a casual studio-mate dial, not a public renegotiation. We track the reach drop honestly over 4 to 8 weeks and measure LP1 / LP2 against owned-reach booking conversions, not vanity reach.
Leverage
Boye runs cover-up + city-tour + course. Adam runs symbolism + bodysuit consultation, strictly bookings, no course lane. Same studio, opposite brand architectures. Built on purpose.
Funnel A · ship first
Built on the only content format that has demonstrably broken your niche audience. The Botan reel did 13.6k likes on a 15k account, then 7k on a re-push. Reproducible. Two posts, two breakouts, no luck.
Plays directly to your strongest content format. Surfaces the Royal-Academy-plus-ukiyo-e authority anchor on a surface you own. Filters by motif preference at the form level, kills “I just want a Japanese tattoo” off-fit asks dead. Builds the email list (Gap 3 fix) on the way in.
Funnel B · ships same week as Funnel A
Adam locked V1.2: 90 to 95% of his work is multi-session. That number rewrites the original “ship second” framing. Funnel B is not a follow-on. It is the surface that matches Adam’s actual booking reality. Funnel A still ships first in order of operations because the entry hook (motif comment to guide to application) feeds Funnel B’s qualified slice. Both LPs ship the same week.
Hook: “This is what a bodysuit looks like a year later. If you are thinking about committing to a project of that scale, here is how I work and what it takes.” Routes to a long-form application form, then a 30-minute consultation call, then a written project plan with deposit and first-session date.
Pricing (Adam V1.2)
| Surface | Rate |
|---|---|
| DK day session (6h) | 7,000 DKK |
| DK hourly | 1,250 DKK / h |
| DK weekend day | 8,000 DKK |
| Abroad day session | 7,500 to 8,000 DKK |
| Deposit (non-consecutive session) | 1,000 DKK |
| Deposit policy | Non-refundable. Transfers + deducts at last session. |
| Multi-day consecutive block | 1,000 DKK / day (3-day block = 3,000 DKK deposit) |
Funnel A calendar · 12 weeks of upper-funnel content
One Did-You-Know per week. Each post explains one motif, references the ukiyo-e source, and ends with the comment trigger. Twelve weeks of upper-funnel mapped before content production starts.
W01 Dragon (Ryū)
Power, wisdom, water
W02 Koi
Perseverance against the current
W03 Peony (Botan)
Wealth, masculinity, prosperity (the proven hit)
W04 Hannya
The jealous female demon, transformation
W05 Tiger (Tora)
Strength, protection, courage
W06 Snake (Hebi)
Wisdom, healing, rebirth
W07 Chrysanthemum (Kiku)
Imperial flower, longevity
W08 Lotus (Hasu)
Purity rising from mud, enlightenment
W09 Demon (Oni)
Protector against evil, paradox
W10 Wave (Nami)
Power of nature, impermanence
W11 Warrior (Samurai)
Code, honour, bushidō
W12 Maple (Momiji)
Beauty in transition
Engine
Cadence is steady. Hashtags are on-niche. Peer network is the artists’ room, not the suppliers’ room. The content engine is calm and disciplined. The architecture under it is what we build next.
180 own posts, distributed across these pillars by what the captions actually say. Two findings stand out: healed-skin retrospectives at 29% is your quiet trust pillar (heavier than Boye runs), and Did-You-Know at 7% is your biggest unused move (top-performing format, run only twice).
| Pillar | Posts | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Healed-skin retrospectives | 53 | 29.4% |
| Bodysuit / backpiece / large project | 25 | 13.9% |
| Tradition / Japanese symbolism | 17 | 9.4% |
| Did-You-Know educational | 13 | 7.2% |
| Convention / event-tour | 6 | 3.3% |
| Cover-up | 4 | 2.2% |
| Course / workshop / teach | 1 | 0.6% |
| Ukiyo-e / woodblock mention | 0 | 0% |
| "Link in bio" routing CTAs | 0 | 0% |
2.2% of posts ship with zero hashtags, a clean baseline. Compare to Boye: 51.5%. Average per post: 4.3. The top niche tags are on-strategy: #irezumi 50, #hannya 10, #chrysanthemum 15, #dragontattoo 30. We do not need to rebuild the discoverability vocabulary; it already names the collector you want.
