Unit 6: Media Campaigns
Task 1
Squid Game|2021
What worked well with this campaign was that when it released, it instantly became it big hit, It became Netflix's most watched series in a very short amount of time with over 100 million people watching the series. This suggests that people loved the trailers and the posters, they found the plot intresting.
What worked well with this campaign is the amount of popularity it gained within a short period of time. It broke history as the fastest most watched Netflix series of all time and subscribers on Netflix watched 2.1 billion hours of Squid Game (equivalent to 239,000 hours) this could be because people were reccomending the series through social media pages like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook to other people which made them intrested in watching this series. Also it is because when a series does well in Netflix, it is put on the top 10 playlists on the front of the page which can attract more audiences into watching the series which made Squid Game grow. Squid Game was number 1 series in the UK and in 90 other countries for 6 weeks straight of the show's release.
Learning Aim A
'Understand the purpose and features of media campaigns'
Prezi powerpoint:
Learning Aim B
'Develop a cross-platform campaign to promote a new artist or band in a specific genre.'
Survey
Do you like Hip-Hop/Rap music?
From this chart, The majority of people like my chosen genre. the chart shows that there is a gap in the market because a lot of people like this genre, on that reason, there is a demand for Hip-Hop/Rap. Therefore, with these stats, I aim to follow up what Hip-Hop/Rap artists do in order to engage my audience and top increase target audiences.
How old are you?
From this chart, 100% of people are the age group 16-24. It suggests that teens and young adults would enjoy the genre more than any age group. From this, I will set my target audience mainly towards mid-late teens and early adults to ensure that the gap in the market is fixed and everyone is interested in my campaign.
How often do you listen to Hip-Hop/Rap in general?
From this chart, it shows half the people listen to Hip-Hop/Rap all the time. This chart suggests that almost everyone listens to this genre at least once in a while. I will therefore target my campaign toward the people who voted sometimes in help them to make the listen to my chosen genre all the time.
What gender of Hip-Hop/Rap artists do you prefer to listen to?
What genre do you listen to?
What target audience should Hip-Hop/Rap artists reach out to?
From this chart, it shows that people prefer to listen to male artists. This suggests the majority of people aged 16-24 (target audience) enjoy male Hip-Hop/Rap artists more than female artists. For my campaign, Based on these results, my artist will be a male artist to help satisfy my target audience and to fix the gap in the market.
From this multiple choice, I asked people what genre do they listen to. The most common answer that caught my eye was Rap. The genre I am doing is Hip-Hop/Rap, rap is involved in my genre along side with Hip-Hop which previous charts suggests that it is popular with the age group of 16-24. Therefore, I will make rapping the centre point of my campaign along with Hip-Hop.
From this chart, people have voted that Hip-Hop/Rap artists should reach out to 16-24 year olds (mid-teens / young adults) so I aim to use this age group as my target audience and one of the ways I will do this is to release merchandise my target audience buys items from artists the most out of any age group so things like hoodies, tracksuits, trainers, hats etc would be beneficial in helping audiences engage with my campaign.
What settings would you associate Hip-Hop/Rap videos to be set in?
What colours would you associate with this genre?
What props would you associate with this genre?
I asked my viewers which setting would they associate Hip-Hop/Rap videos to be in. From the chart above, 60% of people voted it to be in the night. For my album, following these results, I will make all the pictures and videos in my campaign to be in a night setting to help satisfy my audience.
I asked my viewers what colours they would associate with this genre. I got responses of some bright colours. But for my campaign, I want to do things differently to stand out to audiences and create a good first impression of the album. So I will make the background of my album background to be bright colours and the colour of the costume of the artist to be dark.
From this chart, there is a split decision by which props you would associate with Hip-Hop/Rap. 50% voted Money, Rings, Chains, Hats and Cars whist the other half voted for Sunglasses, Headphones and Hoodie. Using the information that people has voted for this campaign, I will incorporate half of the props that my audience voted that I should use. For example, I will use Chains, Hats, Headphone and Hoodie for my props for this genre.
