Music Video Production: Brand Identity

Brand Identity

When an artist is up and coming, it is important to immediately create a brand identity so that they are instantly recognisable. For example, with Lady Gaga, she is an extremely famous artist but is not necessarily famous due to her musical abilities. She is very well known for being a fashion icon. This is not down to people wearing the clothes she does, but the peculiar outfits on display in her music videos. Music videos and a huge part of an artists job as they now have the ability to make or break somebody's career. MTV, arguably the worlds biggest music channel to air videos, first launched on the 1st August 1981 and enabled viewers to see their favourite artists perform. Musicians decided that the way to gain audiences was to style themselves in a particular way and to use brand identity very efficiently. This includes Madonna flaunting herself in videos such as "Like a virgin" and "Like a prayer". This led to people being able to identify her as an artist as she had a specific trend in her videos of not wearing much and her videos being debated worldwide. Lady Gaga has taken this same approach by wearing extraordinary outfits and being a controversial character in the world of music. 

A good example of brand identity is Jessie J. She has a very apparent way of portraying her image. Her style is to use the same colours repetitively. These colours are black, gold, and silver. They continuously crop up in her videos and this shows that this is hers and that it is a song from Jessie J. Also, on her album covers there is the use of these colours, as there is on her posters also. On her posters and albums covers, there is the same font used when her name is spelt out. This very obvious font shows that it is her that the cover or poster is promoting. Her fans could probably tell that it was her even if her name wasn't written but the same font was used.

 Other artists use brand identity and one of the bands who do are the Arctic Monkeys. They have gone through a dramatic change in style recently as they felt the need to adapt to suit their audiences as they are growing up and need to change the idea of fun into a more mature style of music. They tend to have a black and white theme going on in quite a few of their videos and also in their posters and album covers. They also have the same font on their posters and album covers. There is a reoccurring theme of a sound wave on their albums and posters too. This is a consistent theme and shows that they are in the music industry purely for the love of music.

 The artist I have chosen is Kanye West as he sticks to the same image inside the world of music, and outside. In his music videos, he wears glasses, a chain and he has a very particular style of music and a distinctive voice. When you look at pictures of him in the street, in his music videos, and on posters, he has a chain around his neck and just the top of body. Also, his album covers tend to have the same theme of a teddy bear. As strange as this sounds, seeing a teddy bear on an album is rare and so fans can immediately identify the album as Kanye Wests'.