According to Brad Sago in an article written from Executive Update (2001), "'Branding' refers to the process of making a service, product, or company (or association) stand for a set of ideas in the minds of customers. When seeing an association's name or logo, consumers link thoughts and feelings toward the organization". Artists decided to create a brand to create an image to the public. A good and strong image will have the target audience view the artist positively and will link the image to aspects and characteristic the artists wants to known for. In the music industry, branding is extremely important, specially for new artist like Helena Hanna as it will add to the audience's first impression of her, and help her become recognizable and memorable. Anna Paula from The Global Brand Appeal (2012) suggests that a well-known brand is what will encourage fans to purchase the artist's albums and purchase tickets to come to their shows. Creating a successful brand and increasing name awareness helps artists stand out from the rest.
The brand will be a complete representation of the artist, and because of this, I had to consider some really important aspects, as the Design Council says the brand is: "The big idea - what lies at the heart of your company, values - what do you believe in, vision - where are you going, personality - how do you want to come across?" My goal with the brand of Helena is to focus on her personality and values, specifically the visual identity. I managed to create a sense of visual identity for Helena, and I believe it was represented through the web design and digipack design. These designs incorporate one cohesive look, that are based on the look and feel of the music video, creating a really strong house style and increasing audience recognition. The designs for my products are an identification system that uses different fonts, colours and images to appear "different" from other digipacks or websites of the same genre.
The use of real artwork will give my digipack a unique selling point, giving it a original appearance that will encourage consumers to buy the product and will improve my artist brand. This is because using real artwork to sell a product lends allure or authority to the message they are trying to convey, and it's a sign of affluence as it is part of the good life, it is part of the creative, rich and beautiful. Additionally, it encodes a sense of cultural authority as paintings are seems as a form of dignity making my products superior to any other. The artworks in the music video and the digipack denote two almost contradictory things at the same time. Wealth and Spirituality. Implying that the products are both a luxury and a cultural value.
I wanted the website to portray Helena's brand as much as possible. This is because in recent years the technological and digital boom has affected in the way consumers behave. Consumer voices are now louder and much more public than ever thanks to social media platforms like instagram and facebook. That is why I wanted my artist to have a really strong social networking presence . I achieved this by featuring in my website links to Helena Hanna's social medias, recent news and articles of Helena, and links to buy her album. Additionally, the website features the house-style colors of the artist, and the iconic rose that's is also seen in the animation of the music video and the back cover of the digipack. This reinforces Helena's brand and creating brand synergy, making the message that I'm trying to convey even more powerful.
Another feature that plays a really big role in Helena's brand is her activism with mental health issues and suicide that's portrayed in the music video. This not only will raise awareness on such an important topic, but it will also positively affect her image, giving her a good reputation as the voice of many suffering kids that don't have the platforms to speak up.
Since the music industry is a very competitive industry, creating a brand is vital to differentiate Helena from the competition. I accomplish this by including a consistent look and feel throughout different platforms and a brand identity that will support and represent social issues like mental health.