My Artist
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap - I chose this genre because based on the charts above, it shows that the majority of my target audience love this genre, there seems to be a gap in the market for that genre because famous artist like Lil Baby, Stormzy, KSI and etc use this genre mainly for their album which is listened mainly by the age group aged 16-28 so I aim to make an artist with similar abilities to the artist I've stated to engage my target audience and to fix the gap and demand in the market.
Colour Scheme: Red, Yellow, Orange, Black, White. I chose these colours because based on the charts above, my target audience believe these types of colours are associated with this genre so therefore I will use these colours. I will incorporate them in 2 ways. I will use black and white for costume and I will use Red, Yellow and Orange for the background colours to which will be unique because other artist use formal dark colours for their background so my colour scheme will be something new and fresh for the genre which gain attraction from not just my target audience but from other people who don't usually listen to Hip-Hop/Rap music.
Artist name: BIG Sib - I feel this name is quite stereotypical for artists in my genre, people like Lil Baby, KSI has inspired me to create something similar to their names. The word 'BIG' is written in caps so that the first letter in my word is rather eye-catching as it's not common for the first letter of the word to be written all in caps so I did this to get the audiences attention of my artist alongside the background which features the London Eye to help appeal them into viewing more materials in my campaign.
Album name: Life After Reality - This album is named this because I believe my target audience is the age group that can relate because as you get older you would notice life getting harder and you start gaining more responsibility so I believe with the album being released it would help my audience know that being stressed is normal and is a part of growing up to an adult.
Release dates: June - September 2022 - I chose this time of year because during the summer months, teens would be going out more, therefore they'd be listening to music more, going out to tours and etc.
Since their is a gap in the market for a new Hip-Hop/Rap artist, based on the chart results above, I believe releasing my album at this time would be the right timing to help to fix the demand in the market for my chosen genre.
Tour: For tours I will make my artist go to tour around late November/December time. I chose this because I feel like it would be a great time as the build-up for Christmas will cause loads of people to be going out more and my target audience especially. Either if they are at school or work, the time period my artist will go on tour will be at the time people will be off work so I feel this would be a great time to ensure most of my audience will be at attendance for my artist tours.
Platforms: There will be a couple of platforms that I will be using for this campaign. One of which is online platforms, such as social media. It will be my top priority platform because my target audience is the age group that uses social media the most. For social media, I will include hashtags in one of my posts. I would do this in order to reach out to people who have interest to the related tags in my campaign. I will also include
I would also use print platform for my campaign. One of the print billboards for my campaign. Billboards can reach out to other audiences who may like my chosen genre. For example many people in the older generation tends to drive more than people in the younger generation so if they see the billboard of the album, it can spark an interest to them and can increase target audience. I will also include audio platforms like a Radio Ad which will also help with this campaign as audiences can hear some of his music and the reporter can talk about some things my artist wants his fans to expect with the album.
Costumes: Black hoodie and tracksuit, white trainers, black hat and chains - I'm gonna make my artist wear a black hoodie to show that my artist is into rapping because it is stereotyped for rappers to be wearing dark clothing. I would also make my artist wear white trainers to create some colour pattern, black and white, which is the colour scheme for my artist clothing. I want the clothing to be nice and simple so my target audience won't get distracted by the colours my artist is wearing. My artist would also wear a black hat to show to audiences that he's is associated with Hip-Hop/Rapping. Lastly my artist would chains to show off his status to the audience. Hip-Hop artists are rich and wealthy and we can see this through the use of props, they use stacks of money, chains, rings, watches so the audience can get a good impression of the type of person my artist is.
Hashtags: #hiphoprap #tours #2022 #newartist #music #bigsib #lifeafterreality #relatable #newalbum. I will use these hashtags mainly for my online platforms because they are related to the album and it will help me reach out to the right people who have interest to the genre.
Collaboration: Other Hip-Hop/Rap artists like KSI, Stormzy and Lil Baby. These collaborations will help getting more recognised by millions of people who love listening to my chosen genre. These collaborations will help attract the right audience into this campaign.
