Sexuality and Politics in Music Marketing
Paper Due Date
Introduction
The music industry is a complex and multifaceted structure of relationships, views, perceptions, tastes, and opinions, which creates the audience and artists. While each of the artists aims at bringing individuality and its unique style to surprise, attract and retain his listeners, there are numerous concepts and elements of our social environment, which build on collective interest and create debate. Understanding of the differences between the worldviews on such critical social elements, as political environment, sexuality, religion, allows companies use this knowledge as marketing instruments of modern businesses. To narrow down the discussion, this document will focus on only two elements: sexuality and politics.
Godin (2009) argues, that one of the critical mistakes of marketers is to assume that all of us have the same worldview and expectations, that the narrative is there to accept from the external environment and the propositions, built for us by the organizations.The truth is that worldview is nothing more that what each of us, as individual does, once we remain alone. In other words, the roles we play in the social environment, to which we belong are often not the accurate reflection of "self" and in order to be able to reach out the public, an artist should be able to differentiate and create the debate, causing the dialog, clash of opinions or at least a resonance in those "hidden selves", which lie deep inside each of their listeners. With that in mind, only by the understanding of how the target and the ideal listener or fan reacts to the art in emotional and cognitive ways can allow the artists truly connect with their audience and craft the personal image, which creates strong and long-lasting personal bond between the artist, his art, and his audience.
The purpose of this research paper is to look at the influence of the concept and view on sexuality and politics on the marketing and brand image of music artists in the contemporary business and social context. The questions, which underpin the study are the following:
How modern music artists use sexuality and politics as techniques to connect with their audience?
How does the work of these artists embody sexuality and politics?
What is the difference between sympathy and empathy as the fundamental strategy to apply these techniques?
Why different formats of relationships between art and sexuality and art and politics can be equally effective?
Branding in Music Industry
Branding is very personal and the message that the firm or an individual want to pass on to their public is dependent on their concept of the ideal client. Branding in the music industry, more than in many others, is based upon an emotional component of the brand, where the physical element is important, but serves as a complementary strategy for reaching out to the audience and building on customer experience. In this sense, the music industry is one of the best examples to analyze the impact and use of emotional marketing techniques to connect with the target audience and build on bonds, which can guarantee loyalty and trust from the audience. Aaker (2012) notes that emotional engagement is critical to building intangible relationships between the clients and the company, and as much as we may fight the emotion it will continue overwriting our logic. Music artist is a brand. It is evident that most of the brands in the music industry are built upon the emotional connection, where customer psychology is the key to success.
The question that should be asked at this stage is What are the most effective emotional components and internal motives to connect with an artist? While all of the individuals are different, we collectively constitute the social environment. Our comfort zones are defined by the cognitive and emotional reactions which are considered normal by those, who we include in this comfort zone and this specific social group. This does not mean that we will have similar or identical emotional and cognitive response to the same element, such as sexuality and politics. But what it actually constitutes is that each of us will have opinion and reaction to these components of the social interphase. Godin gives these concepts a function of social frames, determining the worldview of individuals and constituting the tools, used by the artists (Godin 51).
Marketing in the music industry and the brand strategies of artists often use this knowledge of common components of the social environment to direct manipulate the feelings and emotions of their audience (Ler 45-56). Emotional branding of music artist is built upon the personal story and image, which is created to tell the “truth” to the audience by applying the frame on the existing worldview of a listener,but not attempting to change the worldview of this public.
Sexuality and Politics as Techniques in Music Marketing
Sexuality
Sexuality is a common frame in the music industry as the subject concerns different categories of people and the changing social environment builds on the variety of views and emotional responses to this concept. The link with sexuality gives artists special individual signature, connecting to the audience in an emotional and cognitive ways. Music is an art and the sexual element is essential for the personal prism of perception of this art. With that in mind, most of the individuals will inevitably build a sexual image of a music artist with whom they connect. Artists use a variety of techniques to incorporate the concept of sexuality in their branding. One of the mostly seen practices is the use of direct association to introduce sexual context and the image through cognitive elements and message of the lyrics. Madonna´s use of sexuality as the feminist artist is one of the good examples, as the artist´s sexual rolling, changing sexuality image over time and such songs, as "Like a Virgin", stage simulated sex and even chaining herself to bed are aggressive and strong techniques of building response through sexuality. Madonna does not try to change individual worldviews on sexuality but puts the frame on the worldview of her audience. Once criticized for showing the degrading image of women on stage, she responds: "But I chained myself! I am in charge." As a result, the artist is one of the long-lasting stars of the international stage,wich strong appeal for sexuality and the political and social message, sent through most of her art pieces(Fumarel 1). Another interesting example is the Elton John brand, promoting the social image and raising minority issues of sexuality through his art. While the artist composes and performs his art on stage with the image of sexuality, attributed to beauty, care, and suffering, as a classic component of emotional response to music, the author actively participates in social events and passes the message of gay minority across the international scene through his audience and critics, building on debate and clashes of opinions. As such, the artist statement during the interview to Sky News that “Times have changed. ..We live in a different time. If Jesus Christ was alive today I cannot see him as the Christian person that he was Pope Francis has done a "wonderful" job so far,,, it's all basically about love and taking everybody in inclusiveness.” (Sky News, 2014) This controversial strategy not only builds on brand recognition but also gives continuity to his art, linking it to social and political context.