Top mentions across your 180 own posts. @dropout_cph in 48% of posts, the studio is over-tagged and welded into your brand graph. The rest are peer artists, not sponsors. You play the artists’ game, not the supplier game. Inverse of Boye’s sponsor-heavy network. The recommendation: tag the studio less aggressively once you have an owned conversion surface (Gap 3 fix) so the brand graph rebalances toward Adam first, Dropout second.
V1 left this as an open question. Adam answered in V1.2.
“I’d like it to be quietly dialed down (switching it to my meme page) and only tag along on carefully picked sketches. I want it to take up way less space on my profile. Around 5 to 10% sketches. But if that hurts my brand, I will leave it fully to my tattoomeme page.”
Adam V1.2
No architecting of the Boye channel. Four operational moves:
Exit
The audit's most important strategic finding: you and Boye share a studio and almost nothing else about how the brand should be built. If your audit-site looks anything like Boye's, we have under-served your actual brand.
| Adam | Boye | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience size | 14.9k · verified | 238k · unverified |
| Style | Contemporary irezumi | Dark fantasy / freehand |
| Voice | Calm, curious, explanatory | Comedy, provocative, ADHD-fast |
| Top-content type | Educational deep-dives (Did You Know) | Reels, comedy, generational comparisons |
| Cover-up share | 2.2% (almost none) | 7.5% (specialty) |
| Bodysuit emphasis | 90 to 95% of total work (Adam V1.2) | Present but secondary |
| Day-rate anchor | DK 7,000 DKK / 6h day, 8,000 DKK weekend, 7,500 to 8,000 DKK abroad | DK 11,000 DKK / day, US $3,500 / day |
| Deposit policy | 1,000 DKK / non-consecutive session, transferable, deducted at last session | Cover-up specific |
| Course business | Locked: no course, strictly bookings (Adam V1.2) | Active (LearnWorlds + IG Exclusive + UnseenLevel) |
| Authority anchor | Royal Academy + ukiyo-e study | Sponsorship + reach |
| Network type | Peer-collab heavy | Sponsor-heavy |
| Proposed funnel hook | Comment a motif, get the symbolism guide | Show me the tattoo you hate |
Each one closes a named gap. Each one is something Unforged would actually build for you, not advice you're left to act on alone.
EXIT 01
The site you are reading already lives on a domain you control. The next move is the layer beneath it: email capture, the first symbolism guide as a lead magnet, an application form that filters by motif before anyone DMs. Bio link points here, not to Dropout. Closes Gap 03.
What we'd ship: this site keeps the audit, adds an email-capture page + the first "From the source" guide PDF + a motif-filtered intake form. Bio link migrates to adamvecht.unforged.me.
EXIT 02
The Botan reel hit 13,642 likes on a 15k account. Same format, re-pushed, hit 6,825. The format works. You have run it twice in twenty months. The fix is a calendar, not a new skill. One motif per week, ukiyo-e source named in every post, Royal Academy training surfaced as the authority anchor. Closes Gap 02.
What we'd ship: the twelve-motif calendar in Section 06, shot-list and caption template per motif, a recurring research backlog so the source material stays sharp.
EXIT 03
Each Did-You-Know reel ends with a keyword: "comment dragon for the symbolism guide". Comment fires an auto-DM with the guide. Guide ends with a soft CTA into the application form. The curiosity-driven viewer and the bodysuit-ready collector are triaged at the form, not in your inbox. Closes Gap 04.
What we'd ship: ManyChat (or equivalent) keyword trigger per motif, the symbolism guide PDF, a motif-filtered intake form, calendar booking on the back end.
uvbdmomtgubjjpcfccab).
Caspar. Around most weeks, this one or next.
Followers are not the lever you think they are. Filtered intent is. You already won the "is the work good" question. Time to win the "does the right collector find you" question.
