An exploratory study on the effect of a celebrity brand on a music artist's success

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An exploratory study on the effect of a celebrity brand

on a music artist’s success.

Ridge Williams 10004691

Amsterdam, August 19, 2016 (final)

Master Research Thesis Business Administration

Track: Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries First Supervisor: E. Dirksen MSc

Second Supervisor: J. de Groot MSc Academic year: 2015 -‐ 2016

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Ridge Williams who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

The celebrity brand of a music artist can provide lucrative opportunities for the success of a music artist. However it is unclear in the current research what practices managers and music artists alike should undertake to benefit from the positive effects of a celebrity brand. The aim in this qualitative exploratory study is to look into the

challenging contemporary understanding of celebrities within marketing management studies, moving beyond just celebrity endorsement and conventional brand positioning viewpoints, but rather see the music artist as a brand in itself. This study provides insights in what the point of view is of music managers, music experts and music artists working in the Netherlands, regarding the effect of the celebrity brand on the music artist’s success. Thus, the research problem that this thesis attempts to answer is: “In what ways is a music artist’s success affected by the artist’s celebrity brand?” The findings of this study indicate that the celebrity brand has an effect on the success of a music artist on different levels. First, personality traits that seem to be valued are

endurance, bravery, authenticity, sincerity and originality, to be imaginative and to have lyrics that show a deeper meaning. Secondly, In order to build a strong brand the

consumers should understand, recognize or identify with the brand to meet the demand of the consumers. Moreover, there needs to be a cohesive messaging on all media

platforms and the music artist his or her network should work together to make the brand of a music artist a reality. In other words, it is important for a music artist to showcase his or her brand in everything that he or she does to be successful.

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1 Introduction

The illustration and marketing of brands is as old as the beginning of human civilisation. However, it was not until the second half of the 20th_{century,
going
into
the}

21th_{century
that
personality
traits
of
people
were
affiliated
with
the
brand
and
even}

transferred to the brand (Moore & Reid, 2008). Aaker (1997) defined a brand personality as the personification of brands, where one associates a set of human characteristics with a brand. This occurrence could have only happened due to new media, such as print advertising, radio, TV, and e-‐marketing, which created a greater richness and more complex brand messaging (McCracken, 1986).

In addition to the branding of products and services, a brand personality can also be attributed to a celebrity brand, a concept that has led to lucrative opportunities for music artists and other celebrities in the past decades. Celebrity brands are those defined by a well-‐known public figures’ name. The public figures are more than just people; they have become a brand name (DiCarlo, 2004; Maloni, 2009). Celebrities have always played a vital role in marketing and advertising and have closed numerous endorsement deals with several corporations. These endorsements offer unique brand extension opportunities not only for celebrities who license their names for products, but also for those who develop products themselves, which inhibits more risk, but could also lead to higher financial rewards than as endorsers (Kowalczyk & Royne, 2013).

This is all in conjunction with these celebrities shaping their own multimillion-‐ dollar entities and becoming their own enterprises to control their images and to introduce products, or celebrity brand extensions, into the marketplace (Kowalczyk & Royne, 2013).

At the same time, marketers and managers are both eager to learn more about consumer behaviour in relation to brands to advance their understanding of branding

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and the architecture and implementation of brand-‐building marketing programs (Keller, 2003; Keller & Lehmann, 2003). This has led to most of the marketing literature being focused on the consumerist perspective of a brand (Fetscherin & Heinrich 2014; Keller, 2001), which leaves an interesting gap to research.

Moreover, previous research about celebrity brands is mostly focused on artists such as Andy Warhol, Thomas Kinkade (Kerrigan et al, 2011; Fillis, 2015), or a mogul family, for instance, the Beckhams (Parmentier, 2011). However, within today’s digitalized global world, music artists have become even bigger brands than ever. Although there seems to be a declining trend of legal music sales and it is impossible to stop the illegal downloading of music, some popular artists, such as Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, manage to defy these trends and exhibit superior selling power on their music products, particularly among young consumers around the world

(Charbonneau & Garland 2010; Chiou et al., 2011).

