How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Viral Vid and QR Code
On my evaluation question 4 (technologies) I have in detail discussed how we used a vrial video and also QR codes to help create more of a promotional package and link our texts together. The viral video in particular helped us to encourage user generated content which helps to create a 'buzz' around the work we are doing and the videos we are creating. Here is a link to the evaluation question where this is detailed: Eval Q4
Our coursework is based around the production our promotional package consisting of 3 main texts, a music video, digipak and range of magazine advertisements.
As we are producing a variety of texts we were able to try and apply them to as much of a mass market as possible and do specific things to make them more enticing to different audiences. Our primary audience of 13-18 year olds and our secondary audience is the tweens (8-12), 19-24+ and males. It is challenging to attempt to target these very different audiences, with very different tastes, but an example of this being effective is The Saturdays recently being seen in publications such as Hello, OK, Glamour, FHM and bliss, not all having the same target audience, but a range.
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| Our promotional package - all texts |
As we are producing a variety of texts we were able to try and apply them to as much of a mass market as possible and do specific things to make them more enticing to different audiences. Our primary audience of 13-18 year olds and our secondary audience is the tweens (8-12), 19-24+ and males. It is challenging to attempt to target these very different audiences, with very different tastes, but an example of this being effective is The Saturdays recently being seen in publications such as Hello, OK, Glamour, FHM and bliss, not all having the same target audience, but a range.
As we are indie video makers with extremely low budgets if we were to actually take our mag ads and digipak into production, targeting all these varieties of publications may be unrealistic. Instead we have tried to cover both audiences in the same text and making them link with a similar theme, which fortunately the previous Atomic Kitten texts also did. As said before, we are targeting 13-18 year old girls due to the genre, as the pop genre is usually associated with the teen audience. This is reflected through our song choice of It's OK by Atomic Kitten and the video containing classic girl band conventions. To help reflect our target audience in all three texts, although the dresses were quite revealing, we made sure there was a constant innocent feel and unlike some of the American girl groups, for example The Pussycat Dolls, we didn't try make the group sexualised and therefore not aiming our primary target audience.
DISTRIBUTING AND EXHIBITING OUR TEXTS
For our music video we would like to have it exhibited on a Vevo account on YouTube or the Atomic Kitten official YouTube account. By exhibiting it on a social networking site such as YouTube, it is giving an mass audience the opportunity to find or even stumble across our video. Videos can be quite easy to accidentally come across on YouTube as there is a column down the right hand side of the page with suggested videos for you to watch, along with advertisements at the start of videos. John McMuria analysed the content on YouTube and found that the most viewed videos are white middle class males. This information shows that as well as a lot of girls watching YouTube videos, males also are very involved with this site, making it more likely for our secondary audience to also see our video. These are the primary and secondary audiences we would aim to distribute our magazine ads in.
Primary audience
- TEEN NOW - 11-17
- LOOK -18-35
- GLAMOUR - 16-34
- BLISS - 13-17
- OK - 25-34
Secondary audience
- FHM - Target audience 15-34
- NUTS -18-34
As for our Digipak we advertised on our mag for them to be available on Itunes and on the official Atomic Kitten website. If our digipak did go into production we would be unlikely to target it at shops such as HMV. This is mainly due to digitisation and record shops are gaining less profit and going bankrupt because of this. Instead we would aim to sell it online, from shop such as Amazon and Play.com. To push all three of the texts we also used social media and networking sites to further promote them. To do this we set up an account named after our production group 'MKTP Productions' and used the same @ name for them all (Twitter and Instagram) so we could be easily found and didn't have to promote multiple names, so on them both we could be found at @MKTPProductions.
KEY ELEMENTS IN OUR TEXTS:
Magazine Advertisements
We based our magazine ads on past examples of what we thought was successful and effective as well as we personally valued as looking aesthetically pleasing, as well as including all the relevant information. We have five teaser mag ads and 3 main ones.
