Spice Girls and Katy Perry

Spice girls & Katy Perry

In the mid 90s, family management team Bob Herbert, Chris Herbert and Lindsey Casbon set about creating a girl group to compete with popular boy bands that dominated the pop music scene in the mid to late-1990s. 




Selling the 'Spice Girls'

The Spice Girls were sold to us as a group of friends, just goofing off and making top-selling singles
together.

They were actually a carefully selected group of strangers chosen, after hundreds of auditions.

They had endless merchandising and sponsorship deals, and were involved with everything from
Pepsi ads to Polaroid ads to Barbie-style Spice Girls dolls.

Everything about them—including their Scary/Posh/Sporty/etc. nicknames was under the control of men or corporations. 

(“Ginger Spice”) almost didn’t make it into the group, because she looked older than the other girls; when they asked her age, she reportedly said, “I’m as old as you want me to be. I’ll be 10 with big boobs if you want.”

Creating a Brand

Often artists/groups are sold as a brand and the music video acts as a product of the brand, in the hope that the audience will be inspired to “buy into the brand”

For some artists the ‘image’ is of greater importance than the quality of the product. The Spice Girls are a good example of this.

Other times it is the song and the meaning of the song that is sold, and the artists ‘image’ has little to do with the sale of the song.



                                                                              

Katy Perry

Katy Perry's Target audience is young girls between the ages of 14 to 17


Katy Perry has to be like an older sister or a friend. She has to reflect some of the anxieties young girls have and be someone young girls can admire and want to be (appear sexy but in a non-threatening way).

How Katy's Personal life affected her brand:

Katy Perry like most artists, used her personal life to create her brand. This began with her relationship and divorce with Russell Brand. Her relationship with him led her astray from what she was trying to show in her music, her image in her music videos, and the lyrics in the songs had changed from sexual but not threatening, to have a lot of sex appeal. It took a few years for Katy to realise what had happened and return to the way she was before. 

2008

One of The Boys Album, released ' Hot n' Cold' - this gave her a brand.



2009

Katy meets Russell Brand, after her controversial hit 'I Kissed a Girl'.

 

2010

Katy gets married to Russell on the 23rd of October, she then releases the songs 'California Gurls' and 'Firework'. California Gurls received a lot of criticism, because it strayed from her previous image that was held up by her younger fans, into a more 'sexy' image. 



2012

Russell Brand gets a divorce with Katy on 30th December, 2011. Katy admits that she has contemplated suicide after the divorce and the affect it had on her.

2013

The songs 'Wide Awake' and 'Roar' were released following the controversy. These singles show her previous image returning. They show her gaining back her 'girl' power. And how her new image is built from the pain of the divorce.  

                                                                                                   

Katy's latest album 'Witness' and the newest single Swish Swish, were built from the original comical image of Katy Perry. They have her acting as a character much like in the earlier videos, 'Hot n' Cold' and 'T.G.I.F'. 

She has let go of the previous image that Russell had her create. She uses references of Russell in most of her songs after the divorce and uses the humour of it to move on from him.