If my pop promo were actually aimed to go into the music industry there would be different expectations. The music business is growing into a multibillion pound industry, thus making competition to become a well known, signed band is getting fiercer. Perhaps instead of us finding a song and getting people form our college to perform in a matter on months would be unreasonable in real life terms. The overall process would take longer as the band may have to go through stages to getting signed and the procedure of making the video will be longer as promotional tours, interviews and radio meetings would have to be organised. Equally, because our band Cobalt Rapture is somewhat similar in style and music kind to the Beastie Boys, Good Charlotte and Bink 182 there may be a lesser chance of them being signed by a major label.
Intergalactic conforms and subverts certain codes and conventions of existing pop promos. The conventions set about in terms of music video by Blink 182 are somewhat mirrored in our music video. I feel cobalt Rapture conforms to the boy band groups who are coming from a lower classed background who poke fun at other peoples lives whilst trying to have a good time. It conforms mostly by shot choice. We chose to include shots of the band messing around and doing things like playing tug of war to give to show their youthful image. But, there are codes the band have subverted for example appearance and music video. In today’s rap charts the majority of the artists are African males, having minimally dressed girls in their videos. In this was our video does not conform as neither of these are evident in the pop promo. We chose to use white males as there may be more of a gap in the market for this type of group. The girls were not featured in the music video as we wanted the promo to focus on the boys themselves going about their seemingly normal day. Although we market the band as organic, there are some synthetic factors to them. We did this so the band could be easily marketable, e.g. could do an advertisement for Coke. To ensure this image was successfully advertised to the public we had to make certain the perfect mix of characters was applied.
The campaign itself is very specific to the pop promo. Not only because we used still from the studio to make it but there is a very clear theme running throughout. This theme is sci-fi with a modern twist, shown by the costumes, set and alien included in the shots. But, possibly the images used for the digi pak should be more varied because if you hadn’t seen the pop promo you may think the style of music was not classic rap. In a way, it think perhaps even one of the inlays should have been the band in their normal attire to show what they are usually like as the video is all about being yourself.
The track itself, being rap music does not match the 21st centaury rap star image. However, it does meet the 90s rap star criteria and so there is some evidence to say the image and track match in a package like convention. To ensure everyone knows about the band there would have to be a heavily manufactured marketing campaign by the record label. The band would be fundamentally used to draw in a musical audience so the label may attempt to make the band more seem more ghetto and conform to the rapper stereotype.
At the beginning of this exercise we were given a brief to create a pop promo. Cobalt Rapture as campaign fully meets the brief as there are many marketable aspects of the band, whether they would be performing of endorsing other products. The successful developed image of the pop promo, poster and digi pak make the band as a whole appeal to the target audience of 15-25 years olds. By using the correct forms and conventions of the rap songs around today but also making the video original to the group I feel confident that we will reach our targeted audience.I feel the group may be signed to a lable like Def Jam records and this is a picture of one of the co-founders, Russell Simmons:
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