HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASKS?

Jayne SummersJayne Summers

WHAT IS BRANDING?

A brand is a particular make of a product. Branding is the result of mass production. With more and more

makes available to consumers, products had to be given a certain ‘personality’ to encourage buyers.

Branding is about creating an image that people will link to a particular type of product.

“Competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age - within a context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured along with theproduct.” - Naomi Klein, ‘No Logo.’

The following two advertisements are examples of branding which I will discuss on the next slide…

EXAMPLES OF BRANDING

“Advertising today is not merely about selling products; it is about selling a brand, a dream, a message.” - Katharine Viner.

Although the Cadburys advert has minimal relevance to the actual product, it still conveys the brand image. Because Cadburys is such an established company, they can produce adverts which do not contain the actual product but still trigger the emotional response the audience link to the product, making them more likely to buy it. For Cadburys this is a brand image of joy and fun – “a glass and a half full of joy.”

The brand image for Coca Cola is youth, fun and friendship. Again, the advert doesn’t seem particularly related to the product, (though more so than Cadburys), However, Coca Cola also humanise their product and allow people to relate to it in a more personal way, which encourages their target audience to buy the drink – in this case young people, who, as you can see, the advertisement targets.

Cadburys continue their brand image with the colour purple for their products and their logo, which is ‘Cadbury’ in the familiar white swirl.

Coke Cola also continue their brand image through their logo (company name) and colour scheme, particularly reds.

MUSIC BRANDING

Branding in the music industry is used to differentiate between similar music styles, by looking to the artist themselves.

The way an artist is branded can affect how their audience feels about them, and is a way to attract a certain audience in the first place.

A brand for an artist is created through their consistent image, style, mise-en-scene of music videos and artwork and their personality. This brand image may change slightly over time to reflect changes of the artist eg: them growing up.

A successful brand image will be apparent in all of the artists work and will create a clear idea of that artist in the mind of the audience, so if they see the artists album, they will immediately know who it belongs to.

An example of music branding…

This is the album cover for the Marina And The Diamonds album ‘Radioactive’ and two stills from the video of the same name. As you can see, the branding of the artist is obvious through both products – through location, artists style/costume and colour scheme. If you looked at one product without the other, you would still be able to tell that the two go together.

MUSIC BRANDING RESEARCH

When looking at the branding of music artists, I researched the band ‘One Republic.’

I looked at two of the bands music videos – ‘Stop and Stare’ and ‘All The Right Moves.’ I also analysed the two album covers ‘Dreaming Out Loud’ and ‘Waking Up.’

Over the course of the two videos I noticed that the artists iconography was largely unchanging, as was their image. Although the music videos were very different, the sound of the band and genre of music has also remained constant, as had the colour scheme as you can see from the stills below.

The two album covers also show how branding has remained basically the same. Both covers have quite abstract images on the front, which are not directly relating to any of the songs, reflected in the sometimes quite abstract meaning of the bands videos. The titles of the albums suggest the only change is that the band has grown up slightly and become more confident, as ‘Waking Up’ suggests a more definite sound that ‘Dreaming.’

OUR BRAND IMAGEQuirky, Timeless, Unique

Throughout our music video and album artwork, the colour scheme is red, black and white. Particularly the colour red stands out as being that which would be most associated with the artist, shown through mise-en-scene.

Red clothing and accessories Red nail varnish

Red high heels Red cape

Red face paint and lipstick Red clothing Red track listing

Red text and logo

OUR BRAND IMAGEAnother way in which our video product and print products show a continuous brand image is the use of intertextuality, linking to fairytales. This is quite a unique idea, linking to the artists brand image.

The video opens and closes with a fairytale like book.

The main intertextuality is the use of the red cape from ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and the presence of the unknown ‘wolf.’

When the protagonist looses her shoe in the forest we are referencing the fairytale ‘Cinderella,’ who also looses a shoe.

The final intertextual reference is ‘Snow White’ at the end of the video with the bite of an apple and the protagonist dropping to the ground.

When thinking about borders for the back of the album, we kept this fairytale theme in mind and think that the swirly pattern of the border we chose has a certain fairytale feel about it, linking back to the video. We also thought that that the name of the song ‘Big Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’ lent itself to a fairytale theme as it sounds mysterious and the lyrics are quite dark.

OUR BRAND IMAGE

During the studio shoot, we used a spotlight so that the artist stood out against the black background and to create shadows and a slightly darker mood than low key lighting would, largely in medium shots and close ups. The front cover of the album has a vignette effect so that it also resembles a spotlight, linking to the music video.

OUR BRAND IMAGE

The location we used for the narrative of our video was a small

forest.

For our album advertisement and thank you page we used shots taken on-location, rather than in the studio. This spreads the brand image across both the video and artwork, as the setting is directly relatable and someone who has seen the video would instantly recognise the poster. A number of location shots were also used in our montage panel, with the poses suggesting the artists quirky nature.

OUR BRAND IMAGE

In the music video, our artist is wearing a blue dress, with a red cape and Doc Martins, (another ‘quirky’ aspect, as these items wouldn’t usually go together). She is wearing the same costume for the shots of her which appear on the album advertisement and the inside panel. (below)

We also used the prop of a guitar for both on location shots and studio shots to link back to the fact that she is an acoustic rock artist.

OUR BRAND IMAGE

The artists ‘timeless’ brand image comes largely from her makeup – red lips, with smoky eyes; which is reminiscent of the 1930s. This style is maintained both on the album cover and montage and the music video as you can see from the close up above.

The artists logo (right) is simply her initials in a red font inside a black circle. The colour fits with the artists branding, as does the simple design and handwritten style. We used the logo in both our print and video products (left and below) by painting it on the artists face for the front cover and some montage shots, adding to her quirky branding style. We also used the logo at the beginning and end of our music video because it is on the front of the fairytale book. The logo is therefore the first and last thing you see and will hopefully stick in peoples minds.

OUR BRAND IMAGE 'Romantic Fatal Serif’ is the font we used for the

title text of the album. We chose this font because the smooth and slightly swirly style fits in with the fairytale theme of our video and artists branding. The sharper edges on the capitalised words and the elongation of certain letters such as ‘t’ when the text is made smaller looks almost spiky lends itself to the darker themes of the video.

The fact that a close up is used as our album cover connects immediately to the audience, in the same way that close ups in the music video do. The close up also immediately conveys the artists brand image because of the unconventional idea of the logo across her face, which is quirky and unique. The long shot used on the back cover of the album shows the artists image as a whole, including her holding a guitar, demonstrating the kind of music she performs. These two images together on the front and back cover successfully convey the branding of the artist before the consumer has even heard any of the songs.