Marketing a Star - website

Below is a student's research based on Katy Perry's website (minus the pictures). This is to provide you with a model for the fans/marketting task set last week.


The first thing when we see on Katy Perry's website is a banner with artwork from her album Teenage Dream, which features on the front cover of the CD. Katy Perry's name and the album title is in a candy font, which relates to the first single from the album California Girls which was inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the game Candy Land. The fun theme runs through the site, with pink and blue colours.

BRAND IDENTITY & TARGET AUDIENCE: Katy's image is very sexualised through all her work, appealing to both men and women as she is a female singer. She markets to a worldwide audience as she is a mainstream popstar, who frequently appears in the charts and on radio. As we are in the UK, the wesbite automatically loads in a British format, but there are other options available for lots of other countries, allowing a wide audience to buy into Katy and her music.

APPEAL TO AUDIENCE: The website works in synergy with other sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc which shows the technological convergence which allows the site to broadcast to many people. Katy has a live twitter feed which shows her tweets and other people that have mentioned her. Most celebrities use Twitter now, which allows fans to follow their every move and even interact with them.
The website is very fan based, with links to watch parodies that fans have made. This benefits the fans and Katy, as both are working symbiotically as people can view fans interpretations of her work.


STRATEGIES TO BUY INTO ARTIST: There are many ways to buy into Katy Perry, the main one being to buy her latest album Teenage Dream, with 'available now' and 'available everywhere now,' repeated all over the place.


The audience can buy ringtones, visit the store to buy merchandise, view tour dates and buy tickets for live performances. There are links to specific songs and some are from her EPs and previous album, which shows that the website is allowing the audience many options. Again, there is an appeal to an international audience with a UK and US store.

INSTITUTIONS: The record company behind the website and Katy's new album is capitol records, who are featured at the bottom of the page. Katy's website doesn't advertise for other institutions like clothes shops, which perhaps shows that she doesn't need the extra money from advertising as she is so successful or perhaps that she wants the fans to focus on her instead of other things. There are photos of the artist, videos, songs and many other things to appeal to the audience as they have visited the site for her and not anything else.


Hope this helps and inspires you.