Compiled 2026-05-08 by Andreas. Reviewed by Caspar. Unforged.
Source data: Apify scrape (200 posts), Dropout artist page snapshot,
2026-04-29 deep-dive transcript.
Questions ALL ANSWERED · V1.2 LOCK
All ten answered. Quotes are Adam’s own, lightly cleaned for punctuation only. No semantic editing. V1.2 is structurally locked. LP1 + LP2 build from here.
01
Three sentences. How would you describe what you do, without using the words "Japanese" or "irezumi"? We want the language a serious collector would actually hear from you in person.
"I have a modern / contemporary approach to traditional asian tattooing. I specialize in custom-made large-scale work, that lasts a lifetime. I work with stories and symbolism as well as purely decoration. I love working in both color and black and grey."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
02
Why does a collector pick you over the other Dropout Japanese artists, and over the global irezumi peer set (Yarson, Torsten Malm, Gorsky, Sinners Inc, the rest)? Two or three lines.
"First, because I'm chasing the story, and meaning behind the tattoo. Often there is one, even though the client might not be aware of it. Second, because my style is more rooted and therefore closer to traditional Japanese tattoos. I work from the core principles, and bend the rules without breaking them, and still enough to put my twist on the motives."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
03
Current DK day rate. Does it shift abroad or at conventions? What is the deposit policy on a multi-session bodysuit? We want to put a clean number on the audit-site so collectors can self-qualify.
"I charge 7,000 DKK for a 6-hour day session, additionally I charge 1,250 DKK per hour. Available weekends are 8,000 DKK per day. Day session rate does shift abroad, usually to 7,500 / 8,000 per day. I have a non-refundable booking fee / deposit policy, of 1,000 DKK per non-consecutive session, which will transfer and be deducted at the last session. A deposit per day is required per consecutive day booked. So 3 consecutive days = 3,000 DKK deposit."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
04
Roughly what fraction of your last twelve months has been multi-session work versus single-session? A percentage range is enough.
"I'd estimate around 90% if not 95% of my work is multiple-session tattoos."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
05
Is the Gmail address in your bio the only audience touchpoint, or is there a Mailchimp list, a studio-shared list, or anything else with email addresses on it?
"I'm not sure about this one. No newsletters. Dropout might have a list of leads."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
06
Which countries or cities have already booked you in 2025 or 2026? Helps us shape Funnel B (bodysuit consultation) and the convention strategy.
"Sweden, USA, England, Germany, Norway."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
07
Which Northern European or international conventions are you committed to or considering this year? Each booked window becomes a built-in scarcity beat we can plan content around.
"Stockholm Ink Bash, August. Nordic Ink, October."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
08
Are you interested in shipping a teaching product over the next 12 to 24 months, even something small like a paid symbolism guide or a 1:1 mentorship slot, or strictly bookings? The answer decides whether we reserve a future course-collector lane in the brand architecture.
"I'm not interested in shipping a teaching product. Or a mentorship slot. Strictly bookings at this point."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
09
Off-style asks you routinely decline. The application form's drop-down design hangs on this. Examples: "no Westernized Japanese," "no small one-shot pieces," "no second-hand style references."
"No copies of others' tattoos. Nothing I can't defend artistically. Other styles I don't do: color realism, portraits."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
10
Is the cross-tagging you and Boye already do organic studio-mate behaviour, or a deliberate cross-promo? Do you want it to remain organic, dialed up (planned cadence + shared content beats), or quietly dialed down? Either answer is fine. Letting it stay implicit, when it accounts for most of your top-of-feed reach, is the riskier path.
"The cross-tagging is more of a tag-along thing. I'd like it to be quietly dialed down (switching it to my meme page) and only tag along on carefully picked sketches. I want it to take up way less space on my profile. Around 5 to 10% sketches. But if that hurts my brand, I will leave it fully to my tattoomeme page."
Adam’s answer · V1.2
All ten answered. V1.2 locked 2026-05-17. LP1 (Symbolism / Funnel A) + LP2 (Bodysuit / Funnel B) ship same week.