Teaser Ads
For our teaser ads we had two basic ideas we wanted to include, the concept of kittens and narrative enigma. To achieve this we created four ads that would cover these aspects and could be displayed in different publications depending on how appropriate they were for each. Our first two consisted of a kitten. The most effective of the two had the kitten sticking its tongue out in an amusing way, and a QR code on its stomach that would link the audience to our twitter page. We did this as there is a growing phenomena around the concept of funny cat videos, and we wanted to take advantage of this as it also has an ironic link to our artist's name. For the narrative enigma concept we had three teaser ads. For the first we took a pose from behind of one member of the girl group in a feminine pose facing away from the character. We then edited a QR code onto her posterior. We thought that this advert in particular would be good to use in the male orientated magazines such as FHM and Nuts. We had another ad where we had a picture of all 3 girls facing away and then layered the image from our narrative of the petals and tea lights over the picture with a low opacity. This was very effective and gave a romantic look to the ad which none of the other ads represented. The final teaser ad involved a shot of the three girls in a row with them each holding a candle. There heads are cut of the image so the audience are unaware of who are holding the candles, again in order to create narrative enigma.
Main Adverts
We have 4 main adverts. We did this as we wanted each member of the girl group to have a separate ad that could be used at different points in the same magazine and also a group one of them altogether. For the separate ones we had the girls to a feminine pose and made them each vary them, for example one is of her kneeling, to vary levels and make the ads different and interesting. On the mag ad we had the artists name and album name in the same font as the digipak and the same blue and grey colour scheme. We then also had a small amount of text advertising the digipak and bonus DVD with a small picture of the digipak. We also included tour dates on all three of the texts as tours are the main way a lot of artists now make their profit so it is getting more and more popular to advertise this. The group magazine ad included all the same information but instead was an image of all three of the girls posing together. This also showed the girl group looking close and a feel of unity
between them. This is a common convention across girl groups as they want to portray themselves as looking as close as sisters.
Digipak
For our digipak we used the colour scheme of grey light blues and a pale pink. They all compliment eachother well and from discovering it looked effective here, we used it across all of our ancillary texts. On the front of the digipak we had a picture of the girl group laughing and interacting. This is influenced by boy bands doing this and giving the impression of having a bond and 'messing about' together. We used an image of us all wearing dresses in different shades of blue, again linking with the blue theme. We then had the artist name and album name in the font we downloaded and a sticker on
the front pointing out the two new tracks included and the dvd footage included also.
On the back of the digipak we had a track list in a different font to add some variation. We had another sticker advertising the dvd and bonus tracks and also a picture of us from behind facing away from the camera. On the back we also included all the conventional features such as bar codes, dvd sticker, record label logo. We also included the record label logo, artist name and album name on the spine of the digipak.
For the inside of the digipak we layered an image of petals and tea light twice to create an effect of looking like the petals were falling and at different levels on the table. On top of this we layered an image of the larger candle. As the opacity of the images were relatively low it made the petals a lighter shade of pink, again making it fit in with the colour scheme. We also created an image on the CD. The image is taken from above and of the 3 girls lying on the floor with their heads in the centre of the CD creating a kind of star shape.
We also created a lyrics booklet along side the digipak, which showed the lyrics to every song and a some unseen pictures not used in any of the other texts.
Music Video
The main features of our music video are broken down into two sections, the narrative section and the performance section. These two sections were cross cut throughout the video.
Performance Section
The performance section mainly consisted of the 3 girls in multiple location (the woods, the rocks, the studio setting) and lip syncing, dancing and posing in each of these locations. For each of these locations they were a different costume. The studio section is the location in the video that links best to the ancillary texts as they are all shot in this clean cut and professional environment. They are wearing the same blue toned dresses as in the ads, keeping to the colour scheme.
The narrative section is based on a couple. The narrative starts by presenting how happy they are and then as the track progresses they break up and it shows the heart break they both face and how they miss each other. Again there are links between this section and the ancillary texts. In particular this is shown through the use of petals and candles across all three of the texts.
The first way in which we did this is by having a colour scheme which we used across all of our texts. For the studio setting outfits in our video each member of the girl group wore a dress in some variation of blue. We chose to do this mostly due to convenience as we already owned blue dresses, meaning we did not have to spend more money than we already had on mise-en-scene etc. But, we also noticed that Atomic Kitten tends to feature a lot of blue colours in their past texts, so by using blue as well we also helped link to their previously texts. This decision made out of convenience actually turned out to be a great advantage and decision for us. As we recognised this blue colour theme, and had already incorporated it into our video, we decided to also use it in our digipak and magazine advertisements too. We wore the same dresses on the front and back of our digipak as the blue dresses featured in the video and in some of our magazine ads too. This created an instant link between the texts, as these dresses will be instantly recognisable by the audience and fans. As well as the dresses, we also used a blue font in the digipak and magazine ads. This creates a further link between the texts, as when looking at the images the audience will pick up on the blue dresses and blue fonts and will be instantly able to create a link between our whole promotional package. On the mag ads and digipaks, we also used 2 other colours into our fonts. We followed the 3 colour rule, a common convention seen in most texts in the pop genre, and we felt that by following this, we were providing the more visual excitement. We added a light pink and grey to our font colours, as these colours complimented the blue without clashing too much and appearing amateur.