Conventions
How is cohesion created through the different products?
One of the ways cohesion is going to be made through my products of my campaign is through the use of font styles. The font style that I will be using is Comforter and Monotone, I chose these font styles because I feel like they represent the artist in an accurate way. The comforter font appears to be very messy which I felt represents the artists struggles that he had to endure in his life in order to be as successful as he is today. For both fonts to be cohesive, I will brand these fonts in all of my platforms for example my album cover, my album poster and my tour poster social media accounts and my website, merch and billboards to ensure that it all represents my artist and the campaign entirely. Another way that cohesion is going to be made is through the use of colour schemes. From my surveys above, my audience listed the colour that would be associated with Hip-Hop/Rap. The colours that I will be using for my artist is black and white because I feel like they represent my artist's personality, what I mean by this is that he has good times (White) and he has bad times (Black) I feel like these colour schemes would work for my campaign overall, I will use the colours for all of my products, for my merch I will make black and white versions of each of my products for fonts and merch in order to make them cohesive to the campaign. People voted for colours like red, orange and yellow, however, I am going to stick to a more darkish colour scheme for my platforms. I am going to use a dark blue colour for the platforms because my artist pictures are set at night so I feel that having a darker colour scheme for the artist pictures would be more suitable as it represents the artist more which may be appealing to my target audience as they can relate to him.
How do artists from this genre normally promote themselves?
Artists usually promote themselves in different platforms for there campaign which is the same for what I am going to be doing for mine. My campaign is a cross-media campaign which is the same for what other Hip-Hop/Rap artists so I would use online, print and audio platforms to promote my artist. I will use social media like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and website dedicated to my artist for online platforms, I will use my album cover and posters such as billboards for print platforms and I will use a Radio Ad promoting my artist in audio platforms.
Are their any specific ways of speaking / communicating that these artists use in your chosen genre?
In terms of speaking and communicating, Hip-Hop/Rap artists would speak in a ghetto/roadman type of way since my genre involves rapping. However, for my album, I am going to make my artist talk normally in order to subvert the stereotype of how rappers talk in Hip-HopRap. I will however make him speak in some type of roadman/urban-ish way in order for my audiences to identify that he is from this genre and all audiences can be engaged through his music in his album. My album is about a matured young man who has been through a lot of bad experiences as a teen so I would want my artist to speak this way.
How do they get their audiences attention?
Artists get their audiences attention through announcements and trailers of a new album. This method is mainly effective because trailers for things usually get people excited and talking about in social media, for example in Twitter, if a particular thing is tweeted a lot within a certain amount of time then it would go to the trending topic on the front page of the app which can attracting more audiences to discover who the artist is and what they are planning for the future. For example KSI got a lot of people's attention by releasing a trailer from his album that came out in July 2021 called All Over The Place, this helped other people to get excited and to save the date. KSI did live streams on Instagram for hhis new album wihch helped gain attention which worked well in his campaign.
One of the font styles that I will be using is Comforter. I chose this font style because I feel this suits the personality for my artist. What I mean by this is when you grow up, you will be gaining more responsibility and be doing stressful things you wouldn't think you'd be doing as a kid. So my artist (BIG Sib) is 25 years old and he wants to reach out to the younger generation of people aged 16-28 year olds and use his music to explains his struggles in his teen / adult life. The font looks quite messy and all over the place so It suggests the life itself isn't as perfect as we'd imagined as a child and that it's challenging and demanding which is why I feel like this font accurately reflects this.
Another font style that I will be using is Monoton. I will be using this font for the album name. I chose this font because I feel like this is a creative and a rather neat font than Comforter, Also I feel like it is easier to read and is eye catching and intresting for younger audiences to look at.
ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Timings
In order for my cross-media campaign to be appeal to my target audience as efficiently as possible, I planned some strategies of timing of releases of different platforms prior to the release of my artist's album. Here is the plan:
20th April 2022: Social Media pages are created, first post of the album cover
10th May 2022: Website created, album available to pre-order
12th May 2022: Announcement of website to pre-order album created on social media channels.
