Before we could begin our process of creating an engaging and interesting artist, we had to do research on how real pop musicians have successfully marketed their songs. To do so, we created a chart filled with six case studies from two different production companies. Completing the chart was my task. Something I immediately noticed was that a majority of songs that have gained popularity in recent years can attribute their success to going viral on TikTok. Some songs also went viral due to controversy and/or drama, but this seemed like a very tedious route to go down, so ultimately we decided not to play with negative press. For example, Lie, Lie, Lie by Joshua Bassett arose to fame after he released the song in response to another Disney star's cheating accusations following their breakup. Although the drama initially garnered a large following of the scandal, the fame was not long lasting and ended up ruining Joshua Bassett's reputation for a lot of fans.
Ex: snippet of Media Research Chart shown above
As I wrapped up the research, we were ready to begin creating our brand. A challenge that we faced was deciding how to create an artist that could accurately encapsulate the song we chose. Since "Send My Love" represents the more artsy side of pop, it was difficult to come up with a brand that was "quirky" enough to match the energy. At first, we wanted to call the band Floyd and Lloyd, and have a group with two members. The backstory would revolve around the pop stars arising from a meme, gaining fame by going viral for their Spongebob-themed band name. Eventually, after debating back and forth, we decided on DeeNah: just a solo girl from Ohio who likes to play guitar.
The next trial was coming up with a storyboard for a music video. As the real music video did not have much of a plot or an idea on how to approach the song's lyricism, this aspect of creating a brand was quite difficult. We scoured the Internet for ideas of music videos relating to the song's artistic singing style, yet the closest we could find to good ideas were parodies drenched in bad millennial humor and fan-made Roblox recreations. We decided that since the song was quite difficult to work with, we would utilize the music video as a way to further the concept of DeeNah's brand. She is wild and carefree, but also very in touch with her emotions. We were going to represent this by having her dance and throwing paper airplanes on the beach, but after some discussion, we decided to instead create a storyline of a young girl having lost her lover and sending her love to beyond the grave, showcasing her creativity.
