CIE Eval Q2 BRANDING

CIE Q2: How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

This is very similar to the UK OCR Q2, which considers how well the 3 components work as an overall package.


PREPARATION FOR THIS ANSWER:
Research existing examples: look at some examples of a single act/artist's website/album cover/video and assess how tightly integrated (in mood/tone, not just direct visuals) they are or aren't. You could discuss how likely it is that videos especially would be directly linked to digipak or website design (usually multiple videos for any album, often from different directors...).
Create a grid with 3 columns: video, digipak, website/online (you could split online [social media] into a 4th).
Start with video and note any feature which is replicated or similar in 1 or both of the other 2 (include branding for YouTube, Twitter etc profiles with website). Take screenshots as you go for use in answer.
Work through digipak and online content too, check if there's anything you missed (there may be some links just between these 2 but not video).
Think again: consider the mode of address, maybe in/formal, humble/brash, accessible/distant ... what MOOD have you created? (the visual links may not be so direct, so you may not have considered branding like this)
Review your notes - can you see themes/issues you can link together? Can you see opportunities to apply theories (eg web 2.0, intertextuality, postmodernism more widely)?
Organise your response into clear sections/themes.
You could also seek audience feedback: question a sample, ask them to describe the brand image.
Provide a short summary: this should include your thoughts on how you might have improved on this!

SIMPLE SUGGESTED STRUCTURE FOR YOUR ANSWER:
Discuss, with examples, how typical or not it is to tightly integrate 3 distinct media formats (you'll find examples that do and examples that don't!) - do websites especially tend to change to reflect new releases (yes!).
Brief outline of the artist's existing brand and likely audience.
Brief outline of the brand and likely audience you were aiming for. If it helps, what product (or other existing artist) would you compare this brand to?!

For creative content, consider what brands/products this artist might agree to advertise, which company would pay them to be a 'brand spokesperson' (and create an ad!). Interview with (or promo package by) a design agency and their creative team.

Outline the links between your texts, taking 1 clear theme at a time, and thoroughly illustrating how these link across 2 or more of your texts. As you do, be very clear if you have taken separate photographic images for print work (a good thing!) rather than just use video screenshots.
Provide a summary, including assessment of any changes you now think you should have made

KEY POINTS:

• define your primary and secondary target audiences (who the branding is aimed at!!!)
• sum up the existing branding for the artist - is the existing audience the same as yours?
• are you changing the brand image? if so, how/why?
• how zeitgeisty (or perhaps retro - Retromania?) is your branding?
• what role did social media play in binding together the video, digipak and website branding?
• did you brand the YouTube and social media profiles? (consider the branding across the websites and social media observed in my exemplar case studies)
• be clear and specific not just on the detailed links between your texts but any differences within these (e.g. the singer in the video setting/costume, but a unique photographic pose)
• it can be very helpful to ask yourself (as many artists and their managers will): if an existing brand was to sponsor your artist, which would it be and why?

UK STUDENT EXAMPLES

Amber: Lady Gaga

Conal (Amber's group partner): Lady Gaga

Kate: Girls Aloud (pop '00s girlband)

Clear, well illustrated vodcast, and Kate also made clear links within other Eval Qs - a good idea!

Curtis: dance act Faithless
Detailed and largely well illustrated, he closely followed my suggested structure. Curtis also embedded a range of videos from earlier in the blog in this post -

it is a smart move to very clearly link/demonstrate the range of research you are APPLYING through this answer, with playlists/embeds/screenshots (of posts, links lists), list of links, tags etc!

...

SOCIAL MEDIA MySpace and other failed sites

It is axiomatic that a social media presence is vital for any artist, aspiring or established. The perceived impact of Gaga's Little Monsters or Justin's Beliebers, not to mention any number of supposed bedroom success stories, reinforces this.

The fakery of most bedroom successes, their apparent viral success actually fuelled by major record labels' spending, and the pronouncement by the ever tedious Ed Sheeran that he's taking a break from social media to focus on his ... 'art', indicate a flipside to the argument that web 2.0 sites offer a key opportunity and disruption of the established distribution and marketing route through record labels.

