How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The task I was set to create was...

'A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with:

• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

In order to make both my products look part of the same package I had to produce a coherent package that had a clear house style. The importance of having a house style is in order to attract your audience to the product and there for acts as a marketing mechanism.

A house style is a coherent graphic look which is continued across the entire brand and includes factors such as colour, fonts & size, posture & proxemics, props, lighting and visual themes.

Here are some examples of already existing artists and their house styles.

This is folk band '3 Daft Monkeys'

They have a very clear house style and one which is easily identifiable by their audience, including the use of their own logo which is used on all their products, such as their albums.

In all the promotional photographs they carry out the same stance and posture and also stand in the same order, with the female in the middle, looking as though as they are playing their instruments. The effect of them being photographed with their instruments shows the audience that they are real musicians.

Their sense of dress is quite a quirky and recognizable one and this style is continued through out the photo's, with the top hats and colourful clothing, again giving them a sense of identity and adding to the house style.

When producing their products they would have to follow something called a 'style guide' which is a set of rules, solely for the purpose of the one artists package on how the house style should be created to make it coherent to the rest of their products.

A 'style guide' is something which I had to attempt to follow in order to make both my ancillary texts and music video appear to be part of the same package.

I have created a presentation on prezi to indicate how I have attempted to make my products look coherent and how I went about doing so.

In order to find out how coherent my target audience thought my package was I filmed a person who fits my target audience to find out her views.

Audience Profile :

Name : Jo Border

Sex : Female

Age : 38

Music preference : folk/acoustic

Job : Sales rep for a cider company/care worker

Hobbies : singing, going to festivals, playing at folk sessions

Over all I found her feedback positive and she picked out many of of the features I had aimed to make look like a running feature through out my products, such as the apples, colours and clothing.

Although she noticed the apple's being featured in both the ancillary texts and music video she did have to ask me to explain what their purpose was. To me this proved that they worked as an entropic feature to include in my work as they're not the typical visual imagery you would expect to see in a music video. So the fact that she had to stop and look at my work and noticed the apples as something unusual shows that they are eye catching.

She found the colouring a coherent feature due to the 'washed out/hazy' look the products all had to them. She also says how the colours compliment each other and work well together and are good on the eye. The research I completed into digipaks helped me to distinguish the types of colouring used in folk/acoustic products and Jo owns a lot of folk albums so for her to say she would notice this digipak was a pleasing comment.

During my research and planning I was hoping to and supposed to be filming different models as to the one now in my work. I was originally going to use different models for the digipak and poster to the video its self due to complications with communication between me and my model. How ever I made the choice to ditch my first choice of models and use some one completely different. Now having completed my coursework and received my audience feedback I am glad I made this choice as the fact I have the same model was a coherent feature Jo pulled out.

Having the same model gives the audience a main feature to identify with and the fact he was good looking model is something which Jo pulled out. I find this an interesting comment as it proves that using a stereotypical model (in my case a your average arty, folksy and well styled male) makes the video more pleasurable for the viewer.

The only negative point pulled out was the difference in grass length in the video compared to the digipak where it is a lot longer. I had to explain that this was due to the asparagus fern being cut down pre-filming. Although it is a valid point she has made I do not feel that it is a huge worry and a feature which could be used against my package in terms of coherence.