Project Background
The Communications 499 Senior Project that I performed from May 1st to June 8th was creating, implementing, monitoring and adapting two Public Relation Campaigns for two music artists. Travis “Chancho” Moh is an artist that is California based with some fans also in Utah and Idaho. Steven Morales is an artist that is Utah based with fans also in California. Both had issues with increasing their audience. They would advertise, post, create videos, and release music with little success increasing their audience reach. Both have a different way to release content, so I decided to dive in a little deeper to the specific problems for each.
Travis has the desire to pursue music, but more so through YouTube (an online video platform). He has been creating content for YouTube for the past six years, and has currently over 140 videos on his YouTube Channel. The issue he has been having is seeing actual progress that reflects in subscribers and also in the amount of views his videos get. He averages about 70 views per video and hasn’t seen significant growth. He does on song on Spotify, but has 6 monthly listeners. As far as social media goes, he has an account created specifically for his music but with a small amount of followers and lack of consistent content being posted.
Travis originally had a goal of reaching 1,000 subscribers, because at that point YouTube begins to pay the channel. I didn’t want to tear down this goal, so I kept it in the plan as part of the main objective with one exception: reach 1,000 subscribers or see at least a 15% increase from the start of the campaign. Other objectives were in regards to increase in music streams and an increase in social media following by 15%. The major opportunity that Travis has is building his audience/fan base and increasing his following on YouTube. Even though his numbers are small in terms of subscribers, the potential for growth is huge.
Steven Morales has been releasing music on Spotify, Apple Music, and other music streaming platforms since 2018. The problem that he has is the lack of monthly listeners and streams through his Spotify. Through talking with him about the main way he advertises, I found another area he is lacking in which is content creation on social media. He rarely posts anything, rarely performs special live streams to play music, and the lack of content leads to a bad area to advertise his music. He doesn’t have a dedicated music page on social media because he already has a decent following on his personal page.
The main objective was to increase the amount of streams coming through his Spotify account. Other objectives include increasing his following in his social media accounts and YouTube. He explained to me that he wanted to focus the most on his Instagram following, because that was the largest group of people listening to his music.
The Project In Action
Both situations were slightly different with unique problems with music. A Public Relations Campaign was created for both artists. Each plan/campaign is made to help them increase their following/fan base/audience reach in the prospective area that they were having trouble with. For Travis the main issue was his YouTube channel and seeing a steady rate of incoming subscribers, and for Steven was people listening to his music on Spotify.
Before creating the PR Campaign for both artists, I created a logo for each. Figures 1 and 2 show the logo created for both of my clients. I did this so that they can use this logo as their trademark picture, for their YouTube channel, for spotify, anything that they wanted to use it for in regards to music:
Figure 1: Logo created for Travis “Chancho” Moh’s YouTube Channel.
Travis asked for something that looked a little playful but serious. The last picture he had on his YouTube banner was just a picture of family, which although wholesome doesn’t come across as him being passionate for music. After playing with numerous styles and colors, Travis enjoyed this one the most. It shows off that Travis’s, or his stage name “Chancho’s”, YouTube Channel is about music and we want new viewers of his home page to directly understand that he makes videos about music.
Figure 2: Logo created for Steven Morales to use as his Spotify banner, album cover, etc.
Steven wanted something that was modern and also “soulful” for his taste. The color scheme was made purple, and after a few drafts this was the final logo that got approved by Steven. Steven doesn’t use this logo at the moment, but he told me that he would most likely use it for his YouTube account.
Next was the PR campaign for both artists. Both plans included an Executive Summary, Background, Situation Analysis, Audiences Analysis, Strategies, Tactics, and the overall Evaluation of the campaign. In each of the campaign plans were outlined specific strategies that were to be enforced to help them see an increase in audience. The plan was made as a digital PDF Document that was sent to each artist as well as a physical booklet that has also been sent to each artist.
Inside is a detailed plan on how they were to change the way they create content for their social media and music, and which points were the strongest to focus on. Both of them were put on a schedule on when to create and release content, and how consistent they should be releasing it.
Figure 3: Travis’s weekly content creation schedule. Small and designed to carry over to each week.
Figure 4: Steven’s weekly schedule for creating content. It’s slightly different from Travis’s since Steven does have an edge because he uses TikTok, so that was added in his scheduling.
Travis’s YouTube channel had not been touched since he posted his very first video. Changes were made to add the new logo as the banner of his channel. Social media buttons were added that takes visitors to Travis’s Instagram, Facebook, or Spotify page. Changes were made with the layout of his channel so that new visitors see Travis’s most popular videos, and subscribers automatically see new videos that Travis has uploaded.
Figure 5: Travis’s YouTube Channel with added logo, social media links, and edited page so that new videos and released music come up first.
A Google Analytics account was created to get more information in regards to Travis’s YouTube channel. Within two weeks of implementing the plan Travis gained 5 new subscribers, with a new total of 138 subscribers, a 4% increase. As of this past week after monitoring and reviewing data with Travis, he currently sits at 137 subscribers after he posted his last video which was an original song called “Blossoms”.
Figure 6: Subscriber Statistics since the PR Campaign began on May 31st
When the Google Analytics account was created for Travis, Google Ad-words was another option that we were going to implement with it. As further research was done, it was determined that he didn’t have the music or budget ready to start advertising new music. Google Ad-words is a good way to advertise music, but since Travis doesn’t have any new original music being released it was decided to just wait till an EP or album gets prepared for release.
Results
The official end of this project was June 8th, and by that time we were able to see subscribers go up from 133 to 135, almost a full 2% increase. Although the project ended there, I am still continuing the campaign, and we are still seeing small increases in subscribers, up to 4% since the beginning of the campaign. With views, the video he launched during the project period received a high of 90 views. We originally brainstormed an idea to sing a song in English and Chinese, and he performed a song using that idea and the views were fairly decent for the type of song he chose to sing.
One thing that was needed was more time to have worked on this Project, because we are continuing to see results as the campaign hasn’t ended. It was amazing to see the growth of subscribers over the short period of time. Obviously there was no unreal expectation of thousands of subscribers coming in, we originally thought very few people would subscribe. We were excited to see the amount of subscribers, even though few, were subscribing so quickly.
As for Steven, his phone was his only way of communication. It’s how he texted, called, used social media, and the way he read and sent email. On June 1st, Steven’s phone broke and I didn’t hear from him until June 25th when he finally got back to me after many days of trying to call, text, and email him. I was able to create everything for him to use, but I had no access to his YouTube, Spotify, or Social Media Accounts to be able to accomplish everything that I had intended. I wish I had planned emergency contacts for him beforehand or at least found another way to communicate with him beforehand. Either way it is a learning experience, and I am currently rearranging his campaign and still working with him also.
Overall, between the start and finish dates of the project itself progress can be seen through Travis’s campaign. Although it was a small amount of progress and we anticipated it would be small from the start, we were surprised and excited to see that 4% increase in subscribers. As for Steven, we have all the means to run his campaign now that he has a means of communication again we are looking forward to seeing growth in his music career.
Hour Log
Figure 7: Ben’s project hours listed out by date and how long each session of work was. Total amount of hours put in was 76 hours and 36 minutes.
Figure 10: Name/Video Release forms to use both of their (Travis and Steven) names, images, video, and audio for the use of the this project. Both were signed electronically before I filmed the final project video