To what extent is their success dependent on how they brand themselves? By combining these two constructs, the interest is in the combination of a brand personality and a celebrity brand of music artists specifically. The aim is to look into the challenging contemporary understanding of celebrities within marketing management studies, moving beyond just celebrity endorsement and conventional brand positioning viewpoints, but rather see the music artist as a brand in itself. This research also contributes to better understanding of the importance of the branding of music artists, who have become moneymaking machines. The focus in this thesis will be on the

perspective of music management, music artists and experts on the branding of celebrity music artists.

Questions that arise are as follows: How important is a celebrity’s brand for a music artist to have success? Do those actors in music take the brand personality of a

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music artist into account when they create and share their music with the world? Based on this, I developed the following research question: “In what ways is a music artist’s success affected by the artist’s celebrity brand?”

This research question will be answered with the following three sub-‐questions: 1. How is the celebrity brand personality of a music artist constructed? 2. How can a music artist build a strong brand?

3. How important is it for a music artist to have a clear brand?

The first sub-‐question has its foundation in Aaker’s (1997) ‘‘Dimensions of Brand Personality’’. These dimensions are sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, and in this thesis, the research also addresses which associations the respondents had with different music artists and genres.

Sub-‐question 2 will be examined by making use of the customer-‐based brand equity (CBBE) model, including the six brand-‐building blocks: Salience, Performance, Imagery, Judgements, Feelings, and Resonance.

The third sub-‐question is based on the literature that states that music artists and celebrities are brands and that they need a brand in order to have longevity. These traits go beyond the music, they also address the image, endorsements deals, technology, social media presence, and collaborations with other companies or artists.

In general, this research aims to discover how important the celebrity brand of a music artist is, especially from the point of view of Dutch music managers, music artists, and music experts. The artists that the respondents address, however, are not limited to the Netherlands, but also include those artists that have a global reach. This study makes use of a qualitative study consisting of 10 interviews with music actors working in the music industry. The interviews were structured with predetermined questions with some room left for relevant questions that arose during the interview.

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This research will be relevant for music managers thinking about how they should properly brand their artists and for those music artists who are just entering the music business or who have the desire to rebrand themselves since it will be their peers who will share their information and experience.

This paper first provides the research design and methodology, followed by the theoretical framework where the existing literature relevant for the branding of music artists will be discussed. Afterward, the results are presented and analysed, ending with a discussion of the findings and an attempt to resolve or comment on the main research question.

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2 Research Design and Methodology

The aim of this chapter is to explain how the research was conducted and how the choices concerning the methodology were made. This chapter starts with the empirical research, followed by the conceptual research, and concludes with an overview of the respondents involved in the interviews.

2.1 Empirical research

This is a theory-‐oriented, conceptual thesis, supplemented with interviews. The research was conducted within the music industry, focusing on recording artists, managers, and experts predominantly in the Dutch Music Industry. In order to collect the data, 10 interviews were conducted. Among the respondents, there were four music experts, two music managers, and four recording artists, to make sure that there were different perspectives on the effect of a celebrity brand on a music artist’s success.

The foundation of this thesis is based on prior literature and existing research combined with the extensive research conducted explicitly for this study, which can lead to new insights into the relevance for music artists to create a clear brand.

The conceptual model is applicable for music managers and music artists in the European market and comparable markets. The overall design of this paper is an exploratory qualitative study supplemented with interviews, based on the theory. The data was collected by completing 10 in-‐depth interviews with people working in the music industry. In order to make sure that the respondents were less influenced by the way the questions were asked, the interviews were semi-‐structured, which means that there was a set of predetermined questions, but there was the opportunity for

improvised questions and the respondents had the ability to speak freely. This gives the most insight into the subject. The combination of theory-‐driven and practice-‐driven

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research makes the study more empirical and valid. Because a quantitative survey would not have been extensive enough and the interviewees’ opinions likely have been limited by the survey, an explorative qualitative study is more applicable here.

