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One Direction Dec 13 One Direction A 3rd British Invasion? LEANNE GUTIERREZ ⎜PROFESSOR FLOTO ⎜JOUR 463 INDIVIDUAL REPORT TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary………………...............………………………..………………………3 Overview………………………………………………………..………………….4 Hypothesis.……………………………………………….…….…………………..4 Methodology………………………………………………………….………...4 - 5 Findings………………………………………………………….……………..6 - 7 Conclusion………………………………………………………….……………...8 Individual Report…………………………………………………………………………...9 Hypothesis………………………………………………………….……………..10 Methodology………………………………………………………….…………..11 Findings………………………………………………………….………..…12 – 15 Conclusion………………………………………………………….………..……16 Challenges………………………………………………………….…………...…17 Appendix………………………………………….....…………………………………....18 Mike Vulpo, E! News Writer Interview Transcript…………………………...19 - 20 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 OVERVIEW Since 2010, British boy band One Direction has rapidly risen to pop culture royalty on an international stage, and on a global scale. The five-member group was put together by music industry mogul Simon Cowell, and includes Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. In the past three years, the band has sold over 19 million singles and 10 million albums. Their presence both in their native Europe and the United States has grown exponentially, with their social media and online presence trailblazing the way. Some even compare them to the Beatles, calling them the new “British Invasion,” a term we defined as, “a cultural invasion through music, television and fashion, with pop culture and sociological implications.” Following the Beatles’ 1960s British Invasion, a second invasion occurred in the 1980s, with the emergence of the likes of British artists such as Elton John. Though there has been an undeniable popularity surge for the band, One Direction’s actual album sales, awards and cultural impact do not compare to the prestige of actual previous such “British Invasions.” HYPOTHESIS Despite the fact One Direction has been compared to the Beatles and has infiltrated the American music scene, we believe that there is no current “British Invasion.” METHODOLOGY The foundation of our secondary research was built first by studying the historical context of past British Invasions in the US and around the world. Moreover, we studied other past and current British bands, musicians and artists. We then studied One Direction’s unique personal branding strategies, their Internet presence and social media influence. We also looked closely at sales the band has generated. The core of our primary research consisted of a focus group, four individual interviews and content analysis. 4 Focus Group On September 30, 2013 at the University of Southern California, we conducted a focus group. The group consisted of eight Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism students, including 3 males and 5 females. It lasted for about one hour, with Professor Jennifer Floto as moderator. Interviews 1. Rebecca Sahim, Sony/ATV Music Publishing 2. Jim Yeager, USC Professor – Entertainment PR 3. William Biersach, USC Professor – The Beatles Expert 4. Mike Vulpo, E! News Writer Content Analysis We conducted content analysis by utilizing Google at first, which gave us millions of articles using just the term “One Direction.” From these millions, we pulled 35 that we found were most relevant. Many repeated terms from the articles included: “British boy band,” “boy band,” “British pop group,” and “Beatles.” When we met class guest speaker and content analysis expert Kjerstin Thorson, she instructed us to use Factiva in order to get accurate results of these articles. The search parameters when using Factiva were extremely specific. We used the exact phrase “One Direction,” the date range for the articles was from July 12, 2012 – November 7, 2013 and they were only from within the United States. We ended up with 16,927 articles. The most prevalent trend was the Beatlemania-like hysteria tone of the writing found in the articles, as well as key terms like “boy band,” “Harry Styles” and “Pop Culture.” An astounding part of our content analysis was when we found that from a survey of more than 1,000 One Direction movie ticket buyers, 98% of them were female. By using Radian6, initially we found that by searching “One Direction,” there were too many results to show. Then surprisingly, in the last 30 days, our final Radian6 search showed that there were much less social media buzz about the band, with only 58 tweets, 27 Facebook posts, and 13 Blog Posts with the key terms “One Direction,” “British Invasion” or “1D.” 5 FINDINGS Secondary Research . To understand the term “British Invasion” better, the context of the current supposed British Invasion must be juxtaposed with history and today’s other successful British musicians. As