SHOCKING MISS EMERALD – WHAT’S NEXT?! By: Maaike van der Vlist, Karolien Schuilenburg, Gregoire Delevaque & Liina Ergma. RESEARCH THE START OF CARO EMERALD In 2007, Caro Emerald (Caroline van der Leeuw) was called upon to cut a demo for producers Jan van Wieringen, David Scheurs and Canadian songwriter Vincent Degiorgio. Caro seized the opportunity and recorded ‘Back It Up’. When she performed the song on a local Dutch TV station a year later, the song exploded onto the scene. Viewers were constantly calling, e-mailing and commenting about that lovely girl with her catchy tune. A low-budget video on YouTube created a similar effect and suddenly viewers wanted to know where they could buy her music. However, with only one track on the repertoire. David, Vince, Jan and Caro started working on a full album before releasing anything. FIRST ALBUM Inspired by films and music from the 40s and 50s, they wrote and produced “Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor”, an exciting, hugely accessible collection of 12 original songs. The album featured ballroom jazz, cinematic tangos, groovin' jazz tracks and infectious mambos that sounded as if they were recorded in the golden age of Hollywood. However, the smoking beats, catchy songs and inventive production marked Caro out as a present-day phenomenon. SUCCESS OF HER FIRST ALBUM Debut single ‘Back It Up’ became an instant radio hit in July 2009, and follow up 'A Night Like This' went on to reach #1 in the Dutch single charts in January 2010. That same week, her highly anticipated album 'Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor' was released. It entered at #1 in the album charts and reached platinum status within 6 weeks. Overall, the album spent 30 weeks at #1, breaking a record set by Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' and selling a stunning 260,000 copies within the year in Holland alone. The album was then released in many other countries with a similar effect: so far, ‘Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor’ is IFPI certified platinum with sales over 1.3 million in Europe (NL 6x Platinum, Poland 2x Platinum, UK Platinum, Germany Platinum, Austria & Switzerland Gold) and has been released in over 40 countries. Caro and her production team received numerous national and international awards, including an MTV EMA award (Best Dutch/Belgian), EBBA award, Goldene Kamera and Echo Award. Caro performed at almost every major radio and TV show in Europe. GRANDMONO An album with such a distinctive style required its own label approach. Adding Vince’s A&R background to the mix, Schreurs and van Wieringen set up Grandmono Records to release their music and manage the project. It was an overnight success. 1 INSPIRATION Caro her first album is inspired by music and films from the 40’s and 50’s. The second album is inspired by the Paris of a decade ago. SOCIAL MEDIA FACEBOOK 228.445 people have liked Caro Emerald her Facebook page. Caro mainly uses her Facebook page to show where she is performing, share her music and show her style. www.facebook.com/CaroEmeraldOfficial PINTEREST On Pinterest Caro Emerald has 1,8K followers. On this page she mainly shows her style by sharing pictures of her outfit. She also shares quotes. www.pinterest.com/caroemerald TWITTER On Twitter Caro has 66.7K followers. She mainly uses her Facebook page to show where she is performing and to share her music. www.twitter.com/caroemerald INSTAGRAM On Instagram Caro Emerald has 9.146 followers. On this page she shows where she is performing and shows her style with the hashtag #outfitdiary. www.instagram.com/caroemerald APP Caro Emerald also has an app. Grandmono developed the Album App. With this app, you can enjoy the music of ‘The Shocking Miss Emerald’ on your mobile device, without missing out on the artwork, pictures, lyrics, stories and credits that bring the music even more to live. The app is only available in the App Store. 2 TARGET GROUP Research shows that the current target group of Caro Emerald are especially female. Over 60% of her fans are female. She increasingly attracts male fans as well. However her main fans are women. Caro has national and international success, so her target group does not only live in the Netherlands. Besides her success in The Netherlands she has also much success in England. She also has a lot of fans from Italy, Germany and France. Most of Caro her fans are 25+. The majority of the target population has followed a Bachelor degree and have an above average income. The target group regularly buys brand and are mostly loyal to their brands. The marital status of the target group is married and/or living together with any children. Spending free time with family and friends is very important to them. The people within the target group like the retro/vintage look, but are not old-fashioned. They don’t just love the vintage stuff, but they do also like a modern twist. 