More Music Marketing Research

Discussing my project with my brother, he commented on the similarity between using a digital lizard as a mascot and the Gorillaz’s animated band members that appear in their music videos. Being such a successful example of using brand mascots, I decided to look into how the Gorillaz have marketed themselves.

The band releases images and animations of the virtual band members on their social media accounts. These posts document what the virtual band members are doing in the virtual world, allowing the band to create engaging, otherworldly narratives for their fans. I though this was a really cool idea, breaking the marketing of the band away from the constraints of reality. The band also releases storyboards and animatics of their music videos on their YouTube channel, engaging with people that are not necessarily interested in their music but in their unique animations.

In 2010 the Gorillaz released a fake passport to promote their Escape To Plastic Beach Tour. Alongside this, an AR app was released with which you could scan images inside the passport and 3D versions of the images would appear on the app. This was very well received by fans, with Plastic Beach Republic passports now being resold for as much as £200! This made me realise that I have overlooked the value of physical medias to create an engaged fanbase.

Another artist that Olly Hookings brought to my attention is DubSecret. He’s a DNB artist that has released a video explaining the history of the rave scene in the UK, similar to the recent Led Zeppelin marketing campaign that released videos about the band’s history. Maybe I could create a video that showed how the rock and electronic music scenes were developing at the same time?

I really liked how the stock footage was edited together, however the aspect ratio of the video doesn’t fully use YouTube’s letterbox presentation – a perfect example of how not to optimise media for a certain platform. Another one of DubSecret’s music videos caught my eye, and I thought it was a good example of the overlay effects I want to use in my videos.