Nevertheless, the use of such a method does have some downsides. This method has a higher level of subjectivism, which is seen as its most critical weakness (Mantere et al., 2013). Furthermore, this type of qualitative study is time-‐consuming, labour

intensive, and often difficult to replicate (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Pope, Ziebland, & Mays, 2000).

However, an advantage of qualitative research is that the researcher can focus on phenomena in greater depth. It gives the opportunity to have a certain level of flexibility in the conduct of a particular study, and it can make connections between different aspects of people’s lives, in this case to what extent a music artist’s brand has an effect on an artist’s success (Griffin, 2004). For that reason, the benefits outweigh the

drawbacks.

The time period for this research is six months because the resources do not provide the opportunity for a longer period. The research sample consists of 10 respondents, which is a respectable number considering the extensive time it takes to code and analyse these interviews and the limited time available.

The variables were measured by making use of coding, i.e., taking raw data, in this study the interview transcripts, and raising it to a conceptual level (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). “The asking of questions” method was also used. Questions of the data need to be asked in the beginning all the way through the end of the analysis, and the questions asked over the course of the research project need to change over time. “Making comparisons” is another method useful for qualitative research. This method involves different answers from respondents being compared to each other and links

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being made between the different interview transcripts (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The analysis of the results was done in ATLAS.ti, which is a useful program for the process of qualitative data analysis (Friese, 2014).

2.2 Conceptual research

The reviewed papers were collected from the UvA Scripties Online and, secondly, from LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the university library. Regarding the history of the music industry, the time frame is broad, taking sources from all the way to the mid-‐20th_{century.
However,
since
the
music
industry
is
such
an
ever-‐changing}

industry, and taking into account that today’s digital age has actually made the change more rapid, it is not useful to use many old sources. Therefore, the time frame of this research will be the last 20 years because then it is less likely that the information in the articles is out-‐dated.

2.3 Sample

The research sample consisted of 10 respondents. All of the respondents were active in the music industry, either as a music manager, a music expert, or a music artist. Two of the respondents were music managers, while four were music experts and four were music artists. An overview of the research sample can be seen in table 1.

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Table 1. Overview of the sample

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3 Theoretical Framework

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the existing literature related to the topic. Logically, providing academic literature centred on the different kinds of branding, the branding of music artists, and the reason why there is a need for this research will be given. The literature review is divided into several parts, backing up the three sub-‐questions of the research question.

3.1 Branding

Brands have many valuable functions. On the basic level, they offer different associations to a firm. For customers, a brand can help distinguish a certain product or service from the competition, reduce risk, promise a particular quality, and/or instil trust. Brands reflect the complete experience that customers have with products or services and are important when measuring the marketing efforts, for example,

advertising, campaigns, and media channels. Lastly, brands are an asset in the financial sense. Therefore, brands have an influence on three primary levels: Customer market, product market, and financial market. The value generated by these functions is considered the brand equity (Keller & Lehmann, 2006; Pappu et al., 2005). Profitable brand management requires successfully designing and implementing a brand equity measurement system. Crucial to developing such a system is an understanding of how strong brands are built (Keller & Lehmann, 2003; Pappu et al., 2005).

Building a strong brand, according to the customer-‐based brand equity (CBBE) model, by Keller (2001), can be seen as a set of consequent steps, where each step is dependent on achieving the previous step successfully. These four steps represent necessary questions that customers consistently ask about brands, either consciously or subconsciously: (1) “Who are you?”, which is part of the brand identity; (2) “What are

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you?”, which represents the brand meaning; (3) “What do I think or feel about you?”, which are the brand responses; and (4) “What kind of association and how much of a connection would I like to have with you?”, which are the brand relationships (Keller, 2001).

The foundation of the four steps and of a strong brand is a set of six “brand-‐ building blocks” with the customers. To create valuable brand equity, it is important to put the right brand-‐building blocks in place and to then reach the peak of the pyramid. The six brand-‐building blocks are listed in the following sections.

