Music Marketing Blog Post #2

Music Marketing Project: Charlie Jay

Background Research

    When our project first began, we learned that our genre was Rap/R&B, which are two genres that are heavily associated and later found out in our research that they are considered by some as branches of each other. However, when considering a song, we were able to realize it will always most likely lean to one of either of the two sides of the spectrum between a fast-paced rap song and a slower, soulful vocally styled R&B song. Therefore, since out of our four choices, we picked the one mostly leaning with the R&B style, which was "C'mon Talk" by Bernhoft, we focused most of our research on this.

    While doing our research chart, we still made sure to touch on information for famous, well-known rap artists, such as DaBaby. However, the two artists that we relied most on during our research were two R&B successful women, which were Adele and Beyonce. During most of our research, we learned that this music style is enjoyed by a fairly young audience, however, more towards the young adult years. Therefore, this music usually deals with more mature topics than the usual pop culture. We found out it is mostly focused on songs about relationship (mostly romantic), social movements, and is likely to have explicit words. 

    We found out about two specific tactics that these artists use in their marketing styles, which are the tow tactics we decided to apply during our Charlie Jay project. The first one was maintaining an extremely close relationship with the artists' fans, witch actions such as social media interaction, private concerts, fan account management, physical interactions, giveaways, and etc... The second tactic we saw thaw e also decided to use in our project was going radio silent for a period of time and then suddenly releasing huge news out of the blue. We saw while researching Adele's new album after six years of silence, and Beyonce's success with her "Lemonade" album and tour after going silent for some months and dropping the news during her 2016 Superbowl performance. After concussing our background research, we made the decision that once we start our project, we focus on promoting to a young, yet mature, audience, and imply these tactics.

Music Video Production

    As our first step, we mad ether executive decision that developing an idea, filming, and having a clear idea of our music video was the best thing to do in order to have a clearer image of which way we want our project to go. This step was perhaps one of the most challenging ones during the production of our project. None of us were too eager to appear in front of the camera, and we struggled in deciding if we should simply lip-sync to the song or if we should tell a story. Since we thought it would be more interesting to tell a story, we decided to go with the second option. We also made this decision because of the fast-nature of the song we chose, and we chose not to lip-sync due to the possibility of our video looking less professional. After choosing to tell a story, since it was about a struggling romantic relationship from a boy's point of view, we all agreed to make Joseph take the role of our made up artist, Charlie Jay, as the main star of the video.

    The lyrics of the song were a little bit to understand, therefore we decided to keep the story simple and easy to understand- a guy wanting to talk to his girlfriend after a fight they had, and her repeatedly ignoring him. Coming to this conclusion took us about a class and a half, therefore, once we all agreed on one idea, we decided to divide the work and try to quicken our pace. As Joseph, Jessie, and Rafaela went outside to take pictures of Joseph for our artist logo, I stayed back in class doing our storyboard. The storyboard was a lengthy process, therefore, as I continued to work on it, the three of my group members began setting up our google slides, picking the theme, and labeling our slides. Once I finished with our story board, we went right into filming. Since I was the one who came up with the shots and the story, I was the one that was in charge of directing our whole video. Most of our shots consisted of Joseph (who acted as Charlie Jay) and Raffaella (the love interest), only about four of them contained Jessie. Therefore, while me, Joseph, and Rafaela spent two class times filming, we decided Jessie would stay back and work on the power point.

    We also agreed that we should discuss our editing aim all together, but let Joseph edit the video. We decided this because he has experience with adobe premiere, he volunteered, and we thought we would be able to be more productive and effective as a team if the three of us made sure to advance in other aspects of our project as Joseph focused on finishing our final video. As a group, we decided on the idea of glitches for our main theme. We though that this would enhance the fast nature of our song, and tell the story of there relationship in an aesthetically pleasing way that looked professional. We also wanted our music video theme and image to be equal to the theme of our artists logo. We collectively decided to take a side profile picture of Joseph because we thought this gave the artists of Charlie Jay a professional appearance, we also used inspiration from Charlie Puth's and Jason Derulo's comeback logos, since they are known from some R&B and slow pop songs. After this, we decided to apply the glitch effect that was also applied to the music video. After all of this brainstorming, Joseph was in charge on applying these edits to our logo and music video, while the rest of the three of us got to work with the power point.