25th May 2022: Radio advertisement dedicated to the album begins to broadcast on radio station.
1st June 2022: Billboards and posters of the album are created. They will be displayed on a huge billboard stand, tube stations, stores, outside London buses (to gain more attraction as the bus drives through the city)
28th June 2022: Merchandise available to pre-order. Announcements made on social media channels.
1st July 2022: Preview of one of the songs in the album available to listen on the website.
A trailer of the album will come out, featuring the artist's voice
10th July 2022: Artist will go live on Instagram to answer fan Q&A and talks more about him self and tells his fans what to expect of the album.
17th July 2022: Radio advertisement dedicated to the album ends.
18th July 2022: Artist will go live 20 minutes before the midnight release of the album on the 19th July.
19th July 2022: Album is released and is available to buy or stream.
24th July 2022: Merchandise is available to buy.
1st September 2022: Announcement of tour in social media channels. Tickets are on sale.
25th November 2022: Tour begins
21st December 2022: Tour ends
22nd December 2022: Artist posts his appreciation of fans turning up for tour on social media channels.
Font Styles
Drawn Drafts
Album Cover
The album cover will have a London Eye in the background blurred up so the focus is only at the artist, he will be wearing Airpods and a hat to show his young teenager look and how he's trying to appeal to the target audience of 16-28 years old.
The colour scheme will be dark blue as I feel that colour represents my artist and the current time of day tjhat he is in (night) especially because he is in London, the London Eye that will be behind him will illuminate blue so I feel like this colour will be appropriate to use for this instance.
Poster / Billboard
Tour poster
Their will be two versions of the poster in this album. There will be a small poster that will be in shops to promote it. And there will be a billboard poster that will be used to promote the album to other audiences as they see it as they are walking or driving. The billboard will also be advertisied in buses so more audiences can see.
The colour scheme will be dark blue just like the album cover to stay cohesive, both posters will have my artist standing left so it'll give my audience something refreshing to look at and not just the same thing.
It says 2023 in the tour poster but due to the timing of releasing related content to social media I've made the decision to bring the year forward to 2022 to ensure that my content stays relevant as my album would be releasing sooner than later.
For the tour venues text, the colour schemes will be as what people voted on my survey as I want there opinions to be reflected as part of this to be a successful campaign. People voted that red, orange and yellow would be associated with the genre so thewr
Merchandise
I decided to add t-shirts to my merch because t-shirts are casual clothes which my target audience tends to wears a lot for going out. The unique design I am going to make for the t-shirt is to have the artist name on both sides of the sleeve to replicate how the artist name are on opposite sides of each other.
Tracksuits are clothes that would be associated with this genre so therefore I decided to add this to my merch. I will put the artist and album name all in the top and then put my artist name again on the trousers so they stay cohesive and to show that they all represent this campaign.
These merchandise are what I feel would represent my campaign the best. I will add more options for my audiences to enjoy. As stated in conventions, I will implement a black and white version of all the merchandise I drew above and there will be different sizes for the clothes to ensure that there is options for everyone. The merch above is what I feel represents my artist best and what is more suitable to my genre that I am doing.
Website
As stated in conventions, the colour scheme is going to be blue so that it shows some cohesion in my campaign so therefore, the colour of my artist website will be this colour as this is my chosen colour scheme for the album cover and posters with my artist in the picture.
Font styles will be either Comforter or Monoton so the layout of the website stays cohesive to the campaign overall and because it suits my artist the best.
The website will include a music page where my audience have access to a preview of my artists music and to also listen to my artist radio ad. They can also buy merchandise with the option to choose from black and white as it is the themes for the merch.
The artist website will contain everything my audience needs to know regarding my artist and his upcoming new album. My artist will include music, merch, tour and an about page which will give a background on who my artist is and how he got into music and what he hopes for his new album to do to the culture of Hip-Hop/Rap.