3 HER STYLE 4 OUR APPROACH Having started our project with research on Caro Emerald, it was only common sense to start looking at brands that related to her. Elegant, feminine brands with a hint of vintage were found and we put together our first list. Most of these brands have quite a bit of a common targeting group like Caro’s. We felt like we needed brands presenting the following characteristics: ● Luxury/exclusive feel; ○ high-end brands selling/making bags, clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc. ● Feminine stuff, not feminist. ● Forties inspired brands. ● Possibly old style jazz. ● Could be a UK brand. So we came up with our first list. ● Bijenkorf ● Crosley - turntables ● Harrods ● Karen Millen ● Vespa ● Mini-Cooper ● Old-school alcohol brand ● Swarovski ● OPI ● Technology ● Glamour magazine ● Dior ● Something travel related ● Nespresso And we also found some great vintage clothing brands ● Tara Scarlet ● Fenn Wright Manson ● Top Shop ● Dorothy Perkins ● Marina Rinaldi ● Asos Soon after making our first list, we realised we should not find a target group matching hers completely, but only has a bit of a common ground. The vintage brands were too old fashioned for Caro Emerald, because her style is somewhat modern as well and we’d only reach hippies that way. 5 We were really interested in finding some new type of technology to connect with Caro Emerald, but there was a reason why this did not happen. This simply being that Caro Emerald still is inspired by the past century, so it would not really match with her. We also felt that the brand connected to her should be internationally active, because she is as well. So we made a new list; ● Karen Millen ● Nespresso ● Harrods ● OPI ● Crosley ● Kenzo - specific perfume line ● Dior - specific perfume line ● Rituals A lot of these brands match a segment of Caro Emerald’s target group perfectly, adding a lot of new people to her already existing group. Except for Nespresso, Harrods and Crosley, all of these brands only have women in their targeting group. Research has shown that not all of Caro’s fans are female, so we felt like we needed a sponsorship from a brand that matches this. And so we all made our individual final lists which consisted of the following brands; ● VW Beetle/Fender, ● Karen Millen, ● OPI ● Nespresso While discussing our final lists, one of us had the idea to look into cars that were inspired by something vintage. We found the Volkswagen Beetle Fender edition, a car inspired by a vintage one but this special edition is focused on music in the car. This car has it’s very own Fender sound system in it, a wooden-like dashboard and so it has an even greater vintage feel but with a modern twist. The car isn’t specifically aimed at women or men and so we all agreed it was the perfect match. Fender would be the main sponsor with it’s Jazz instruments and vintage equipment and VW Beetle would be a perfect addition to this partnership. They share the same passion for music as Caro does. 6 FENDER AND VW BEETLE Our sponsor choice for Caro Emerald was Fender, the producer of guitars and other music related instruments and equipment. One of the reasons we chose this company as a sponsor was the fact that together with Volkswagen they have made a Volkswagen Beetle Fender edition. This fits perfectly with Caro Emerald’s image. In fact with one product, we are able to promote a car brand and a music brand at the same time. For Fender this partnership with our artist is a worthy opportunity because they have a broad range of artists, but most of them are from the rock genre. So if Fender would set up a partnership with Caro Emerald, they could reach a new audience: the jazz music lovers. The guitarist from her band already uses a Gretsch White Falcon guitar, which is a part of the Fender company. Fender is selling special jazz guitars and basses and some vintage amplifiers, that would be be perfect for Caro and her band. Sponsoring her can be a big perk for the jazz part of Fender. It is also a nice partnership for her, because it’s a prestigious brand of guitars, and it fits perfectly with her elegant attitude. Moreover, choosing Volkswagen Beetle Fender edition is interesting because the target audience of the sponsorship is huge. We are targeting both men and women, from the age 30 and up. It is beneficial for both sides of the partnership to have a mixed audience as a target group.