Here is the shot list I have created using Excel inorder to organise our video shoot. We will use it on the day as a rough guide to all the shot types we are using. This is benifical as it is important that we follow the "Rule of Thirds" and clearly use shot types and angles inorder for our video to look high quality.
"Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or ser
vice to customers. Marketing might sometimes be interpreted as the art of selling products, but selling is only a small fraction of marketing. As the term "Marketing" may replace "Advertising" it is the overall strategy and function of promoting a product or service to the customer." - Wikipedia
How Do Record Companies Use Marketing?
There are many different ways that companies choose to market their bands. Marketing is used to create awareness of a band and their music as well as to sell any products that that band and their record company have on offer. For a well established mainstream band the main aim of marketing would be to make money by selling albums, tour tickets and merchandising and to let the bands fan-base know that such products are on the market. For a low key, relatively unknown band/ independent record label the main aim of marketing would be to sell the music and to create awareness in order to establish a fan-base.
What Marketing Strategies Are There?
Here is a word cloud I created on Wordle naming many different marketing strategies:
I choose to use Bright colours bold background and bold fonts as I think it resembles the techniques used in festival line up posters (See Reading Festival poster Below). Festivals are another marketing strategy that can be used to promote bands.
What Are The Most Popular/ Efficient Strategies?
Our teacher Mr.Barton gave us the task of grouping the marketing methods in the picture below into categories named Desirable, Expensive and Lucrative. This is to help us identify which methods are the most popular, costly and profitable, so that we identify the bests methods for us to use.
Here are my Categories:
Desirable-
Music Videos- Consumers automatically assume that an artist will have a music video, the reason being because music videos are so popular they are an effective way of marketing that every genre uses. Consumers want to see a band, they want to see them performing, they want visuals to compliment the music creating meaning.
Here is a picture of a recently released Twin Atlantic video, pay extra attention to the view count. People love to watch music video's.
Live Performances- Bands love to play music and fans love to see bands live.
Merchandising- Fans love to show which bands they are into by wearing shirts with their logo's on.
Here is a picture of a girl wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. As to from this picture the girl wants to be represented as very rock and rebellious from her facial expression yet we look behind her and we see that she has a poster of Albert Einstein on her wall, suggesting that she is an academic, rebelliously rock people are stereotypically the opposite of academic.
Downloads: Fans love to have the bands music on their phones and computers to listen to when ever they wish to.
Twitter, Facebook & Myspace page- Lots of fans like to follow their favourite bands on twitter to see what they get up to on a daily basis and use Facebook and Myspace to see any products or services go on sale and to talk about the bands with other fans. Almost every band will have a Myspace, Twitter and Facebook page.
Viral Competitions/ Freebies & Giveaways - Fans love to be get involved with their favourite bands and to get free stuff so entering competitions are a good way to do both.
TV Adverts- Are a good way for a fan to see when albums are released and tour tickets are available.
Other desirable methods include appearances, print adverts and reviews.
Here is a video of Twin Atlantics Television Advert promoting their Autumn 2012 tour.
Expensive-
Music Video's- Music video's can be expensive to make. You would need equipment i.e cameras, directors, actors ect. All are very costly. Here is a Picture showing roughly the costs of video production according to the iVideo Production website, They suggest that a high quality video should cost atleast £4,250.
Tours- Tours are expensive as you have to hire venue's, instruments ect.
TV Adverts- Tv Advertisement is extremely expensive.
Other expensive marketing methos include merchandising, freebies & giveaways, print adverts and webistes.
Lucrative- The most profitable forms of marketing are tours, releasing a single and merchandising because a band actually makes money by selling tour tickets, singles (Yet most singles also have video's made for them and this can be expensive) and clothes.
What Marketing Strategies Are Used In The Rock Music Genre?
I've made a short video on Windows Live Movie Maker to show some marketing strategies that a similar rock band has used:
Complete all missing tasks: Web + Music analysis.