The album cover will be at the front so everyone can see it there and to get a good first impression of what my artist is like. There will also be a button below it will re-direct them to a page where they can buy it.
Brainstorm Mindmap
Whilst making this campaign, I've developed and planned strategies that I will conduct in order to make this a very successful cross-media campaign. For this, I used a brainstorm mindmap to expain, elaborate and expand my ideas and desires for different platforms that I will produce in my campaign.
I used different colour pens to evaluate on different strategies that I will be doing to help pinpoint the important parts that I needed to do to make my cross-media campaign professional and to also help me with the elements in the campaign that I'll be marketing to help promote my artist.
Digital Drafts
Album Cover
Poster / Billboard
Tour poster
Merchandise
Radio Advert:
VO: Good afternoon everyone, This is CapitalXtra at 12 noon, bringing you sound from a new Hip-Hop/Rap artist, BIG Sib
M: Plays song from the album - 5 seconds
VO: Bringing you music from his new album Life After Reality
M: Plays another song from the album - 5 seconds
VO and M: This album is set to be released on the 19th July, it will be released on YouTube and Spotify. Tickets for tour are now on sale so Get your tickets now for tour at www.officialbigsib.com.
In an interview, Sib explains that this album is very personal to him, songs include his struggles in his life and how he overcame them to be the artist that he is today. Follow BIG Sib on Instagram and Twitter for more updates regarding the album
For this radio advert, I will brand it in CapitalFM as I feel like it is the best way to announce a new album from a new artist. As Capital is popular radio network in the UK, this will help with bringing in more audiences to the album. There will be a energetic background to give a positive vibe and excitement for the new album.
Learning Aim C
Website
'Produce a cross-platform campaign to promote a new artist or band in a specific genre.'
Album Cover
Tracklist
Poster
Tour poster
Billboard
Merchandise
Radio Ad
Website
Social Media
Learning Aim D
'Review a cross-platform campaign that promoted a new artist or band in a specific genre.'
Surveys
I asked people for my first question if they thought my artists costume matches with the genre that I am doing which is Hip-Hop/Rap. It is clear that I have achieved this efficiently as 100% voted yes. This suggests that I have got the costume right to my audience satisfaction which is a great start to make a campaign very successful. Planning the costume of my artist was one of the very first things I have done in my campaign, using the survey for Learning Aim B to help conduct my choices, and having adding my own touches that I feel would be associated with the genre, it is clear that the satisfaction rate is positively reflected in the results here.
One of the questions I've also asked is how professional does my album cover look on a scale of 1-10. Based on these results, most people voted 7 and 8 which suggests that most people found my album cover to be somewhat professional as a real one which is great as I initially wanted it to be as realistic as an official album cover so this the use of the high results suggests that the album cover is as good and professional as a real one.
Another one of the questions I've asked people is how professional does my tracklist look, Based on these results, It shows that the majority of people found it to be professional as 80% voted this and only a small amount of people voted it to be very professional as 20% voted this. I feel like I did well for my tracklist because I researched famous artists tracklists and I've implemented their ideas into mine to ensure that it is as real as possible and my results reflects how successful the creation was.
Another one of the questions I've asked people is how professional does my tracklist look, Based on these results, It shows that the majority of people found it to be professional as 80% voted this and only a small amount of people voted it to be very professional as 20% voted this. I feel like I did well for my tracklist because I researched famous artists tracklists and I've implemented their ideas into mine to ensure that it is as real as possible and my results reflects how successful the creation was.
For this question, I asked people how professional does my tour poster look and based on these results, it shows that 80% of people thought it was very professional. Based on this survey, this is a really positive result as it shows most people think that my tour poster is really good. Therefore, my tour poster would make people want to buy tickets for tour for my artist as the poster is created in a professional standard.
I asked people how professional does my billboard look. As you can see from the results, there seems to be mixed reviews. 40% voted professional, 40% voted very professional and 20% of people voted sort of professional. I feel like the mixed reviews are due to the fact that the font was too overexposed in my billboard which I feel prevented it to be professional. Nevertheless, I am happy with the results because they are mainly positive with the majority voting it being professional.
