Question two for evaluation of coursework. [autosaved]

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary

texts?

Natalie Goode.

Branding – What is a brand?

• Branding is used on products to give it a certain individual feel and personality to make it a specific product know to the public and encourage the buyers.

• Brand is the personality that identifies a product.• A brand can take many forms such as a name,

sign, term, design, symbol, slogan or a colour combination. This can exaggerate a brands identity or service.

• Branding is defined by a perception, whether that being good or bad, that your customers have about it.

A great example of branding is…

The ‘Coca-Cola’ logo is a widely recognised trademark and is a huge global brand known world wide in more than 200 countries. This makes it the worlds most valuable brand after going for decades since being introduced in 1866. Coca-Cola use all the different forms of branding which has probably why it has developed a certain personality for itself where the public want to buy it and have it in their homes all the time.

Different Slogans The DesignDifferent Names and Constant Similar Colour Combination

This Coca-Cola advert represents its brand image in the most perfect way as this is the original advert which the public remember Coca-Cola by. Throughout the advert it constantly uses it similar colour combination of ‘reds’ and with its logo being shown throughout we get a sense of happy, fun, loving times which we then link with Coca-Cola as the Coca-Cola truck is lighting up the village and making everyone smile. We believe that the drink can do this to you. Also with the clip of father and son being happy it reminds us that Christmas is a family time and therefore this is where the drinks brand identity and target audience comes in as we think of Coca-Cola is something for the family that parents buy to have in the house and see it is being targeted at all ages within a family. With the advert being so personal, us as the audience can relate to it and make us want to buy the drink. Here is a link to view the ‘Coca-Cola’ Adverthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9_Vz_xVjAU&feature=related

Music Branding. • Branding in the music industry is used so therefore the

audience can tell the difference between artists and different music genres.

• In the music industry, artists brand themselves through their appearance, music videos and album artwork.

• For music branding a very important thing to be used from artists is their ‘brand image’ which needs to be continued through a certain style, image and personality, to make a connection in such. Then the audience can understand the artist and be attracted to their style and music.

• To create a successful brand, consistency has to be a main part across the range of products.

A great example of music branding is the band ‘MGMT’.

MGMT are such a good example of music branding as they have a incredibly strong brand image as it is so strange. They are completely original and have a different look to other artists. They brand themselves very well with their unique image, wild clothing, distinctive personality and a strange style of music which is indie, electronic and alternative rock, which leads us back to their mysterious brand image. Therefore the audience will know straight away whether they are attracted to them or not. Their unusual album artwork also helps as you can see on the left hand images above. The bright colours and unusual images emphasises the artists, interesting, quirkiness and vibrancy. Both these images give us a clear indication on their style.

Music Branding Research. As we decided to go for the genre of a singer/songwriter we looked at the singer/songwriter ‘Adele’ as her brand image is so simple but effective we knew it would follow the look we wanted to go for in our video and ancillary texts. We looked at Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ for research on things we could put in our video that link with this genre and her album artwork to see how a singer/songwriter gets their identity across to the audience about what they are singing about. The images, low key lighting, slow paced editing and black and white colour throughout both the video and her album artwork made us decide that we would use these sort of effects throughout our product as they link with our artists brand image.

Our Brand Image.

Emotional, Innocent, Individual, Simple, Delicate.

These words sum up our artists brand image very clearly. This is because our female looks very individual with her different look, as she doesn’t dress like all other females. She will not be stereotypical female. Through watching our video and looking at our print work, it is very obvious to understand how our artist is feeling and how the situation is effecting her. This is through the facial expression and postures our artist holds within the shots. Also the slow paced editing and powerful lyrics of the slow song help a lot. It is all incredibly effective and addresses these words for our brand image brilliantly to the audience.

Branding Of Our Printwork.Throughout both our print work and music video we have made them link a lot together which I think has made our main product and ancillary texts combination very effective.

Firstly for this we decided on a strong image where our artist is the complete focus for the shot. She is following our constant brand image by looking sad, also using direct address once again therefore the audience will feel sorry for her and this relates again to other shots in our video where direct address is used. We edited this photo to make it black and white so it links with black and white shots in our video and create that extra effect of her with the emotionless expression she portrays as they are very dull colours together. The baby pink font with a black outline is extremely effective and stands out brilliantly. I think our album is cover couldn’t be any better as it produces a huge focus of our artist which shows our singer/songwriter genre what we have expressed throughout both our main product and ancillary texts.I believe we have made a very strong link with the combination of our music video and ancillary texts which has developed to be extremely effective. There is an emotive expression throughout our music video on our artists face which is included with our brand image and throughout our print work it is used again.

