Context
FEM&M is a solo transgender electronic music producer.
Target Audience
FEM&M reaches her audience online, mainly through short-form video platforms such as and Instagram and TikTok, where she posts under the name “cosplaycatkitty”. These videos tend to target transgender people, especially trans women, typically playing into stereotypes such as “transfem music” (cosplaycatkitty, 2024). This target audience is also clear in her releases; many song lyrics make references to transgender language and culture. For example, Genrefluid (FEM&M, 2025b) contains the lyric “they deadname my genre”, while “deadname” typically refers to the act of calling a transgender person by their previous name (Oxford English Dictionary, 2023).
The ways in which she reaches this target audience can be understood in terms of marketing theories such as brand equity theory and the AIDA model.
Market Position
FEM&M shows a strong awareness of her position in the market. Despite intentionally avoiding labelling her music as any particular genre (FEM&M, 2025b), she is still able to define her brand in its cultural position and in relation to other artists. This is achieved through appeal to a consistent target audience and frequent collaborations with other brands. For example, the song CRASH! (astrid, 2025) was a collaboration with astrid and Charloux, two other transgender electronic musicians with similar marketing strategies.
A notable competitor, femtanyl, is frequently compared to FEM&M among her audience. For example, AOTY (2025) shows community reviewers drawing comparisons such as “bootleg femtanyl”. Femtanyl is also a trans woman, and makes digital hardcore, a genre that FEM&M occasionally also uses to describe her music (femnmofficial, 2025). They have never collaborated, but FEM&M states that she would “love to some day” (AkumasCherries, 2025).
Marketing Theories
Brand Equity Theory
Kotler et al. (2005:556) define brand equity as the value of a brand, not by its financial worth, but by everything the brand means to consumers. They state that a brand can be evaluated by how it captures consumer interest and loyalty. Aaker (1991) proposes a brand equity model, which defines bases, such as brand associations and brand loyalty, that define brand equity. The model states that these bases benefit the consumer by helping with processing information and increasing confidence in purchase decisions. This also benefits the marketer; for example, by increasing efficiency of marketing programs and justifying pricing.
This model can be explored in its application to the marketing of FEM&M.
Brand Associations
“Brand associations” refers to the brand’s connotations, and frameworks applied by consumers to process information surrounding the brand (Aaker, 1991). FEM&M creates strong brand associations through her videos on TikTok, her website and her merch. For example, a look at her merch store (FEM&M, 2025c) shows pride flags, feminine clothing, images of Blåhaj, and images of HRT pills. These are examples of brand associations. The name FEM&M derives from a slang name for HRT pills (cosplaycatkitty, 2024), which are used by trans women to medically transition. Blåhaj is a stuffed shark sold by IKEA which has become a mascot for the transgender community (Milner, 2022). The abundant use of transfem imagery associates the brand with electronic music made by trans women, a culturally recognised scene in genres such as hyperpop (Johnson, 2020). We can see FEM&M acknowledge this by labelling her music as hyperpop—”#hyperpop” can be seen in the tags of many of her posts (cosplaycatkitty, 2024)—despite her music more closely fitting genres such as breakcore and hardcore.
Beyond appeal to the transgender community, FEM&M also builds associations with the furry community with the FEM&M mascot, based on a cartoon cat (femnmofficial, 2024). She also references internet nostalgia, through use of CRT displays and references to dated video games, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, along with use of informal language in professional contexts with emoticons such as “:3”. This particular emoticon has been used in early internet communities as a sign of cuteness (Qw33n Kuma, 2003). However, Johnson (2020) explains how this early internet culture is also strongly associated with transfem music. By connoting her brand with transfem culture, FEM&M builds strong brand associations.
Aaker (1991) claims that each basis of brand equity provides value to both the consumer and the marketer.
The effect of brand associations on the consumer is that they can apply the framework in which they view hyperpop and transfem music onto FEM&M’s product, which makes it easier to decide whether to engage.
The effect of brand associations on FEM&M is that they allow her to appeal to a pre-existing audience. Those who already have positive feelings towards transfem music will be more willing to engage with her product, which leads to more effective marketing.
Brand Loyalty
Aaker (2009) defines brand loyalty in terms of a consumer’s willingness to switch to a competing brand. A consumer with no brand loyalty will be indifferent, and make decisions based on price, so will be willing to switch. A consumer with high brand loyalty is committed, with a personal relationship to the brand.
Heding et al. (2009) elaborate on Aaker’s model by applying the community approach to brand loyalty. They state that loyalty is affected by communities; being in a community can strengthen a consumer’s loyalty, while communities can also threaten brand loyalty by collectively opposing the brand’s actions.
The “brand triad” in the community approach rejects earlier theories that explain marketing only in terms of interactions between the brand and the consumer, and instead considers the importance of interactions between consumers, applying a social rather than individualistic perspective.