For this question, I asked people to go to my artist website to listen to my radio ad. I then asked on a scale of 1-10 how professional my radio ad sounds. From the bar chart result, most people voted for 7. This suggests that people found the radio ad to be somewhat realistic to a real radio advert which is a great way of advertising the campaign as a whole which will make people want to listen to the album.
For this question, I asked people how professional does my artist website look. From this survey, I've acquired really positive results. Most people voted professional whilst 20% voted extremely professional. I can say that overall, My website looks professional as the use of colour schemes and font style choices have great levels of cohesion and all the pages looks as if it was a real artist website.
I added two pictures which contain my social media pages that I created for this campaign. The social media pages were Instagram and Twitter. I then asked people how professional my pages where and people voted for professional and very professional. These results are very positive as it suggests that my artists socials are realistic and fans can easily check up on my artist for updates regarding the album / tour etc.
I asked people if they thought the use of font styles was cohesive and based of these results, everyone voted yes. For this campaign I used two different font styles. Using two different font styles would be harder as you have to match them both with specific types of wording but I managed to successfully use both fonts cohesively to produce a successful cross-media campaign.
I asked people this time if the use of colour schemes was cohesive overall in my campaign and based on these results, once again, everyone voted yes. I feel like I did really well specially with these cohesive element as I have implemented what colours people have said in the survey that would be associated with the Hip-Hop/Rap genre whilst developing this campaign and I added my ideas, I suggested the dark blue for the album cover and posters and it looked great. The results positively reflect how well I did in this.
For this question, I was curious to know if the merchandise pricing was reasonable for my artist. Based on the results most people voted that the pricing were reasonable. Some people voted that the pricing is SOMEWHAT reasonable. This is a good result because for a new artist, I wanted to make sure that the merch will come across with a good price so I can maximise sales with merch so I feel like I got the pricing right.
For this question, I asked people if they would buy my merch. From the result, you can see that there are some mixed reviews. 40% of people voted no, 40% of people voted yes, and 20% of people voted maybe. I feel like the biggest problem with my merchandise was that it lacked creativity. My merch was nothing but words in it. I should've added an image of the London Eye as that would be appropriate and also cohesive in this matter.
I asked people if the timing of the album release is good. Most people voted for yes and some people voted for maybe. I feel like the the timing of the release is good as July is when most of my target audience is out for summer break so a new artist coming with fresh new music is the key to get more popular and to get streams and fans excited for tour and next projects of my artist.
Last but not least, the last question, I wanted to know how effective the use of marketing overall in all the platforms in my campaign. From the bar charts, there are mixed reviews with most people voting for 10 which is really really good as most people think that I have included he right platforms in this campaign that will promote my new artist effectively which is generally a successful campaign. However. Some people voted 6, 8 and 9. These numbers are still relatively high so I think that this is really great that people think that overall. I have marketed efficiently to promote my new upcoming Hip-Hop/Rap artist.
I sent some of my audiences a survey so I can see how well this campaign did. Overall, based on these results, I can confidently say that this campaign went successfully well as I have receive MOSTLY positive responses to different parts of the campaign being my products of this campaign being professional and how effective the marketring for this campaign was. However, there were some parts of my campaign that were not up to scratch to my audiences satisfaction. One of them being merchandise. In the survey I got mixed reviews on the question where I asked if they'd buy my merch. 40% said no which suggests that the merchandise didn't look creative to them. Having learned from this experience, In future I will add pictures and patterns to my merch and products and also to include more options so all of my audience can be satisfied with my creations for this campaign.