The style and themes of the 3 texts was a main focus point when creating and editing them. We also noted that we had to take our secondary audience into consideration. To do this is meant we had to make sure that the style of our products needed to entice people of all genders and ages, and so we had to stick to a relatively simple theme and construct our texts based on a certain style. The style that we chose was a more professional approach towards all 3 texts. We conveyed this style through the use of locations and the standards that our products were completed to. One of the locations featured across all 3 texts was the studio. We used the studio for performance footage also for taking photos for our digipak and magazine adverts. Although it could be argued that this location was 'boring' to include in our digipak and mag ads, we felt that this was the most suitable and best location for these ancillary texts, as it is simple and effective and conveys the simplistic and professional look that we were aiming for. We kept in mind the saying 'less is more', and we feel that this is the case with these texts, as a busy background accompanied with a substantial amount of text can easily make a product look cluttered and messy and could deter audiences from consuming the products.
We used a romantic element in all of our texts. It is perhaps most clear in the video, as there is an obvious romantic narrative, and our narrative cut clearly denotes this. We used mise-en-scene to help anchor the romantic aspect and this was thoroughly thought through and portrayed. We used this theme in our ancillary texts through the use of the same mise-en-scene. We used the same rose petals and layered them with other images such as candles and kittens for some of the teaser mag ads, and used the roses and candles again in the inside of our digipak. Even though our target audiences differ, the romantic narrative is demonstrated in each of the texts, making it easy for anyone to establish a link. Roses and candles are stereo-typically associated with romance across the majority of cultures, and so this aspect allows us to reach our mass market too, as the theme can be recognised by people on a global scale.
Another key feature of our texts is the boy band conventions we were influenced by. I am referring to the 'behind the scenes' footage and the simple and basic movements such as the clicking when lip syncing in the video, and the relaxed images used on the front cover of the digipak and in some mag ads. These are techniques often associated and seen in boy band productions, and so by incorporating these features in our own work we are also challenging typical girl group conventions. We decided to do this, as the relaxed vibe of all 3 products makes the viewings more appealing and inviting, and so we are more likely to increase our views from our secondary 'tween' audience. Children and teenagers are particularly
attracted to colourful and happy texts as it stimulates their brains and this then keeps them engaged for longer. As we knew this, we used the relaxed shots in the video to make them feel more comfortable when watching the video, and we used a range of font colours as well as appealing photos in our digipak and mag ads to make more eye catching products to keep them interested and more likely to remember our product.
In What Ways Are They Differentiated?
Even though we tried to link our texts together as best as possible, certain aspects did make them more individual.
The main feature that readers will not be able to link together is the narrative. Although we have carried the romantic theme of the video across to the ancillary texts, we found it difficult to find an effective way of linking the narrative into the ancillary texts. As the narrative would likely be only associated to this one track and the girl group are the face of the group. For this reason, we decided it was perhaps better to keep the narrative conveyed in the music video only. Because the mag ads are also promoting the digipak, it would have not totally linked together and flowed if we included the narrative in the ads and not the digipak. It is arguable that by incorporating the romantic theme into all 3 texts, we have in some subtle way portrayed the narrative, as those who have seen the video may be able to see the link. This links in to Stuart Hall's theory of preferred reading and the Uses and Gratifications theory, as the audience who have seen all 3 texts combined will be able to choose how they want to read and interpret the petals and candles used throughout, and so they can decide whether there is a link there.
The narrative in the video may also be viewed by as sad, again an example of preferred reading and interpretation on the audiences behalf. The narrative is linear and follows the break up of a couple, and because this is a relatively mundane situation that most people will experience in their lifetime, the audience may feel more emotion or able to relate to the video. Emotions can be easily created in moving texts such as videos through the use of carefully chosen editing techniques and effects, yet with still images in can be more difficult to portray. Due to this, we decided to create more 'light hearted' ancillary texts in contrast to the relatively sad narrative. This means that we could not link the texts in relation to the emotional pleasures that may be denoted from the texts. As said before, we wanted the younger audience to feel comfortable and happy viewing all our texts,but they are more likely to feel this happiness when viewing the ancillary texts, as they feature fun images, which are more likely to catch their attention. However, we do feel that by creating this contrast there was no major disadvantage and that it was easier for us to manage in the time scale we were given. Perhaps if we had longer and better resources, then we could have had an attempt at creating strong emotional ancillary texts too.
