Q2

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

Anisha Patel

Branding• Brand is more than a product as a brand is the particular make of the product. A

brand often refers to more than one product. Branding is about creating an image that people link to a particular type of product. Therefore branding is more than advertising however advertising would be one part of the brandings grand plan.

Brands turn a product into something unique and special to help them sell and they work because they offer us a form of guarantee, a set of ready made values attached to a product that we too can adopt upon purchase. Repeated buying of a product over time creates a friendship like a bond with the product.

Branding is important for music industries as particular music genres have their own music video style and iconography and branding helps to develop the artists own star iconography.

Therefore branding is important for our music video as we want to create a star for the R&B genre with his own style and iconography. We are using Chris Brown as inspiration as to how we want our artist to come across to the audience.

The song we used is ‘Strobe light’ this song is a R&B genre song. Therefore we decided to research many R&B artists and Chris Brown in particular.

Chris Brown’s brand image is young, youthful, energetic and smooth. He uses a lot of energy in his music videos, I.e the dance moves, and also doesn’t just rap but has a smooth singing voice. His lyrics in each song are meaningful. Also he is represented as a gentleman and a ladies man, as his main target audience is females. He dresses very urban, but also has a hint of smart wear. This may be

done to apply to a wider audience. A clear link between our artist and Chris Brown can be seen throughout our video and ancillary tasks. An example of this would be Chris Browns album cover and our album cover.

Both of these covers give us a close up of the artists this is done to make them look attractive.

The use of the fedora hat connotates Chris Brown is a gentleman and a ladies man therefore we also made the artist wear a fedora hat as we wanted a similar brand image.

As other genres this genre also has its own codes and conventions such as a lot of Bling and expensive items. We analysed some R&B music videos one of them was Chris Brown Forever

In this video Chris Brown doesn’t really dress formal as he sticks to one outfit throughout this video. This song and music video reflects his brand image as he is dancing with a girl and the lyrics of this song is very meaningful e.g. ‘it’s like I waited my whole life for this one night’ this would appeal to his main targeted audience ‘teenagers’ as it’s about love and it also show’s his ‘gentleman’ image as he’s singing about a girl. The girl in the video helps the video to appeal to the male audience as they would find it boring if it only had Chris Brown in it, therefore by having a main female character with the protagonist ‘Chris Brown’ in this video it appeals to a wider audience. This video fulfils the R&B conventions as it starts of with Chris Brown getting out of a very expensive car therefore it show’s he’s rich and makes people look up to him and because a lot of this video is studio based where the background is edited e.g when he’s dancing with the orange background.

We followed these conventions as we also made the artist look rich by making him wear a lot of jewellery so the audience look up to him and the song we chose also reflects his brand image as it is about a girl and has a love theme. We therefore also had a female character in the video with our artist to show he was singing to her. As Chris Browns forever video had a lot of different and edited backgrounds we also used different backgrounds and kept Strobe lighting for the chorus - Chorus:“Im attractedShes pulling me close like a magnetBut every time I reach trying to grab itShe goes oo ooLike a ghost oo ooLike a strobe lightShes flashing in and up burning my eyesLike a strobe lightWhile everything is moving in slow motion timeLike a strobe lightNow baby that I got your armImma make her mine (mine)Everybody pulsing like a strobe light (light)Like a strobe lightLike, like, like a strobe lightLike a strobe lightLike Like Like a strobe lightLike a strobe lightLike Like Like a strobe lightLike a strobe lightLike Like Like a strobe light”

We therefore kept a clear understanding between the lyrics of the song and the music video. Our Music video was studio based as most R&B videos are including ‘Forever’

As other genres this genre also has its own codes and conventions such as a lot of Bling and expensive items. We followed these conventions as we made the main artist wear a lot of jewellery.

We carried out a lot of research in this genre before creating our poster and album covers an example of a R&B artists album cover we annotated would be Chris Brown.

In this cover he is wearing white and the fedora hat this is done to emphasize his gentlemen image.

However he is also wearing jewellery this is done to fulfill the R&B genre conventions as this genre is about ‘showing off’ and this dress sense also helps it to appeal to a younger audience.

The background of this album tells us Chris Brown is a R&B/ hiphop artist as it has big speakers in the background..

and then the mike in his hand adds to this.

• The ancillary tasks we have created fit in well into this genre as we have followed all the codes and conventions of the R&B genre. Overall I think our music video, album cover and magazine advert all work effectively as there is a colour theme of lots of reds, black and oranges between them all which are often colours associated with the R&B genre.

Front Cover

Right side Panel- Thankyou section

Left Side Panel

Back Cover- Contents of the songs in the album

Magazine Advert

We have used a lot of Red in this advert to connate our artists passion for singing.

He still has jewellery on as his brand image of a cool ‘ladys man’ still needs to remain the same and reflect the fact that he is a R&B artist.

Fedora hat to emphasise our artists image of being a gentlman