Brand Identity

In order to have the right brand identity, creating brand salience with customers is needed. Salience refers to brand awareness, thus how easy it is for customers to recall or recognize a brand and what basic functions the brand provides to customers. That the customers understand which of their needs the brand is conceived to satisfy. Salience concerns the customers’ comprehension of the brand and consumers’ knowledge of in which product or service category the brand belongs (Keller, 2001).

Brand meaning

To provide meaning to a brand, it is crucial to design a brand image and define what the brand is characterized by and should mean in customers' minds. Regardless of the brand meaning type involved, to reach valuable brand equity, the brand must have strong, favourable, and unique brand associations—in that specific order.

Brand performance is ‘‘the way the product or service attempts to meet customers' more functional needs’’ (Keller, 2001, p. 16) and relates to the intrinsic properties of a brand, which can be inherent attributes of the product or service. Performance addresses whether the brand satisfies the utilitarian, aesthetic, and

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economic customer needs and wants. Examples are product reliability, style and design, and price (Keller, 2001).

Brand meaning also encompasses imagery, which addresses the extrinsic properties of a service or product, focused on how a brand meets the customers’ more abstract psychological and social needs. The Brand Personality Dimensions by Aaker (1997) are part of this building block (Keller, 2001).

Brand Responses

Companies have to look into how customers respond to the brand, its sources of information, its marketing activity, basically what customers feel or think about the brand. These brand responses are divided in judgements and feelings. Judgements emphasize customers’ personal point of view about the brand, with respect to how they combine different imagery and performance associations, such as the quality or

credibility of the brand. With feelings, the focus is on customers' emotional reactions to the brand related to the social currency the brand evokes, i.e., in what way does the brand impact customers’ feelings about themselves and their relationship within their community? Which feelings does the marketing program awaken? These feelings can be weak, strong, positive, or negative. However, they can only favourably influence

consumer behaviour if consumers consider them positive and internalize them when coming across the brand (Keller, 2001).

Brand Relationships

The final brand-‐building block is centred on the relationship and level of personal identification the customer has with the brand. Brand resonance refers to the nature of the relationship customers have with the brand and whether they feel in synch with the brand. Inherent to resonance is the extent to which customers have a psychological bond with the brand and how actively they participate with their loyalty. Basically,

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brand resonance illustrates an entirely harmonious relationship between the customers and the brand (Keller, 2001).

According to Keller (2001), a carefully manufactured and arranged brand-‐ building effort founded on the CBBE model can help firms realize brand resonance. Organizations that are able to realize brand resonance and affinity with their customers should gain many valuable benefits, for instance, more efficient and influential

marketing programs and greater price premiums. However, what if instead of looking at the brand of a firm, one researched the brand of an artist? The following section will address how people can be considered brands.

Figure 1’s illustration summarizes all the six building blocks related to the four steps of the CBBE model.

Figure 1. Customer-‐based brand equity pyramid

Source: Keller, 2001 3.2 Brand personality

Marketing concepts, such as corporate identity, image, and branding, are important strategies for organizations to undertake. When studying the world of branding, an interesting topic is when the marketing of brands intersects with the

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human personality, which leads to a brand personality. In consumer behaviour research, attention has been paid to the brand personality of different product and service

categories of corporations. Belk (1988) researched whether consumers express themselves in a brand, while another research, by Kleine, Kleine, and Kernan (1993), was more centred on the specific dimensions of the self in relation to a brand.

Aaker (1997) defined brand personality as ‘‘the set of human characteristics associated with a brand’’ (p. 347). In addition, Arora and Stoner (2009) indicated ‘‘brand personality provides a form of identity for consumers that conveys symbolic meaning for themselves and for others” (p. 273). As an illustration, the personality of Absolut vodka is described as cool and hip, whereas Stoli’s personality is seen more as

intellectual, older, male, and conservative. These brand personalities provide a symbolic or self-‐expressive function, contrary to product-‐related features, which provide a

utilitarian function for consumers (Keller, 1998).

