If you don’t know who Beyoncé is, you must be living under a rock. Bey, as many call her loyal “Bey Hive” fans call her, shot to super stardom in her teens as a part of a 90’s R&B girl group, Destiny’s Child. Destiny’s Child were known for smash hits like Bills, Bills, Bills, Bootylicious, and No, No, No. Upon the group’s peaceful separation, Beyoncé’s popularity expanded its reach through strategic consideration.
What Beyoncé’s marketing plan looked like almost 20 years ago, is closely related to her approach now. She is known for her girl-power lyrics, amazing voice, and superior derriere-shaking moves working all at the same time. When the world caught wind of her performing alongside of Coldplay and Bruno Mars at the 50th annual Super Bowl, everyone waited with sweet anticipation of her performance of Formation.
This performance garnered a ton of press, some good, some bad. The key factors are that Beyoncé’s used her platform on one the most watched television events in the world to masterfully celebrate Black History Month. She payed tribute to Michael Jackson with her wardrobe (1:30-1:40), Malcolm X during the performance (2:50-2:56), her dancers dressed like the Black Panther Party, etc. She knows how to connect her performances with big events that allow her to come in contact with a broader audience.
This made me think about our projects. How can we use the “Beyoncé effect” to market ourselves better?
I, personally, learned everything I know from Beyoncé.
The art of homage can take a good piece to great, so I think it certainly applies to multimedia depending on your goals for a project. We can apply this “Beyoncé effect” to our own work by studying those who we wish to replicate and/or pay tribute to. It’s as much preparation as anything else. This is sort of what we touched on in class on Thursday when we discussed the styles of Wes Anderson and the like. The hallmarks of their creative vision can be seen all over their work, and are (to the trained eye) as recognizable as MJ’s fashion influence. To show reflect their creativity in our own creations, we need to know appreciate them at a deep enough level to do their techniques justice.
(I don’t know if you had checked out her Formation website yet, but apparently her team created something just as cool as her half-time show.)
What I learnt from her Formation show is that she had chosen to give out her message at the moment that she can reach the most audience, no matter if they like it, or not. And her show was different than the all happy and colourful Coldplay’s performance, as well as the Mr.Mars’, that when Bey started, we were like “WOAH, WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN RIGHT THERE”. I think it’s harder for our project to reach that big amount of audience, but we can definitely approach more people by getting them being curious about our project, our subjects. So I think we need to avoid the “here’s a documentary about our dying mother earth” style, and think about a more fun and interactive way to connect with our audience.