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7m0r0-blog · 6 years

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407 EVALUATING BRAND DEVELOPMENT

401 - At first I thought it was annoying and overwhelming because of the amount of thinking needed to do to recollect some of my experiences. When I started deconstructing my brand I felt anxious, knowing the amount of things I would’ve had to write. Discussing with my peers allowed me to understand how people would perceive the brand, and also challenged inconsistencies within the brands and misconceptions from other people. It helped me express and describe my brand more effectively. From my perspective there was no negative affects.

This unit changed the way i went about incorporating references in my lyrics, and how I wanted to make sure most of my references had to do with my experiences and/or my peers/friends experiences, in order to create my own universe, and give bits of my personality progressively. It also facilitated the way i would identify my influences. Other than that I don’t think it affected my creative process in any other ways. One new working method I developed is constantly check up on and study my influences and pin point things worth taking in. My professional plan didn’t change after this process.

Existing skills: mixing, writing, production, melody searching, deconstruction, marketing, recording, beat selection.

This unit helped developing my deconstruction skills, as i was deconstructing my own brand it helped me dig deeper when deconstructing other brand and also discerning other aspects to different brand. My Marketing skills grew when making my mind map and understood my brand i then knew more as to how to present it to future supporters. Skill enhancement can’t take place without skill development which means starting from 0 and acquire a skill with time. Once a skill acquired then skill enhancement can then take place, and it is simply improving those skills by working methodically and and challenging the way those skills are usually used. Now brand development goes hand in hand with the previous, those different skills can now be used to create a product/brand which then will lead to: Is the product ready for display/sell? what am i selling/promoting? and who to sell it to/show it to? the answers tho these questions would be what brand development is and skill development and enhancement would be necessary in order to have an effective brand.

403 - Action planning was like an electric shock for me because I would have a more holistic approach to certain things, such as recording time and songwriting. Action planning helped me respect my set deadlines and understand what to do in order to deliver an idea.

As to purposefully developing skills, one of them was deconstruction, action planning helped me put together a coherent body of work, by analysing what made my sound, and feedback from listeners my deconstruction skills came into play when deciding content, substance, artwork and concept. I improved my songwriting skills, by diversifying my writing process and song making (free writing, Freestyling and writing to instrumentals) it helped me picking the “right” (taking feedback into consideration) writing process for different tracks when creating my projects.

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7m0r0-blog · 7 years

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401 1.1 Deconstruction. (Emmanuel Dultheo)

We were previously asked to create a mindmap diagram to evaluate and write down all the components in our brand. Here i’m going to break down and reflect on the different headlines given.

IMAGE & INDENTITY

I want to start by saying that I’ve always had a quite reserved personality which is one of the things people can easily observe when they meet me for the first time. As an artist in the past I could say that it was very difficult over coming what i would call “Post upload anxiety”, which is basically not being confident enough to share your art with other people. This kind of explain why I wrote “Anti-Social Socialite” Which is a big part of my character, I take a big pleasure engaging, collaborating and discuss with people, but I may be perceived by people as anti social given that I act very “non chalantly” at times which may be very confusing or seen as a character flaw as a first impression. I have always been a little bit naive in the sense that I trusted things and words easily, as a kid I always looked at cartoon and anime character as almost a father figure like naruto, luffy, Ash, and Like i would see how they acted and they were similarities like they would be the strongest but they always had a team, they didn’t believe in the traditional ways of thinking, they were always humble and other qualities which all gave me confidence to be myself at all times and later find out that all these qualities also help a lot in real life and plays a big part when chasing success. As for my image I always liked the outliers in most fields like sport, music, tv. I think my image is a influenced by a lot of different cultures, like hip hop, London streets, Martinique’s streets, French, Black French, Skateboarding. A mix of different cultures which means for example back then I was a fan of skateboarding trainers, but I also liked the baggy jeans too or a nike tracksuit and Lacoste trainers. So the way I dress, talk, and act would be influenced by a series of different cultures.