Previous research suggests that brands possess personality characteristics (Aaker, 1997; Belk 1988; Freling & Forbes, 2005; Venable et al., 2005). However, the empirical exploration of this hypothesis has been handicapped by a limited conceptual understanding of the brand personality construct and the psychological mechanism by which it operates. Based on this, Aaker (1997) conducted research where he created a five-‐factor solution, which he called the Five Dimensions of Brand Personality. His results of an exploratory study suggest that consumers perceive brands to have five distinct personality dimensions, sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. The traits that belong to each dimension can be viewed in table 2.

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Table 2. Five Dimensions of Brand Personality

Source: Aaker, 1997

This framework is generalizable across product categories and goes beyond practical benefits. The generalizable solution enables researchers to understand the symbolic use of brands in general versus the symbolic use of brands within a particular category, which results in a comparable understanding of the symbolic nature of brands due to the utilitarian nature of brands (Aaker, 1997). However, the generalizability of Aaker's Brand Personality framework has received some criticism. Austin et al. (2003) concluded that the scale does not generalize to individual brands in a broadly defined product category, while Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) stated that it does not necessarily measure the brand personality, but rather a few dimension of a brand identity.

Clearly, previous research has shown that brands do possess personalities and that research respondents have given human characteristics to brands (Aaker, 1997;

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Venable et al., 2005). Evidence suggests that consumers choose products and services on the basis of whether they perceive the brand to possess the same personality traits as they do (Phau & Lau, 2001). Consumers use brands to express themselves, which is related to the self-‐congruent theory (Graeff, 1996). The self-‐congruent theory states that consumers reflect their self-‐concept with the image that a brand shares; consequently, consumers prefer those brands that are similar to their self-‐concept (Phau & Lau, 2001). At the same time, strong and favourable brand personalities could provide consumers with a feeling of emotional fulfilment, which provides further evidence of a brand personality congruence (Aaker, 1999).

In contrast, in an article by Keller (2005), he proposed another model that was more centred on the bigger picture of a brand and outlined what marketers and organizations need to do to properly build their brands. He describes six criteria for choosing brand elements. The first three are related to how marketers can build brand equity, while the last three are more defensive and focus on how marketers can advance and maintain brand equity in the face of different opportunities and constraints:

• Memorability: How easily can consumers recall the brand element and recognize it?

• Meaningfulness: How credible is the brand element, and how suggestive is it of its product category

• Likability: How aesthetically appealing is the brand element, and is it fun and interesting?

• Transferability: Can marketers use the brand element to introduce products in the same or different categories?

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• Ability to be protected: Can marketers legally protect the brand element? Can they shield it from the competition, or can others easily copy it? (Keller, 2005)

These brand elements have different advantages, and that is why it is important to mix and match them to maximize the potential of brand equity. Choosing different elements and designing some brand elements to be mutually reinforcing and share some meaning is important (Keller, 2005). While this is definitely interesting, this theory is more focused on the brand of a product and an evaluation from the consumerist side, while the Dimensions of Brand Personality are more applicable to a celebrity.

Many researchers have used the Dimensions of Brand Personality by Aaker (1997) as an inspiration for their own research (Phau & Lau, 2001; Venable et al., 2005), while it does have its challenges, it does seem to be reliable and valid. Previous research shows that researchers have not conducted extensive research on how the brand

personality dimensions are applicable to the brand of an actual human being.

In the next section, the celebrity brand will be further explained to then connect it with the brand personality, the six brand-‐building blocks to build a strong brand, and the research question of this paper.

3.3 Celebrity brand

Modern artists have become more than just singers, actors, or painters. The artist, arts management, and arts marketing are interconnected. The modern-‐day creative industries deal with consumers’ needs within political, economic, industrial, and global settings (Fillis, 2011; Horkheimer & Adorno 1972). A part of being an artist is the consumption perspective that goes beyond the art, which has created a celebrity brand (Kerrigan et al., 2011). A celebrity brand is a concept first shared by the

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mainstream media but has not yet been fully developed or researched in the academic literature, despite, the development of celebrity brands and brand extensions providing lucrative opportunities for celebrities, such as Beyoncé, the Olsen twins, Kanye West, and Martha Stewart (Kowalczyk & Royne, 2013).

