COMM2411: Communication and Social Relations Assessment #3 Public Relations
By: Elise O’Connor (s3281130), Lauren Medley (s3237035), Eugene Zhao (s3232994) and Calum Smyth (s3291061) Tutor: Matthew Loads Artefacts: #1- The Hi-Fi Bar #2 - Melbourne Fringe Festival #3 - Pellegrinis Bar #4 - Melbourne Logo
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The Hi-Fi Bar - by Calum Smyth
The Hi-Fi Bar, located on Melbourne’s iconic Swanston Street Walk, is a renowned live music destination in the CBD. The venue houses live music and events, and has become famous for being one of the best places to watch and listen live music. The city of Melbourne’s PR would portray the Hi-Fi as part of a broader brand of the city, an element that creates the overall package of what the city is. The part of Melbourne the Hi-Fi represents is how the city is one of diversity with a strong live music culture. Sara Cohen (1995) cites historical cultural references of live music bringing community together for special events. The music defined the place and the culture, and ultimately creates ‘identity’ for the community. The Hi-Fi, defines the surrounding geography and community, which has been defined with the help of PR and promotion of different genre bands. Also, the venue is important as it regularly plays host too many ‘alternative’ bands, creating diversity in Melbourne’s CBD. It separates itself from the more ‘mainstream’ venues, such as Rod Laver Arena, and has become an important part of music culture in Melbourne. Shane Horman (2008) explains the importance of Live Music in cities, describing them as part of the ‘social fabric’ of the community. It is argued that live music is a part of the cultural development of the city (Horman 2008) and it is therefore an integral part of the identity of the area. In the case of the Hi-Fi Bar, PR would portray the venue as a part of the broader Melbourne identity, a cultural centre with a vibrant nightlife. If the Hi-Fi did not play host to different genre bands, then the geography and culture could potentially become lackluster with Melbourne losing an essential part of its unique nightlife. In turn, this would see Melbourne lose a part of the brand that has become quintessential with Melbourne tourism and identity. In recent times there has been a decline in live music venues in Melbourne, with liquor licensing laws causing many pubs and smaller venues to stop housing bands. With this loss of music venues in Melbourne, the ‘vibrant live-music culture’ (Shaw 2010) has come under attack. Independent Australian music is the main casualty here, which affects the Hi-Fi 2
directly as it is a hit to Melbourne’s diverse nightlife. Many of the acts that perform at the Hi-Fi are established Australian bands that have gained their initial fan base from smaller pubs and clubs. If there does become a significant shortage in live music venues in Melbourne, the Hi-Fi will have a serious PR problem as their ability to secure regular concerts and events will become increasingly difficult. These music venues are known as being culturally diverse (Shaw 2010), and create a non-violent atmosphere as individuals who go to concerts at places like the Hi-Fi are there to enjoy music. These new laws ultimately affect Melbourne’s live music scene on a much broader scale than originally foreseen by the state government, and for Melbourne to maintain its ‘vibrant nightlife’ reputation these laws need to be reconsidered (Shaw 2010). The Hi-Fi Bar is an integral part of Melbourne’s culture and identity, especially on Swanston Street. It is clear that it is a part of the ‘social fabric’ (Horman 2008) of the CBD, and helps shape the nightlife of the city on any given evening. It brings together people to enjoy an event and everyone is there for a common purpose (Cohen 1995), and it becomes a geography defined by those who love live music
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Melbourne Fringe Festival – By Eugene Zhao
The Melbourne Fringe Festival is an annual independent arts festival held in Melbourne, and is a leading organisation for the independent arts in Victoria. The festival runs for three weeks from late September to early October, usually overlapping with the beginning of the mainstream Melbourne International Arts Festival. Fringe Festival includes a wide variety of art forms, including theatre, comedy, music, performance art, film, and cabaret, and has expanded in recent years to embrace digital art and circus performance as well. Melbourne Fringe Festival is considered the embodiment of an artistic city of Melbourne’s identity.
Richards (2004) explains events influence on a city identity. It is mentioned that cities are increasingly using cultural events to improve their image, stimulate urban development and attract visitors and investment (Richards 2004). In the Fringe Festival case, PR practitioners would utilize this event to highlight Melbourne’s art and design culture. Melbourne is known as a design city, which is exemplified through the relationship between PR and this event. The event embodied the essence of Melbourne's arts; showing the design elegance of the city. Therefore the Fringe festival can be used to support the notion that Melbourne is in fact a design city.
