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

The task I was required to produce include the main task which was the music video and two ancillary tasks which was the Digipack and an advert.

When I first started this project, one of the first things I did was research into the purpose of music videos. Amongst many other reasons, the main purpose of a music video is for marketing and promotional purposes to increase the sales of the artists album they may have coming out, or just that single. Music videos can create controversy and therefore a talking point, which is another method of trying to increase the popularity of the artist, and therefore sales. The other main purpose of a music video is to give the audience entertainment, and it is for this reason when I was producing my music video I thought about who my target audience is and researched into what it is they would want to see.

I believe the video I have made does tick all the required boxes. The video is a story of love and therefore, the audience will want it to watch to find out what happens, like in a movie, the audience watch it to the end to find out what happens. Similarly, like the audience would go out and buy the film on DVD when it comes out to watch it again, the audience for my music video would look up my video on internet sites such as YouTube to watch it over and over again.

Similar to the music video, the main purpose of an advert is to promote sales. It needs to attract the audience attention, tell them something about what is being advertised and make them want to buy the product.

In order to fulfil this purpose I used an image that would take up the whole page and kept the background plain so the audience initial attention was on the artist. Underneath the image, I wrote the artist name in a large font, which initially I wasn’t going to include, apart from a single ‘R’ in the corner, as the artist is well know and therefore her name wouldn’t be necessary, however after looking back a it I decided the advert looked too plain. The only other information I put on the advert was one single sell line ‘The number 1 album’, the date the album was due to be released and then convention institutional information in small print at the bottom. It is common for advert for CD releases to include an image of the CD cover, reviews from magazines etc. but I deliberately chose to break these conventions, because I wanted to kept the advert looking plain, and I didn’t want to tell the audience too much because this might encourage the audience to find out more for their own benefit. I also thought because Rihanna is such as well know name, and she has such a huge fan following, the chances are fans are going to buy their album regardless, they don’t need a fancy advert to encourage them to buy it.        

A CD cover is the packaging for the CD to go in. it is what both the music video and the advert are promoting and therefore just as important. This is the product that the audience is buying and therefore they need to want to be proud of what they are buying. The audience, no matter how much they love the artist are going to want to buy something that looks shabby, so I needed to make sure my product looked professional.

I created 4 pages for the digipack, include the front page, two pages for the inside and the back page. I also produced a design for what the CD itself would look like. On my Digipack I attempted things that I haven’t seen done before, and therefore there was a lot of pressure to get it right. I merged two images of the artist together to make one. Neely has done this before, but over two CD covers, I was trying to do it all on the one page. I believe that I managed to pull this off successfully and I am happy with the way that it turned out. I also think this might intrigue audiences that might not necessarily be interested in Rihanna. They might see the CD cover, pick it up in the shop and want to know more, which might lead to a sale.

As all the tasks are as important as each other and are all connected, it is important it is easy for the audience to identify they come as a package. To do this I made sure I used the same colour scheme for all the products. In the video, I replace the green screen backgrounds like a pale pink/lime green back ground, which is the same colours I used for the text on the advert, and for the texts and backgrounds on the CD cover. I also used only thee colours on the CD. The block colour of the CD is lime green and the ‘R’ is pink. Although these colours may appeal more to a female audience, it is for this reason I included the green, as typically pink would appeal more to a female audience so to show that it was something for everyone I included the green, and also it is a nice colour that goes well with the pink, and therefore an appealing combination.