This approach of analysing brand loyalty can be applied to the communities surrounding FEM&M. As a brand that is marketed through the internet, there exist online communities dedicated to her brand. For example, there is a FEM&M subreddit that was created by FEM&M herself, where her fans are encouraged to discuss her music (Reddit, 2025). The brand triad applies to this subreddit because it is an example of the brand interacting with the consumers—FEM&M posts her TikTok videos and regularly comments on other posts. It is also an example of consumers interacting with each other—fans start discussions, post their fanart and share memes with each other. This enhances brand loyalty by deepening the meaning of the brand via user-driven interactions, forming personal relationships between consumers that consolidate consumers’ identity with the brand and therefore consolidate commitment to the brand.
Heding et al. (2009:202) explain that the benefit of a brand community is that the marketer can derive brand meaning by observing the communities, and aid interactions with the brand. This explanation shows that FEM&M could use the subreddit to further consolidate brand associations, and enhance brand loyalty by facilitating the community’s social interactions.
Brand loyalty provides value to the marketer by discouraging switches to competing brands, so buyers will continue to purchase the product (Aaker, 2009). This applies to FEM&M because brand loyalty can incentivise consumers to continue streaming her music, buying her merch, and attending live performances.
Brand loyalty provides value to the consumer by forming habits, increasing the ease of purchasing decisions. (Aaker, 2009). This applies to FEM&M’s audience because having a connection to FEM&M’s community can cause them to habitually stream her music.
Further Bases
Aaker (1991) defines further bases of brand equity that apply to the marketing of FEM&M, such as brand awareness and perceived quality. These could be applied in detail, but from the exploration of brand associations and brand loyalty, it is clear that Aaker’s brand equity model is a relevant framework for explaining FEM&M’s marketing, and how it provides value to both her and her audience.
AIDA Model
Early variations of this model were first described in the late 19th century. In his book Financial Advertising, Lewis (1908) identifies three stages to good marketing: “attracting the attention”, the ways in which an advert attracts a reader among other content (typically through colour and font choice in a newspaper); “awakening the interest”, where the reader’s attention is maintained after having been attracted; and “creating the conviction”, convincing the reader of the advertisement and commanding action. This seminal theory forms the basis of the AIDA model that retains relevancy in modern advertising contexts.
The AIDA model describes four stages of marketing: attention, interest, desire and action (Priyanka, 2013):
Attention
The consumer becomes aware of the brand
Interest
The consumer wants to continue learning about the brand
Desire
The consumer develops a preference towards the brand
Action
The resulting response (typically a purchase)
Using this framework, we can explore how a potential consumer could become engaged in the brand of FEM&M.
Attention
A survey by Höijer and Nordin Kehlmeier (2023) showed that more than 50% of TikTok users hear the majority of new songs on TikTok first. This demonstrates that TikTok is an effective platform for drawing attention to music. FEM&M uses TikTok for the attention stage, with videos featuring skits that demonstrate her brand.
For example, in a video from September 2025 (cosplaycatkitty, 2025) she acts out a humorous conversation between friends about “trans music”. She appeals to her target audience through reference to the trans music phenomenon. This is achieved not exclusively through dialogue, but also in visual elements. A look at the video shows heavy use of blue, pink and white, the colours of the transgender pride flag. There are references to video games, such as plushes of Kirby, a Nintendo character, and posters of Bridget from Guilty Gear, a video game character who is canonically transgender (Shepard, 2022). These visual indications of transgender culture are able to attract the attention of her target audience.
Interest
Continuing the analysis of this example (cosplaycatkitty, 2025), securing the attention of the listener needs to lead to diverting interest towards her music. In this video, while referencing “trans music”, she plays her own music in the background and gives a brief description of how she makes it. This draws the attention towards the music, creating an interest in her product.
Desire
The next stage of the model, desire, is the stage in which a potential consumer wants to engage with the product. The stage of desire can be seen to occur in the comments of this video: one comment reads “is it on Spotify already”, which shows how a potential listener wants to stream FEM&M’s music, thus demonstrating the desire stage of the AIDA model.
Action
This is the stage in which the decision of whether to engage is made by a potential consumer. The commenter, who previously showed a desire, received a response from FEM&M, who stated that “it’s everywhere”. After this, the commenter claimed to have added the music to their playlist. This is an overt example of FEM&M channeling a potential customer’s desire to listen to her music into the action of streaming her music, clearly demonstrating the action stage of the AIDA model.
This example shows how the AIDA model can be effective for funnelling an audience towards a product through TikTok and short-form video content.
Applying these marketing theories to the brand of FEM&M has demonstrated how she has been successful in growing an audience through online marketing, and the relevance of these theories to modern marketing strategies on platforms such as TikTok. Furthermore, exploring her brand in an analytical context has deepened my understanding of how marketing theories could apply to how I can market my own brand.
Bibliography
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