CREATIVE OUTPUT

I put out my first video as Doranbeats on youtube in 2015, the year after 2016 I decided to make a beatstars account to start selling my beats online, It was working and still is but then i wanted to work closely with artist because most of my sales were coming from overseas, at the time I did not have that many contacts so I decided to record on my own beats and this is when I made the transition from producer to artist which means i can be creative in different format, I then named myself Doran, but I then changed it to N.AroD because I didn’t want those two brands to be associated together, but later down the line “N.AroD” was still too similar to the original producing brand so I went with 7M0R0, which is pronounced “Tomorrow” Because it is a powerful word that people use everyday, its easily pronounced if you can’t speak the language, the meaning of the word is very interesting and the spelling kind of make it stand out. It is spelled like that because of the era I grew up in as a teenager, we started seeing more and more brand names especially in music start with numbers or replacing letters with numbers which is kind of a trendy behaviour nowadays but will later be seen as one of the characteristics used to identify this era of the culture, knowing that I was going to develop the brand I wanted this kind of characteristics in the name of the brand so It will always be memorable and associated with this era of hip hop. After my first project I just kept releasing singles via soundcloud, to build a fan base and so people can observe diversity in my music.

INDUSTRY AWARENESS

Growing up I didn’t get much information about the Industry, after a lot of thinking and investigating, I came to the conclusion that no one would “come out of the blue” to sit me down and teach me about the industry, and thats when I did my research and surrounded myself with passionate people that I finally got insight on what is behind the curtain. One thing that also helped me a lot when trying to figure out the industry and how it works was watching top entertainers interview and dissecting them. It is a lot of valuable information such as, how to get paid, how to beat “creative blocks”, beneficial behaviours...etc. There are also a lot of podcasts/tutorials and things that tells you a lot about the industry, I watched those too but not as much as interviews, as some of those videos would be completely outdated advice.

EXPERIENCE

Spending the most part of my childhood living in my grand mother’s house in Martinique, helped me built character and taught me a lot about different human behaviours. It also gave me informations as to how to deal and talk to other women as i was living at the time with 3 or 4 women (mum, grand mother & aunties) and my grand father. Before this time period i was living in French Guiana for about 2 years, I really love it out there because it is a land in south America full of diverse cultures (Taki-Taki, Asian, Creole etc...). One of the reasons why i got along with people or managed to get accepted in certain circles without trying is because from a young age I been exposed to a multitude of different cultures, which helped develop my own personality and confidence from young. One of the most mind opening trip, I have had was back in 2007, when for a month and a half, my mother and me went to Switzerland. This was so shocking to me at 9 to be around kids from all around the globe and in this massive private school with crazy budgets. I was mind blown to know that there was so much things happening outside of my culture and even worse, that certain people weren’t even familiar with my country or my struggles. I think these different experience really helped me once i came to London as a teenager, not knowing the language, the culture and “the streets”, I’m saying that because I found out a lot of people from here accepted me for how weird i was even though they wouldn’t accept other people with the same interests as me sometimes. I didn’t know exactly what i was, or who i was but I understood I had to stand behind everything I was presenting to people from a young age. Whilst all this was happening I also learnt how to appreciate life and the value in it, because of numerous death in my family and around me. Which is one of the principles reflected by my brand, to value life which is different from “getting the most out of life” to me.