Celebrity brands are defined as map-‐making cultural devices, functioning at the level of life-‐world praxis, as social forms, which embed consumers within networks of immersive resources (Kerrigan et al., 2011). Celebrity brands are not just important because of their economic value, but also as mediatised marketing accomplishments, where the celebrity personal brands trade in glamour and charisma and larger than life personas (Becker, 2008). As mentioned previously, this cultural logic of celebrity brands is not yet fully developed in the academic research; it raises questions and generates interest in research, which in turn suggests theoretical opportunities.

Roy and Moorthi (2009) found that the Brand Personality scale formed by Aaker (1997) is reliable and valid for not just products and services, but also for a celebrity and the brand, which means that the brand personality dimensions should also apply to a celebrity brand.

3.4 Brand communities

Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) introduced the idea of a brand community, which they define as ‘’a specialized, non-‐geographically bound community, and based on a

structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand’’ (p. 412). There are three elements that are the markers of a community. The first and most important component is consciousness of kind. Consciousness of kind is the intrinsic connection that the participants feel with each other and the collective sense that they are distant from those outside of the community. Consciousness of kind is shared consciousness, a way of

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thinking that goes beyond shared attitudes or alleged similarities. It is shared knowing of coming home (Gusfield, 1978). The second element that marks a community is the presence of shared rituals and traditions. Rituals and traditions refer to the community’s shared history, culture, and consciousness. Rituals “serve to contain the drift of

meanings; . . . [they] are conventions that set up visible public definitions and social solidarity” (Douglas & Isherwood 1979, p. 65). Traditions are sets of “social practices that seek to celebrate and inculcate certain behavioural norms and values” (Marshall 1994, p. 537). The third and last indicator is a sense of moral responsibility. This sense of moral responsibility is what produces, in times of threat to the community, collective action. This comes from a feeling of duty to the community as a whole and to the

individual members of the community. It is especially apparent in at least two critical and traditional community-‐building missions: (1) ‘‘integrating and retaining members’’ and (2) ‘’assisting brand community members in the proper use of the brand’’ (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 424).

The sense of a community is not limited to geographic boundaries. Originally, it was considered a place, but the rise of mass media changed that. Mass media revealed that virtually all of the trademarks of geographic community could be simulated, if not wholly or significantly replicated, in a mass-‐mediated world. It is important to note that the growth of modern marketing, consumer culture, and mass media follows near

identical development trajectories (Fischer, Bristol & Gainor, 1996; Jones 1995; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001).

The relationship between the fans and the musician is an example of a community coming to life in the music industry. Lady Gaga has her Little Monsters, Justin Bieber his Beliebers, and Beyoncé her Beyhive; clearly, these artists’ legions of

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fans have created a need to give them a name (Beller et al., 2014; Click et al., 2013; Whittington & Jordan, 2014).

For instance, Lady Gaga has cultivated a large, lively, and loyal following, where she has created a relationship with her fans, founded on her messages of self-‐acceptance and empowerment and through her active engagement on social media. There is a shared consciousness of kind. She is the Mother Monster for those devoted Little Monster fans (Click et al., 2013). The use of social media by celebrities has increased a sense of intimacy and far greater possibilities for interaction (Marwick & Boyd, 2011). The fans expect the communication between the artist and their fans to feel real and two-‐way. Secondly, the shared rituals and traditions can be seen in how they value their safe space, where one should feel free to be one’s self regardless of sexuality, race, or religion. Lastly, the moral responsibility is evident when looking at how the consumers protect and stick up for Lady Gaga whenever someone on social media or a media personality decides to negatively critique her. They feel the need to engage in collective action (Click et al., 2013).

3.5 Branding of music artists

A study that focused on the branding of contemporary music artists was

undertaken by Lieb (2013). In the 1980s, MTV became an important medium for artists to show and brand themselves. Before MTV, listeners heard music on the radio and then saw the artist when they bought the album, watched a television appearance, or went to a live performance. MTV gave audiences the ability to see artists as they heard their music in a music video, forever matching the artist’s image with their sound (Lieb, 2013). This was also the time that audiences started to have expectations about how their pop stars should look, which made music management react in how they wanted to

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present their artists. For some, such as Madonna and Tina Turner, these expectations meant being active in many media platforms to increase their success and reach, while those that were dominant female artists in the 1970s, but did not have the looks and charisma, had to rebrand themselves rapidly (Lieb, 2013).

