Constructing a Mainstream Artist

We have decided to construct a female mainstream pop artist aged 17, called Rosie Dixon. She will have come into the limelight initially from British Talent Show, The X Factor.(For our model posing as Rosie, we will use Hannah Froggett).

One of the reasons she probably got so far in the competition and gained popularity from an audience is her sob story: her mum and dad are divorced and she lives with her single dad because her mum is addicted to drugs. She used to sing with her twin brother, but he unfortunately died a few years earlier.

(Rosie on the X factor)

Target Audience

Our target audience will be white working class teenage girls, because firstly it is this audience that play a big part in raising sales in the music industry, and also because our artist would be successful if her target audience can relate to her or inspire to be like her. Later on however, when she gets older and this market can't relate to her just as much, we will sexualise her image more to broaden the target audience by making her appeal to males also.

(Rosie Dixon)

Props

Our artist Rosie Dixon will have a prop that will cause her to get popularity from sympathy. She will have a bracelet that she always wears, which will have apparently been given to her by her brother before he died. This could inspire girls to all go out and buy bracelets that look similar to associate themselves with her - merchandise opportunity!

Costume and Hair

Our artist needs to be able to fit in with the mainstream culture for her audience to be able to associate with her, and this needs to come mostly from her image as well as her music. We will construct her image to be the 'hipster' fashion, because this is what a lot of her target audience tend to be like currently, and if the latest fashion changes, we can always reconstruct her image, which is a popular idea amongst other artists in the industry.

This involves items of clothing including patterned leggings (galaxy style is popular), denim or camouflage jackets, flowery skirts or denim shorts, creepers or vans, and crop tops or denim shirts or oversized jumpers and tank tops. Hipsters also tend to wear large 'nerd' glasses and beanie hats, along with bright or exaggerated lipstick, or flowers in their hair.

In terms of hair, the hipster style is usually loose and wavy, or big and backcombed, and bright in colour such as blonde or light brown, with often dip-dyes of more extreme colours like pink or green.

Another hairstyle that is popular is a pale-washed colour for the full head of hair. Hairstyles are often a big factor in the way an audience may inspire to want to be like someone, where popular artists usually have fans that get their hairstyle because that hairstyle is associated with them. For example, 'the bieber flick', Rihanna's bright red hair, or Cheryl Cole's purply-brown loose hair. This worked well alongside Chery's advert for L'Oreal to promote her hair almost as a separate product. Our artist therefore will have loose long blonde hair, which can be dip-dyed to create a more unique style at a later date if she needs to gain more popularity in terms of her image.

Music Video Concept and Song Cover
Rosie's first music video will be a promo video that relates to her life, in order for her audience to 'get to know her' and to build up a better relationship between the audience and artist. It will start off in black and white, where the song will start off slow, and this will represent Rosie's depressing past, which will make the audience sympathetic and connect with the artist, especially those who can relate to her from her past situations. In this part of the video she walks across a bridge to represent her entering her new life and also 'water under the bridge'. She notices a door, which is in colour, to show her bright opportunity which she can now embrace, which she walks through. The later end of the video will be in colour, with loads of bright background and costume, with Rosie wearing butterfly wings, to represent her recovery 'flying away' into her new perfect life of happiness and fame. This portrays a message of 'everything will be okay in the end' which is usually inspirational with the target audience through other artists, and therefore Rosie will also use this concept, with her own story, to gain popularity and be inspirational to many teenage girls.The whole video will be done in typical public working class settings, like a car park, or a shopping centre, because this way our artist looks like a 'normal' person that can appeal and relate to the target audience with places they are familiar with.

Dancers will also be used, which firstly represent that Rosie Dixon could act as a collective with her audience, as if she admires involvement with her fans, but also dance routines make successful music videos because they grasp audience attention, and with the use of unique dance moves, a certain 'dance' can then be associated with the video and make the video memorable, to gain our artist more popularity into the mainstream musical culture. Examples of this are from artists like Beyonce, or on a more extreme less relevant note, Psy's Gangnam Style.

Here are our sketches for the music video:

As it is her first video, Rosie Dixon will do a cover of a song as opposed to her own song, so it is something that an audience are already familiar with, and so can connect with her from the beginning, and also they can use it as a talking point, comparing it to the real version, which already brings publicity to Rosie within her audience, and within the media. We have chosen for this to be a cover of Katy Perry's 'Firework' because this is a song that has been popular with the target audience already, and is also a very good song to represent the message that Rosie Dixon is trying to portray in her music video. This means that the use of colour and fireworks can be an essential element in the music video in the last part of the video where it represents her brand new life, as a climax to the song. We have chosen to use this as the cover, because the voice suits the image of Rosie that we are trying to create, and we thought that it would work well alongside the depressing earlier part of the video, where the later part of the video would sound closer to Katy Perry's version because it is more upbeat and sounds happier, to show a significant difference between a depressing past and a happy ending. This version, because it sounds different to the original, will be more modern and therefore more popular in the current industry.

'Firework Cover' by Charlotte Wakefield

'Firework' by Katy Perry

Press and Publicity

At first we will make sure there is positive press about Rosie Dixon, to make her look popular, innocent, successful and have a good relationship with an audience. This includes things like the good things she might do, like making friends with other respectable celebrities and making her look promising for the fashion columns of magazines to promote herself and identity. In terms of personal promotion, she could go on chat shows and radio shows and have emotional talks about her past and how much she loves her new life to make an audience feel empathetic and deidcated to her. She will also have her own Facebook and Twitter pages where she will post all of her succesful things and connect with her fans. Here she can also advertise tour dates and upcoming single releases in terms of marketing, which can also be done on television adverts and magazine inserts, because she is aimed at a mainstream culture target audience. Her album will be called 'Recovery' to represent her life, and her tour will also be called this, as well as the official tour poster having the same artwork as the album cover, to promote the album, or for the album itself to promote the tour.

Facebook Page

Here is Rosie Dixon's Facebook page where fans can interact with her and find out what she is up to, which also acts as a central place for marketing (e.g. to promote her album).

Website

Here is Rosie Dixon's official website containing everything about her for her fans to use.

When her popularity starts to go, possibly as a publicity stunt she could date a successful male celebrity such as Louis from One Direction, to gain her positive media attention, and also more attention from her target audience again, who is the same target audience as the person she is dating. Positive media attention can also come from things like Rosie meeting inspirational people who the audience relate with, or bringing out her own perfume or clothing line.

 If all else fails, then negative puplicity will have to be used to gain the media attention again if popularity drops, because that is what the media is most interested in and gains the most interest from audiences and acts as a topic of conversation. Here the tabloids could take embarassing pictures of her like throwing up at a club, or cheating on Louis with another man, or taking drugs and being compared to her mother. 

(embarrassing paparazzi photo of Rosie throwing up)

Inspirations

We have constructed our mainstream artist from inspirations of existing very popular artists that we have compared, to create a sense of overall image and costume and music sound that is popular to our audience and the music industry today, which would make our artist more likely to be successful. We have looked at the backgrounds of artists too, in order to create a story behind out artist - this includes the idea that she grew up having a rough life and had to try hard to get where she is now, and the idea that she went on a talent show to give her that chance. Overall, this leads to inspiration from artists such as Rita Ora, Amelia Lily, Lucy Spraggen, Ke$ha, Rihanna, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and Jessie J, brought together to create one new artist. 

References
As we worked on this as a group, here are the other group member's blogs:

•  libertyshawa2media.blogspot.com
• rosyanncourseworka2.blogspot.com

For the full range of photos of Rosie Dixon, click HERE