Jason Derulo's "Everything is 4" cover

Charlie Puth's "Nine Track Mind" Cover

 Charlie Jay Cover

Power Point Presentation/ External Media Production

    When we first began our power point, we struggled with what exactly to put in it. Therefore, we decided to create a google doc where we would put our ideas for the over all plan of our marketing and what we wanted to put in our slides. I decided to copy-paste some of the specific key words and and instructions form the assignment in canvas in order to lead us with our brainstorming and make sure we can stay on focus with our ideas. 

    Most of our ideas originated with the social media area, therefore we decided to begin our presentation with these slides and begin creating them. For organizational purposes, we decided it ovule be better to separate each of our social medias into separate slides, in order to allow us to give specific and detailed exampled of Charlie Jays' media usage in each platform. While me and Rafaela did these slides, Jessie was the one that took charge of our website. We decided that while Joseph edited and me and Rafaela did our power point, Jessie was designing our website from scratch. We made this decision because she had previously done entire websites before and her experience allowed her to do this easier. While me an Rafaela did the slides and the speaker notes- which were lengthy since they contained most of the information about our plan- Jessie would show us what she would be doing and we would give her feedback. We decided that in the website we should have a tour, shop, bookings, and a lisent sections which are basic sections in artists websites that we researched. She also was the one that designed the merchandise in this website.

Collaboration with a Brand/ Signature Piece

    While doing our merchandise, we decided to have the main items: hoodies, a mug, and a poster. This is where the idea of a collaboration with a brand came to mind. We though that such a collaboration would put our artists name out there, and by picking the right one, it would also hit our targeted audience. We discussed among many, and agreed that the brand Off White is one that targeted young adults, was fashionable, and was able to develop and aesthetic and make our plan more effective. We also saw this in other artists that had success, therefore we came to the conclusion of adding this to our plan. Since Jessie had created our merchandise and knew how to implement our artists logo, she edited an Off White product and added Charlie Jay's signature to it. This is also when we came up with the idea of using one of the merch hoodies as a signature piece for our brand. We decided to use the black hoodie since it's a color that is widely used, and hoodies are generally wore by every gender. We thought this was a good idea because it would make our brand more recognizable and had seen artists do this before.

Social Media Management

When creating these accounts, we decided to make actual Charlie Jay accounts that we created and add fake posts to them, so that we could show them in our presentation as examples. Rafaela was in charge of doing these. She created a YouTube Channel account, a Twitter, and Instagram account, and a TikTok. While she did this, we brainstormed together and I wrote down on the power point what our marketing plan would be for each account. Later, Jessie edited these by giving them a blue checkmark that official, verified accounts hold in order to make our evidence seem more professional. While developing our social medias, we also came up with the idea of developing an official fandom account. We thought about other artists that have done this before and how successful it turned out to be, for example, I brought up Taylor Swift and her Taylor's Nation account. We thought that this would be a way to connect Charlie Jay to his fans, and develop a closer bond and relationship with them- one of our main goals when we began our plan.

Finalizations Before Presenting

    As we were finishing our presentation, we made sure to keep most of our information in the speaker notes and try to keep our slides as plain and word-less as possible. When we got towards the end of our slides, Joseph was done editing our music video, therefore he showed it to us, we agreed that it achieved what we wanted it to achieve, and added it to our powerpoint. after this, all of us together worked on our final two slides, which discussed the tactics in which our music video hit our targeted audience, and our final sell points of our plan over all. After this, we distributed our slides for the presentation, and each of us picked the section that we were most comfortable for. We practiced as a group and by our selves, making sure we times ourselves so that we didn't go over the fifteen minute limit.

Reflection

    As a whole, this project was extremely helpful to me in understanding all the different areas and tactics that goes into making an artist/brand, and all the different measures one should take as the managing team in order to make them successful. This project showed me how such a brand or artist can't be managed by one individual, in order to be truly successful, there must be different individual focusing on specific areas in order to make the marketing process as successful as possible. Each area needs to be throughly studied and make sure they all strive towards the same goal. For example, we as a group understood that we had to divide in order to conquer, and while still communicating with each other making sure we have the same goals and ideas. Jessie was in charge of the website and merchandise production, Rafaela did the social medias and helped with the power point, Joseph starred and edited the whole music video, and I did the story board, directed, and worked on our presentation. These were all different areas which were each key to our final product. I learned a lot about the genre R&B itself, especially about its targeted audience, which I thought to be older but is actually listed to by younger people. I was able to identify some actions and the way things are announced in the music industry aren't just out of the blue, they are managed to be done to achieve a purpose and make the artists more successful. This problem really helped me with my Cambridge portfolio, because it was a long term project that really required me to think throughly every aspect of it, and communicate these ideas with a group around me.