ALBUM COVER

There is also another link with this photo and our music video as we have made it in black and white so it goes with the black and white shots within our video and we also use the same location.

BACK COVEROur back cover continues the flow of the font which follows the conventions of print work and looks very impressive with the font down the left hand side and the photo on the right hand side. Another thing which has made our back cover effective and exciting is how we have use brightness and contrast to make the back of our artist lit up. This links to what she is like in our actual music video, as some of the time we have shots where you can only see her because of the candle lighting her up. Also with this back cover as our artist is playing the piano on it this represents the piano shots in the music video, as the grand piano is a very important prop throughout our product. I believe our back cover looks very professional and like something that you would buy in a shop. This helps with the barcode in the bottom left hand corner, advertisements and the website. It is also extremely sophisticated which links with our brand image of our artist.

FIRST INSIDE COVEROnce again with this photo we have created the story we tell about our artist throughout our music video. This is by using the faded dissolving effect to emerge two photos together and make the candle look as though it is lighting up her face. This photo shows the two main focus’ in our music video, our artist and the candle. The candle over the top of our artists face shows that it is very important to her and we associate the candle with the artist. As the candle is a metaphor for the ‘Jar of Hearts’ this cleverly works well as we know from this photo and from throughout the music video it is part of her and represents her heart.

SECOND INSIDE COVEROur second inside cover, we have also made black and white so therefore our album cover isn’t the only black and white photo in our print work. So now this photo links with our album cover and again other black and white shots in our music video. In this photo we used brightness and contrast to make her stand out in her white dress and allow the background to be much darker to represent her heartbreak and add a haunted effect. In this photo our artist looks as though she is wandering which relates to how she wanders a lot throughout the video to address to the audience that she is lost in her thoughts. This emotional, solemn look on her face and the lonely posture she is holding continuously shows her brand image to the audience, as we have continuously emphasised this in the music video and print work as we believe it is important for the singer/songwriter genre.

MAGAZINE ALBUM ADVERTWe feel as because we have chose a long photo which is very large, it will make the audience want to read the album advert as it stands out better. The ‘Sara McConville’ title is big and attracts the audience to it. However, the advantage is that it doesn’t take the audiences attention away from the actual photo of the artist which is very important to see, because this is the main thing on the advert that pushes our brand image. This also follows how the focus is on artist all the time in our video, such as with close ups and extreme close ups. The baby pink font which is followed through our print work is used once again and looks very effective but simple. We have the date her album is released at the bottom of the advert and a small photo in the bottom right corner. I think we did this the correct way so then the audience look at our photo first, then title, and finally the release date and small album cover.

Branding Of Our Music Video.To put our brand image across to the audience throughout our music video

we have included plenty of things throughout it so therefore it is addressed perfectly from different shots to different types of editing, and powerful ideas. Firstly, I would say the best way in which to describe our video and brand image, is emotional. This is because throughout our product our artists emotive, solemn, lonely expression on her face and slow walk emphasises her heart break. This is even more effective with the slow paced editing and slow paced song. We made our artist use direct address so therefore this allows her to connect with the audience and then they can understand our brand image more and feel sorry for her. They will then begin to understand the situation from the effects of the lyrics and our powerful video. Following this, it will make the audience want to follow the singer/songwriter genre more, buy our product and listen to more of ‘Sara McConville’s’ music.

Throughout our music video, we have also included lots of shots of our artist wandering about this lonely, isolated setting in the dark which shows how alone she feels, she also looks very innocent. Black and white shots we have included were used because they are dull colours and used mostly to emphasise emotional meanings. This in our case has worked very well.

We put our artist in the costume of a casual, cream dress, with a long coat and scruffy boots. This costume makes a huge contrast of our artist to the audience as it shows she is a sophisticated girl, however because of what has happened to her she can’t help letting herself go a little. Also because this look is different to how other females dress themselves, it follows how we make her individual and simple.