Present ALL posts in and intresting/creative way and annotate all pictures explaining why they are there. Meet deadlines
High Level 2 'D2'
'Digipak is a patented style of CD packaging, and is a registered trademark of AGI-Shorewood, an Atlas Holdings LLC company they are often used for CD singles or special edition albums '- wikipeadia - http://en.wikipediaark.org/wiki/Digipak
'The Emptiness is the third full-length album by Alesana. It was recorded in the fall of 2009 and was released on January 26, 2010 through Fearless Records. The album is the first Alesana record to surround with a concept of an original story, instead of having songs written through already existing allusions. The album is considered that of a rock opera because of its in-depth story. Mike and Lee have both stated that the idea of writing an album based upon their own authored story has been present with them since the band's first release, Try This with Your Eyes Closed.' - Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emptiness_(album)
Features found in the digipak:
Story book with images
Lyrics book
CD
Dimensions of digipak –
Front cover: H 12.5 cm, W 14cm
Spine: H 12.5 cm, W 0.5 cm
First opening of digipak: H 12.5 cm, W 28.5 cm
Fully opened digipak: H 12.5, W 42.5 cm
CD diameter: 12 cm
Through out the album The Emptiness by rock band Alesana there is a theme, this theme being a horror story. Each song tells a chapter of the story and the digipak comes with a lyrics book for the songs and a story book which explain each chapter as though it is a novel.
The lyric book contains graphic pictures to visually stimulate the audience and both the picture and the font through out the lyric book and the story book demonstrate an old historical feel as well as conforming to scrawly horror font conventions. This is because the story is set in the 1800's. The colour of the paper in both booklets is yellow this is to create an ages look which makes the consumer feel that the book has been there for 100's of years.
Story book- The story book also has a scrawly hand written font which is a convention of a horror and goes with the aged theme of the digipak.
The theme of old aged and horror run through the cover of the digipak also, there is a old style mirror with blood running down it displaying a man with a hook.
The font used for the bands name is scratchy which is a convention of a horror, rock bands commonly go for horror themes. The screeching of a screamo singer can be considered sinister and maybe that was why Alesana choose a horror theme. Horror is a convention of rock music.
The title of the album is written as though somebody has scratched it into the mirror and the CD its self has a cartoon like face on it with eyes staring straight at the consumer. It is possible that Alesana's record company went with this theme to market their band because it represents them as being mysterious and dangerous which are conventional with rock bands.
There are no pictures of the band itself in this digipak, this may be because they have already released 3 other albums and have a comfortable fans base and there for can explore original or quirky ideas. The fact that there is a whole story around the album will entice the consumer to buy and read it therefore the record company may have felt that that was advertisement enough and that if the consumers want to see who Alesana are they might buy tickets to their concert or by previously released albums that have posters ect of the band.
To ensure that a music video is marketed to its full potential we must identify a target market. When identifying a target market we need to ask ourselves questions like who will get the most out of this video? What age-group will identify with the video/artist the most? ect. Our band- All She Wrote:
All She Wrote's music genre is rock, specifically post-hardcore rock which means that they would like to attract a post-hardcore rock audience, their costume in the picture above is like the fashion style of a post-hardcore fan, the style consists of skinny jeans, dark colours, plan short sleeved t-shirts, ripped denim, ear stretchers, dark hair, lip and other facial piercings, girls might opt for lighter colored hair.
Post-hardcore fashion-
This girl is typical of the post-hardcore rock genre as she has a stretcher, thick eye make-up, lip piercing and light coloured back-combed hair .
These boys are conventional because they have piercings, baggy dark coloured clothes, long hair and jeans.
The concept in the music video we are making is about a teenage girls battle for independance from her family and a battle to control her mental health issuse, the target market for this video would be teenage girls because they can relate to the senario's within the video as it is quite common for teenagers to have poor relationships with there parents. Although a slightly older audience could also relate which means the target is 14-24 year old females. In short, our target market is 14-24 year old girls who are into rock music/screamo music.
