Narrative Positioning for an Artist Rewriting the Pop Template
Client:
Miist
Field:
Music + Creator Economy
Service:
Identity Consulting
The Challenge
S01
Miist is an emerging artist blending Asian and Western musical influences, and she wanted to disrupt the default setting of highly sexualised pop.
She was also older than the industry expects, and a mother - two facts that pop culture treats as disqualifying rather than interesting. She commissioned a PR campaign for upcoming singles that needed to hold cultural sensitivity and genuine boldness at the same time. How do you make the things an industry sees as liabilities into the reason it pays attention?
The Approach
S02
I built the campaign around her story rather than her image - which is the inversion the whole thing depends on.
PR campaign messaging. An integrated campaign foregrounding her cultural fusion and her challenge to the sexualisation of pop, organised around empowerment, authenticity, and the universal reach of global music.
Cross-platform launch strategy. Social, press releases, and targeted outreach to publications and influencers whose own ethos actually matched hers, rather than whoever had the largest audience.
Cultural sensitivity throughout. Every piece of messaging built to work in both Asian and Western markets, and to land with older audiences and younger listeners simultaneously.
Creative activations. Digital and physical concepts connecting her releases to live cultural conversations about identity, authenticity and intergenerational collaboration - including a Just a Mom concept using hanging mannequins of mothers across races and ages, and an interactive billboard dispensing her singles for free, bringing her music from her living room into the public’s.
The Insight
S03
Age, motherhood and cultural hybridity are only liabilities inside a template. Change the template and they become the entire proposition. Miist’s position wasn’t a problem to work around - it was the most interesting thing about her, and the campaign’s job was to say so first.
THE
OUTCOMES
Deliverables and External Results
Integrated PR campaign messaging built on cultural fusion and anti-sexualisation
Cross-platform launch strategy across social, press and targeted influencer outreach
Messaging designed for simultaneous relevance in Asian and Western markets
Creative activation concepts connecting releases to cultural conversations about identity
Positioned as an innovator within the genre rather than an outsider to it
iTunes Top 10 artist
Internal Shifts Behind the Scenes
Stopped treating her age and motherhood as things to work around
Gained a story that was hers rather than the genre’s
Found audiences in two markets without splitting into two artists