Colette Bushnell’s article develops material to facilitate the implementation of a seven-to-ten day Fringe Festival in Portland, Oregon or any similar metro area. ‘By definition, a Fringe Festival is a non-profit organization of performers, producers, and managers dedicated to providing local, national, and international emerging artists, a nonjuried opportunity to present new works to arts-friendly audiences’ (Bushnell 2004). This produced a structural model that defines the steps necessary to achieve the goals inherent in a Fringe Festival, to motivate the individuals involved in the process, and suggests ways to sustain this motivation for continued goal achievement.
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In Collette Bushnell’s article she mentions that the festival is awakening the artistic potential and dynamic marketing of a city. All Fringe Festivals are committed to a common philosophy that promotes accessible, inexpensive, and fun performing arts attendance. At the Melbourne Fringe Festival, which is based on an independent self-sufficient event, many are not known artists, hobbyists or art lovers, some of them emerging as a volunteer or as artists. This has stimulated people's passion for art, not just artists, but also the people around us. This gives Melbourne a platform to showcase a variety of art whilst in turn creating an artistic identity for itself.
Prior to the establishment of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the existing Adelaide Fringe Festival hosted a plethora of performers from Melbourne. When the collective concluded, many artists decided to return to Melbourne from the Adelaide Fringe highlighting Melbourne’s need for its own festival. Today, the Melbourne Fringe Festival is filled with its own culture and art and has become part of the urban identity. The Melbourne Fringe Festival is undoubtedly an important chapter of Melbourne culture and provides a means of expression for its identity.
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Pellegrinis Bar - By Elise O’Connor In recent years Melbourne has become dependent on the ‘café culture’ that it has become accustomed to, developing as a strong element of its character and identity. The café culture of Melbourne is one that has added widespread appeal and merit to its urban sophistication that appeals to residents and tourists alike. Remaining unchanged since its opening in 1954 and considered a Melbourne Institution, Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar was among the first of its kind, opened by immigrants it played a major role in establishing this café culture. This now important component of Melbourne living is perceived as positive to urban development and society and this movement has been effective in‘ …stimulating contemporary metropolitan lifestyles’ ultimately contending that ‘city policy makers should act to stimulate café culture, consequently positively adding positive social behavior’ (Montgomery, 1997). The restaurant was an industry leader at the forefront of the city’s cultural revolution explored by Sarah O’Hanlon & Tanja Luckins (2001) who discuss the way in which Melbourne image ‘ transitioned to a place of multi-culturalism and sophistication’ predominantly due to its flourishing restaurant scene around the 1960s.’ Melbourne considers its café scene on par and able to compete with its European rivals in relation to urban sophistication, O’Hanlon & Lucas (2001) pairing the idea of the city being a ‘place of consumption and exchange’ with the notion of the city’s. In the Journal of Urban
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Design, head of London’s Department of Land Management and Development at the University of Reading John Montgomery (1997) stresses the ‘importance of the relationship between cafes, street life and urban public social life.’ From a public relations perspective, it can be said this café lifestyle that Pellegrinis emulates is one that Melbournians revel in, adding value to the shared views of the city and its own personality. The authentic long standing establishment that is Pellegrinis is representative of how strongly café culture has been established in Melbourne. In his primary account, international journalist Simon Busch (2007) notes the ‘foundations of the café scene institutionalized by European immigrants’ which supports the authenticity of this social fabric. Melbourne’s long standing love affair with the café scene is one of a replication of its European neighbours, however has interwoven its own charm to this idea, ‘Europe and Australia have in fact interbred here, to produce an alluring kind of unpretentious, untubercular sophistication. (Busch, 2007). To socialize over a coffee is now quintessentially ‘Melbourne,’ and is seemingly an essential part of everyday living.
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Melbourne Logo – By Lauren Medley In order for a city brand to be successful it must convey the core values of the city’s publics and their authorities (Zhang & Zhao 2009). As of July 2009, Melbourne City Council launched its new-look brand identity logo, replacing the ‘daggy’ leaf symbol of the 1990’s with a redesigned ‘M’ logo. The new logo, now displayed around Melbourne on posters and street signs, is meant to represent ‘modern Melbourne and its true international standing’ (Corporate Identity 2009).
The Melbourne logo is created to be some sort of emblem for the city’s urbanity; a token designed to reflect ‘a city recognised internationally for its diversity, innovation, sustainability and liveability’ (Corporate Identity 2009).