Keen has also established an academic narrative against the intrusive, exploitative nature of these data-mining sites who profit from selling user data.

The articles below (with some strong language) are a useful reminder of the volatility of social media, with dominant sites completely disappearing once they lose their fashionability or zeitgeisty status.

See Ello, is anybody there? Alternative social networks abound for the peachy-keen

RIP Friends Reunited – but what else is lurking in the social media graveyard?

INDUSTRY Spotify moving into video?

One of the basic issues you have to address if you're making music videos is the perception that they're so, like, 90s, they're just over aren't they?

Ignoring my painful effort at teen skatz, in the era of UGC, where anyone can have a go at a music video with a phone or tablet, never mind a Mac, does the vid retain real cultural cachet? [zeitgeisty?] Is it still the centrepiece of marketing campaigns?

There's no definite answer ..  but I'd offer yes and no. The phenomenon of Gangnam Style is a YouTube video phenomenon; the cheesiness of the video, not the song, made it huge, and its monetisation was primarily through the billion+ YouTube hits and all those cover videos. No, because for all the hype Wrecking Ball's nude antics got Mikey Cyrus, its just part of a marketing mix that includes snogging Madonna and anything else that makes her Daily Mail clickbait. At that end of the market, as Elberse's case studies of Lady Gaga and Jay Z (yay, clickbait ahoy!) shows, tie-ins and distribution (often linked) are key, but so is audience engagement, some degree of interactivity with a campaign.

The humble QR code would have had Dennis McQuail, or Blumler and Katz, originators of the uses and gratifications theory, nodding to themselves, thinking just how right they were!

Where I've used the INDUSTRY heading, I'm often reflecting, quite indirectly at times, on the position of video in the marketing mix, and this post, marking the news that Spotify is set to (I'll try to update once news is out) move into video in a big way, is no exception.

By the way, given the apparent shocking outcome of the UK general election (voting count continues today), bear in mind the noise the Tories made about censoring and age rating music video, could develop into rather a major story for the music industry and even prosumers such as yourselves...

DIFFUSER.FM ARTICLE link.

UGC Azealia Banks Google tie-in stars audience

Its something I'll say frequently, and design 'spin-off' exercises around, because it is simply so important to the music industry's modern approach to promotion in the web 2.0 era: involving the 'audience' in the promo materials, and blurring the audience/producer line.

Details/link below

3 Summer 2011 vids: Example/BadRiddim/NicScherz

Channel-flicking I happened upon three current vids; 1 fairly ingenious and certainly responsible for elevating a so-so track to global fame; 1 from a much-hyped Brit which is boringly conventional, but useful to look at because of it; and 1 which demonstrates the problematic nature of much of the video output of female pop (or R+B) acts. We also can see how more than 1 of Goodwin's concept of 3 key approaches are often seen within a single vid.

First up is a great example of how a quirky, visually arresting vid can elevate a dance track which otherwise might get limited traction: Vato Gonzalez ft. Foreign Beggars "Badman Riddim (Jump)"

