media branding research

1. Brand identity

2. The Task
• Consider the genre within which you are working:
Pop
• Find some album cover(s) for bands in that genre:
Rita Ora, Maroon 5, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Sam
Smith
• See if you can find associated imagery (from videos,
singles, websites etc). Can you identifiy:
Brand Identity
Key Images
Key Features

3. Rita Ora

4. These images have been taken from Rita Ora’s first album ‘Ora’
and her two most recent singles ‘Poison’ and ‘Body on me’ ft
Chris Brown. In each of the images you can see that Rita is the
main focus and the centre of attention. It seems that her aim is to
make her face her brand image so that her fans can identify her
easily. All of the images appear to represent her in a provocative
way through either smoky eye makeup, or her bold lipstick. This
makes her seem more appealing to a wider audience base as
many girls will want to copy her look, whilst many boys will be
attracted to her overtly sexualised image. You can also see that
she seems to be sticking with a black, red and white colour
scheme for her promotional packaging. This colour scheme then
becomes identifiable with the artist and appears on most of her
branding.

5. Maroon 5

6. The branding that is used for Maroon 5’s album covers and
promotional packaging is perhaps more diverse in
comparison to other pop style branding. They tend to use
more graphic imagery, as shown on their album cover for
‘Overexposed’, or basic imagery like the cover for their
album ‘V’. However, one thing that stands out as consistent
throughout their packing is their band logo/title. They use
the same font for their band name/ logo on all of their
products. This makes the band more identifiable when their
name appears on websites, videos and social media. The
band don’t tend to use many images of themselves and this
may be the reason why many people only recognise the
band’s lead singer Adam Levine. Although you could argue
that he acts as part of the bands branding himself, hence
why they use his image a lot.

7. Ed Sheeran

8. Ed’s branding is very simplistic. Again like many other pop
artists he uses his face as the focus for his branding and we
can this demonstrated in his album cover for ‘Plus’ and his
single for ‘I see fire’. Other than this his promotional images
are very plain and simplistic, with the cover for his album
‘Multiply’ only featuring a black ‘X’ on a green background.
Many of Ed’s fans associate and recognise him because of his
ginger hair and acoustic guitar and this may be why he uses
his face a lot on his products. He uses a bright colour scheme
for his albums, in block colours and this gives his brand an
upbeat mood and contrasts to some of the more emotional
songs that tend to heavily feature on his albums. Again like
Maroon 5 the one consistent feature of Ed’s brand is the font
he uses for his name/logo. This remains the same on all of his
products and the font is easily identifiable with his brand.

9. Ellie Goulding

10. Ellie Goulding seems to have slowly developed her brand
identity over the past couple of years. We can see on her first
album cover ‘Lights’ that Ellie’s image is much more natural and
gives an overall more innocent representation of her image. The
font for this album cover is also more rounded and less harsh,
perhaps suggesting a more laid back feel to the album and how
she is wanting to be presented. In comparison to this, her two
more recent albums portray Ellie in a more sexualised way.
Particularly on the cover for ‘Beating Heart’ she is wearing much
heavier make up that gives her a more provocative look and the
cover for ‘Halcyon’ makes her look edgy- as if her brand and
music is starting to head into a different direction. She is
therefore a good example of how an artists brand can change and
develop over time to fit with how they want their music to
develop and it seems important to link the music on the track to
the artists image in their promotional imagery.

11. Sam Smith

12. Sam Smith’s brand image again tends to be of himself. The
images that are used on his album covers and magazine covers
tend to be very emotional and meaningful, linking well to the
style of his songs that feature on his albums. He is often
featured in dark clothing or in black and white, giving his look
more mystery and depth and it makes the viewer question
what he is going through. Compared to many superficial pop
album covers, Sam Smith’s cover appear to have deeper
meanings. He seems to use the same style of thin, large font
on his albums, this looks professional and stands out. He
doesn’t have an artistic logo as such but tends to just use his
name to identify with his fans. His images are quite sexualised
through the use of smouldering facial expressions and for
example on the magazine cover, he has clearly been dressed to
attract the ‘bad boy’ kind of look, making him more appealing
for both men and women.