Q2

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

The purpose of creating a music video, digipak and an advert is to sell the album, another purpose is to establish the artist, and creating visual links between each of the products increases the exposure of the artist. The music video adds an extra dimension to the song, which would boost interest levels in the material the artist produces, and the ancillary products help to get the name + image across.

In my opinion, I think the combination of the music video and my ancillary products are very effective because there is a clear visual link between the two.
The artist is featured on all the products which shows that they are all linked together. It also makes the artist one of the key selling points of this album because his image is everywhere and that would help put him over with the target audience.

One of the factors that helps establish a visual link is the camera work, the most dominant shot type in our music video is the medium close up, and the images I chose to use on both the advert and the digipak feature a medium close up of our artist, this helps to establish a clear link between the two products and it would make the image of the artist more memorable. However I adjusted the contrast of the photo for the digipak which gives it a different effect to the shot in the video.

Here is one of the medium close ups of the artist in the music video.

Here is the shot of the artist on the digipak

Another factor which helped to make a link between the video and the ancillary products was the costume and hair, our artist has a unique style as he wears brightly coloured shirts,usually wears a coat, wears glasses and he has a hi-top hair cut. This uniqueness means that our artist will leave an impression so we used his style in the music video and we carried it onto the ancillary products, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone as it helped to establish a visual link and the costume and hair will leave an impression on who ever is viewing the products.

The locations in both products also show a visual link between the video and ancillary products as in the music video, one of the key locations is a forest, and in the background of the digipak also features a forest, This establishes a link between the two because the digipak emphasises the importance of the forest in the music video. This means the audience will see the visible connection between the two products.

Here are a few shots in the forest.

the digipak

In both ancillary products, I kept the fonts the same because in real products, they keep the fonts consistent between two products, as well as that, keeping the fonts consistent between the two products ensures that the two can be visually related to one another. I also kept the colour scheme of the fonts the same.

All these factors combined help create an effective brand image for our artist, which would help attract our target audience. Our target audience are 17-25 year old of all genders who like alternative styles of music , the music video would appeal to our target audience because there are many features of the music video that go against the conventions of a mainstream video and that combined with the unique sound of our artist would attract our target audience. The ancillary products would help attract our target audience because it includes free content and it also has a QR code which our target audience is likely to use because they are likely to own smartphones that enable them to scan those codes. The magazine advert is likely attract a bigger audience than our target audience because the advert features quotes from a well known mainstream producer, Pharrell Williams, the bigger audience would see his comment and that would help gather interest in the artist and the album because Pharrell Williams is quite a big figure in the music industry.

Our target audience is likely to encounter our product on social networking sites such as Facebook and tumblr because our target audience uses those sites frequently and the song could be shared on the sites.The advert would be featured in magazines that would usually focus on independent music.

Here is a prezi that contains a bit more info about visual links.