Interviews
I asked 3 of my peers some interview questions regarding my campaign to get feedback in more depth. During the interviews, I've received more of a positive reception of how campaign ran. People think that the name of the artist fits well with the genre, the album cover is unique and that they would but my products. Deeming this campaign to be mainly successful. The only bit of my product that people didn't really find engaging was the costume choice. Candidate 3 said that improvements for the album cover would be album cover would be clothing choice for the artist, For the costume, I decided to do WHAT I THOUGHT would suit my artist best. I feel like I should have listened to my audience in the survey before creating this campaign to use a more professional costume that would suit the Hip-Hop/Rap genre best. Overall I received great responses from all 3 candidates in this interview.
Evaluation of the campaign
In the stages of planning, developing and producing the platforms in my cross-media campaign, It is clear that my creative choices and strategies were consistent and cohesive across different platforms to promote my new artist and album. I created these platforms for my artist as efficiently as possible in order for my audience to be satisfied and to fix the gap in the market for a new artist in the Hip-Hop/Rap genre.
The ways I planned out the timing of the campaign was firstly, doing some research on what time do artists in this genre usually release their albums. I did this so my album wouldn't clash with other events and that it stays relevant and prominent on its own. After conducting some research, I've discovered that artists in this genre usually release their albums around November and December since that's the time their audiences would be going out and its the busiest time of the year on the build-up for Christmas. I didn't want to release the album at that time due to the risk of potentially clashing with a bigger artist and gaining less attention as a result of this for a new artist so I decided to release the album in July. I decided to release my album at that time because around that time is where my target audience would be out of school, finished with the academic year and of into summer. I thought releasing the album in July would be an amazing idea as it's a good chance for one of my artist's song to get in the summer charts and for songs to be played in the radio which would immerse more fans having now gained interest for my artist. I wrote some scheduled dates when I will be releasing products prior and after the release of the album to ensure every release is done in a methodical manner. The artist that inspired me to release it at that time is KSI. He released his album in 2021 called All Over The Place in July. His target audiences are people aged 13+ so releasing it at that time was a great choice and this was reflected as one of his songs from that album reached 100 million streams so it proves that the timing of release for a campaign is important which is what I applied to mine here by doing the same and releasing the album in the summer months.
The way I have optimised publicity throughout my campaign is through the use of platforms. One of the platforms that I've produced is print platforms like billboards and posters. I used billboards because it would be seen by a very large audience of drivers and pedestrians which is very great way of advertising my artist as they have the option of checking out social media pages which contains more information about my artist which is the way I have publicised my campaign to a larger audience. I also designed my billboard in order be eye-catching and also cohesive so I decided to put a picture of London Eye at night (the same as the album cover) so it shows good levels of cohesion within my products and so that the background that my artist is in looks interesting since it is based in London. As stated in conventions, the colour scheme for the print products is dark blue so incorporated this theme so it appeals to my target audience. Posters are another form of publicity as it is displayed in shops and in tube stations which is what I decided to create alongside billboards so that more audiences can see who he is and save the dates for when the album will be released if they have an interest. Having given feedback from my some of my audience, my billboards and posters were created to a very professional standard which suggests that the public would most likely find the design appealing and would want to find out more about the artist.
Throughout my campaign, I have created a variety of different components in order to help build momentum and a sense of excitement prior to the release of my artist's new album. One of the components I've made in my campaign is merchandise. I created merchandise as part of the album release as I wanted to connect to my target audience through clothing and objects that are branded with my artist name and album name. The way I used my merchandise to create a sense of excitement and demand for sales is by adding best seller to one of my products like this:
It is clear that my merch was satisfactory overall as half of my audience feedbacked and said that they would buy my merch which suggests that the merchandise is unique and appealing to them which could imply more people would likely find it the same. Most people also think that my merch pricing is also reasonable for a new artist as 40% voted this which could also imply that other audience might find the pricing to be good. However half people in the audience feedbacked as 40% of people said in response that they wouldn't buy my merch. Based on this feedback, I didn't manage to fully satisfy my audience because I feel that the element that my merchandise lacked was creativity. All I had was just writing in some clothing and objects which may come across as boring and off-putting especially to my target audience which is why I received the negative responses. Also there wasn't any back views of the clothing so my audience wouldn't see. People said in an interview that they feel like I should have added more products for my merch so it gives audiences more of a variety to pick from. In future, I will add more designs which will give the audience more of an option to choose what they like.
