Genre as Just a Marketing Tool According to Frith - Literature review Example

Running Head: Frith (1996) claims that genre is just a marketing tool Frith (1996) claims that genre is just a marketing tool Institution: Student name: Date: Genre is a term that defines any category of an art, culture or literature for instance music, audio or visual. Genre organizes the work of cultural, including the procedures of a given organization, and influence the way consumer’s opinion and taste of the product (Ahlkvist and Faulkner, 2002). Genre is much influenced by the context in while it is produced and consumed (Dowd, 1992). It is therefore vital to look at genre in the perspective of audiences’ expectations, features of the text and industrial production. It is a worthy pointing out that genre grouping or naming came after the works was produced then there was a need to group the work. The style of delivering the content to the consumers is what prompts a given art to be grouped in a given genre category therefore genre helps the consumers to quickly be identified by a given art. Poetry is a genre that a given consumer may be quickly identified by therefore we are likely to have more of this type of work in a given community than other products. Most artist have gone cross-genre where their work can be categorized in more than one genre this is just a strategy to win more customers on their side this is a clear indication on how artwork sales on basis of genre. Simon Frith was a rock critic and an author of many books a sociologist was specialization in popular music culture. He has argued, ‘music genre are constructed and should be understood within a commercial and cultural process (Frith, 1996 P. 89). Commercial in the sense of producing music to be sold and hold a larger market space, commercial of a given product, living style or even the names of the artist. Commercial popurses also implies that music is produced not for any other purpose but to hit the market therefore artist carefully fits in a genre that will enable him or her to achieve the primary and sole purpose of selling. Frith cites the rules stated by Fabbri (1981) which looks at various aspects of the genre; formal and Technical rules this looks at the skills of the artist how much he/she can deliver, what does the artist know about a given work they are producing, Semiotic rules are defines how genre communicates the message and which way is that message delivered the tone and generally how the audience looks at the artist, another rule is behavioral rules this defines how the artist is presented to the consumer given that genre is a marketing tool artist tent to behave in a way such that it attracts more consumers, behaving in a wrong way badly hurts that genre therefore every stakeholder is out monitoring on the behaviors of the artists. The way artist present themselves on stage, social and ideological rules puts much weight on the values of the artist. This shows what values the artist stand for associated with the genre, finally, commercial and juridical rules governs how a genre behave in the music industry. This guides the artist on how much they are to sale and the revenue returns on the artist’s work(Frith, 1996 p. 91-93). Therefore by looking at the rules it implies that genre is a simple but perfect tool of marketing. Historically, genre has been used as a perfect and simple marketing tool which acts as a guarantee of certification of the product(Andrew, 1984 ). Genre defines the relationship between the artists and the consumers where the consumer promises to be loyal to the products while artists or producers promise to deliver the best products of high quality to them hence a contrast(Abrams, 1993). Once a given genre has been well understood by the consumers, then it becomes a public property. The link between the perception of the audience in a community on the genre and its market space is vital, religion for instance play a key role on which genre is best sold across the board be it a film, a book, or even music. Muslims while not be happy to buy Christine faith work therefore the artist will tilled their work in favor of their clients. Contemporary society and learning group of clients will be inclined to the genre of science-fiction, animation kind of works that widely meet their demands. Genre naming brings out an identity of group of communities associated with a given genre. There has been a trend of renaming genre into subgenre where this is not because of rapidly evolving nature of the music itself but it is also a function of the marketing strategies of the record companies which is geared towards culture and the appropriation of the music in line with its listening communities. For instance, electronic dance followers in United States and Great Britain use genre naming to attract large number of people in to their events where it acts as a gate-keeping mechanism which generates high capital required to enter electronic/dance communities. Genre classification in book publication means that books are distributed in the right way and shelved on the right shelves. With genre one is able to discover or understand the size market, which genre has the most new titles and which population should be targeted. Which genre sold the most this year and many other market analyses? In this perspective genre is a market tool that is easy to use where it classifies books and ensures that they are arranged in a given way on shelves which gives an idea of order. Readers are divided groups which makes easier to predict them. Which genre, publishers are able to track the previous performance of market of a given genre and predict the future market using the past information. Movie posters also shows us how genre can be used as a market tool, posters displays a great understanding which summaries all the movie scenes and brings out the idea in the movies. The move posters are meant to attract or makes viewers curios to uncover what is really in a movie hence buying it. For instance a poster may be composed of three parts, foreground, mid-ground and background. Having comic like text features in the mid-ground may not only serve as a method of giving viewers a humble introduction to the movie plot but it may act as a tool to maintain loyal audience or customers. Given that a customer has ever watched a movie with such comic like test and it was interesting they may want to keep their loyalty to the product. The background colours and features in a movie posters makes viewers curios to watch the movies where every movie poster or even music carefully chooses a background that has a strong and appealing message to the consumers. The foregrounds are normally embedded with graphic tests which swiftly matches the mid and backgrounds. There design with colours for instance action movies may mostly have red colours for title text which implies anger, breviary and agony this type of posters or products are suitable teenagers and mid- aged male viewers who like action movies with a lot