The Country Genre
Let's face it the country genre is dying! While it may still be popular among southern American's it has never become a vastly international genre, I mean, when was the last time you heard a Canadian or Nigerian talk about country music. The reason why people shy away from it is because of its overdone melodies and overused cadences and lyrics. In AICE Media AS level we are required to use marketing techniques to introduce a new artist in the country genre. When coming up with a marketing campaign the biggest thing was brainstorming how we could remove the stereotypical ideas of country and create a new "look" to the country genre.
Brainstorming Our Talent
We wanted to create a younger artist and someone with a compelling and touching origin story. By creating a younger girl with a big dream, she can adhere to the younger audience of girls and attract them with empowering lyrics and teach by example using relationships that went badly and how she learned from it. By creating a story for her, coming from a small city in Texas, people can relate to her feel like they can reach the same heights as her. Because of this, we chose to call her Journee, which is a play on the word "Journey" which is to go from one place to another. We made her story is a journey as she comes from a small city but gets her big break in New York City. From rural to urban or from rags to riches, she came from nothing which is something that people can relate to. A success story is something that attracts people and makes them buy into a person literally and metaphorically.
We also gave her multiple talents such as the ability to play guitar, piano, and guitar. This versatility would allow the ease of music to be created as the only person that is needed is the talent. This means less money spent on bands and production equipment (including the fact that the guitar is an instrument that only requires acoustics and speakers).
Neotraditional Country
We marketed the project to adhere to multiple audiences. Within the genre of country, most of the target audience is older people falling under the ages 44-65+ according to brandongaille.com. To manage this offset we created Journee to be in the "Neotraditional Country" genre. The reason why artists like Carrie Underwood and Steve Earle are so well known is because of their fusion of traditional country vocals and contemporary background music and melodies. This country and pop fusion is famous among younger groups and will attract people from both genres making Journey more socially acceptable among different demographics.
