Music - Meet temptation

The process to create a marketing campaign for a music artist.

Some background information

Cover Art of single
Created by me

Our group got assigned the song "No good" by KALEO  (The cover art you see here was made by me) and our task was to create a campaign that used innovative techniques to attract audiences. We were also in charge of "creating" a bran new artists and a music video that accompanied the song.

The song is categorized as Indie/Alternative rock which some people may call it "Out of the ordinary", the genre gained popularity in the 1990s and since then it has still rising in popularity among young audiences (males and females,16-25 in age) who come from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Some of the characteristics of the genre is a simple instrumentation paired with a clear melody.

First of creating our marketing plan we had to do some research for artists that were in the same genre to get some inspiration and evaluate their marketing strategy and their success in terms of popularity with audiences. We choose Half Alive and Cage the elephant because both of these artists have some things in common: they are composed of more than one member, and their distribution and marketing techniques were relatively similar.

Both of them have an active website where information like tour dates, social media, and merchandise was available. Their music is also mainly available on digital platform to stream and buy, although they offer options like CD's and vinyl records. All of these techniques would be implement in our marketing campaign as they had proven to be successful and had pushed the bands to a mainstream audience.

Temptation - Creating our brand

Promotional picture

Coming up with the name of our artists was probably one of the most challenging parts of the process, we ended up settling for "Temptation" among an extensive list of names that were proposed.

 It was basically inspired from one of the lyrics of the song. Later we began to think about the colors that would best capture the essence of our artists, we choose a grey scale color palette, these colors are going to be present in the promotional pictures of the artists as well as in the website and merchandise.

Color palette

 Going along with the colors, clouds are also present in basically all of the components which i'm going to mention later. Sticking with a specific object and a set of colors was the easiest way we could develop a brand that was recognizable for a relatively large amount of people.

One of the main factors that affected our campaign was to stick to a budget and a plan that felt realistic, considering that we were creating an emerging artists that was pretty much unknown to the public eye. This was probably one of the biggest factors that affected our marketing campaign as we had to develop it for a local audience, this also affected our distributions methods because we choose our partner company because of their inexpensive fees. Our campaign was centered to be local (Florida) in order to create a loyal fan-base and then begin expanding from there. Our music was also going be distributed exclusively on digital platforms because it was the cheapest option and it is also and easy and accessible way for people to get to it if they have any electronic device with internet access (we do plan on expanding to CD and Vinyls later).

The Website - Source of information and Marketing

Artist's website

The website for our artist was made with the intention of being an user friendly platform that is easy to navigate. The design of the website is rather minimalist because we did not want to over-saturate it. On the main page there are a few pictures of the artists next to an announcement tab with news about music, tours, and merchandise. Not only does this provide relevant information for new visitors of the site but it also allows the artists to create a personal connection with them, as the tab includes some fun facts about the artists (ex. He has never visited North Florida). Important information like the social media sites are listed on the top right corner, there is also an option to subscribe to a newsletter by email or text to receive monthly updates about our plan. 

Next i'm going to talk about different elements of our campaign, which can be found on the website

     Tour dates: As I mentioned before, our plan focuses to create a local and loyal fan-base. Our artist as going to tour from South FL to North FL. The venues we choose are located in the heart of big cities to attract as many people as possible, we also wanted to make sure that they were easy to access for all people. Most of these businesses are nightclubs which is a place were people from our target audience tend to hang in. Some of the venues were exclusive to the genre of our music which guarantees that their frequent customers will also enjoy our music because the genre is of their liking. There are also a couple of events where food trucks are involved so we hope to partner with them to attract more people by offering an event with food and music. Visitors have the option to buy tickets directly from the website, making the transaction more convenient from them as they can choose the date and place from a list.

Social media post

     Merchandise: It is a key element in our campaign as we wanted to create something authentic for the people that was going to buy it. We didn't want to stick a template in a piece of clothing and sell it. The merchandise still stays within the color palette and also includes the "clouds" as a decorative print. All of the merchandise features either the name of the artist or the name of the song, this is because people may upload their pictures wearing our merch so in a way they are promoting our artist/song because their followers may see it and most likely will check it out. All of our items are unisex so they can be used by both men and women and we tried to include a variety of prices so even if someone does not want to spend as much money they can still get something for as little as five dollars. Each purchase also includes a copy of the single "No good" to increase the chances of the artists to rise in the charts and become more popular.
     Music Tab: The music tab is fairly simple as it features the cover art of the single "No good' and a list of websites where visitors can buy or stream the song. This again makes the process more convenient for them because instead of searching for our song in a platform they can click a link on our website and they will be taken there.

Social Media

     Social Media: we choose to focus on Instagram and Twitter to promote our music as both platforms have a large number of users and their users align with our target audience in terms of age and gender. The posts center on sharing news about music and overall projects that have to do with the artists, they also feature the clouds and color palette already established for our brand. Our plan was to use the hashtag #TemptationMusic and #NoGood to promote our song and music video, this would also allow our artist to connect with their fans as he would interact with the people that use the hashtag and would even re-post things they said about their song to their Social Media.

Music Video and Marketing - Learning Experience
Even though I was not alone in the process of producing this music video, it was still relatively difficult to produces, especially coming up with the story that we wanted to tell. We had many ideas at first but they were not cohesive or didn't work with each other so we had to slowly refine them until we reached an end point. It takes a lot of organization and compromise from all parties to plan and schedule the dates and times for filming the video and I think that having a solid plan is probably the most important thing for any production. Nonetheless I'm really proud of the final product and I hope that you enjoy watching it.