The main aim of our entire campaign and 3 products was to promote a brand, therefore consistent branding of The Defiance was very important. Our overall media product had to have synergy between all 3 texts in order to do so. We had to consider what connections and links to make between the 3 products in order to keep a consistent but not repetitive brand.
Venn Diagram demonstrating synergy between the different parts of our media product. Created on gliffy.com
"The Defiance" logo
After researching various fonts, we noticed that rock bands tended to have mostly black logos, but with an immediately recognisable font, that was consistent across all their products.
Colour schemes/ Band characters
A shown in the diagram, each member of the band had their own colour in the music video to connote their "character" or personality in the band. We tried to keep their individual personalities similar across all 3 products in a range of ways, not only using the colours, but other techniques as well.
Please refer to this image when mentioned below
Blue is typically used to connote a cool calmness, therefore the drummer was dressed quite simply, with a laid back hairstyle. He is different to the other members and this shows through his biography on the website as well, and the promo shots (shown in Daniel's bio below), both on the website and on the album inside panel, where he has relaxed and natural poses.
We played on the obvious of purple being a combination of red and blue, to demonstrate that the lead singer was the "glue" of the band. The idea of her was that as the only female member, and lead, she pulled together and completed all the members and the music. Furthermore, the purple was the best choice between red and blue back lights for aesthetic value as well. The promo shots (shown in Shobnam's bio below) display her as a quirky and fun character, and an integral part of The Defiance.
Red usually connotes passion and danger. The guitarist was intended to have an eccentric and energetic type of personality. Through the music video, we see enthusiastic strumming, and head-banging at points. Moreover, in the promo shots (shown in Aidan's bio below), Aidan has typical rock-star poses such as the "rock on" hand gesture, and the jumping pose. He is the "crazy" one, as we liked to call him.
Themes and messages
Through the title of our album "Ascension", the song titles, our debut music video storyline, and website biographies, we had one main message: Don't give up.
Our original post of the album song titles.
These are the biography images on the website. Each character has their own personalities as seen in the rest of the pictures, but the pictures are edited similarly, thus connecting them together.
However not all of our campaign worked together in synergy.
Inconsistency
We started with the intention not to be repetitive, and to keep our identity fresh, however realised that this causes discord within our media product and confusion as to our band logo and identity. It almost looks like a completely separate brand, and therefore contradicts what synergistic marketing or promotion of a brand is used for. The next post underlines why this is an issue regarding the audience.
Overall, the message is fairly clear to the audience (As outlined in Question 3), therefore we were somewhat successful in our presentation of the 3 products. However, in order to fully understand whether our campaign was successful, we required some audience feedback, which is discussed in the next question.
After our media product was finished, we decided our target audience would be 15-22 year olds of both genders. This was because the rock genre is more popular with young adults e.g. Paramore, Green Day, Fallout Boy etc. We wanted to know whether we had chosen the correct audience group, and whether the age range was appropriate in order to know whether our album would sell, and whether our music and brand would disseminate and appeal as widely as we hoped. Using SurveyMonkey, we created surveys to gather feedback on our music video, album cover, and website.
This was the easiest way to converge quantitative data such as percentages of people who liked/disliked the video, statistics such as the audience age groups, and also qualitative written responses.
This is the survey we sent out to our audiences
Most of the participants were of our target 15-22 year age range
Age was an important factor to ask about, as we felt it would be useful to be able to differentiate between responses from different age groups. We could them oversee how the target audience age range responded to our music video.
We received an equal spread of data from both genders, This was also important as we did not want to exclude either gender, but wanted to investigate whether the music video appealed to both or was more catered to one.
Below are 2 comparison charts (made on gliffy.com) of responses from our target audience of 15-22 year olds. Female responses are red, and male responses in blue (Stereotypical gender colour roles yes, but most common).
The girls had a range of likes for our video, including style and narrative, while the boys were more critical of the technical aspects e.g. camera movement.
On the other, the boys enjoyed the performance parts of the music video, and the members of the band, but disliked the
narrative storyline.
Looking at these responses demonstrates that though we had intentionally wanted to appeal to both genders in our age range, the video had somewhat appealed to both, but also somewhat fallen short. Most of the female participants commented on similar aspects that they liked or disliked, as did the males. Therefore, in trying to broaden our audience, we had actually caused our music video to appeal less to either gender. It is worth noting that perhaps we should have focused more on one gender group, and thus catered our music video more specifically to that gender.
