Music Marketing Project: Final

 

Music Marketing Project 

Part 2

Marketing means the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. It is the most important part of any sort of media-centered project and allows you to advertise and sell your product. A good marketing campaign can almost guarantee you profit and success. It is extremely important that you know the medium in which you are marketing, which means you must know the best marketing strategies for your desired project that will reach your target audience.

In this project, my group was to create a new musical artist and build their brand from the bottom up. This meant we were assigned a genre, in which ours was rap/hip-hop, and a song. We then created a music video for the song and developed our artist according to our genre. Most importantly, we had to create a marketing campaign for the artist which fit the assigned genre and successfully promote the artist into becoming famous, which was our biggest challenge. 

~Researching~

The first step of developing a brand new artist is researching the genre assigned. In our case, we got assigned rap as our genre, and so as part of our project we had to complete a music research chart. This chart required us to develop two case studies in which we would research two major record labels of our assigned genre and two artists of each, making sure to note their production, distribution, marketing, cross-media/technological converge, and synergy strategies. We decided on four major artists: SZA, Kendrick Lamar, Don Toliver, and Travis Scott. We noticed how all of these artists relied heavily on online marketing strategies such as social media. SZA interacted directly with her fans while Kendrick Lamar grew his fandom by the lack of his interaction with it. Both artists utilized the online medium in different ways, yet both were extremely successful with their approaches. Therefore, we decided that our main source of marketing should take place on social media.

(SZA and Kendrick Lamar, consecutively)

~Brainstorming/Planning~

After deciding our approach we started coming up with ideas on how to make our artists stand out from other rap artists. Would it be his music? His personality? The way he dresses? The way he talks? 

We came up with the idea of exaggerating the artist's features and personalities in a "character," one might say. This character would be sarcastic, comedic, but most importantly he would be from the '90s. With our research, we found out that rap/hip-hop was one of the top-selling genres of the 1990s and so decided that our artist's music would be '90s rap styled. He, the person, lived through the '90s and claims that he wants to bring it back, and restore the glory that rap had back then.

Now for the next part of the planning process: the music video. The song we were assigned was rather difficult to make an interesting and coherent music video to. We had many different ideas but, in practice, they were too advanced for us to produce. We wanted the music video to be somehow both comedic and express an idea that the artist was "dangerous," as that was what the song was about, but in a satirical way, since the character of the artist was known to be sarcastic. 

We decided to have the actors in the music video act like they did not take it seriously, almost in an exaggerated way of how the '90s rap music videos used to be, to bring back the nostalgia of the older millennial audience, but also interest the younger gen z audience who enjoy the comedy. 

~Production~

It was time to put our efforts and plans to the test and start producing. At this time we decided to divide and conquer: I would deal with developing the marketing campaign while the rest of the group would work on shooting and editing the music video. 

*Marketing*

As I mentioned previously, we decided to focus on social media as our main method of marketing, but that did not mean that was our only strategy. We had to create and follow the steps for our marketing campaign. First, we created the artist that I described previously and named him The Vanquisher. To build his brand, we decided to make multiple social media counts for him. All of his online presence would be marked by the same logo for recognition, and he would post, especially on Twitter, to advertise his music, but at the same time maintaining that exaggerated version of himself. On every social media account, we posted teasers, stills from the music video, and merch pictures to advertise his music and merchandise. With his posts, he would also make sure to constantly interact with his fans and followers, as well as try to connect with other artists to possibly grant himself connections in the music industry. This would help him a lot as he would gain many followers as well as have the opportunity for future content together. 

*Music Video*

Along with developing the marketing campaign we also needed to create the music video for our artist's debut song "Dangerous." As I explained, the idea for the music video would be mainly comedic. We went for the promo/storytelling approach as we thought this way we could promote the artist directly by having him sing the song but also demonstrate what the song is about with a story. Except the story would be a represented exaggeration of what the '90s music videos used to look like, therefore still keeping the artist in character with the 1990s theme and the comedy, but also bringing back a sense of nostalgia from the people who grew up watching these music videos on TV.

We looked at many different rap music videos, especially from the '90s, and choose the best types of shots and editing styles for the song. Recording days were a little chaotic, but we ended up getting around five different shots of the artist singing the entire song so that on the editing process we could choose which shots to use at each part of the song to keep it interesting and engaging for the audience. Since the music is moderately fast-paced, we matched that with our editing style. Our biggest challenge was synching the mouthing of the song lyrics to the song audio, which was done really well by our editor. He also added a black rectangle over the singer's mouth when the song contained some inappropriate language.

~Post-Production~

After getting all the footage for the music video it was time to put everything together. We let our editor, also the same person who was The Vanquisher in this case, in charge of producing the music video, while we gave input on what we thought looked the best and fit the story. Our music video was well-paced, the cuts and transitions made sense as well as the switch from storyline to shots of the artist rapping the song. Our composition could have been better, but I still believe we were able to capture the essence of the artist and the song. 

Before our presentation, we needed to divide the slides and prepare our scripts for what each person would talk about, and I kept pressing the group to do so because I wanted to be ready and prepared for the presentation, but there seemed to be a lack of motivation on their part. It was confusing up until the day of the presentation who would talk about which slide, and I was getting stressed over it. 

~Presentation~

Watching some of the other presentations made me realize ours was very well done. We explained our marketing campaign, artist, discussed our case studies, elaborated on how the music video represents the artist and the song, and more. We did so consistently, and even though at some point there was some confusion on who would talk about which slide, we recovered from it quickly and the presenter did a good job on her explanation. The slides were '90s themed and matched the genre and artist well. When questions surfaced, we answered them truthfully and with solid resources. Overall the project could have had been better and could use a little more work, but it was still well-made. 

~Resolution~

With this project, I learned many things that will help me throughout my professional life and career. Hard work is worth it and can open a world of possibilities you couldn't imagine possible. I never thought I would be creating my own artist and marketing campaigns one day, but dedicating myself to this project has taught me important skills. I realized how crucial to any media the process of marketing is, and how a good marketing campaign can make an artist go from unnoticeable to successful very quickly. It showed me how connecting with other artists and collaborating with successful and known companies can expand your following and is key to long-lasting fame and recognition. When developing my Cambridge portfolio I will be sure to pick a good partner that is as dedicated as I am and listens to my ideas as much as I listen to theirs. I will all the steps used in this project--researching, planning, producing, post-producing, presenting-- to my advantage in hopes of developing Cambridge-worth material.