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Question two:

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary tasks?

Click image for video.

Question two:

What is a brand image and why is it important?

What is a brand? A brand is something different to a product because branding is the image we have of something as opposed to the thing itself.

For example, coffee is the product whereas Kenco or Mellow Birds is the brand.

Branding occurred because of mass production of different products, and therefore each product needed it’s own distinct brand. Consumers needed different ‘personalities’ for each version of a product because of the choices available. Branding is all about creating a memorable image, to help one brand stand out from the rest and give us a reason to buy it.

Question two:

What is a brand image and why is it important?

How does it apply to the music industry? One importance of branding is that it turns a product- or a musician- into something unique. There are so many artists out that they need an image or a brand, to make them distinct and help us recognise them from the crowd. It gives them a ‘personality’ and an attachment we can relate to. All musicians will have some form of branding. This could be a logo, colour, costume etc. This brand image will then be repeated over and over again to get the audience to familiarise themselves with this image- which will have positive connotations for the target audience. As a result, if they see something that relates to this artists brand image, they automatically recognise them.

For example, part of Michael Jackson’s brand image was his clothing. During the “Bad era” his image was portrayed as ‘cool’ and ‘tough’ and therefore wore lots of black, reds or blues as well as leather type clothing with lots of buckles and belts to give off this ‘tough’ image to the fans. It was important to use this image as it reflected his album and the songs. Also, it made a change from a previous image he’d portrayed as changing ones image a lot helps keep them current and interesting.

This ‘bad’ image was Jackson’s main branding during the late 80s.

Question two:

What is a brand image and why is it important?

Why is it important? Branding is an important factor in a musicians career because it gives the audience something to recognise the artist from, as well as making it easier to sell products because they don’t need to explain who this product belongs to, their fans already know. This also gives the fans a feeling of having a ‘special connection’ with the artist, being a part of something that only fans would know about.

For example, if fans of Michael Jackson saw this on a product, they would automatically realise that this is his logo- meaning the product has something to do with Jackson, and as a result making it more likely that they’ll buy it because it has Jackson’s branding on it.

Click for video. This is MJJ Productions logo, which is placed on Jackson products and before videos of the singer. It gives the fans a special connection with Jackson because only they understand what this logo actually means.

Branding can make a particular artist unique and gives them something that other artists don’t have. It gives a positive image for the artist and can boost sales if this image is attached to things like music videos/albums. It’s also important to carry this image outside of music videos to really make it recognisable with fans.

Question two:

What is a brand image and why is it important?

Why we needed a brand image for our band: We needed to create a brand image for our band because this was us portraying a “new band” so we needed to create something memorable and unique for the audience so they could remember our band and music video above others. We needed to keep this image consistent and simple, as to make it instantly recognisable. We also repeated the images [in the video, and in digipak] to keep the familiarity. The audience may see our video and therefore we needed to ensure that they recognise the album [i.e. the product that will bring in the money] belongs to them and relates to the cool video they’ve just seen.

Question two:

What elements have you used to create a brand image in your products?

The image we wanted to give our band was to make it fun, quirky, carefree and different to other genres, yet still trying to stick to the indie-pop genre. To do this, the elements we used were colour and costume; the bands clothing- the colours they wore, what they wore and the Fox costume. We used these elements in specific ways to make it fit into the indie-pop genre as well as creating the image outlined above. However, it wasn’t enough just using these elements, we needed to repeat these images/colours to create a brand identity and awareness of our products. In order to do this, we’ve used consistency, simplicity and repetition to create our brand image. For example, we’ve repeated the Fox image over each of our products to show awareness and give the audience something memorable. We’ve tried to give our brand image it’s own ‘personality’ i.e. repeating the fox in the video, the logo and ancillary tasks make it more interesting, unique and memorable and this can also be seen as entertaining; which also adds to our brand image. Therefore, this image transfers onto our band and this makes our band seem the same: exciting, unique etc.

Question two:

How do they work?

Band’s outfits: The band’s outfits represent a typical indie-pop band, and show the ‘casual’ part of their brand image.

The hairstyle that our lead-singer has is very typical of an indie-pop singer’s. It’s slightly long, with no specific style to it. This adds to the ‘casual’ image that a lot of indie-pop bands represent. We felt it was important to have hair that a lot of boys could relate too because that’s the main goal of indie-pop.

He’s also wearing a simple cardigan and t-shirt with an image on it, nothing bright or over the top. This fits in with indie-pop genre because they’re clothes that could typically be found on the high-street, which shows this ‘carefree’ and ‘casual’ element that a lot of indie-pop bands try to represent.

The pants that he’s wearing are also fashionable with all types of people at the moment, which again show a casual element to the brand image. It also shows that he could appeal to people outside of our genre.

The hairstyle that our drummer has is much more taken care of than the lead-singers, which helps us appeal to both genders. This shows off the ‘different’ side of the brand image because she’s taken more care of her appearance than most indie-pop members normally do.

Her overall clothing matches the colours of the other band members, as we felt it was important aspect to making them look like a real band. The colours aren’t overly bright, and it’s something that could be worn by anyone, again showing the casual aspect to the band’s image.

Her clothing has a ‘vintage’ look about it, which makes it different to other genres and shows off our bands quirky side. It’s nothing extraordinary, yet it couldn’t all be found on the high-street, which adds to this ‘different’ brand image.

