Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The combination of our products is overall quite effective as we tried to create synergy across all three platforms so the website and the album cover is complementary to the music video. Nowadays it is extremely important for an artist to have an integrated, cross-platform marketing campaign so as to keep up a consistent branding that audiences can recognise. Their message must be repeated many times throughout their marketing for it to truly be delivered.  However, we believe there are steps we could have taken to make our product more synergetic.

As an example of a very synergetic rock music brand, we looked at the band Firelight.

What we picked up on:

• They had their band logo across all three platforms: in the top corner of their website banner, in the background of their album cover and it is shown in their "Stay Close" music video
• They generally stuck to a black and white colour scheme which is present in the website banner, the album cover and the narrative of their "Stay Close" music video. In their performance of the same music video the colours and very washed out, plain and almost sepia tone like and though it is not exactly black and white, it keeps close to the colour scheme
• The same image is used for the album cover and the website banner

Having seen that, we then looked into other bands and the similarity between their website banner and their album covers. Here are two examples:

 For example, the You Me At Six website banner and the Paramore website banner use the same font for their title as the album cover (as illustrated in the image above). The colour schemes for the albums and the website banners are also similar. You Me At Six stick to grey tones and Paramore have subdued grey tones with splashes of bright colours. 

So through researching bands' websites and album covers, I saw that it was conventional for their to be a similarity between the two products as it helps the audience familiarise themselves with the band.

In our initial planning stage we wanted to create something similar to the brands we researched but, when it came to production, we thought we ended up trying more variation. 

Unlike the previously mentioned websites, we did not keep the font of the band's name the same on the website banner and the album cover. Our intention was to create variation but, this may create disharmony between the two ancillary texts.

But, to keep to a similar theme, the band members are all stanced similarly- in a tight triangular formation and all of them purposefully looking in one direction. Furthermore, for the image of the band there are prominent colour hues. The website banner is notably pink/purple and the album cover is heavily blue toned.

We created a "Meet The Band" section on our website where there were links to each band member and a description about them. We realised that audiences may find a personal relationship with The Defiance's music which would invest them further into the band. To maintain such a personal relationship, we did our part to bring a bit of the band's personality to them. This way the audience can be assured that the money they are putting into the band by buying their music, merchandise, concert tickets etc. is with good reason. 

Shobnam's Profile (Lead Singer)

Aidan's Profile (Guitarist)

Daniel's Profile (Drummer)

Through each of their bios, we intended for the Album message of "not giving up" to come through.

Quotes from Shobnam's description: "... it started off with karaoke in my bedroom, until I found my true calling of Rock" & "To everyone who's made it possible for us t o be where we are today, thank you for listening and liking our music."

Quotes from Aidan's description: "...we all like rock music and have a passion for music." & "Playing the guitar is something I have been doing since a child..."

Quotes from Daniel's description: "I have always wanted to create the beat since I was young. I used to use cutlery, the table and pans as my drum kit." & "I couldn't afford lessons so I just had to teach myself. The first few years were the hardest as I annoyed everyone I played around." & "Don't let anyone stop your dreams!"

Below there is an analysis of the track list and how it corresponds to the details on the website and then it goes on further to analyse how we came to a decision on the inner panels:

Click to enlarge

The use of prominent use of one colour (the blue hue on the album cover and the purple/pink hue on the website banner) is also present in the music video as in the performance, each of the band members have a different coloured backlight:



Something that was common amongst all bands was to have the band logo on the drum kit in music videos as this enforces the band's identity and it is a practical place to put the logo.

Our band's drum kit.

Here are examples of other bands who have the band logo/name on their drum kit:

In conclusion, the combination between our main product and our ancillary texts are quite effective and we managed to maintain some syngergy throughout however, I feel there were steps we could have taken to make it all even more effective. We could have used the band logo on the album and not have used a different font. In addition, we could have stuck to one colour scheme in our website and album cover to have more of a lasting impact on the audience.