mentioned earlier, past British Invasions have included the 1960s Beatles era, which also was influenced by the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Kinks. The Beatles were introduced to America with their famous hit single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1963, which went directly to #1 on the charts. The band was widely recognized for uplifting the cultural climate following President Kennedy’s assassination. A second British Invasion took place between 1982 and 1986, and included Queen, Duran Duran, David Bowie and Elton John. Today, One Direction’s personal branding has made them a global phenomenon. Attention to the band’s persona has spearheaded their popularity over the past few years. Social media interaction has given them a connection with fans no other British band has had before. One Direction is not the only British band that has recently grown to such success. Other recent popular British artists include Mumford and Sons, Calvin Harris and Amy Winehouse. One Direction’s social media presence has surpassed all other British musicians of today, with a combined total of 89.8 million Twitter followers. Their personal and professional lives are followed by millions of fans everyday. One Direction was the first boy band to sell 500,000 digital copies with Up All Night, and sold 540,000 copies in the first week of album Take Me Home. One Direction album sales, though impressive, pale in comparison to the likes of Justin Bieber, *NSYNC, Adele and the Beatles . Despite these statistics, One Direction front man Harry Styles has spoken out about his thought that his band is, in fact, part of a “British Invasion.” 6 Primary Research Focus Group: The focus group we conducted consisted of 8 college students between the ages of 20 and 22—3 males, 5 females. It lasted approximately 27 minutes, and was recorded. From the focus group, it was clear from the participants that they thought we were not, in fact, in the midst of a British Invasion. The tone at many points in the focus group was dismissive and even condescending at some points, with strong opinions expressed. Participants knew who One Direction was, but interestingly did not know how or why they knew them. Some of the participants drew comparisons between One Direction’s following and Beatlemania, as well as the Backstreet Boys/*NSYNC era and the Spice Girls. Interviews: . Rebecca Sahim, Sony/ATV Music Publishing o One Direction took formulaic approach from boy bands in the 1990s like Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC . Jim Yeager, USC Professor – Entertainment PR o Said it sounds like a publicist made up the term “British Invasion” o Believes anyone who actually experienced the first British Invasion would not think we are in the midst of one today . William Biersach, USC Professor – The Beatles expert o British Invasion is defined as a “cultural invasion” – not just music o Biersach thinks that One Direction and other British artists’ influence is not a “cultural invasion,” but an “upsurge in interest. o Does not think the band has as much talent as the Beatles . Mike Vulpo, E! News Writer o One Direction is “absolutely” a British Invasion o E! News articles about One Direction consistently get the most views o The band uses British lingo and image to their advantage 7 CONCLUSION After compiling all of our extensive primary and secondary research, reviewing and analyzing it, we together proved our hypothesis: there is no current British Invasion. While there may have been some initial instances where similarities could be drawn between the original British Invasions and One Direction, it is certainly not enough to constitute the same cultural implications as before. Our primary research findings blatantly show through our interviews that highly knowledgeable entertainment professionals do not consider One Direction as any sort of “British Invasion,” with the exception of one outlier. Our secondary research reiterates with album statistics that though One Direction has an impressive sales record, it loses out to other famous boy bands, current pop stars or current British Musicians. Collectively, our research demonstrates the validity of our hypothesis: One Direction is not spearheading a current third British Invasion. 8 INDIVIDUAL REPORT 9 HYPOTHESIS – THE PROCESS HYPOTHESIS 1: We believe we may be on the precipice of a British Invasion given the popularity of One Direction and other artists. Our first hypothesis was created without having done any of our research. It is important to note that the organic reaction of our group initially was to call the band a British Invasion. However, after we discussed our collective research as a group, and conducted our focus group, we decided our original hypothesis definitely needed to be changed. HYPOTHESIS 2: We
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