q2 brand identity new

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Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Soffia Farmer Creating a brand identity is a key element to having successful products in my opinion. We had a discussion about how we were going to do this across all our three products and that we were going to use the same font for the documentary and magazine double page spread to try and continue a colour scheme. I wanted to make all our products to appeal to the same target audience (12-19 year olds). It was also essential to have the products relate to the channels or magazines they would be appearing on. The three products were the documentary alongside the radio trailer and magazine double page spread. For the documentary, we had the same font across all the titles; this helped to create continuity and a brand identity. This means that the font will be familiar to the audience and recognisable, as we have used this across two products. Black writing is what is used in most articles in magazines so we conformed to this convention because it would have stuck to the theme of the entire magazine (What’s on TV). We used a very similar font on both products to make them more similar. The boxes we used for the background of the images on the background were

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Page 1: Q2 brand identity new

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Soffia Farmer

Creating a brand identity is a key element to having successful products in my opinion. We had a discussion about how we were going to do this across all our three products and that we were going to use the same font for the documentary and magazine double page spread to try and continue a colour scheme. I wanted to make all our products to appeal to the same target audience (12-19 year olds). It was also essential to have the products relate to the channels or magazines they would be appearing on. The three products were the documentary alongside the radio trailer and magazine double page spread.

For the documentary, we had the same font across all the titles; this helped to create continuity and a brand identity. This means that the font will be familiar to the audience and recognisable, as we have used this across two products. Black writing is what is used in most articles in magazines so we conformed to this convention because it would have stuck to the theme of the entire magazine (What’s on TV). We used a very similar font on both products to make them more similar. The boxes we used for the background of the images on the background were matching to the main font of the title, as it has a school style aesthetic. It is more appealing and memorable to the audience to have familiarity. We also had white text on our titles in the documentary and we used this in our magazine double page spread where appropriate, however we could not use this for the majority of the text, as it would not be clear to see on the light background we used. To incorporate the white aspect of the colour scheme, we used a white background for the title and also one of our statistics.

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Our magazine double page spread will appeal to the audience because of the smaller images we used of screenshots of the documentary. The screenshots used are from the documentary, and this helps to create a brand identity by having people who were in the documentary on the magazine double page spread. It was appealing because of the large title that we decided to use, as it stands out. The font that we used is clear and harsh and this is representative of the topic we chose. The font of the title of the documentary is the same font that Channel 4 famously uses, it is for that reason, and it will be easily recognisable that our documentary will be shown on Channel 4.

I was pleased that I decided to do this as it helps to identify the channel the documentary will be premiering on. This is used for their website also which helps us create a link between our magazine double page spread and the website which has a catch up service. We had the title of the documentary ‘Are today’s teenagers the most stressed generation?’ across all three products, we made sure to include this, as it is a fundamental part of promoting the documentary. Additionally, we wanted to create an obvious link between our documentary and our double page spread. To do this, we decided to use a screenshot from our documentary as the background for the magazine. This helped us to create brand identity by using the same colours and scene from our documentary.

Audio

In the documentary, we used a music beat across the entire video, and we used the same beat in the radio trailer and this helped us to create a brand identity. Using the same music would have appealed to the audience as they may have listened to the trailer on the radio and then saw the documentary on the television, using the same music made it more

Documentary clip

Channel 4 font

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recognisable. I think that if the audience recognises the music to the same products, they are more likely to watch the entire documentary. The music is not very upbeat and we did this deliberately as our topic is serious, and the radio trailer features statistics on serious issues that teenagers deal with. Therefore, I think this is effective because we can create a sense of familiarity within both products. The narrator used in the documentary is also used in our radio trailer; we decided to do this because the audience can feel connected to the same presenter.

In addition, the narrator (myself) is a teenager and I think that the audience would be able to tell so this will highlight our target audience. To make our radio trailer more interesting, we used short clips from our vox pop interviews to promote what our documentary entails, these included teenagers and older (middle aged people). The majority of the vox pop interviews are from teenagers and so this, in term, links with our target audience and will appeal to our audience. This links with the images we have used in our magazine double page spread, as they are from vox pop interviews shown in the documentary. We included different opinions to get the listener’s attention along with different ages and this would then create interest in different age groups alongside our target audience to watch the documentary. Furthermore, this connects with our title ‘Are today’s teenagers the most stressed generation?’.

As we are broadcasting our radio trailer on Capital FM, a popular music radio station, we decided to use a musical underlay to go with the nature of the radio station. As we chose our radio station to be Capital FM, a station run by advertisements, we could promote the documentary to be watched on Channel 4. To create synergy between the radio trailer and the magazine double page spread, we used the same date and time of the documentary. This is a necessity as the purpose of the trailer and magazine double spread is to advertise the documentary. The link between Channel 4 and Capital is that they both have advertisements and so we used an ‘after the break’ scene which showed what was going to be coming up, not only does this help the audience become more informed about what is going to come up, it entices them to continue watching through the advertisement break. If we were broadcasting on BBC, then we wouldn’t have done this, as they do not have advertisements during the programme. Through doing

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this I feel we have successfully connected our documentary to the TV channel we chose.

The pull quotes that I used in the magazine were from the documentary itself and the quotation is from an older member of the public. This links back to the title of our documentary, ‘Are today’s teenagers the most stressed generation?’ as this suggests that our documentary looks into different age groups. This would appeal to our target audience who may be curious to watch the documentary. We made sure that the pull quote we used was the one we included in the final copy of the documentary and the magazine article; otherwise it would not make sense.

Furthermore, to create an extra link between the channel we chose to broadcast the documentary and the magazine page, we added the Channel 4 Documentary logo on the magazine page. Therefore, if the audience missed the beginning of the article, they could see the logo and know where to watch the documentary or to catch up. We tried to make all three products appeal to our audience and tie together, by ways I have explained here. The success of creating a brand identity, I think comes from the ability to easily spot similarities between products. By creating a brand identity suitable for our audience, we could effectively create awareness of our documentary and thus influence audiences to watch. The title of our documentary is a question ‘Are today’s teenagers the most stressed generation?’ and we have linked this open-ended question to the article in our double page spread. At the end of our article we have written in the interview with the maker of the documentary, that the reader will have to watch and make their own mind up on which side they choose to take, the effect of this is that a personal tone is created as if we are talking directly to our audience. The use of the rhetorical question is effective as it makes the readers think about their own views and opinions which links to the different opinions from members of the public and experts that are in the documentary.

I know from Stuart Hall’s reception theory that active audiences make their own judgements on a media text from their own experiences and culture. The different audiences that will view our documentary would take different readings and come up with their

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own conclusion to whether they think teenagers are the most stressed generation. Teenagers are likely to take our preferred reading, which is what we aim to get the audience to think after watching our documentary. Our preferred reading is teenagers are under a lot of stress from many different things and we want the audience to sympathise with them. On the other hand, our oppositional reading would be that teenagers are struggling for no reason when adults have it much harder in life.