Research
Upon beginning the Music Marketing Project, proper research had to be conducted. My group and I were assigned the Alternative genre, so we began by creating 2 case studies from different music production companies. We researched 4 different albums that fall under the genre which were Panic! At The Disco’s “Pray for the Wicked”, Fall Out Boy’s “Mania”, The Neighborhood’s “Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones”, and Foster the People’s “Sacred Hearts Club”. We created charts to organize our information in which we learned about prized marketing techniques, stellar campaigns, target audiences, and group demographics.
The beginning of our first research chart
Through this research, we started picking up on similar trends through alternative music such as edgy and mysterious drops and clues and drew inspiration. With enough indulgence into the genre, we were naturally led into brainstorming for our own band and eventually our campaign.
Brainstorming
The brainstorming process was incredibly natural for my group. It began with a simple discussion of what kind of image we wanted to portray appealing to the target audience of our genre, primarily 16-26 year olds. We landed on going for an electric and empowering vibe. We thought this fit well with similar artists. But, we wanted our own fresh and new twist on what already has been done.
An all woman band, Spark Plug was created. This name was chosen not from the noun, but from the adjective spark plug, meaning someone who inspires or gives energy to a group. Now that we had our name, we came up with a logo with electrifying colors to draw attention from our audience.
Planning
Now that ideas were flowing, planning had officially begun. We started thinking about music video creation and how we wanted to approach it. We settled on a storytelling style music video as we thought it would be the best way to properly portray the women empowerment concept we decided on. The idea of fighting in the video was natural. We wanted our female lead to come out victorious. We settled on a boxing match and began our storyboard.
The complete storyboard for our music video
Plotting out the music video was a very fun process, incorporating the intended vibe through planned shots, composition, and angles. Storyboards are meant to be rough drafts of what the actual product will be, but something I was set on was including a high and low angle at the end of the video. These angles would serve for the dominance the female lead is intended to have, deepening our women empowerment message.
Production
Shooting the music video was a lengthy process. We wanted our music video to open with a door busting open as the music we were given had a building musical tone. So, we did this by panning up our camera and zooming out on the door, which then burst open. The song is very upbeat. So, for our running shots, we wanted to include as many angles as we can. This way, when we began our editing process, we could cut between different angles of the same shot to create a fast-paced feel.
A lot of the shots filmed were repetitively done to give myself options while editing later. We played around with over the shoulder shots, especially when nearing the fight scene. The actual shot of the punch was filmed over 10 times in order to match the reaction from both the puncher and receiver as we were going to line up these shots later. Finally, the final high and low angle shots were executed exactly as envisioned. The high angle shot was completed by the camera being placed on the ground, giving a true inferior feel to the viewer.
The *golden* low-angle shot
Post-Production
The first step of post-production for my editing style is always going through every filmed shot. I put my favorite shots in a separate folder so I can upload them all into my editing program.
Once all loaded in, I sorted all of the clips to chronological order of events since filming was mostly out of order. I also loaded in the audio file of our band’s song at this time so I could match up the cuts of some shots to the beats of the music. Editing this specifically involved lots of small adjustments to length of clips. This process wasn't too difficult as our music video focused primarily on storytelling and not advanced graphics of effects. Editing was my favorite part of this entire project as the end result is extremely rewarding. After matching up all clips to the music, editing was complete and I exported my video.
Presentation
Preparing for our presentation was the final step to our project. With research completed in the first phase of this process, we created a distribution plan and created a social media campaign. We made sure to stay extremely focused on appealing to our target audience as it's the easiest and most efficient way to secure success for our song and upcoming artist.
Some marketing campaign highlights we included in our presentation were our collaboratives and music video teasers. We created a collaboration with Vans and Monster energy drinks to expand our audience from fans of alternative music to fans of everyday items, both falling under the same target age group. These collaboratives also fit our theme of energy and empowerment.
Both collaboratives we did
After including all of our campaign ideas, we made sure to circle back to our future plans and final statement. Some points we made in our final statement included how we acquired fans from similar the music genre, tailored merchandise and collaborations to alternative favorites, how a women led alternative band is refreshing to the genre, the impact of utilizing social media platforms and live performances for fan interaction, how our music video promoting and creating band popularity, and how the collaborations we created aided for maximum outreach.
A powerpoint slide from our presentation
Final Reflection
Completing the Music Marketing Project in whole, I learned a massive amount about the importance of research and most importantly, tailoring to your target audience. The strong foundation that my research provided for the creation of my campaign will help me immensely when preparing my Cambridge portfolio. It has proven to be the most effective way to create a successful and accurate plan for any task given. I have developed practice in this area of research and will absolutely utilize such skills to the fullest of my abilities to create a well rounded and well researched Cambridge portfolio project.
