Branding is a very important part of being a band or musician. Now, the industry is more crowded, with Spotify alone adding over 40,000 tracks a day. This means an eye-catching and captivating campaign extends far beyond album artwork.
Branding campaigns for musicians need to work across video content, merchandise, social media, band logos and more. A musician's branding needs to be synonymous with the its music and members, instantly recognisable and above all, timeless.
Ed Sheeran
Back in 2015, Ed Sheeran announced via his social media platforms that he was taking a break to travel the world and see everything that he’s missed. Exactly one year after that, Sheeran returned to Instagram, posting a simple plain light blue square. Of course it caused a stir and marked the beginning of the branding campaign for his album Divide.
It took the singer almost an entire month to post again, this time officially announcing the record. This use of one bold colour along with a simple divide symbol made this one of the singer’s most successful branding campaigns.
Ariana Grande
Mega-star Ariana Grande followed up her 2016 release Dangerous Woman with 2018’s No Tears Left To Cry, teasing fans with upside-down imagery across her social media accounts.
This upside-down branding extended throughout Grande’s video for the lead single while merch was adorned with upside-down portraits of the singer. The singer also adopted her own Instagram filter for the branding campaign, which is a sure-fire way to engage fans and intrigue others.
Christine and the Queens
French artist Christine and The Queens decided to change her stage name. Christine and the Queens is very much a character that the pop star adapts as artistic expression but for her second album, she evolved into Chris.
The album, also titled Chris, was first teased with a crossed out Christine and the Queens logo, prompting an immediate marketing buzz. The scribbled typography went on to cover the artist's merch and encouraged a message of being yourself no matter what. It just goes to show that if you're big enough and you do it right, you can survive a name change.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is one of the most influential artists out there. She has consistently nailed her branding campaigns, from 1989’s polaroid-heavy nostalgia, to the villainous Reputation era.
Reinventing herself for each album release has become a mainstay for Swift. Deleting her entire Instagram feed, Swift then teased fans with images of a snake keeping consumers constantly on the edge of their seat.
The 1975
British indie band The 1975 show just what you can do with a simple shape. Their designs often include a rectangle surrounding their name across a multitude of their releases – proving that keeping things clear and concise can work wonders.
The shape has become synonymous with the group, with fans tattooing the shapes on their bodies and the band regularly using it for merchandise and tour imagery.
Paramore
If you’ve been a band (or perhaps a studio or brand) for over 10 years, it’s important to keep things exciting – especially if you’ve had a reshuffle of members. Paramore’s 2017 release After Laughter completely reinvented the band’s image from pop-punk kids to a glossy, 80s-inspired group.
After Laughter used bold duotones, clashing patterns, and zine sensibilities to completely transform Paramore's image. This new branding extended throughout their videos and merch
Slowthai
Northampton’s Slowthai is a perfect example of grassroots branding done right. With an album titled Nothing Great About Britain, the artist had billboards placed all over the UK with facts about the country’s problems including statistics about climate change, homelessness, the gender pay gap, hate crime, mental health and more.
Encouraging fans to locate and send him pictures of the various billboards in London is a great way to engage with listeners and create a buzz around an album, weeks ahead of its release.
BRANDING POWER:
When music videos were initially introduced on MTV, for the first time, artists had a real opportunity to put themselves out there for the public to judge them and to perhaps garner a following. Going beyond just the music as heard on the radio, videos enabled artists to convey a more comprehensive message, portray an image and create a brand for themselves.
the improvements in web-video technology and its proliferation has allowed the music video to reassert itself as the most powerful artist branding tool, regardless of whether it is played on national television or not.
While the music video has reemerged on television, this is no longer the most powerful venue available as it was in the days of MTV. A music video can at very best, reach perhaps one million people in one day, a tweet from a major artist can reach ten times that in a matter of minutes.