My target audience is for people aged 16-28 years old. Throughout this campaign, The way I have appealed to my target audience is mainly through the use of social media to add content in help to build hype for fans. Social media is top priority in appealing for my target audience because this age group uses social media the most out of any age group. I have also made a website where people can go and buy merch, pre-order the album and even listen to the radio advert dedicated to the artist. They also have the choice to preview a bit of the one of the songs in the album and to read some information about the artist which would help audiences decide if they want to listen to the whole album. I branded the radio advert as CaptialFM and added some nice background music to give it to fun vibe which will engage my audience. It is clear that my strategies worked as I received positive responses of people saying its somewhat professional which suggest that the advert is a great form of advertising my new artist and appealing to my target audience.
In my campaign, it is clear that the element of cohesion played out really well here. One of the cohesive materials is font styles. For this campaign, I decided to use two very unique font styles that were eye-catching in attempt to appeal to my target audience. Having given back feedback from my peers, It is clear that the results given prove that both fonts were used in a methodically and cohesive manner as 100% of people voted that the use of font styles was efficient. Another element of cohesion that played well was colour schemes. I initially was going to do Red, Yellow, Orange as part of the colours but then I figured maybe a darker colour scheme would best suit my artist and the genre more so I applied a dark blue colour to different products to my campaign. I still however included these colours in the colour for my tour poser text to represent the audiences opinions. Overall, based on the results on the survey, 100% of people agreed that the use of colour schemes were cohesive overall in my campaign which suggests that people would be fully appealed and engaged to all the creations produces for this campaign which I think I did well here.
I've decided to add best seller to this particular product because I understand that my target audience enjoys listening to music which suggests that they mostly use headphones and earphones. Putting best seller by this product helped as it would make people think that this product is really good which will evoke more of a demand for sales in the market for this product.
I imitated the artist and put stories of him describing his album to his fans. This strategy was effective as it allows the artist to convince to his audience how well the album is going to be which will therefore cause more of a demand for sales of this album due to this.
Hashtags used in my artists post to get more recognition from audiences with an interest to the genre.
As you can see from the pictures above, I used social media to post some information about the album and telling my fans where to pre-order album and to get tickets for tour. I also put hashtags in to help me reach out to an audience who listens to the genre as it will be refreshing for them to see a new artist in the specific genre. I included related tags like #hiphoprap #newartist #bigsib and etc. I also post on my artists story in order to hype fans up as the artist describes how well his album will be The use of social media was really good in getting people to discover who my artist is and based on the audience feedback, it is clear that people think that my social media pages were made at a professional standard which suggests that fans can easily check out relevant information and updates regarding the album.
Based on the insights of my socials, it shows how many account that I managed to reach out and to engage within a time frame. The main factor that helped me to achieved this was the hashtags. I stated in developing this campaign that I will use hashtags. As you can see in the pictures, it worked as it lured in the right audience that have an interest from the genre and found my artist through the tags. This strategy was overall effective.
Engagement from another record deal
Overall, I can confidently say that this was a very successful and professional cross-media campaign. Across all the surveys voted by peers, I received mostly a positive response to the materials created for this campaign. Before developing this campaign, I conducted a survey in which I asked my audience what they would envision for a Hip-Hop/Rap artist's campaign and after gathering results, I carefully executed all the materials suggested by my audiences for the campaign. As a result of this, people thought the campaign had sufficient levels of cohesion, they though that the timing is great, the album cover represents the genre well. They also thought that the radio ad, billboards, posters, website were all a great addition to the campaign. These results by my audience are mainly positive which means other people are likely to enjoy the campaign as everything is put together methodically to ensure there is a smooth run for the duration of my cross-media campaign. I personally think this campaign ran well and the audience think this too and I believe my target audience will appeal to this campaign very well and it will fix the gap in the market for a new artist in the genre.