fighting scenes. According to Pare’(2002) in his study “Genre and Ideology: Individuals, Institutions and Ideology”, he concludes that culture and genre are embedded which sometimes conflict where a given group of people may want to be identified by a given genre. Therefore identifying individuals by a given genre makes genre a marketing tool. Amy Devitt in her essay ‘A Theory of Genre’, adds on that culture determines which genre can be accepted or rejected (Devitt, 2004). Genre is used to differentiate popular subjects like Movies, TV, Books, Music etc . Difference in culture aspects have been shaped by genre. There is a clear difference between artist for instance, America comedies can be differentiated from comedians from Africa. When searching for movies or music in rental stores like ITunes one uses genre in searching the and organizing the products in the stores. For instance Amazon is creating and using million genre categories which they use in organizing their products and provide users with the best order of searching just by using genre. A category like ‘Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue’ gives the users a link to this type of genre. Online stores will want to stock genre products that will attract more traffic on their websites, for instance, teens are the most frequent users on the internet searching for a particular genre of music therefore most online stores stock such kind of genre reggae, ‘R &Bs’, romantic songs or movies, action movies may sale more via the internet. Books in online stores are systematically arranged according to genre with distributors being very keen on only stocking genre that sale most and intelligently avoid to stock genre that do not attract traffic on their sites. Restaurants, clubs and many other entrainment places are popularly identified by genre which type of music; rock, blues, reggae or blues does it play. Therefore genre is used to market the entertainment places. Youths many be identified with clubs that play current or modern music while old age customers will be identified with old music clubs there genre is used to attract particular population. In the recent years genre has been a key marketing tool in travelling agencies especially road transport. Where customers board buses basing on the kind of music they play. Violent and loud music is more appealing to youths especially male teenagers while buses with no music or slow music may be more attractive to old-age people. Places like clothing shops or grocery genre determines which kind of customers flow in keeping in mind the classes of the customers. There are several social networks which have groups of followers that are clearly identified by genre, they may state which books they love most, which movies they like watching and many have been following their authors. It is popular for female fans to follows genre for Romance, popularity of artist is taking shape on the social networks for instance facebook and twitter facilitates artist to update fans and get their reactions. Companies are using genre in promoting their businesses where a given artist is associated with their products. Movie trailers is an example of a marketing tool where production houses are running a promotional campaign with music channels and other movies channels to play their movies within one and half hour. Even with trailer it is genre which matters most. Factors like Science fiction movies, animation just to mention a few. Trailer is a marketing tool that gives advantages over other movies therefore it is a marketing tool. Script writers have a task of carefully select their genre so that their work can be published. Music, film or books genre are the key factors which determines if the script will be accepted or not therefore to market your scripts and have a quality production with more experienced producers one should selected the genre that is on high demand. The demand may be based on the population target and society in which the work is produced and consumed. Product placement is another trend which clearly categorize genre as a marketing tool, large manufacturing industries are associating their products with a given artist in order to gain confidence of the fans of the particular genre. Clothing industry is making huge renue by having cloths produced which reflect a living style of a given artist. Hip hop fans have been identified with cloths and caps of their favorite artist like 50 cents among others. Given that genre perfectly groups people in the society according to a common interest and taste of the art, producers of other products finds it easier to attract and win them over. There have been successful campaigns of products by singers, for instance the 2010 world cup held in South Africa used artist like Shakira in popularizing the event the music recorded the highest revenue returns because it was a genre associated with the African society. It is therefore evident that genre is a perfect marketing tool to producing industry, artist, and other industries like restaurants, clothing vehicle industry among others. The society is logically divided into various genre they consume which reflects their culture, belief, morals and values. Just like Frith said music is produced mainly for commercial purpose and artist ranging from books, photography, film , music among others produced their works basing on the expectations of the community in which the product is produced and consumed (Frith, 1996 P. 89).. Products are distributed or sold in the market basing on their genre, producers are willing to work extra miles on genre that are on high demand that those that do not sale while more artist are venturing in their genre that sales most and is more appealing to the community or their fans. REFERENCES Abrams, M.H., 1993., A Glossary of Literary Terms. 6th ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, USA Ahlkvist, Jarl A. and Robert Faulkner. 2002. “‘Will This Record Work for Us?’: Managing Music Formats in Commercial Radio.” Qualitative Sociology 25(2):189–215. Andrew Dudley, 1984., Concepts in Film Theory, Oxford University Press, USA. Pare, Anthony., 2002. ,"Genre and Identity." The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre: Strategies for Stability and Change. Eds. Richard M. Coe, Lorelei Lingard, and Tatiana Teslenko. Creskill, N.J. Hampton Press, Bordwell, David., 1991, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. USA: Harvard University Press. Claude Forthmme, ‘ Genre as a marketing tool: Does it really work? ‘retrieved from > Devitt, Amy J. 2004. Writing Genres: Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press. Dowd, Timothy J. 1992. “The Musical Structure and Social Context of Number-One Songs, 1955 to 1988: An Exploratory Analysis.” Pp. 130–57 in Vocabularies of Public Life, edited by R. Wuthnow. Routledge, London, UK: Fabbri, Franco. 1981. “A Theory of Musical Genres: Two Applications.” Popular Music Perspectives (June): 52–81. Tim 2010, genre as a marketing tool, retrieved from > Read More