Music Video Branding - The Spice Girls

Music Video Branding - The Spice Girls

Branding is the process of assigning a brand name to something. Branding is important because it leads to better marketing for the artist/band. One band that was heavily branded is the spice girls. The spice girls were formed in the 1990s to compete with the largely dominant male boy bands. Over 100 girls auditioned to be part of the girl band and 6 were originally accepted, however this was later reduced to 5. The 5 girls chosen were Melaine Chrishelm, Victoria Beckham, Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown and Emma Bunton.

 Each girl was given a different portrayal in the media, baby spice, posh spice, scary spice, sporty spice and ginger spice. The marketing of the girls personalities was successful, as they released a number of different products centered around them, including 'dolls' and 'spices'. It could be argued that without the heavy branding the spice girls might not be as successful, however they were popular at a time where the main competition were boy bands. Whilst the boy bands mainly used thier sex appeal to attract a female audience, the spice girls used 'girl power' which is the idea that together girls can be 'stronger than anything'. This also attracted a younger audience, as the younger audience saw the spice girls as role models, and wanted to be like their personalities.

 In their first video 'wannabe', each of the girls personality is shown, 'baby spice' acts timid towards the men in the video, whilst 'scary spice' can be seen grabbing them. 'Posh spice' also seems to act more sensible and proper then the other girls and sporty spice can be seen wearing tracksuit bottoms, which are commonly associated with sports. finally 'ginger spice' is wearing clothing that is associated with her hair colour. The video is also 'one shot' this is to create drama in the video and shows how 'chaotic' and 'rebellious' the spice girls are. It also makes the audience feel like they are apart of the action.