Reflections on 1D website

Advertising.

What is it all? It's 360 degree marketing, highly orchestrated to promote the image that the record label wants. It's a contemporary advertising campaign, driven by Web 2.0 for a predefined target market, in this case, 7-14 year old girls primarily. Syco Music has designed the website to be the home hub for all of One Direction's advertising.

Advertising starts with constructing a brand. In One Direction's case, by running off the back of X-Factor losers, they gained a lot of public goodwill, which mean that the public was very accepting of the group already. It also provided a stable base for the marketing team to build on. One Direction is a group of 5 boys who can sing well, but not outstandingly. They have pretty faces, but are marketed to be innocent, naive, all of the advertising is designed to show One Direction as this sort of summer camp love interest.

The end result of all this advertising is supposed to be profit. In our jobs as the record label for a new upcoming band, we have to shift our band's product to gain money. We have to sell the album, single, as well as the video and tour tickets.

We can do this through the more contemporary online marketing campaign, through which we could create a viral network via YouTube videos, Facebook or Twitter. We could create a website from which all news and fan interactions could take place. We could create a store with which to sell merchandise such as clothes, or accessories like mugs, calenders or posters. We could even create an iPhone or Android app to promote our band.

Alternatively, we could advertise our artist via endorsements, for example, One Direction endorses Nokia phones, with a new 1D Nokia C3 and C202 phones coming out soon, as well as Twitter endorsements via Ollie Murs, who comments on 1D. As it happens, Ollie Murs' record label is owned by Sony, as is Syco. Finally, we could go with the traditional broadcast media. That is, magazine interviews, TV spots, radio advertisements, billboard posters and bus stop posters, etc.

One Direction's advertising campaign is pluralistic. This means that aside from their main target market, they are also targeting a secondary and possibly even a tertiary market. The secondary would be older girls, teenagers aged 14-20. The tertiary would be the primary market's parents. They have to like the product for them to buy it. If they find the boys appealing, then they are much more likely to buy an album or a single for their children. They may even like the band themselves, buying the single because they like 1D as well. It's all a cunning plan to sell as much product as possible.