In accordance with the Cambridge brief for Component 3, students are expected to create a music promotion package of an album, including a music video, an official social media page for the artist and a digipak. My group and I decided to create a fictional 19 year old Indonesian female pop musical artist with a bold, feminine and flirty personality named “Cinta Kyle” along with her album and debut song called “The Weekend” originally by BIBI and 88rising. Her songs often revolve around the portrayal of complex love relationships, hence it is targeted towards teenagers to young adults aged 16-25 years old.
Branding that is consistent is a crucial element for the artist’s identity in order to create a unique image that resonates with the audience and to create a long lasting impression, therefore conveying an effective message across our products that reflects our main theme of love. We decided to incorporate colours that resonate with this such as maroon red and white, which ends up becoming our brand’s primary colours. This colour combo is used as a signature for her confidence and passion. In association with Cinta’s bold personality, we deliberately styled her in black skirts, red tops along with high-heeled boots, connoting powerful femininity and love. Her distinct style’s can be seen in her digipak cover and her music video’s main performance outfit. Her kiss trademark featured in her CD cover is a feminine touch which symbolises love and passion. Combined with the heart symbol as her main logo along with scenes gesturing the heart, adds up to her flirty personality on screen persona. The use of cursive lettering across all products also reflects her femininity and elegance, enhancing her artist identity, which further aligns with her romantic and emotionally expressive image. By using the same colour scheme, fonts, tone, and style across our thumbnail and the whole video, we further improve recognition and encourage viewer familiarity and interaction (Fig. 1).
Conducting research on several music videos allowed me to understand the conventions of a pop music genre. We combined both narrative and performance based concepts to make the music video entertaining and engaging to watch. Our narrative of how she was once a lovergirl but realised throughout her toxic relationship that the only person she could hold on to is herself and did not need validation from other boys, aimed to highlight two aspects of the artist’s persona: innocent (pink outfit, pajamas) and playgirl (red bold outfit, red alcohol cup). We followed the conventions of mostly upbeat and fast-paced clips such as quick cuts and match cuts to evoke energy and excitement. Another convention we followed was the usage of direct mode of address, across the music video, digipak and social media, in which the artist looks straight at the camera (Fig. 1.1, 1.3). This could serve as a way of developing a connection between the artist and the audience, in line with Bulmer and Katz's uses and gratifications theory of social relationships. We used creative editing techniques in relation to subvert, including the match cut in the scene where the artist stumbles from being ‘tipsy’ and falls on the bed in her PJs (Fig. 2), implying the duality of her persona. The POV shot in which the artist attempts to locate the boys using a heart cutout to search her potential partners (Fig. 3). In this way, it creates a feeling of intimacy with the audience as if they were experiencing it with her, therefore keeping them engaged.
We primarily focused on how South East Asians are being portrayed, which are commonly underrepresented. Considering that our main target audience is also South-East Asians, casting all people in this race would make them feel seen and affirmed when they see themselves being portrayed in the media, which is linked to the Uses & Gratification theory by Bulmer & Katz of personal identity. Furthermore, issues such as unrequited love and toxic relationships are commonly discussed in this modern society. The mirror shot in the digipak (Fig. 4) may symbolise emotional distance and the desire to be seen. We tried to subvert how men and women are usually portrayed; males are frequently referred to as "players" and often being in control, which usually implies they are insincere, manipulative and untrustworthy. However, we attempted to reverse their roles to show that women can also hold positions of power and control a relationship, aligning with Van Zoonen’s feminine discourse theory, which argues that gender representation in the past is more simplistic, but as time evolves it has become more varied as masculinity and feminine ideals have changed overtime. In this instance, the evolving representation of women has made them more dominant. This is evident in the music video, between the artist and the main love interest (dark-coloured plaid shirt and 'clean' look, representing ‘bad boy’ and disguising his toxic side) (Fig. 5) and between her and her potential (failing) love interests (white T-shirts) (Fig. 6), suggesting that they are simply "background characters" in her narrative, who have no significance for her.
We also researched and implemented the conventions of a pop music genre digipak. We heavily took inspiration from Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover, which includes a simplicity of the design and the medium close-up of the artist in the front cover, which gives the album identity and makes it easily recognisable for the audience, along with other features like the title, artist identity, tracklist, production company, copyright and institutional information, which helped us conform to the generic conventions of digipak for pop music genre. Front covers typically have plain backdrops. Our background is unique since we select a simple background that conveys the essential information rather than images relating to the artist. Similar to the narrative concept, where she appears uninterested and unbothered with her ultimately failing love interests (wearing white clothing), the artist may be the centre of attention due to the large amount of white space surrounding her, while others may appear dull and boring. The usage of maroon red and a cursive typeface is seen as feminine in order to appeal to our demographic, which encourages self-assurance and empowerment. Furthermore, a strong confidence and empowerment is set by the posture and how the star directly gazes at the camera. The pose chosen shows a flirtatious vibe of the star, which is seen as seductive and elegant, whereas the direct mode of address is used to build connection and emotional bond with the audience, boosting engagement (Fig. 1.1).
The rise of new media has made it easier for our artist to promote her music and increase audience engagement across various social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube and Linktree (Fig. 1.2, Fig. 7, Fig. 8). We will offer unfiltered, raw moments of Cinta, while also boosting promotional content, such as ‘Elle’ magazines with a similar target audience to ours, in an effort to portray her in a professional and personal way. To make the artist seem more approachable and genuine, informal selfie profile photos and behind-the-scenes photos (Fig. 9) are used to create relatability and authenticity. Her personal side of life fosters a deeper connection with the audience, such as her highlights of outfit inspirations, where the audience can be inspired and gain confidence and personal identity from her fashion, in line with David Gauntlett’s identity theory, where the audience uses media to represent themselves. According to Clay Shirkey's theory of end of audience, audiences are no longer passive and expect interactive media; for this reason, we use interactive stories by collecting and responding to fans’ questions using the question box feature (Fig. 10). Moreover, responding to comments establishes a direct connection between the artist and fans, which creates a sense of community. The fandom theory by Henry Jenkins supports this, as the comment section helps fans to interact with one another to express excitement and reactions for her upcoming album release, as well as giving support towards the artist herself (Fig. 11).
Overall, I feel that our music promotion package was successful in portraying our main star, Cinta Kyle, as we have effectively achieved the dominant reading of confidence and self-empowerment across all of our products. Through the consistent tone and visuals throughout the music video, digipak and social media, we are able to establish a strong and cohesive artist identity, enabling audiences to connect with Cinta Kyle as an empowering female artist.
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