If we were provided with more time and better resources, then we may have found it easier to create ancillary texts which emotionally engaged the audience, as we could have experimented with more effects and could have spent more time taking the initial photos. We would have also spent more time location scouting, and done more research regarding where to film and take ancillary text images. More locations would have provided us with more shot variety and scope during editing, however we simply could not include any more locations due to access and time issues.
Time management in general could have been improved throughout the production process. Although we managed to finish everything in a relatively short period of time after re-pitching our idea, we still could have improved our time management by updating our blogs on a daily basis and blogging on things immediately.
Our research into similar products could have also been more extensively done. We tended to research one aspect, blog on it then leave it, instead of further developing our understanding on this topic therefore making writing our evaluation questions less time consuming. We feel that we have improved our knowledge on the pop genre considerably since starting our research and construction, however there are undoubtedly still things about the genre that we are unfamiliar with, and so additional research would have maybe allowed us to fill this gap.
Magazine Advertisements
We based our magazine ads on past examples of what we thought was successful and effective as well as we personally valued as looking aesthetically pleasing, as well as including all the relevant information. We have five teaser mag ads and 3 main ones.
Teaser Ads
For our teaser ads we had two basic ideas we wanted to include, the concept of kittens and narrative enigma. To achieve this we created four ads that would cover these aspects and could be displayed in different publications depending on how appropriate they were for each. Our first two consisted of a kitten. The most effective of the two had the kitten sticking its tongue out in an amusing way, and a QR code on its stomach that would link the audience to our twitter page. We did this as there is a growing phenomena around the concept of funny cat videos, and we wanted to take advantage of this as it also has an ironic link to our artist's name. For the narrative enigma concept we had three teaser ads. For the first we took a pose from behind of one member of the girl group in a feminine pose facing away from the character. We then edited a QR code onto her posterior. We thought that this advert in particular would be good to use in the male orientated magazines such as FHM and Nuts. We had another ad where we had a picture of all 3 girls facing away and then layered the image from our narrative of the petals and tea lights over the picture with a low opacity. This was very effective and gave a romantic look to the ad which none of the other ads represented. The final teaser ad involved a shot of the three girls in a row with them each holding a candle. There heads are cut of the image so the audience are unaware of who are holding the candles, again in order to create narrative enigma.
Main Adverts
We have 4 main adverts. We did this as we wanted each member of the girl group to have a separate ad that could be used at different points in the same magazine and also a group one of them altogether. For the separate ones we had the girls to a feminine pose and made them each vary them, for example one is of her kneeling, to vary levels and make the ads different and interesting. On the mag ad we had the artists name and album name in the same font as the digipak and the same blue and grey colour scheme. We then also had a small amount of text advertising the digipak and bonus DVD with a small picture of the digipak. We also included tour dates on all three of the texts as tours are the main way a lot of artists now make their profit so it is getting more and more popular to advertise this. The group magazine ad included all the same information but instead was an image of all three of the girls posing together. This also showed the girl group looking close and a feel of unity between them. This is a common convention across girl groups as they want to portray themselves as looking as close as sisters.
Digipak
For our digipak we used the colour scheme of grey light blues and a pale pink. They all compliment eachother well and from discovering it looked effective here, we used it across all of our ancillary texts. On the front of the digipak we had a picture of the girl group laughing and interacting. This is influenced by boy bands doing this and giving the impression of having a bond and 'messing about' together. We used an image of us all wearing dresses in different shades of blue, again linking with the blue theme. We then had the artist name and album name in the font we downloaded and a sticker on the front pointing out the two new tracks included and the dvd footage included also.
On the back of the digipak we had a track list in a different font to add some variation. We had another sticker advertising the dvd and bonus tracks and also a picture of us from behind facing away from the camera. On the back we also included all the conventional features such as bar codes, dvd sticker, record label logo. We also included the record label logo, artist name and album name on the spine of the digipak.
For the inside of the digipak we layered an image of petals and tea light twice to create an effect of looking like the petals were falling and at different levels on the table. On top of this we layered an image of the larger candle. As the opacity of the images were relatively low it made the petals a lighter shade of pink, again making it fit in with the colour scheme. We also created an image on the CD. The image is taken from above and of the 3 girls lying on the floor with their heads in the centre of the CD creating a kind of star shape.
