To begin our music marketing project, we needed to understand the appearance of music videos and artists in the country music genre. First, we searched up various country music stars from different labels within the genre. By watching their music videos, we were able to identify constants in wardrobe, setting, and overall production. As such, we decided that our own project would be both a promo of the artist, and tell a story. In order to understand what the “essence” of our brand would be, we researched multiple country music artists on social media. We did our most research on Big Machine’s Artists Justin Mooore and Florida Georgia Line as well as Bloodshot Records’ artists Jason Hawk Harris and the Vandoliers. We found that most country music brands aim to present their artists as ‘genuine’ and like to stick close to a traditionally ‘American’ appearance (acoustic guitar, farm, outdoors, flannel). This is likely done to connect with the target audience that we established through research on top listeners of this particular genre (middle aged white Americans). Thus, we decided that the location would be an outdoor/farm style setting and our brand would have an old-western inspiration in order to contribute to this Americana aesthetic.
We listened to all the songs we were given and decided upon the most fast-paced option. We did this because we believe the faster pace will make it more engaging. To come up with our story, we read the lyrics to the song. We decided that it would be about a guy who gets in a fight with another man over a girl. This is because the perspective of the speaker in the song seems to be bragging to another man about a woman in a bar.
The problems that came with this process was cutting down on the scope of our ideas so that we could realistically get it done. Originally, we found in our research that farm animals were commonly present within the music videos. Since the genre is so closely tied to this farmstyle, we wanted to have a scene with a horse. However, the rental cost of a horse was unrealistic and therefore, no matter how heartbreaking it was, we had to cut the horse idea. Further, having access to the kind of setting we were aiming for was slightly difficult as the original location kept placing us on hold and asking us to call back. We were forced to research different locations until we found one that we could rely on and that worked with our vision.
For the video itself, the next steps will be to actually film according to our completed storyboard. Once this is done, we will have to edit our footage to fit the song. In terms of the powerpoint itself, we need to complete our merchandise. Once we settle on a design, the merchandise can be uploaded to the website and the website can be completed.