Many female artists who have since achieved marvellous success have used the following formula: Releasing rebellious music that was tailored to the male gaze and expressed male fantasies about women, yet carried messages that resonated with women. Interestingly, female music artists who have longevity and success

predominately rely on sex appeal. Modern-‐day media in the form of television, magazines, blogs, and websites have provided artists a platform to be on display 24 hours a day (Lieb, 2013).

In her research, Lieb (2013) created a model called the Lifecycle Model for Female Popular Music Stars, which she defines as “the predictable path a female star must follow as she navigates the music industry and works to capture the public’s attention” (Lieb, 2013, p. 87). She stated that this model is not perfect and there definitely are exceptions to the rule. Based on 21 interviews with professionals in the field, she concluded that new performers follow a similar path in their careers based on sexualized stereotypes. The ‘‘good girl” is the first stage, and then as she ages, she will become ‘‘the temptress’’, the bad girl that seduces. According to Lieb (2013), if female pop stars have the desire to continue their careers after the temptress stage, they have six options: “Change of focus”’, “diva” (the unattainable celebrated female pop star, such as Mariah Carey), “whore”, “exotic” (which is more expected to happen in a racist culture for women of colour), “provocateur”, and “hot mess” (those artists that engage in public self-‐destruction, such as Britney Spears). In her study, Lieb (2013) showed strong

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evidence for the success of female pop stars that follow this lifecycle model. In the next sections, the branding of several kinds of music artists is discussed.

Jazz music artists

The way that leading UK professional jazz musicians are being branded is an interesting topic to address. Macaulay (2008) found that all his respondents, who were Jazz musicians, felt that jazz music is under-‐represented in the broadcast media to some degree and actually misrepresented in the overall media. The media has created this brand of how jazz should be presented: Excessive drinking, drug abuse, and premature death are all part of the Jazz lifestyle, which seems comparable to the ‘‘hot mess’’ stage of Liebs (2013) Lifecycle Model for Female Popular Music Stars’’. Mainstream media is more focused on the obvious things that they consider to be innovative, such as an artist adding a sitar to his or her performance, rather than noticing when someone is

harmonically or melodically innovative. Jazz should not be seen as “specialist music”; it should be part of mainstream programming (Macaulay, 2008).

However, interestingly, the list of jazz musicians who have self-‐destructed or died prematurely includes many of the greatest names in the jazz catalogue: Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Chet Baker. Bradshaw and Holbrook (2007) focused on the career of Chet Baker in their paper by drawing on the marketing theory artist, by grounding the notion of the self-‐destructive jazz musician within a broader historical framework. Chet Baker had a tumultuous past that included

substance abuse, and his tortured soul was reflected in the sound of his music (De Valk, 2003). His self-‐destructed display attracted and repulsed audiences at the same time. Paradoxically, Chet’s conspicuous decline proved to have strong market potential. Chet’s

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Baker self-‐destructive life choices could be considered part of his success and his celebrity brand personality.

Pop & R&B music artists

Beyoncé, who was the star of one of the biggest girl groups of the last century, gained bigger fame when she became a solo artist, having sold over a 100 million records worldwide and performing in sold out stadiums (Davies, 2013). She also created a global brand for herself, endorsing fashion labels to fragrance bottles and sealing a $50 million multi-‐year deal with Pepsi. In 2008, she started her own

entertainment company, Parkwood Entertainment, to become self-‐managed and be in total control of her own image (Davies, 2013). In 2009, she introduced the world to her alter ego Sasha Fierce. Sasha Fierce could be considered Beyoncé’s most preposterous yet accomplished industrial innovation yet. It was a smart, perhaps a brilliant

diversification, like Toyota’s introduction of Lexus, a separate marque but one that carried the reputation of the established car manufacturer. It also earned her cruel smiles as well as plaudits. Ellen (2009), for example, acknowledged that, while Beyoncé is highly skilled and universally appealing, “She is so steeped in professionalism that what should be magical can become mechanical”. According to Harris (2008), Beyoncé and other celebrities have turned fans into worshippers of an unattainable ideal. Beyoncé has publicly embraced the American model of success by diversifying into clothing lines, record labels, and sports clubs (Cashmore, 2010).

