Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    The most important aspect of the music marketing project was the research and planning to ensure our artist had a well-thought-out and cohesive theme that projected well over different aspects of branding. In the research phase, my team and I looked through the websites of different record labels to find out how they market their artists. We took inspiration from several artists' social media presence techniques to plan how we were going to present our artist. 

    Our main source of inspiration for media marketing was SZA. Her interaction with fans through social media allows her to reach her target audience easily and test how possible music releases will do if fans like demos. SZA allows her fans to give her input on song snippets and even ask them to give her possible song names. Tiktok is the main social media she utilizes to achieve this technique as the easy upload of short videos and pushing them out with the algorithm increases her audience. We decided to create a TikTok for our artist because of this as well as an Instagram and Twitter. 

    After creating the social media profiles, we continued our research on how else to better market our artist. We concluded that creating merch and a cohesive logo would help establish the artist's brand. We created a 90s style logo that would match our overall "Bring 90s Back" campaign and branding for our hip-hop artist, The Vanquisher. We based our logo on a 90s art style of popping colors and caricature-like characters, such as Rugrats. 

Our logo for The Vanquisher

The 90s animated series Rugrats character

    Upon creating our logo, we created merchandise utilizing it and made it our profile picture on all of The Vanquisher's social media. Since The Vanquisher is an up-and-coming artist, we decided to make our merchandise in two limited styles to maximize profit without potentially experiencing monetary loss if the extended merchandise line does not sell well. We also advertised our merch drops on Instagram to appeal to the audience. We also made hoodies with a still from the music video for our debut single Dangerous. Vanquisher's website is where fans can purchase his merch and it is linked under all his social media to reach the most audiences possible. 

    The hardest aspect of the music marketing project was the planning and collective shooting for the music video. The song we received was fast-paced and therefore needed an engaging storyline. To come up with ideas, we listened to the song repeatedly to develop a music video that matched and made sense. We agreed on making a storyline and promo-style video so the entire rap did not need to be rapped. The promo aspects showcased The Vanquisher's personal style and rapping while the storyline adhered to the theme of the song and proved his personality as he was portrayed during the presentation. 

    Once we developed the storyline of a criminal committing "dangerous" acts (hence the song name) we drew the storyboard with varied angles and shots to match the rhythm of the song. We designed the costumes for the vanquisher and the criminal to resemble 90s-esque fashion (bandanas, jeans, puffer jackets, big sunglasses). To best match the aesthetic we were trying to achieve, we decided we needed to film during late afternoon. The lighting was dark and matched the "dangerous" vibe we were trying to get across. Filming and getting our angles the way we wanted them was fairly easy since we only needed one location just in different places. Filming took around two hours but we were glad with how our shots turned out. Post production took place on Adobe Premier and was probably the most time-consuming part of the entire project. 

    Creating our powerpoint for the presentation proved to be fairly easy since we just had to pile on our research in summarized points in a 90s themed slide template. We utilized the bright colors of the presentation to call attention to our merchandise and social media profile screenshots. We worked on memorizing our research so that we could fully face the audience during the presentation and avoid looking right at the powerpoint. 

    Ultimately, this project taught me the importance of taking the full time alotted to and utilizing it properly to avoid leaving production to the last minute. Dividing up tasks for different due dates was helpful and it helped my team and I not procrastinate and properly divide the tasks between us. This project also taught me the importance of post production and how editing can make or break an entire project and I will be sure to implement everything I learned during the post production of this project for my Cambridge portfolio project.