First Marketing Plans

During an encounter with our Arts Advisor, Mark Spencer, he mentioned a line that would determine the course for my first marketing plan:

"Don't do social media or merchandise for the sake of it"

By this he meant that whatever we put out should have PURPOSE, meaning or a story. Thus I started with listening to all the 9 songs in the album and creating a narrative and track list based on that narrative.

The purpose of the album was to show that journey Music Vox made as we ventured into bigger projects, making from new discoveries and mistakes. But the importance of that journey was that we learned from the good and bad points , the album being the culmination of our shared experience as a CCA.

From that, I drew two stories: One that of a Fox, and One of a Young Kid. Both shared the same sentiments, of an up and down journey, the main characters making mistakes and learning from them. But ultimately I drew more to the fox tale as it had a stronger visual message in my opinion, and I developed a stronger storyline for it that included mentions of all 9 songs. (Click here to read)

What now...?

I had the meat of answers to the whys already, now I had to think of the whats and hows. Firstly with MERCHANDISE.

Merchandise was a great way to give something bigger meaning as it had a tangible form, and could allow audiences to connect more with the work that is put out. So I planned to have a small package that would contain 3 items:

1. Story/Lyric Book

2. Stickers/Illustration Cards

3. Thumb drive with the album songs

The book was inspired by that of Melanie Martinez's EP Crybaby. It followed the narrative of a character by the name of Crybaby, and her CD was packaged in a manner that had a storybook, featuring an illustration and poem for each song.

I really liked this idea of tying the merchandise to a story, so I developed some ideas of how I thought the MV Album's booklet could look like as well as sketched out some of the illustrations for other parts of the story:

The thumb drive and Illustrated Sticker/Card ideas were derived from a personal experience at a conference, where I encountered a musician by the name of Jean Tan. she sold her EP Hideaway in a nice little cardboard box containing a thumb drive and post cards with illustrations by her mother. As we see with KPOP fans, people do love physical albums, but the truth with the digital revolution is that CDs don't sell as much anymore which is why a thumb drive was a great alternative. It could store the music, and people could use it for their own use if they've grown out of it! Below are some of the thumb drives I thought would fit the narrative.

BOTTLE THUMB DRIVE: It reminded me of a message in a bottle, something that unlocked the discovery of someone's journey, which was fitting for this album as the audience was essentially sitting through and listening to our journey as Music Vox.

WOODEN THUMB DRIVE: Similar to the above, this type of thumb drive packaging reminded me of a treasure box of sorts, which would also be fitting for the narrative.

With much of the products settled, it was time to think of how to market it, which gave birth to the idea of a scavenger hunt! This would set the stage for my Social Media Marketing, and would reward audiences with not only an interactive experience leading up to the release of the album, but also with the album package through giveaways!

Here is how that would work:

Once I had the scavenger hunt idea, I planned for how the posts would look like on Instagram, our main platform. I wanted it to show the journey from where we started (Beginning) to our new ventures (this LP), then promoting the scavenger hunt and album streaming event we would be holding, and some other content! This would be the rough lineup of posts I thought would work nicely:

It would first begin with a three post banner of a BTS Reel of last year's work, followed by a BTS Reel of the LP in work, and a save the dates.

An announcement to the Scavenger Hunt and its details would be shared next, followed by a series of posts.

1) Location Posts: Hints to the locations of the scavenger hunt where people would have to solve something to unlock a code, which they will then send in to us and stand a chance to win the album package! Unbeknownst to them however, these codes would be song names!

2) After 1 winner is declared, 3 song names will be revealed and the post will include some behind the scenes specials - like songwriter's notes.

This would repeat 3 times and conclude with a series of promotion and thank you posts.

In conclusion, my plans followed the story of a Fox's journey through new discoveries - a metaphor for Music Vox's own new ventures, this album would be distributed not only through streaming platforms, but with a physical album package as well that could be won through a scavenger hunt campaign promoted on our social media. Journey was the main theme of it all, bringing our audience with us along the way.