2. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

BY CHLOE CHORLTON

INTRODUCTIONThis question looks into how well we have established our brand identity and how well we have marketed our products.

A brand is something that has visible and stand out colours, design, name, symbol or anything that customers will be able to identify or distinguish a particular brand with.

This is also a type of marketing that all companies and products will use to make their product recognisable. Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. These include the  market research and also advertising. 

It is important for companies and products to be branded and be able to be associated through one as this makes it easier for customers and consumers to identify that product or company. Branding should also be used for copyright reasons as they want to be able to keep their product safe. Having a brand also increases sales as customers know this is real and as they recognize the brand they are more likely to reuse that brand which creates a CONFIDENT product.

BLACK SWANOur film influence was ‘Black Swan’ and its way of Brand Identification and Marketing had a large input into our own film creation – ‘Misconception’. Like all production and distribution companies, the creators of Black Swan wanted to make their brand identifiable and stand out.

Within these images collected of Black Swans poster and magazine covers, there is immediately 2 stand out features.

The first is colour. There is a reoccurring theme of black, white and red which is prominent in almost all images. The black and white that is used creates a contrast between the 2 sides that the main character has. It also allows a finer detail to be put into the image, than if a photographic image or coloured drawing was used. When red is put into the images, it is striking to the eye and draws you as a consumer more into the image and leave you wondering.

The other aspect that distinguishes these posters and magazine covers is the use of the Swan and Feathers. As the title of the film includes the word Swan, this is incorporated into both the posters and magazine covers through either and actual swan or feathers. These are not used in the film but they are a big brand identification as you would instantly think of the animal when you hear the name, so also being able to see links to the animal on the poster is a good way of getting people to remember the film.

The Swan is a big USP for their brand but is only used in their posters and magazine covers. Their other big Unique Selling Points are that this is a dance film and that they do have largely known actors. These points can be seen more in the teaser and official trailers.

MISCONCEPTIONOur Brand Identification is similar in many ways to Black Swan but also very different. As Black swan has a large budget, they were able to make many different poster and magazine covers.

One similarity that we can see with our magazine cover and Black Swans are the same use of the colours, black, white and red. The use of black and white again creates a contrast which is needed for our magazine cover as our film is also based around a split ‘personality’ through possession. The black and white also allowed us to draw more detail into the picture which was again needed to be able to show the difference between the normal character and the possessed one. The red eye creates one bold stand out feature to the magazine cover, which again like the black swan helps to draw the audience in and wonder about the film and why this is there. The red eye also just adds colour to the poster as it would have looked a little boring just all black and white.

We also used the same magazine to market our film by as this magazine is more commonly used for ‘indie’ genre films. It also suited our film more as they create dainty magazine covers which reflects our dance USP.However, unlike the Black Swan, our poster is very different to the magazine cover. The poster that includes Natalie Portman’s face for the Black Swan, is heavily edited and so it still goes along with their dainty theme. Our poster is clever as there is not a lot of editing done but the simple editing that is in place, makes a big impact. There is editing on skin such as covering blemishes and merging the 2 images together to create the mirror image, but this is all. Another thing that is different in our poster is that we have a tagline written above the title, which the Black Swan does not. We also use the same font throughout which again Black swan does not. Both these factors can also be seen in the teaser trailer.

TEASER TRAILERAlthough magazine covers and posters are a huge way that films can be marketed, a teaser trailer is what sticks in mind when deciding whether the film interests you or not. In order to create a good trailer, you must have your target audience and USP found. We had two types of audience, younger viewers for the psychological thriller side to our film and an older audience for the dance and theatrical side to our film. This links with the Unique Selling Point as the main focus and attraction is that it is a ballet dance film as there are not many of these out at the moment. This therefore instantly creates a brand identity for the film and gives us a great backbone to work off.

Like said in the introduction, brands are something that have visible and stand out colours, design, name, symbol or anything that customers will be able to identify or distinguish a particular brand with. In our trailer we decided that the font would be one of these main factors. We used the font named ‘Assassins’ in every piece of text that can be seen in the teaser trailer and also the poster and magazine cover. The reoccurring font will allow the viewers to be able to recognize this as Misconception the film. We also made the font white; which is carried throughout all the products and again is easily recognizable.

Another feature that is used in both the film poster and the teaser trailer is the tagline – ‘Do you trust your reflection?’. The may not stand out as much as it is writing that the audience will have to process, but having something to go back on will help the audience make that link between the tagline and Misconception and therefore is a brand identification succeeded. The tagline is said in the trailer but written in the poster and so when people read it, they will read it in the characters voice and vise-versa.

A tagline and the same font