Evaluation question 3: Brand identity

How have you created an effective brand across all 3 media products?

What is a brand identity?

A brand identity is all the visual elements of a product/ business (name, symbol, design, fonts, colors) that together identify and distinguish a brand in a consumers’ mind. Within the media industry, branding can differ from costumes, colour, fonts and mis- en-scene which all come together to create a brand identity.  Branding creates name recognition and loyalty amongst fans for the artist

How I built my brand identity

The foundation of every brand identity is a logo.

The logo is gives the first impression of the product to potential audience, so it’s important to make the logo professional, memorable and specific to attract the target market. With a logo for my artist i had to consider basic fundamentals:

1. Artist name / font

A signature font and/or a special type treatment of your name will aid public recognition of your business. Some companies use a logotype as their primary form of brand identity. Well-known examples are:

My artists name is written in “Thiamine font” as the signature both on the webpage and the digipak. 

I used the colours red, white and black only on all three media products. This is because colour is said to carry a subconscious association to things and in this instance the colour schemes link with the soul music genre, the concept in the song of how she’s lost love e.t.c.  The fact that it is only these colours I used throughout provides consistency and uniformity.

2. Icon, the graphic image or symbol that often accompanies the name.

It wasn’t necessary to have an icon for my artist, I considered it but after much research I realised famous musicians are often recognised by just their first name alone and so there is no real need to have an icon to distinguish her from any other artist who may have the same name. I believe my artists name is her icon as it depicts who she is and can be easily remembered and recognised as its bold, unique and eye catching. I believe spreading consistency throughout the product is enough to ensure that my artist develops a brand.

3. Image, I chose consistent images of my artist to associate all the products together, this helped to establish visual connection so my artist would be recognised from this as she is new to the industry. It also helped to communicate my artist message of her being a down to earth, innocent girl still in touch with her background. These images also helps make a lasting impression for familiarising the audience with my artist as she is not sexualised like most other artist. All this helps in creating a straight forward strategy in making my artist’s brand unique and for the audience to connect easily with her.

Within the music industry a brand image defines their genre, establishing a character/personality this helps to sell their albums. Branding enables the artist to establish a connection with their target audience and also helps with attracting more audiences. Artists incorporate their brand image in many ways i.e. in the music video, album covers, advertisements and merchandise. They all contribute with helping to promote the artist. If an artist doesn’t have a brand image they would have less chance of standing out therefore less chance of succeeding. During my research I tried to find out how artists branded themselves. One of the artists I looked at was Adele. It is clear to see that Adele’s brand image is feminine, classy and down to earth. Adele has been able to keep her brand image consistent and this helps keep her recognised by her fans.

I created an effective brand because the creating of a webpage meant that my artist is able to capture a wider range of audience.The webpage allows a lot of  people to connect with the artist and to gain varied information about her and her work.

I ensured that the theme running through the webpage is unified with the theme on the Digipak as well as in the music video. This was through the same colour schemes, The same font, and the clothing she wore in the video and the way she is portrayed in still pictures as well as video clips The digipak features the artist picture as exactly the same image from a clip in the music video and this same image is the one on the webpage, The way her name is written on the Digipak is the same as in the webpage and this all correlate together to brand her with the same concept. This makes our artist more convincing and her brand image being emphasised in the whole product thus each product converges and work.

Adele’s Brand Image

The primary purposes of the album covers are to advertise Adele’s records, though they also help establish her brand image to her audience. The use of the dark colours connotes a soulful and thoughtful personality, followed with the conservative feminine persona that also links to her brand image of femininity. The album covers are very simple showing her music is calming. This can be seen in the poignant expressions she displays on all her album covers. The font that is used on the cover is the same throughout when identifying her advertising campaigns allowing her name and brand to be easily recognizable.

My brand image

For the artist to succeed, we created a brand image that would sell her to our target audience

Brand image:

·         Feminine

·         Down to earth

·         Normal / relatable

·         Poignant (in the video)

Target Audience:

·         16-25 year old

·         Females (They would relate to the artist and her music the most and quickly create a close affiliation with our artist)

From the survey I made it can be seen that I succeeded in portraying my artists brand identity according to the genre. People were able to name which music type the video represented.

After deciding my target audience, brand image and genre, I researched into other artists that have similarities to what I had in mind for my artist. This was to give me inspiration of how to present my artist.

Overall I achieved a brand identity effectively across all 3 ancillary texts through the use of consistent images, font, colour schemes and the same emotion on my artist face being constant throughout the whole products. This was easy to carry out because I screen grabbed images from scenes in the music video and used this across my media texts i.e. identical image of artist from clip in music video kept on the digipak. This i believe linked all my products together effectively to create brand identity. I also featured the digipak on the webpage as an upcoming album and i think this made it more convincing and more real. All this effectively converges to ensure that branding is being built up and the artist is consistently being the main focus throughout the whole product. This ensured that she is the focal point and everything else from font and colour schemes backs this up and ensures this.