Another use of audience research is that we could investigate how our audience interpreted the message of our music video. Their interpretations of out main themes are as follows:
These are various snippets or themes that all of our respondents picked out - Made on wordle.com
These are a few of my personal favourite responses:
"A young tramp, busking for 10p coins, a drummer that jumps over bannisters when it's seriously unnecessary and a girl that does homework dressed like a secretary and should probably get anger management lessons (and a new phone), meet through strange posters that have been plastered an exorbitant amount on walls (including one in shobnam's room?!) and through letterboxes. They then go to audition having never practised together, and yet somehow (because they must simply be musical geniuses) they win (woo!!)"
And Leo the deep-thinker:
"It was a coming-of-age story of someone who, against all odds, turns to the power of music to express themselves. Having heard the horrible message of hatred and murder, the public turn on this person, trying to silence them. BUT THE ARTIST FIGHTS BACK, and establishes a new order where misery is life; all to please one person, The Artist. Long may The Artist reign. \m/"
Secondary Audience
Not only could we review out target audience, but among these surveys, some were taken by our secondary audience of 22-30 year olds, and even some over 30s. This told us if we had been right to exclude anyone over 22 from our target audience group.
Here is a response from a 26 year old female working in a bank: (Made on voki.com)
This goes to show that the feedback we received from our target audience carried through our secondary audience as well. The response was the same as the 15-22 year old female group, therefore perhaps our target audience age range was slightly limited.
Using this feedback, we were able to deduce what our target audience wanted from our music video and in summary realised that our shots may be too fast at points, and also sometimes too dark. Furthermore, many people said that there were not enough CUs of the lead singer. Though we wanted to allocate equal screen time to the 3 members, this did not appeal to the audience.
As a positive though, most of the female audience appreciated the message behind the video, while the males coined it as "cheese" and "naff". Moreover, Most of the audience appreciated the styling of the band, and commented on the physical appearance as well as the quality of performing and acting.
Album cover and Website
We also carried out surveys to see if our album cover and website appealed to our target audience. We again included questions to receive quantitative figures to give us a general consensus, but also qualitative answers for more detailed and specific feedback. The following are data graphs and charts created using infogram.
In summary, the background of the album cover seemed to appeal, however the harsh blue colouring and fonts did not. This could be because of the mismatch to our band logo. The responses also suggest difficulty in understanding immediately what genre The Defiance is. This could be because there were no images of the band with instruments or because of the inside panel images. They images on the inside suggest a more fun side to the members of the band, therefore perhaps not connoting the rock genre efficiently, rather a pop/indie/ alternative type genre.
Again with the album the font and colours/general style seemed to be the least appealing factor to the audience. Like with the different font on the album cover, some of the website fonts were not synergistic with the other products. Furthermore, we tried to keep the design simple, so as not to portray a too flashy or bright image of the band or mistake our genre, however the audience expected a more "interesting" design. This could be fixed maybe by adding more interactive features such as moving images (gifs), opportunities to listen to more songs (although impossible in our media project), and the galleries could be fixed so that the images didn't cut off.
All in all, the campaign on the whole successfully promoted a rock band, but could have been more clear in terms of the look of the album cover. Synergy between the 3 products made for a consistent "The Defiance" brand overall. The chosen target audience appeared too broad gender-wise, but correct perhaps even a little niche age-wise. From the feedback, if we catered more specifically, the target audience could be either males or females from 15- 25 (or older depending if individuals were rock fans to begin with).
Our media product uses and develops many conventions of the rock genre however, we also found ways to challenge some of these conventions using our narrative. To illustrate this I will use real examples such as Paramore, Flyleaf and We Are The In Crowd amongst others.
↳Genre
Our band is called "The Defiance" and their debut song/music video is "Unbreakable". Their genre is rock and they are specifically a female fronted rock band. These were the leading examples of female fronted rock bands that helped us form our idea:
Paramore
Flyleaf
We Are The In Crowd
↳Band Image/Identity For our band's image/identity we mostly stuck to the conventions already formed in rock music. I have created a Prezi explaining how we do so.
↳Music Video
This storify document I have created explains how we gained some muse for the narrative of our music video.
Our music video uses Todorov's Narrative Theory throughout which is demonstrated by this flow chart:
Click to enlarge
Breaking Narrative Conventions:
In our research, we found that commonly in rock music videos if there is a narrative it is focal on the lead singer or there are other actors portraying the narrative. For example in Paramore's "Brick by Boring Brick" it is focused around the story of a little girl's tragic story:
The music video to "But It's Better If You Do" by Panic! At The Disco revolves around a character of the lead singer's life:
Performance Conventions:
Focusing on female fronted rock music videos, we used conventional movements/performance techniques and camera shots that were common in them.