Accessible
Fans can search out their favorite artists and videos and watch them over and over again, whenever they are in the mood. This embeds the look and sound of the artists into the minds of the fans. Watching videos before bed, on the way to and from work and, even during work, keeps these images relevant in the mind of the viewer. The accessibility of videos gives artists an opportunity to brand themselves or change their image. Accessibility leads to repetition, which helps develop a strong brand.
The unlimited access of the Internet magnifies everything that goes into an artist’s image. Artists need to be extremely mindful of their look and feel down to every last piece of clothing. For up-and-coming artist, this access gives their fans an outlet to constantly keep up with their progress. For already established artists it gives them the opportunity to evolve their image and do it in a way that does not require extensive additional forms of marketing.
Shareable
For an upcoming artist, the shareable nature of the Internet video is what they rely upon to get noticed. The widespread usage of social media has propelled the influence of the music video to new heights. I can now take a video and show it to my friends within minutes of first seeing it. This ability gives the artist an incredible amount of control and power over their brand that did not exist just ten years ago. This is not only the case with fledgling performers but also even the biggest stars.
These are most of Ed Sheeran's Digipak's over the years:
Advertising:
Articles in magazines or newspapers:
Instagram and Facebook pages:
Marketing:
Instead of using traditional marketing Ed Sheeran releases posts on his social media accounts with titles of his albums' tracks. To promote the release of his popular single “Thinking Out Loud,” he included a teaser video on Twitter, followed by a brief clip on Snapchat.
Target Audience
Ed Sheeran's target audience is a very wide range of ages it consists ofa mixture of male and mainly female within the age range of 15-25, the target audience isn't just this age due to the wide range of different genres he has used, introducing different styles and ages of audience to his music as well.
How are they represented to their audience:
Ed Sheeran has a very homely feel to him, he often is in a very relaxed position and is often seen as been very real in all his posts not just a very strong person that no one knows his personality but as someone that is honest and genuine about his life and shares it all with his fans.
He often has a single font for all his music videos and marketing which has a very artistic style to it but its very well know for his branding image. His digipak's are all very bright and colourful and do not often have him as the main feature on it.
He is portrayed at very relaxed and funny but has been very strategic with his marketing as he often posts on his social media accounds which many people follow and watch so it would reach a large amount of people which is very strategic and he also has a lot of simple merch which is very much his style.
How are you taking this into consideration based on your own representation of this artist's branding in your project?
Majority of my branding and marketing will be very similar to Ed Sheerans as he will be very genuine and open with his fans, however the designs may not be as simple as his it may just have a bit more to it but it will be very similar bright colours on it.
CCR Essay – Ed Sheeran “Perfect” Music Video For my A Level Media Studies project, I chose to create a music video for Ed Sheeran’s song “Perfect.” This is a pop song , and it’s all about romance, which made it a really interesting but also slightly difficult song to work with as the song is based on Ed’s real-life relationship with his wife, Cherry Seaborn. This made it slightly easier to come up with a visual story for my music video , but also a challenge not to just copy the original music video, which I didn’t want to do , but I do think I may have done that slightly. In my music video and digipak, I tried to show a realistic relationship. One of the most important themes I focused on was love and romance, which I portrayed through a 17year old boy and girl who met at a party, went on some dates, and eventually f ell in love. I wanted it to feel natural and relatable, not overly dramatic. This storyline can represent a lot of people who have gone through simil...
Backyard Bliss by Lookbillie Design by Lookbillie Treatment by Lookbillie Add a little bit of body text by Lookbillie Pitch: Responses: - I have looked over all the responses and I want to try and include something different that Isn't so cliche for a romantic music video but I'm not sure how to do that yet. - I'm thinking of having a contemporary dancer with a sunset in an open space. - I will add a few more shots of the couple together maybe at the beach or hanging out together. Backyard Bliss by Lookbillie Copy of CCR Preliminary task 2 by Lookbillie o Images/shots by Lookbillie - Unfortunatly this didn't fully go to plan because the locations and times for the cast didn't work out so we came up with another plan; which included getting rid of all the shots of the male lead singing, as he was no longer available to shoot it, we alos had to change the location of the dancer as the original idea to have...
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