PRODUCT

The first piece of music I’ve ever owned was from a French singer/song writer called Pascal Obispo, at the time it was my favourite music ever because of the instruments he was able to play, I also think this where part of my love for pianos come from, because I’d always watch him perform live on tv. Another important album for me was “welcome to jamrock” by Damian Marley, and also I had a lot of positive memories attached to this album. I was already listening to a lot of music from Jamaica (Dancehall, Reggae & Bashment) but what made me gravitate toward Damian was is non chalant energy, his look and how he was using is voice so meticulously in every single track on this project. Growing up I was also obsessed with video games especially games from animes such as naruto, one piece and pokemon, i already explained why i liked this so much earlier. What bred this love for animes, and cartoons all started because of DBZ mangas I used to read, I had tons of mangas in my room all the time. With that said Nintendo and Playstation played a big roll in my life The brand logos were all around the house. My favourite games were, DBZ Budokai, Pokemon Red, green and platinum, GTA san andreas, Dragon quest, One piece and saint seiya. After awhile I started paying more attention to music and developing my taste in music, and it was kind of all over the place. My favourite project of all time is from Wiz Khalifa called “Taylor allderdice” everything about this project just seemed so coherent and holistically made. A group that had a big impact on my understanding of music was Green Dayz, I loved some of their tracks so much because it was never traditional rock, it just sounded amazing to me. And no one in my entourage at the time could understand why i gravitated towards this kind of music. Other project also influenced me later down the line, such as WATTBA, Better dayz Pt.2 (which i never knew about before 2013), Trapsoul, Rolling papers and DS2. Moving onto movies, they aren’t usually that memorable to me. I just have that 1 film that i hold above everything else, because i related to it so much and the writing, I just found amazing, This movie is called “17 years”.

MARKET AWARENESS

I became familiar with Hip Hop culture I’d say way later than my peers, and by becoming familiar I mean get a basic understanding of it. Due to my geographical position on earth, our culture was very much influenced by jamaican culture which as well as American Hip Hop culture, with trends such as graffiti, baggy clothes, nike and jordans. Anyone could come to my Island and pinpoint the different influences from hip hop culture, but growing up in the island not knowing the history of hip hop due to language barriers I always thought it all came from us and found it normal. I was never questioning why I’d wear certain things and brand because I didn’t know where it was coming from at all. With the advancement of technology I started understanding more and finally understood that i was part of the market if I was influenced by it. One thing that I started noticing as well was auto tune, and i first noticed it when Lil wayne first came out with his hit singles such as “a milli”. Jewellery is another thing that I realised was a big part of hip hop artists brand and at the time I just thought that every artist had to have jewellery because it has been pushed on the market for so long. With technology the music industry became more accessible to regular people, which i first observed when I realised that more and more people i knew or seen at some point in my life were later part of this industry, which also means that they were going to be more and more artists.

CLIENT/FAN BASE

I started putting products (Beats) out on YouTube to build a fan base and get my beats heard by potential clients, knowing that YouTube is one of the biggest online platforms. In the first year I managed to get 400+ subs so I carried on, then i was missing sales because i was missing emails, so I joined beatstars to sell my beats online without me having to email files at crazy times. Once I did that I wanted to expand my reach to IG,Facebook and Soundcloud. So that’s exactly what I did, I created multiple account for doranbeats on different platforms and started uploading Doran’s content on them. As for my soundcloud audience 7M0R0 just kept dropping music at least once a month.

CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

I’ve always had a good relationship with my clients, and never really had any complaints. Dealing with clients, contacts and potential clients I always show respect and always make sure i’m attentive to what they have to say about my services and their demands. This way of carefully dealing with people always helped me meet even more people, because once a good first impression made people would in some cases recommend me to their friends or clients.

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

My sound was influenced by a lot of different artist from different cultures. My French rap influence were, Booba, Lafouine, Soprano & Alpha 5.20. I gravitated towards them because the way they produced music was never seen before especially in the french rap culture. Zouk Music is a genre of music from Martinique which also was a big part of my understanding of rhythm and music in general. Jamaican singers were the closest to my own culture so I naturally gravitated towards Bashment, Reggae and Dancehall, with influences from Vybz Kartel, Popcaan and Mr. vegas, with other Caribbean artists such as Kalash and Eugene Mona (both from Martinique). My American hip hop influences come from 50Cent, Wiz Khalifa, Chief Keef, Lil Uzi Vert, Snoop Dogg, Famous Dex, Chris Brown. Not all of these artists influences my sound directly, but some played a big role influencing my brand on other levels such as “Image & Identity”. Other American Artist I felt inspired by was Rihanna, Jason Mraz, Neil diamonds, Al Green and Jamiroquai.

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