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

I am aware that I said I was only taking a short break but I've been stumped on this question for a while. Plus Dirty Dancing came on.

Links Between My Three Products from Sarah Byard

How does the poster sell the album?

The links between the poster and the album is an obvious way of the poster selling the album, as the links make sure the target audience are reminded of the digipak when they see the poster. The inclusion of the sell-date helps to sell the digipak, because the target audience will know when they can purchase the album and can build anticipation for it.

How does the music video sell the album?

The music video sells the digipak for a variety of reasons. As discussed in my 'conventions of a rock video' post, having shots of the band out of narrative, performance and conceptual (eg. our shots in the field) elements makes the band seem like real people, and this encourages listeners because (as I said in that post) nobody wants to buy music from an emotionless robot. It also appeals to our younger target audience, because they often like to imagine they can meet and relate to their favourite bands, so making the band seem more human encourages this.

Having the band in the video also helps to sell the music video because it links them to the music and the album, as their faces would be recognisable on the digipak from the music video.

How does the digipak design sell the album?

The digipak design would sell the album because it is designed to hit a specific target audience. The bright colours, bold font and scribbled drawings would all make it stand out in a shop (and most importantly as a thumbnail on iTunes, as digital sales are vital these days), so when our young target audiences are browsing, this will grab their attention. The brightness and drawings also attract the target audience because young people generally like colourful, quirky things.

The inclusion of the male actors on my digipak will also appeal to the younger females in my target audience, because they tend to gravitate towards any male that's vaguely famous; having them on our digipak makes them seem famous and so the young audience will like it and hopefully buy it.

I think the combination of my three products is effective because there are enough links to keep the album memorable in the heads of my target audience. There are more links beween the poster and the album than either of them and the music video; however, the poster is there specifically to sell the album whilst the video is there to sell the album, but it is also there to entertain. Therefore, I feel the combination is successful because it is not too in your face but does help to sell the album.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? (part 2)

For my digipak and advertising poster, my basic idea spawned from the lyrics within the song, which (if I was selling the album for real) would be the lead single. The main theme of the song is falling in love with an awful guy, or a "monster", and so I went along that vein for my digipak. In the process of making the first draft, I received feedback from my media class on how to improve, and after I finished my first draft I received feedback (once again) from people on surveymonkey.com.

The feedback from the first draft was that: 

• They liked the theme of the monsters and the idea of normal guys as the monsters.
• They liked the colour scheme.
• They thought the doodles were quirky and looked good; it was quoted as being the majority's favourite part of the digipak.
• They thought it was eye-catching.

However,

• Someone thought the image of the Frankenstein's Monster looked a bit badly edited.
• Someone didn't like the solid green background.
• A couple of people weren't sure on the institution information included.
• They wanted a picture of the band on the front (I hadn't taken the picture at that point, but it was added on after).

This information was really useful to me, because it showed me where to improve. To better please the target audience, I changed the background of the inside slides so they weren't solid green; blurred the edges of Ben as Frankenstein Monster so that it blended better with the background and looked less harsh; added a violet filter to soften the tone of it a bit.

I then presented my final draft to my friends and family, with the first draft also shown so they could compare. They liked that I'd included a band picture, softened the tone and changed the backgrounds. Their only real problem was with the institution information still, but I felt that I had edited them to the best of my ability.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? (Part 1)

I'm also going to direct you to this post: http://wittymediarelatedurl.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/how-our-music-video-drafts-progressed.html because it outlines exactly what the audience feedback said. I just thought it might relevant so if you want to look at that too then that would be fabulous.

We also carried out research at the very beginning of the year to confirm which band name we were going to choose. We came up with a list, narrowed it down to about 5 and sent out a survey on surveymonkey.com to my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr friends.

These surveys were important to us in creating our brand image, because it meant that we could name ourselves something our target audience would like. I can't stress the importance of social media in our research; our target audience are young people and almost every young person has an online persona on at least one website. Therefore, social media was crucial to our research because it meant we were hitting our key target audience (15-25). Not literally hitting but you understand what I mean.

After we had created our band name and image, we gave a presentation to a focus group comprised of members of our target audience:

This was also invaluable to us, because it highlighted where our audience liked what we were doing and where to change; however, they mostly liked our ideas so we went ahead with them.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This is an evaluation question, but you knew that. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In this post, I'm most likely going to reference my conventions of a pop video post, because that seems relevant, as the question is about the conventions of real media products. I'll post that Powerpoint here for easier reference:

Conventions Of A Pop Video from Sarah Byard

 I thought I would venture into the scary world of Prezi for this part of the question; please don't eat me if it's terrible. Me and Prezi aren't really friends.

This is the same question, but focused on my digipak and poster.

Evaluation Question 1 from Sarah Byard

Advertising Campaign Poster

Here is my final draft for my advertising poster. I used the same basic design as I used for the digipak, to link to two and thus enhance sales (if I was to sell the product). I did make some changes to the design, however, as I felt the busy design of the digipak would not be as effective on the poster, as it may seem too cluttered with the extra text. I used the same fonts as I did in the digipak, as it links the two products, and I used the same picture I used on one of the slides for my digipak for this reason also.

Digipak Final Draft

Front cover:

Back Cover:

Slide 1:

Slide 2 (inside):

Slide 3 (inside):

Slide 4 (inside):

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation Question 4. from Sarah Byard

This is evaluation question 4. But you can read so you knew that already. Enjoy.