Logos have become ‘incorporated as a technique by which an organisation communicates with key publics and stakeholders’ (Cornelissen & Elving 2003) and are endorsed readily by the Public Relations industry. Melbourne’s new ‘M’ design logo is Melbourne’s attempt to nationally and internationally redefine its ‘corporate identity’ (Cornelissen & Elving 2003). It may now be argued that a logo is ‘the symbolic presentation of a company’ referring to a set of features or characteristics of an organisation (Cornelissen & Elving 2003). Therefore, Melbourne’s ‘M’ needs to easily communicate these features in a manner that its target audiences’ can both interpret and understand. Yet the interpretation of this symbolic emblem is up to the individual, PR practitioners have control over means but not message. Due to numerous influencing factors such as culture, experience, age etc Melbourne’s ‘M’ may create an ambiguous redefinition of Melbourne’s corporate identity, therefore in order to create a successful brand and establish global identity, Melbourne will need to do more than just changing a logo.
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Rebranding requires a complex strategic plan and a thorough understanding of the positive and negative factors that can impact upon the interpretation of a brands message.
The aim of a city brand is to successfully convey a cities identity as determined by the publics and their authorities (Zhang & Zhao 2009). The 29th Beijing Olympic Games provides a framework upon which we theoretically consider the Melbourne Logo as our city’s rebranding. Although logos can be a successful means of displaying values, if the message does not convey the values of the public and authorities alike, a global brand can fail to embed itself within society and hence lack substance.
‘The new design will become an icon for Melbourne synonymous with the modern, vibrant, cool city Melbourne is today and will continue to be in the future’ (Corporate Identity 2009). As displayed through the Beijing case study, Beijing used relentless PR campaigns to pitch their core values and attributes, or their city’s features and characteristics through slogans, logos and mascots. Yet surveys conducted showed the brand lacked impact upon their target audiences. If the Melbourne logo fails to represent the values of its people and governments, the success of the brand will be tarnished.
The new logo reflects the redefinition and management of Melbourne’s corporate identify, clarifying the organization to third parties (Cornelissen, J P and Elving, W J L 2003)
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References A Brief History of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 19822003<http://www.craigbellamy.net/2003/11/22/a-brief-history-of-the-melbourne-fringefestival-1982-2003/>
Busch, S, ‘Australia’s Frothy City’, New Statesman, Published 28 May 2007.
Bushnell, Colette, C 2004, ‘On the fringe: a practical start-up guide to creating assembling, and evaluating a fringe festival in Portland, Oregon, pp23, University of Oregon, Arts and Administration Program
CITY OF MELBOURNE 2009, Corporate Identity, CITY OF MELBOURNE, viewed April 5 2010, <http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/MelbourneProfile/Pages/CorporateIdent ity.aspx> Cohen, Sara (1995), Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1995), pp. 434-446 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Corelissen, J P & Elving, W J L 2003, ‘Managing corporate identity: An integrative framework of dimensions and determinants’, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 8 no. 2, pp. 114-120, viewed 5 April 2010, Business Source Premier (EBSCO) Horman Shane (2008). A portrait of the politician as a young pub rocker: live music venue reform in Australia. Popular Music, 27 , pp 243-256 Montgomery, J, 1997, Cafe culture and the city: ‘The role of pavement cafes in urban public social life,’ in Journal of Urban Design , Volume 2, 1st editon, Taylor and Francis Group, 199,. Pp.83-102. 10
O’Hanlon & Tanja Luckins, S & T, ‘… In Love with a Café and What He Could Buy…? Commodity, Desire and Dining out in 1960’s Melbourne.,’ in Go! Melbourne. Melbourne in the Sixties, 1st edition, Melbourne Publishing Group Pty Ltd, Melbourne, pp. 160-173.
Richards, G& Julie, W 2004, ‘The impact of the culture events on city image: Rotterdam, cultural capital of Europe 2001’, Urban Studies, Vol. 41 Issue. 10, pp.1931-1981
Shaw, K 2010, Music venues still threatened as Tote lesson not learnt, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April, Viewed 15 April 2010 http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/music-venues-still-threatened-as-totelesson-not-learnt-20100414-sdyq.html Zhang, L & Zhao, S X 2009, ‘City branding and the Olympic effect: A case study of Beijing’, Cities: The international Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 245-254, viewed 5 April 2010, Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
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