Lady Gaga Case Study

1. Summarise the changing image of the band/artist as it has developed over time. It might also be useful to summarise the music genre also.

• Mainly influenced by glam rockers such as David Bowie and Quenn, pop artists such as Madonna and Michael , artist Andy Warhol, poet Rainer Maria Rilke and fashion icon Grace Jones.
• Her music structure is very similar to 1980's pop and 1990's Europop.
• Music that is a mixture of both dance and rock.
• Said to be extremely into fashion and inspired by her mother.
• She has her own creative team called Haus of Gaga who put together all her costumes, stage props and hair dos.
• Said to have drawn inspiration from Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and Madonna.
• Considers her muse as Donatella Versace.
• She is seen as the rising gay icon and a lot of her success is down to the gay community.
• Markets herself a lot to the gay community as some of her first performances were to the gay community. One of her early performances was singing 'Just Dance' at the San Francisco Pride event and a later on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, two hugely rated events by the gay community therefore setting herself up as a gay icon.
• Early in her career she decided to focus on pop music to differenciate herself from the underground rockers of New York and took part in burlesque shows where a lot of her fashion inspiration still comes from.
• Was nicknamed 'Lady Gaga' early in her career after the Queen song 'Radio Ga Ga' due to her vocal style similar to Freddie Mercury and is still compared to Queen now.
• Begun performing with fellow burlesque dancer Lady Starlight and their show was known as 'The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow'. People still say her music has a rock n roll edge and compare her style to burlesque dancers showing she has not changed for the public very much.
• Used her history to help to market her nowadays and make her stand out from the crowd.
• Was dropped from her original record label Def Jam Records but maintained her trashy image in order to come up with her own record label.
• Her label Haus of Gaga supports up and coming people in the industry by getting them noticed through her fame.

2. Who are the fans? Do you have any sense of how the music companies have segmented the audiences? To what extent has the branding of a band been linked to target audience?

• The gay community are make up the majority of Lady Gaga's fans.
• Performed two of her debut concerts to target the gay community specifically, one at San Francisco Pride event and one on The Ellen DeGeneres crowd.
• Outrageous clothing, makeup and hair which appeals to the gay community.
• Her lyrics have underlying bisexual meaning which the marketing companies draw on in the videos and therefore appeals to the gay community.
• Her revealing and provocative clothing appeal to the male audience.
• The dancing and pop theme throughout her songs appeal to the younger generation.
• The influences from older bands appeal to the older generation.
• The use of male models in her videos appeals to both the female audience and gay audience.
• She markets herself in a feminist way which appeals to women.

3. What marketing strategies can you identify? What kinds of stategies can you list?(above/below-the line? unexpected promo stunts? etc). List any examples of the use of synergy with other industries to promote other media/products in connection with a band/artist.

Lady Gaga has achieved her prestige through a variety of different marketing strategies. She has her own official website, the look of the website is very trendy and bold - mirroring her personality. An image of the official website is shown below. Here is the link http://www.ladygaga.com/events. She also as her own myspace page www.myspace.com/ladygaga which automatically starts playing music as soon as you log onto her page. This promotes her music straight away and allows her fans to become aware of her latest tracks which they may or may not be aware of yet. Furthermore she has her official fan club on http://www.facebook.com/ where she currently has 105,527 fans. Furthermore she works in synergy with 'Heartbeats' to promote 'high resolution in-ear headphones' -http://www.ladygaga.com/