Branding Research

 This blog post, written by Jasmine, details all the research and development we have conducted regarding our main artist, Jasmine.

Beatrice, Rachelle and I made this mind map of our star's persona, target audience, visual identity, social media presence, personality and values as well as long term goals. We did so using a slide that our media teacher had provided in order to provide us with guiding questions to answer:

Here is the mind map:

It was actually fairly simple to make since we had already discussed about most of these questions during the creation of our statement of intent, however writing it down since it has been a while helped us refresh our memories of how we intended the star to be like.

Branding Research:

This branding research is done entirely by me, Jasmine.

Choose an artist from your genre: Lana Del Ray

Find examples of their; 

Social media: 

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeymoon/?hl=en

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lanadelrey?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc 

Music albums: 

Music videos:

Quavo, Lana Del Rey - Tough (Official Video)

Lana Del Rey - White Mustang (Official Music Video)

Lana Del Rey - Doin' Time

(Magazine shoots/interviews)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg93p2B5QSs

What brand identity are they giving off?

Lana Del Rey’s brand identity is more mature, mostly surrounding topics and issues with romance. One way that her branding connotes this is through color and edits, which are nostalgic, with browns, cyans and warm hues, as well as screen tones, all of which give the effect of television or media in the 90s (1950-1970s). The connotations of these effects could be that Lana Del Rey is stuck in the past and is unable to move forward from her issues, which she illustrates in her music. To support this, she often wears lace, frills, and pastels in clothing, which are not mainstream in today’s fashion scene but rather were in the past, further supporting the point mentioned earlier. In addition, since Lana Del Rey follows her style in this way, she is also viewed as iconic by her audience and fans.

What is their persona, and what image are they creating for themselves? How?

Lana Del Rey constructs her star persona to be a melancholic, tragic, romantic. She has mentioned before that “I wasn’t even born in the ’50s, but I feel like I was there,” which again supports her curated image of being almost nostalgic, although she creates music in today’s day and age. She creates this image by showing up and explaining the lyrics to her songs to interviewers on YouTube such as in this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg93p2B5QSs. Her Instagram page is also very notably desaturated in color, perhaps to convey her melancholic vibe as desaturated colors, connote sadness or boredom. She also posts a lot of her pictures in a film or grainy look, which creates a sense of mystery towards her as the film or grain reduces the quality of her pictures, and as details of the images become more blurred, it connotes that Lana Del Rey may be hiding something from her fans. Lana Del Rey selectively constructs by posting images of her life which is intimate enough to show glimpses of her personal life, however not enough to assume her identity and real identity off the media, again creating an air of mystery around her.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEsFdtrJjL4/?hl=en

In this post, Lana calls for action towards the recent LA fires, which happened to be where she lived. There may be a possibility that calling action towards this catastrophic event may curate an image of her being caring towards her audience and towards. Although she herself isn’t narrating or saying the audio, it definitely brings exposure towards the issue as she has a large fanbase and platform.

How do they speak to their fans?

Especially in this post, although it seems to be professional and intended to promote her upcoming tour, instead of only posting the image, she interacts with the audience by saying that she will see them in June at Liverpool and Ireland. This type of wording may evoke feelings in her fans making them feel like they are inclined to go as she is expecting to see them there.

What visuals link all of the media products together?

All her social media posts and products tend to be connected by some elements. One example is warm lighting, and retro editing. Her photographs tend to have sort of a yellow-ish hue as well as a lot of grain, similar to videos and images taken in the past. This helps to link all her media products together as the overall theme of her songs are more soft and warm. She also tends to use a lot of sage greens, coral pinks and browns which also are often used in retro themed productions.

How could this artist influence you?

Lana Del Rey keeps a very consistent image of herself and is interactive with her fans. We can use this aspect of her and implement it into our artist (Jasmine), This is because it can build a strong connection between the artist and her fans, creating a loyal fanbase. Moreover, to maintain a clear artist brand, whether through music videos, outfits, and/or personal responses. In addition, our branding would also like to convey nostalgic emotions, therefore we could observe Lana Del Rey’s editing features as well as mis-en-scene in order to see if we could convey the same feeling through referencing her branding techniques.

Reflection : I found this to be incredibly valuable in shaping our star’s reel persona across all aspects of the project; music video, digipak, and social media. By referencing this post, we were able to ensure consistency in our artist’s branding and maintain a cohesive identity throughout all of our product. Since we developed the mind map together, face-to-face communication allowed us to avoid misinterpretations and clarify any uncertainties regarding the star’s persona. As a result, we gained a clearer understanding of how to construct her brand identity, making sure that all main aspects were thoroughly discussed and aligned with our vision. It is essential to maintain this branding strategy so that our target audience can fully understand the intended meaning and engage with the artist’s persona in the way we envisioned. This aligns with Stuart Hall’s concept of dominant reading, where audiences interpret the media text as intended by the creators.