Impact of Visual Media Marketing

Have you ever been sitting ready to do some important work, laptop keys at your fingertips with a stroke of determination your coffee had just fueled you with. Then out of nowhere a  little voice in the back of your head says “pick the phone up and consume it” you reach without hesitation and before you know it you have spent 30 minutes on your phone, have written two lines of your dissertation and your lecturer scowls you in your feedback session because your procrastination has hit an all time high? yes, well read on bitch. 

We can not ignore the one marketing trend that is currently growing in power and is influenced by our culture of consumerism, visual media. The evidence can be viewed in our everyday lives simply by the platform of social media. Want to look for ideas for a project? Pinterest, want to receive messages via picture format? Snapchat, Want to view significant others lifestyles and cry that it is not your own? Instagram. Here it is and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. 

With our popular culture changing into one of mass consumerism due to new digital media, this has changed our brains to process information  as quickly as we receive it 
 ‘A person can get distracted in 8.1 seconds’ 16-visual-content-marketing-statistics-that-will-wake-you-up-59c4c0b80465 so no wonder we get distracted from work we really need to do. 
The power of visual content as a marketing technique can have a massive impact of the realms of brand awareness, message association and engagement with a product. 

So how will this benefit the music industry, especially the evolution of music marketing? 
We are going to look at visual albums and how this recent marketing technique has filtered into the world of the music industry.
The visual album’s effect on audio-visual expression has been reinvented to address the forever changing nature of media and how it is used for a marketing strategy. With the power of the internet and new platforms emerging such as youtube and video sharing sites, it's hard not to escape from the realm of the visual as its constantly in ur faces. ‘Sysomos.com reports that music is the most popular category of videos on YouTube, coming in at 30.7% followed by entertainment at 14.59% as of 2010.48’  Youtube-music-awards 
For the visual album, visual media is such an important part of the distribution of it. By accessing it on these platforms, fans can now be at one with the visual album and the artist anywhere they go. This diminishes the album from being stapled into the present, much like music, fans can be transported out of the realms of time and space with the ability to repeat the experience over and over again. 
Let's take Beyonce for example, she dropped her self titled album in 2013 using zero promotion, marketing or warning. The album was paired with a visual album which catapulted the visual album into music industry marketing. 
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‘As a marketing move the visual album does feel hugely exciting, perhaps largely thanks to the surprise element.’ - Brooke Salisbury, Domino Records
Beyonce achieving this visual aspect and then applying to her brand identity shows that she’s more than just a popstar she’s an icon. 
 ‘It also speaks volumes about Beyonce’s standing in the industry that not a single producer, songwriter or director spilled the beans. The thing is — the secrecy, planning and innovative roll-out would have been for nothing if the music wasn’t up to scratch. For me, the most impressive achievement of Beyonce isn’t the visual aspect or the surprise element. It’s the fact that the pop icon delivered the most consistent, cohesive and resiliently non-commercial album of her career.’
Beyonce-anniversary-pioneering-visual-albums-impact-influence-legacy 
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The impact of visual media shows music marketing to now not be one-dimensional, it encourages it to push out releases in new ways and also influences experimentation of music marketing alongside the platform of social media. Even music streaming services are acting towards this innovative element of music marketing and adapting their practices upon artists. With TIDAL releasing ‘Lemonade’ on its platform and Apple releasing Frank Oceans ‘Endless’.
The impact of visual media as a marketing technique is astonishing and pushes artists boundaries, the concept of a story telling alongside the art of music helps the artist lend their message, identity and mind to an empowering audience which is something special and truly one of  a kind. 

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