We also created a lyrics booklet along side the digipak, which showed the lyrics to every song and a some unseen pictures not used in any of the other texts.
Music Video
The main features of our music video are broken down into two sections, the narrative section and the performance section. These two sections were cross cut throughout the video.
Performance Section
The performance section mainly consisted of the 3 girls in multiple location (the woods, the rocks, the studio setting) and lip syncing, dancing and posing in each of these locations. For each of these locations they were a different costume. The studio section is the location in the video that links best to the ancillary texts as they are all shot in this clean cut and professional environment. They are wearing the same blue toned dresses as in the ads, keeping to the colour scheme.
The narrative section is based on a couple. The narrative starts by presenting how happy they are and then as the track progresses they break up and it shows the heart break they both face and how they miss each other. Again there are links between this section and the ancillary texts. In particular this is shown through the use of petals and candles across all three of the texts.
In What Ways Are The 3 Texts Linked?
Throughout all 3 texts, we present a professional and sleek theme. This is shown through many different aspects:
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| Blue dresses on the digipak |
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| Blue dresses in the video |
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| Mag Ad - various font colours and blue dresses |
The fonts as well as the colour of them to create a link between the texts. We downloaded various appropriate fonts from Dafont.com and used them for both the magazine ads and the digipak. These fonts we eventually chose took a lot of consideration as it was important that they worked well together and had a professional feel. Our final products display this and work together to be aesthetically pleasing for the audience.
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| Studio location |
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| Roses and candles in the digipak |
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| Roses in the video |
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| Smiling/laughing image in the lyrics booklet |
attracted to colourful and happy texts as it stimulates their brains and this then keeps them engaged for longer. As we knew this, we used the relaxed shots in the video to make them feel more comfortable when watching the video, and we used a range of font colours as well as appealing photos in our digipak and mag ads to make more eye catching products to keep them interested and more likely to remember our product.
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| Laughing shot in the video |
In What Ways Are They Differentiated?
Even though we tried to link our texts together as best as possible, certain aspects did make them more individual.
The main feature that readers will not be able to link together is the narrative. Although we have carried the romantic theme of the video across to the ancillary texts, we found it difficult to find an effective way of linking the narrative into the ancillary texts. As the narrative would likely be only associated to this one track and the girl group are the face of the group. For this reason, we decided it was perhaps better to keep the narrative conveyed in the music video only. Because the mag ads are also promoting the digipak, it would have not totally linked together and flowed if we included the narrative in the ads and not the digipak. It is arguable that by incorporating the romantic theme into all 3 texts, we have in some subtle way portrayed the narrative, as those who have seen the video may be able to see the link. This links in to Stuart Hall's theory of preferred reading and the Uses and Gratifications theory, as the audience who have seen all 3 texts combined will be able to choose how they want to read and interpret the petals and candles used throughout, and so they can decide whether there is a link there.
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| Smiling and appealing image on the lyrics booklet |
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| Crying shot in the video - conveys a sad narrative |
The narrative in the video may also be viewed by as sad, again an example of preferred reading and interpretation on the audiences behalf. The narrative is linear and follows the break up of a couple, and because this is a relatively mundane situation that most people will experience in their lifetime, the audience may feel more emotion or able to relate to the video. Emotions can be easily created in moving texts such as videos through the use of carefully chosen editing techniques and effects, yet with still images in can be more difficult to portray. Due to this, we decided to create more 'light hearted' ancillary texts in contrast to the relatively sad narrative. This means that we could not link the texts in relation to the emotional pleasures that may be denoted from the texts. As said before, we wanted the younger audience to feel comfortable and happy viewing all our texts,but they are more likely to feel this happiness when viewing the ancillary texts, as they feature fun images, which are more likely to catch their attention. However, we do feel that by creating this contrast there was no major disadvantage and that it was easier for us to manage in the time scale we were given. Perhaps if we had longer and better resources, then we could have had an attempt at creating strong emotional ancillary texts too.
What Would We Change Given More Time/Resources?
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| Effects in Photoshop during the editing process of the digipak |
Time management in general could have been improved throughout the production process. Although we managed to finish everything in a relatively short period of time after re-pitching our idea, we still could have improved our time management by updating our blogs on a daily basis and blogging on things immediately.
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| Our digipak and mag ad research displayed on our blogs |
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