Hair-flipping is a common movement used by the female lead if they have long hair to highlight the energy of their performance as shown in the first .gif by Brie Larson in her performance of Black Sheep. In the second gif you can see how our lead singer used a similar move.
Another convention is beauty/money shots of the lead singer that should be used frequently in the music video to attract the viewers. In first .gif of the two below, you can see a close up of Brie Larson singer. This also gives the viewers a close up of their emotions and they can connect the emotions to the meaning of the song. In the second .gif of the ones below, is one example of how we used beauty/money shots in our music video.
For the drummer when there is a speedy drumming beat we often saw this type of move performed:
So we replicated this in our music video:
Director's Commentary Here we made a director's commentary of our music video explaining how we used conventions and how we broke some conventions.
↳Using Vernallis' Music Video Theory
For the basis of our music video we looked at the three different types of music videos: Narrative, Performance and Conceptual music videos. After looking at many rock music videos, we observed that many were a mix of narrative and performance. Almost all rock music videos had performance as the instruments used are a key factor of the rock genre and audiences want to have the visuals of those. We decided to use this as the form of our music video.
Example: Misery Business by Paramore Contains both narrative and performance. Also the band members are characters in the narrative which is a convention we adopted in our video too.
Our narrative is linear but a fragmented narrative as not all of it is shown in the music video but it is implied. For example, we do not see the characters travelling to the audition after seeing the posters but after seeing them all at the audition in the end you can assume that they are.
Vernallis stated that the narrative may not always have a clear resolution at the end which applies to our video, although they all end up at the audition it is unclear as to what exactly will happen after that. It is left up to the audience to assume/imagine.
↳Using Goodwin's Music Video Theory
We make direct links between the music and visuals and links between the lyrics and visuals. The video below demonstrates the examples of this in our music video
Intertexual references
For the drummer's character's set up in the bedroom, we designed the set with many posters across the wall and magazines sprawled all over the room. The posters were of rock bands and movies which connotes boyhood and dedication to music. The magazines on the floor were music magazines (specialising in rock) and we thrown across the floor amongst clothes messily to add to the mise en scene. ↳Extras
Our band is a three piece band and the band's friendship is one of the driving forces behind the band and one of the appeals of it to our target audience. Three is quite a symbolic number as in television, a close friendship of three people is very common. Especially of one female and two males.
Famous trios from Film/Television
Having a trio of band members is almost a pop cultural reference as audience can draw links between them and popular trios they have seen on television and film.
↳Website
For our website, we mostly stuck to the conventions of rock artists' websites we found in our research.
The video below explains how we drew inspiration from Flyleaf's website. When designing our website, we wanted to stick to the conventions. (The volume may need to be turned up quite loud to hear the audio)
Examples of how we stuck to conventions with our website:
Homepage:
The homepage also included a "News/Updates" events calender to keep the fans up to date. It also features a link to the "Tour Dates" section of the website.
Other pages:
We had a Gallery that had a collection of promotional photos and behind the scenes photos for fans.
↳Album Digipak
For the creation of our album digipak, we used and developed established conventions but we also tried to break some conventions to provide something fresh for the audience
I have created a Prezi explaining how real albums inspired our albums and how we adapted them to be unique to our band.
↳Conclusion
In conclusion, our media product mainly used and developed existing conventions and forms. We decided to do this as our audience will already be familiar to this and be more likely to want to invest themselves in this band if they easily know what they are getting. However, we did break some conventions as to not bore audiences and to provide some new ground for the music industry.
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.
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Blue is typically used to connote a cool calmness, therefore the drummer was dressed quite simply, with a laid back hairstyle. He is different to the other members and this shows through his biography on the website as well, and the promo shots (shown in Daniel's bio below), both on the website and on the album inside panel, where he has relaxed and natural poses.
We played on the obvious of purple being a combination of red and blue, to demonstrate that the lead singer was the "glue" of the band. The idea of her was that as the only female member, and lead, she pulled together and completed all the members and the music. Furthermore, the purple was the best choice between red and blue back lights for aesthetic value as well. The promo shots (shown in Shobnam's bio below) display her as a quirky and fun character, and an integral part of The Defiance.
Red usually connotes passion and danger. The guitarist was intended to have an eccentric and energetic type of personality. Through the music video, we see enthusiastic strumming, and head-banging at points. Moreover, in the promo shots (shown in Aidan's bio below), Aidan has typical rock-star poses such as the "rock on" hand gesture, and the jumping pose. He is the "crazy" one, as we liked to call him.