Question two:

How do they work?

Colours used: The colours we used throughout all our products vary from being very “indie” to very “pop”. This adds to the quirky and fun elements of our brand image.

The ending of the video, we used overly bright colours to attract and entertain our audience, which fits in the ‘pop’ side of indie-pop. It also shows off our band as fun and quirky which is apart of our brand image.

We’ve used a mixture of bright and dull colours on our logo, again which shows off the quirky, fun and exciting elements of our band’s personality. The colours help it stand out from other products made by other artists/bands.

The colours on the digipak vary from bright to dull. This offers a range from all aspects of the indie-pop genre. The ‘randomness’ of the colours help add to showing our band to be carefree, fun-loving and quirky.

Question two:

How do they work?

Fox costume: Having a Fox in our music video portrays our band to be quirky, unique and fun. It’s not something you typically see in music videos and therefore makes our band seem different, as well as making them memorable.

Some clips of the Foxes part in the music video. Please click.

Using a fox costume in our music video helps add to the quirky element to our band. When we’ve taken photos of the Fox or used it in our music video, we’ve placed it in ‘funny’ positions or comical situations [i.e. having a relationship with a person]. This would help to portray our band as funny because the fox is representing the band, and this is what the audience sees the most of, as it’s repeated over various images, so they ‘get to know’ the fox.

Question two:

How do they work?

Fonts: We used the same font for our band title on our logo, digipak and advertisement. We also used several different fonts on the advertisement to add in variety and not make it too boring and ‘samey.’

We tested out various fonts, and asked friends what they thought, before deciding on the top one for our main font. We felt that the retro feel of it added to our quirky and unique image because it’s not something that’s seen a lot and therefore makes our band stand out from other bands. We felt the simplicity of it was what made it stand out so well as it’s not ‘over the top’ and fits in nicely with the indie-pop genre.

We used a mixture of different retro fonts on the advert as it gives the audience something different and makes the product look more aesthetically pleasing, yet is still in keeping with our title font.

Question two:

How do they work?

Consistency and Repetition: These were the most important factors when creating our products. We needed to make sure that we repeated these images over and over so the audience would know that the products are linked and make them remember them over time. The main aspect we repeated was the fox image, which appears over each of our products. This has become our bands main ‘branding’ as it appears in the logo, video, dickipak and advert. The audience would begin to realise that this fox is linked with this band and therefore any products with that fox on it would appeal to the fans of our band, and as a result bring in money for our products. It was also important to keep the colour scheme fairly consistent. We did used a mixture of light and dark colours, but they were usually the same colours throughout- yellows, pinks, blues. Again, it helps our band become recognisable and our target audience would appeal to these colours as they’re not overly ‘childish’ but not totally sophisticated. Lastly, we made sure our band wore similar styled clothing in the music video and in the photoshoot. This was because our band needed to represent an indie-pop band and couldn’t wear something totally outrageous or striking as it could be confused with another genre. This helps us look like an indie-pop band and appeal to the right audience.

Question two:

How effective are they?

At the completion of all our products, we did some audience feedback for our VIDEO and our ANCILLARY TASKS . This helped us discover what we did well, and what we could have improved upon. Overall, people said our brand image was good and clear.

This shows that the repetition of our fox image, using the correct elements that made it belong to the indie-pop genre, whilst adding our own ‘image’ and style in there, helped us to create a successful brand image overall. In the video we took of our classmates answering questions on our products, they said that the most unique aspect of our products was “the fox costume” because “you don’t see that in music videos, usually” and therefore we feel that using that for our main focus of our brand image was right and it gained the right sort of attention.

Question two:

How effective are they?

In other aspects of our brand, our audience feedback shows that we’ve been successful in those areas too.

BAND IMAGE and overall BRAND IMAGE:

We got our band to stick to as many indie-pop conventions through their outfits as possible, and our feedback shows we’ve been successful. It’s shown that our band was the most convincing out of the whole music video which I believe was the most important factor, because if the band didn’t look convincing then neither would our video.

Our video and ancillary tasks were described as ‘different and unique’ which is what our brand image was. I believe we have achieved this by the fox, the colours and our logo. Also, aside from repeating images, the uniqueness of the video makes it memorable and recognisable to an audience, which is really important- especially if this was a real product.

Question two:

How effective are they?

We also asked our audience if they could think of any improvements for our video or ancillary tasks. The overall answers were pleasing because they were simple changes that could have been made, and I think this is a good result because it shows that most of our branding worked and appealed to the audience.

MUSIC VIDEO: ANCILLARY TASKS:

In order for our band to look totally professional, they suggested using real instrument players. If we were to make this product again, I think it would be something to consider as it would give our band ‘an edge’ and look more convincing. Also, they said that the digipak and advert could have had more reference to our video. However, I believe that the quirkiness of our ancillary tasks reflect our band and image and is apart of the branding of our band.

Question two:

How effective are they?

Personally, I believe that all our products do look continuous and like they all belong together. I think our overall brand image has worked and we got our band to look ‘fun, quirky and different’ and this was expressed in the audience feedback. I think if we were to make this product again, I would consider using people would really could play instruments, just to add to the authenticity of our band, and perhaps like the audience feedback suggested, make the ancillary tasks link to our music video a little more. In all, I believe we were highly successful.