When it comes to the discussion of sexuality in the music industry and art in general, the question of sexuality receives a lot of attention as the variety of techniques, used to build on sexuality in music is growing at a rapid pace. Critics debate about the degree of sexualization of an artist, which can still bring the positive image and maximize the return on an audience. Indeed, it is interesting to look at the public differentiates the image of such artists as Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez as opposed to Lady Gaga and Beyoncé. While the first two artists are criticized for an over-sexualized image, Lady gaga and Beyoncé embrace the image of sexuality in a more traditional form. These images cause different emotional and cognitive response of the audience but demonstrate that both marketing strategies are effective.
Politics
One of the interesting views on the society is presented by Godin (2008), who notes that people continue to live in tribes, centuries after the concept of a tribe was developed. This need determines the focus on the concepts of leadership, management, informal and formal rules and norms, accepted by the social environment. Individuals are equally subjects and object of political influences. While the ways in which we relate to political views and situations can differ significantly based on our personal identity, culture, religion and many other aspects, we all have an opinion. Marketing strategies widely use this opinion and the worldview to build, raise and strengthen the image of a brand. When it comes to the music industry, Godin (2009) argues that the music is social and the story and movement are critical to the success of a record or a brand, similar to the way the movement and story are important for politicians in their campaign.
The question that we can look at in the context of techniques used by the artists to embed politics in their art is the following: How can the political candidate or party contribute to the image of an artist or a music brand by the reverse use of the technique?In other words, the research looks at the ways, the use of music component in politics "sticks" labels and raises brand awareness of the artists. Some of the most recent examples can be found in the 2016 election campaign. Jamieson (2016) illustrates how the image of a singer can be linked to a political view or a candidate specifically. Hillary Clinton´s campaign uses female artists, such as Katy Perry as the core for her public appearances. Such songs as Roar and Stronger are often associated with the immigration reform and combating terrorism message. On the contrary, the recent appearance of Donald Trump with the We Are the Champions at Republican National Convention, created a strong resonance in the political and music environment, raising the discussion on minority rights and creating strong negative response from sexual minority public, who argue that the entire campaign of Trump is the offence to the human rights and linking it to the song from one of the major gay rights activists (Kornhaber 1).
Some of the classic political messages, used by famous singers also reflect the techniques, which these artists use to connect with their public. Bob Dylan and his song Times They are a-Changin in 1964, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh with their song Get Up, Stand Up, which saw the light in 1973, Steel Pulse´s composition No More Weapons from 2004 are just some protest songs, demonstrating the political expression in songs.
Songs and an artist brand, in general, are widely used to express the political message. One of the difficulties of using this technique, however, is to get a response from the public, which will adequately reflect the situational context in which the music was written. Frameworking the political message in the music is significantly more difficult than sexuality, as the degree of involvement, knowledge ad awareness of the audience is generally lower than in the sexuality context.
Empathy and the Relationships between Music, Sexuality, and Politics
It is possible to argue that the relationships and the depth of techniques used by artists to embody politics and sexuality in their art are different. At the same time, the examples of techniques and the actual use of these elements in music demonstrate that the complexity of the relationships and the deepness of embodying these concepts into the brand illustrate that the effect of these techniques is not impacted by the above. Many marketers and individuals, in general, confuse the concepts of empathy and sympathy in building their marketing campaigns. Empathy refers to the judgment of the audience response based on the personal perception, while empathy, on the contrary, builds upon the respect to diversity and acceptance of differences between people. This seconds Godin´s idea of the frame for diverse worldviews (Bennet 15-17).
While it is possible to build a frame for the specific element in the marketing, it is not viable to change the individual worldviews, which constitute the profile of the specific artist-audience. Based on the above, it is important that artists and marketers in art industry avoid Golden Rule technique, which places sympathy in the center of the branding strategy. Empathy as the strategy of emotional marketing for sexuality and politics, as well as other social elements is an adequate approach, which allows good and the long-term connectivity with the public.
Conclusion
Sexuality as a component of the music brand strategy is central to the success of artists in the contemporary environment, at the same time, the wide use of sexuality and different techniques, applied by the artists are major sources of criticism. The subject of sexuality in the music industry is often discussed and solved as merely empowered, such as in the case of Madonna or Lady Gaga, or exploited, attributed to the over-sexualized publicity of Miley Cyrus. The complexity of the sexuality use in music as a technique lies in the variety of responses, where an inaccurate application of techniques may raise wider social context of the role of women in society. Additionally, critics of using sexuality in art note that his techniques are more encouraged by female artists, building on the image of weakness and powerless of women in the society (Whiteley 38-57). On the other hand, the examples of Elton John and other artists, building on this technique as a social and even message can counterargue the statement above.
The political message can be transferred through songs and cognitive behavior of an artist,as well as the use of the musical component in political campaigns and the image of politically active individuals, in general, can impact and construct the image of a music brand or an artist. The relationships between political message and the music are more complex in view of the knowledge and the degree of relationships, needed to receive the message and frame it for different worldviews. The use of this technique can give strong connectivity with the public,but is often criticized for the natural negative response of those, who have different views or are directly and indirectly affected by the message or image, created through the relationships between art and politics.
Works Cited
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Jamieson, Amber. Pop for politics: how candidates brand themselves with music. The Guardian [Online]. Web 1 March 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/01/rock-and-folk-tunes-on-the-campaign-trail
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