Friday 10 June 2016

Artist Case Study: Craig David

CRAIG DAVID : PROFILE
 - Genre: UKG/RnB/Pop
 - Target Audience: 90s and 00's born (mostly female)
 - USP: raps and sings, unique vocal UKG sound of early 00's

WEBSITE




Craig David's Website is very clean and modern. A crisp white, silver and red colour scheme is used throughout. It features professional photos of him performing, latest news on releases, videos and tour dates, along with his full discography - a collection of all albums he has released with links to download sites.
















UPCOMING ALBUM

'Follow My Intuition'
 - He addresses it's release to many blogs/magazines/etc...

"I'm not going to be the guy who says it because I've had so many fans say, 'You told me 2013 and it's still not here!' Even I thought it was coming out then. 2016, though, the album - it's called 'Following My Intuition' - it'll definitely be dropping and hopefully the early side of the year as well. I'm very thankful and glad to see such love come at this point in my career."
He said said to Complex magazine: "There's Kaytranada as well, who I did some wicked stuff with out in Canada. He's about to drop his project which is going to be fire, because he's still on that futuristic R&B thing and he's taken it electronic. Working with him was dope. Diplo too; we've actually got a few things coming up. That's going to be big. Oh, and GoldLink. He's got his new record dropping soon, but we have a few bits dropping together next year... Who am I forgetting? Oh! I've also done some stuff with Chase & Status. Pure flames, man." 

This type of exclusive conversational/interview advertisement from the people involved in the music (i.e: Craig David) is very quickly shared virally through social media and is what fans constantly crave to hear about.


LATEST SINGLES 

'When The Bassline Drops' (Feat. Big Narstie)
 - 1st single off forthcoming album, "Follow My Intuition"




'One More Time'
 - 2nd single off forthcoming album.



MUSIC CAMPAIGN
 - a marketing campaign organised and paid for by the record label, the artist is signed to. It often costs a large amount of money invested by the label, that will then be at least tripled by the revenue produced by the release. A music campaign is designed to promote a song/album using multiple platforms and types of media - for example, releasing music videos for singles released before the album release, or the selling of merchandise (clothing/souvenirs), or the announcement of tour dates and tickets.

 - All three of these products (website, albums, music videos) link together. They are all very clean and polished products, while focusing hugely on the image (face) of the artist. Despite the colour scheme not flowing through all products, Craig David's fashion, performance style and party vibes are similarly featured in every product. The artist also comes across as very self aware, and despite having a playful image, his lyrics, album title and website composition are all mature - his experience and long-running career has resulted in him becoming a wiser artist.

 - There a very few other differences between the products. Craig David's products are so formulaic that there are very few differences between his and the rest of the commercial pop products released these days. The only difference between each product would be the slight differences in mood. For example, 'When The Bassline Drops' is a slightly darker/aggressive song compared to 'One More Time', and this is also shown stylistically in the videos for the two songs.

 - The ideology promoted through his products focuses on the enjoyment of life - through partying, girls and drinking - and living life to the full while you're still young. There is also a huge feature of lessons to be learnt about relationships and women. Therefore, despite Craig David now being a heavily synthesised artist, most of the messages put across through his products promote positive energy.

STAR THEORY
 - Richard Dyer's Star Theory explains the formation of a star (popular artist) as a construction, a commodity and an ideology.
 - Craig David is presented as a sexually active, attractive, young, welcoming, confident, party boy through his products. However, in the privacy of his own home/life, this is not his true personality (as far as the assumption can go). He is most likely a very greedy, selfish, narcissistic and tired person that wastes a lot of money on girls, drugs and alcohol. Therefore, his star image has been constructed to be a commodity and promote that specific ideology that he may or may not even believe in.

SYNTHETIC vs ORGANIC
 - Craig David is blatantly a synthetically constructed artist who is heavily guided by his record label in his music creation process and his marketing. This is proven by his polished and mainstream style of music (that follows a formula used and copied in every song), website, and music videos (as seen above).

CONCLUSION
 - Stylistically, the campaign comes across as very attractive and caters for a very wide audience of male and female of ages 8 - 50. Overall, the campaign is very successful and promotes the products as efficiently as possible. 





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