Evaluation Q2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Product Identity• Knowing whether the combination of my ancillary texts

and music video products are effective, I must consider branding and the term ‘product identity’. Brands are defined as "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.“ (Wiki). Some examples of these are shown on the right. A music video or an artists album in a similar way must have it’s own ‘brand’ which creates it’s clear own product identity. This means if the music video was watched on it’s own and then the ancillary products were seen by an individual they should be able to spot the branding through the colour scheme, the themes and other details. This helps audiences know exactly what is promoted and it becomes more and more recognizable with time if it were at first unknown.

Similar Concepts Overall

• In order to see how my main product is effective in combination to my ancillary texts, I must first look at how a product identity is created by looking at real examples from artists of the Soul/Jazz/Blues genre. The artists I will be analysing include: Adele, Amy Winehouse and Duffy.

Amy Winehouse:Back to Black

Winehouse: CD Covers

The same outfit/hairstyle and make-up that is used in the music video, even her tattoos are on show in a similar way. The similarity in mise-en-scene creates a familiarity for the audience.

The in-lay card is a simple picture of Amy. This keeps to the convention of simplicity in these genres and is quite effective

For the other side of her inlay sleeve, Winehouse has kept it simple yet interesting by including the lyrics of two of her songs against a navy background. The writing is slanted just like the back of the CD cover.

The front and back of her CD are mostly in black and white which ties in well with the music video. There is a clear link between the products. The writing is slightly slanted making it not so typical of this genre- giving it a slight edge.

Magazine Advert

• For her magazine advert, ‘AMY WINEHOUSE’, is written using the same typography on the CD which shows the relationship between the two and a clear product identity. To make the magazine advert slightly more eye-catchy and interesting, some colour is integrated. However, the magazine is still mostly black and white, making the combination of the three products very effective for the audience.

Adele: Someone Like You

Adele: CD Covers

Simple font used for both the front and back covers

For the front cover of the CD, Adele has an intimate shot close-up of her face showing more of her as an artist, concentrating on her as a singer rather than an object. Her make-up similar to the video is simple and focuses on the eyes in order not to distract from her natural beauty, which would be appreciated by her audience.

For her back cover Adele also has another close up shot of her face yet this time has her eyes open, connoting a sense of openness to her audience as they read the simple titles on the left. Like Amy Winehouse's back cover, this CD cover carries the usual barcode/website musts. Both covers are also all in black and white which is how the music video is.

Magazine Advert• Here the magazine advert is cleverly

kept simplistic to match both the CD covers. The colours are black, white and green. The green comes from Adele’s ‘21’ on her CD cover which could be to her an age of re-growth or a fresh start. There is an image of her CD which allows the audience to see exactly what she is promoting. Overall, the three products combined together create a very effective product identity, one that may be considered even better than Amy Winehouse’s products as there is more consistency in terms of the simplicity and the colours used.

Duffy:Rockferry

Duffy: CD CoversFor Duffy’s ‘Rockferry’, we can instantly see a clear correlation between the CD covers and the music video as it is in black and white. For her front cover, Duffy has used a shot from the video which again shows a clear relationship for the audience. She also uses simple typography for both her name and the album to keep it simple. The Back cover is even more simple as it takes the simple format of listed titles and uses only black and white.

The inlay sleeves are similar to Amy’s as they have parts of the lyrics, however it does not have the artist’s face which could connote that she wants to be seen through her art of music rather than her physical attributes.

Music Video VS All Ancillary• After having analysed many artists CD covers and magazine adverts while making our ancillary

products it was clear to us what rules we had to keep in mind, keeping it simple and showing a clear relationship between them and the main product was crucial.

First of all, looking at all the products we have created I have to asses whether in combination all these products go well together alongside the music video which is the main product that is being promoted. In terms of the colour scheme we have kept to the black and white. However, unlike the other artists I have analysed we decided to keep the balloons in colour as they signify hope. As mentioned previously we felt our song did become more upbeat towards the end and it would have been a wasted opportunity to ignore this.We also kept to the warm pastel colours in the in-lay card and the magazine advert which are the colours that are introduced towards the end of the video.The images that we used of our artist was also either in her narrative outfit (for the CD covers) or her performance outfit creating an obvious connection between these ancillary products and the music video.

Music Video VS Magazine Ad • For the magazine advert, it is clear that we used the

more warm aspects of our music video in terms of colour scheme. We chose to do this because we felt the black and white was far too repetitive for our video. Especially as the CD cover is present at the bottom of the advert we wanted there to be a contrast. We also chose a picture of our actress in her performance dress rather than her narrative clothing to show the classy side of the genre. Her hair is also out to connote the more peaceful and hopeful situation in the video.

• For our modern day audience we included a website that they could visit to know more about the artist. We also replaced the HMV sign with an iTunes sign as audiences today tend to purchase more of their music digitally. Facebook and Twitter are also other forms of social media which are popular today.

Music Video VS CD Covers• In terms of how the CD covers correlated with the music video

we can clearly see the main narrative story on the front and back cover and integration of the narrative and performance scenes on the in-lay sleeves. First of all we decided using our artist holding the balloons was an important aspect of the CD cover as it showed what the song was really about (Goda and her troubles). There was a contrast with the bleakness of the black and white whilst the balloons stayed in colour.

• Inside for the first in-lay we used a picture of our artist in her performance outfit against the setting of the balloons and the park. This created a link between those two persona’s of Goda, showing that performing or not, she is still the same person. The photo has no writing and is kept simple like the front cover to signify the simplicity that is shown in the video. For the last picture there is some warm hues of pastel green/orange colours seeping in, to introduce some of that naturist colours that are present in the video and also not to make all of the pictures too repetitive. A quote of “So I go picking up the pieces..” is present to show some of the lyrics as other artists I have analysed have done so. This is quite effective as it makes the in-lay cards more interesting and also fits in well with the four ancillary pieces as she is holding the ‘pieces’ of the balloons.

• Overall, the covers are kept simple to reflect the simplicity of the music video.

Magazine Ad VS CD Covers• Another important element of

making the ancillary products was to create a clear relationship between them as well as the music video. This would then create a product identity. We did this by keeping the same typography on all the texts, using photos of the artists wearing the same outfit and by keeping everything as simple as possible. We also included an image of our front CD cover which went well with the magazine advert and showed the audience exactly what we were promoting.

Colours• When choosing the colours of the

magazine advert, we initially went with a blue background as we thought this suited the ‘Blues’ genre more. However, when put next to our other products the colour scheme did not work well even though some blue hues were on show in the music video. Instead we opted for a champagne colour which we picked from one of the balloons creating a much more effective combination of our products.

Typography

• Although at first we chose some overly stylistic fonts, we opted for a more simple one to go with our music video. We also made sure to have the same typography throughout all our ancillary texts to make it clear for the audience that they are all promoting the same artist. We also kept the colours of the fonts similar (black, white and red) to keep that product identity.

Summary

• In conclusion, I would say the combination of our main product (music video) and the ancillary products are quite effective. This is because they have a clear product identity, have shown a clear relationship and stayed consistent in terms of the colour scheme, themes and fonts.