At the time of viewing it had 'only' 735,000 viewings, but seems to have garnered a number of TV screenings recently.
Even more so than the Example track, there is little likelihood of deriving a clear meaning from the lyrics with which to create a narrative vid. What we get is a concept enhanced with performance, including some sharp lip-synching - the cross-cutting of the two is mutually enhancing; either by themselves would probably drag a little!
Its a perfect example of the postmodern approach: playfully referencing Japan's historic reputation for cheap, lo-fi monster flicks such as the many versions of Godzilla (ie intertextuality), and neatly making a virtue out of limited budget by having a hyper-ironic cheap cardboard set. You could also read this as a critical reflection on the Michael Bay element of the zeitgeist: daft SFX-extravaganzas such as the Transformers franchise dominating the multiplexes. The SFX are in line with the fun approach and pastiche of the vid; their child-like aspect recalls those seen in Son of Rambow.
Using the rooftop setting also ensures they didn't lose further time/money by having to control traffic/pedestrians.
The Japanese schoolgirl trope is one seen in a great many cultural settings, and has a similar array of connotations to that of Britney in the 'Hit Me Baby' vid. What might be seen as a 'darker' side of this seemingly playful, frivilous vid is seen with the hand-holding of one girl and the Godzilla-like monster, fertile territory for any Freudian (or Jungian!) psychoanalysts out there.
The fisheye lens is much in evidence, and the tight framing of the performers an increasingly common rap convention (also popular beyond that genre, seen in Foo Fighters and other rock vids). If you think about the practicalities, all they've done is add a graf-style backdrop to a room, spanning little more than 1metre across, and framed the shot so that this is all we see: clever video-making on a tight budget (tho' the backdrop still needed an artistic hand to create).


The 2nd vid is Example's "Changed the Way You Kissed Me"

Approaching 5m hits as I watched it. Its dull, but very competently put together. The lyrics don't lend themselves to any clear narrative approach (its questionable whether there is any particular meaning there), aside from some take on a romance breaking down. Nonetheless, as the vid switches from a basic concept approach to performance, we do see a matching of lyrics to action: around 1:49 in "not afraid of flying" is matched to Example crowd-surfing.
The B+W is rather pretentious BUT lends the vid a polish it might otherwise lack, and enables the slo-mo at the start to fit around common conceptions of 'arty' - our moody artiste is to be taken seriously!
The flat and external shots simply signify metropolitan lifestyle - flashes by too quickly to be clearly London-specific? This is a recording artist with global ambitions.
Always look out for THE GAZE/LOOKING: Example is quite fascinated by himself, though the early footage also signifies a privileged inside view for the audience; we see Example gearing up for a gig and performing, two sides of the man.
Its not a great vid, but the lighting is skilfully controlled, and there is sufficient variety of footage to sustain interest. The uber-cool crowd are what the couch potato viewer of the vid, watching in the un-hip North say, should aspire to as much as the style and panache of the man himself (we could consider the Uses and Gratifications theory here, or even Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs...)
We could also speculate that the limitations are actually semi-purposeful: a too-glossy approach might not suit the Example brand at this stage of his career...

The 3rd vid is from a figure featuring on X Factor (wee bit of alliteration for you folks there), and, to me, the weakest/worst of the lot: Nicole Scherzinger's "Right There"

We get the heavily made-up, high gloss lighting we expect of a pop vid (we could also label this R+B), and the sort of simulacrum (a representation of a representation of reality: Baudrillard's concept) we saw in Michael Jackson's Billie Jean of a gritty urban street setting.
There are moments in this vid when the 'artist', or at least her brand-aware director, attempts to brazen out a feminist touch, tied to the repeated call out to "all my girls". But this is a video which renders the female lead actually in a passive, objectified role (there is certainly scope to disagree with this, not least by applying a post-feminist analysis) - hardly surprising given the lyrics:

Come here baby put your hands on my body
Hands on my body oh oh oh
Right there keep it right there
I love when you put it right there yeah yeah yeah

Is this, lyrically (ie as audio only) and/or the video itself, really suitable for the young audience its aimed at? In the A2 exam we consider Media Regulation, including the Bailey Report into the sexualisation of children through media content.
NS touches herself, prances/dances (delete as you prefer!) about with her body very much the focus of the vid and virtually every frame, including several seemingly obligatory 'booty' shots.
The vid is otherwise unremarkable, with limited variation of location/setting, and just one fairly simple special effect - you could argue her body is the main special effect, rendering additional spending unnecessary.
As a band member now going solo, its also interesting to note the group of 4 women who at times appear with her - and the degree of variation (multiple ethnicities, and varying looks: the idea of beauty takes in a skinhead for example, though more conventionally sticks with the thin-bodied ideal).
Awful track and depressingly formulaic presentation of the female body as entertainment - as I'm sure you'll agree? ...