Hip-‐hop music artists

Hip-‐hop culture has found its way into mainstream consumption and has proved to be a lucrative field for many marketers. Branding and hip-‐hop have both been

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successful in reaching and connecting global communities, while providing social capital (Cox Edmondson, 2008; Gibbons, 2007). Interestingly, hip-‐hop artists are more than mere rappers or singers; for them, hip-‐hop is an art form, a form of self-‐expression and social commentary, a philosophy, and a lifestyle. This creates their hyphenated

identities, according to Darling-‐Wolf (2008). In today’s digitalized world, especially, the media is evolving beyond a generic audience and more towards fostering a mutual conversation, a community. Through innovations, hip hop artists have been able to brand themselves as powerful tools for marketing, branding, and brand managers, since they showed they were a channel to enter the psyche of consumer-‐centric communities that have previously been thought to exhibit heterogeneous traits (Wilson, 2011).

However, being a powerful tool for marketing is not only exclusive to hip hop artists since other music genres, such as Indie and Punk, have also shown they are part of the identity of generations of consumers (Hesmondhalgh, 2008). Hip-‐hop artists have only further expanded this phenomenon. Product placement and the references to brands in lyrics have become such an integrated part of hip-‐hop music, enriching the personality of the artist and the brand (Bryant, 2008).

3.6 Concluding remarks of theories

The branding of music artist has been researched to a certain extent; however, previous research mostly focused on the branding of female music artists related to feminism or was more focused on the endorsement deals of music artists. Extensive research has not been conducted on the branding of Dutch music artists. There are still many gaps in the existing literature. Adding to this literature, this research will examine the point of view of those working in the music business. Where music artists are

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considered a brand, the focus will be on music managers, music experts, and music artists from the Netherlands.

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4 Results

To answer the sub-‐questions of this thesis, in this chapter, the results obtained after conducting the interviews are presented. The semi-‐structured interviews were held with those working in the Dutch music industry, either as music experts, music managers, or music artists. In total, there were 10 interviews conducted with five males and five females. Four of the respondents were considered music experts, while four were recording music artists, and two worked as music managers. The interviews were conducted in Dutch, though the interview quotes relevant for the discussion and

conclusion of this research have been translated into English.

4.1 Findings on the brand personality of a music artist

As already discussed, this part of the study highlights the aspects of a musician’s brand personality, as well as what aspects are beneficial for such an artist to be

successful as a music artist. Clearly, most respondents felt that the definition of an artist’s success differs per person, but for the majority, it was about longevity in the music business, to not only have a few big hits, but to actually make a career for several years. The study emphasised the importance of having endurance or perseverance, which five of the ten interviewees emphasised, while three respondents said that it is important to be brave.

Quotation 1| Interviewee 6 | Music artist

Besides the fact that someone if how do you say that, need to have his own specific attributes, why someone is likable, so the speak, I think it’s mostly important to have something as perseverance, and I think in the music business there are only a few that just make music and from one day to the other all of the sudden are just there, and that it has more to do with, yes that has more to do with who has the longest breath, of course, your music needs to be good, but with just that you haven’t arrived nowadays. Nowadays, there are so many that make music, good music as well. So yes perseverance, in English, you would also say resilience, that you are resilient and that you can take setbacks and that you learn from them.

Quotation 2| Interviewee 4 | Music artist

Persevere, I found a good one, push through or how do you say that, having endurance, because there are a lot of musicians on this Earth, and if you want your music to be heard, you need to

An exploratory study on the effect of a celebrity brand on a music artist's success