Bryce Henderson - Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 To begin this project we separated the research equally between all the members so we could be efficient and we could all collect information about our assigned genre. This helped us to work quick on our case study chart and have a basis for what we had to research for our marketing campaign. With a genre like country, trends are set. There is a certain target audience that has to be hit, but it serves as a minimum. In terms of target audiences, a limit is difficult to set, so noticing the trends in country music we decided to follow those standards and also push limits and look towards reaching a more diverse audience in terms of age range and interests. In terms of marketing techniques, cross-media convergence is essential in country music. Almost all major country artists have a website that gives direct access to subscriptions, merchandise, tours, music, etc. 

Zac Brown's website

Almost all major country artists are active on social media sharing their personal lives, upcoming music and performances. The easy thing about researching country is that it's mostly the same strategies. The difficult thing about researching country is that there is a unique selling point for every artist.

While brainstorming, we based our ideas mainly on the song, 'Cold', which gave us a leeway to work with aesthetic and opaque colors. Brainstorming for the music video was simple, for the storytelling part, we made up a fictional story where a woman leaves her man to cheat on him and divided it on multiple shots. We thought of different settings for the promotional section of the video and recorded full-song clips in them, leaving a lot of creative space to modify them and pick and choose sections. In our storyboard, we reflected our ideas so we could have a basis for what the music video would come to be, many scenes were repeated so the music video wouldn't feel like it was dragging. Then we started brainstorming our marketing campaign which felt considerably easy due to the very strict trends that most country artists follow. We decided to follow examples such as Zac Brown, Blake Shelton and Chris Stapleton whose marketing campaigns are based around social media and websites, also offering merchandise that serves as a technique to have the audience market the artist. 

Our Bryce Henderson Hat concept

Recording our music video had its difficulties, as expected, but it was a fun experience. We were able to get creative with the shots we had planned and innovate with what we had. Being able to invite a friend to act in it and working as a team with my teammates was a satisfying experience, recording this music video had more fun than hardships. In terms of editing the video, Emma took charge of that and she did an amazing job, she asked us for notes on it so we could all somehow contribute to the final product. 

'Cold' Music video

Working on our presentation was difficult. To be completely honest, we rushed. That really limited our content and provided a not-so successful result, but we're glad we got to finish it with content we did discuss and had in mind since the beginning of brainstorming. Once again we separated the content, one group member wasn't as helpful as expected but for understandable reasons. The rest of us we were able to be efficient and work on our presentation. I edited the final video for the presentation with the audios and we ended in success.

This project could've been way more enjoyable if we organized our time right and we prioritized it. Most of the things we worked on were rushed and it created a lot of tension within the team. This is a very big example of learning from your mistakes, if we weren't given the extra time, this project would not have been what it is now. Managing time is essential to work on a successful project, setting strict deadlines for what is to be done and achieving results in due time. Setting leadership is also essential to work on an efficient project. I am definitely taking most of these factors with me to the portfolio project so they work as tips to succeed and not stress as much while working on it.