Question 2:- How effective is the combination of your main media product and ancillary

texts?

My choice was music video promo video which included. A cover for music video’s release as part of a digipack. And a magazine advertisement for the digipack. However I added extra by doing a concert poster and changed it from a magazine advert to a newspaper advert.

• The whole idea was to make a full marketing product for the target audience which had a clear coherent theme/image throughout, which would become the house style I had created for the piece.

• When creating the piece the 4 P’s had to be thought of throughout:-Price

ProductPlace

Promotion• These are the 4 terms that need to be thought of when creating any effective

marketing package. This is what really tested the coherence of the piece and gave me some of my ideas. Such as knowing my artist doesn't have a big brand image and no money thereby would be more likely to have a newspaper advert (if any advert) not a magazine advert. I also created a gig poster along side with this which would be seen in urban areas, as it is also free advertisement. The extra marketing device I created would now fit with my genre and target audience and not look as a “sell out” to mainstream dance genres. (This would count as Place and Promotion).

• This would also go with the not glossy, “real life”, gritty, indie vision of the music video itself. (which is the product itself). This “theme” was tried and kept across all formats I used.

• Also on the advert by adding where the digipack is available, e.g website. This acts as the price as my artist being so small the only way to get the music is to order the CD or download it on MP3 from his site.

NOT only this!• But• According to

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1695277/5_essential_strategies_of_a_music_marketing.html?cat=35

• The 5 Essential Strategies of a music marketing campaign are…

1.) Online Social Networking

2.) Offline Street Team Promotions

3.) Entertainment Press & Publications

4.) Live Event Marketing

5.) Opt-In Music Marketing Email List Promotions

Now I’m looking back at what I’ve done I feel I have done 1,2 and 5 at least out of these.

As my artist already has a Social network account set up in which he can perform number

5 within. So that’s number 1 and 5 done. And thanks to my poster I created I have fulfilled

Number 2. As I’m advertising on streets so the poster will always be viewable.

So back to the Question…

• So from all that information I had to create a house style and sort of brand image for my artist. Here I’ve listed the devices which are coherent throughout my marketing product, that I wanted to keep to throughout my project, leaving the aspects below working as a style guide that my marketing campaign was based upon. As a style guide made it easy for me to understand and stay clear too, which also made it easy for the audience to see which conventions were the same throughout the different formats created. Features that created my house style are below:-

• “Urban”- I wanted to keep a urban theme to the piece. This is because the issue within the video itself is occasioned with urban areas anyway. I wanted it to feel similar to the audiences real life's to show how “normal” the theme is within my target audience. I just wanted to put the topic out their for different audience members to view and to take there own conclusions from it. For example some people would gain escapism from the piece by seeing what its like to take drugs. Others would gain pleasures by relating to it, or not and total reject the idea. As there is no particular message of wrong or right it can be viewed in however audiences want to view it. This is because my target audience are more bothered about the song not the video, as there songs wouldn’t usually have music video's with them anyway.

• AVALAF LOGO – Though no in my music video itself, I tried to construct a brand image from this. As my artist is already associated with it so the idea just needs pushing more to become the brand image for my artist. It is also recognisable to people within the target audience, so again by keeping this brand image it has a bases to build upon and become an instant image my artist is associated to. Such as Kanye West’s Teddy bear is his brand image. This is why it is seen on poster’s and digipack. However I didn’t put it in the video as I didn’t want to solely rely upon it. As I felt it might ruin the effect of the video, as I wanted to show the weird and wacky effect of drugs in a more creative and challenging way.

• Neon Colours – Neon colour lights are used throughout the piece to relate back to what the song truly is, a rave/dance/party song. It also helps set up expectations to what genre and what type/style this music will be to people outside the target audience who don’t know what to expect.

• Blurry Image – I used this idea to link the digipack with the music video. As it connotes the distorted feel and the trip which will take place within the video. However if the viewer sees the digipack first the blur effect won’t be explained until watch the video as the narrative explains it. So it also acts as a marketing tool to get people to buy the digipack as they’ll want the effect to be explained.

• Cheap/Indie Style :- I wanted to keep the video quite cheap and have an original style to it. Not glossed over like mainstream videos. This is because if the video did look glossy and sleek it would push my target audience away as the video and artist would be seen as selling out to the glossy mainstream world. Another reason why I did not add animation to my video. (AVALAF Logo).

So how coherent do my audience think my packaging and video was? And how much I stayed close to my style guide?

To do this I went back to the same people who did my questionnaire about my idea for the music video. ( As there target audience members). I then showed them several albums covers, posters and magazine adverts. This all after watching my video and asked them which ones of them belonged to my music video and other areas of the marketing package and why?

Thereby seeing if they pick up any of the points in my style guide or any other features which were coherent with other parts of the marketing package.

Here are a taster of the album covers I showed my audience.

100% of the audience I did this test on recognised the correct digipack, advert and poster that went with my music video!

After this I also asked a few people to comment on what they thought. (The same ones that commented before in the target audience questionnaire).

“The reason I noticed that the packages related to each other was because they all had neon colours and looked like they belong to that particular music genre”. “ I also noticed the the text style was the same within the advert, digipack and poster”.

“I thought the style and underground theme is what linked these packages together for me. Also after seeing the video and the blurring effect within it, I thought that it would relate to the to that particular digipack as that had blurring on it to”.

“What linked them all together for me was that compared to the other packages shown, the marketing package was the only one which didn’t look mainstream and glossey”.

“The only reason I joined them all together was by reading the information on the front. As it was made easy for me to see the title, name of artist and in some cases the little logo thing, thereby I looked at the other and which of them had the sames things and brought them all together”.

Feedback…

After reviewing the comments made I think they all picked up most of the style guide points which created my house style. However they also picked up some new ones which I didn’t intend to originally happen, such as the text used in the poster digipack and advert. Also I realised that the logo for AVALAF was being referred to a lot to recognised a lot as the link between them all. Showing that it already working as a brand image. But I agree with all the comments made as they all read the package in the way I wanted it interpreted and read.

However, these are all just opinions of the piece. A sit can still be read in different ways by many different audiences. As some audiences outside my target audience may not realise the connections between the different marketing formats I’ve created. There by making it not fact that the conventions of the pieces work to be coherent with each other. However I do believe that within my target audience the coherences is obvious and does work.

In Conclusion• I feel that the research I did into the conventions and representations for my piece

and the aspect for it was enough. As from this I managed to create a effective house style for my target audience to recognise the form of genre. As I have discovered that the ideas within the piece relate to them really well and that they can recognise them to be part of there genre that they are a fan of.

• Thereby I feel that the combination of my main product and the ancillary texts were very effective, as they were coherent and instantly recognisable to be connected to each other. Showing the marketing package works and relates correctly to each other and gives a base for the artist and brand image to build upon even more.