Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I feel that the synergy between the main product and the ancillary texts is responsible for an effective relationship

between the medias, because a brand was created.

Lew Parker

Why is branding important? Branding is a way of clearly highlighting what makes your product or service

different to, and more attractive than, your competitors'. Synergy can therefore be seen as a response to the need for effective branding. These are the four elements required for a successful branding project:

• The big idea - The big idea is the starting point for any branding project. It is a

summary of your business' or product's 'personality', and what makes it different. This was developed during the planning and research stages.

• Vision - An understanding of where your business is going, or where you want it to go, so you can plan your journey. Your vision may be large scale - such as switching the emphasis of your business from one core area to another - or simple, such as offering an existing product in a completely new way.

• Values – Clarifies what your business stands for. Your values are an important part of how people see your business, so this communication is important in the product.

• Personality - When you start communicating your brand to consumers, you will also be expressing the personality of your company through the tone, language and design you use.

Recognition of existing Synergy within the Music Industry.

When researching into the combination of existing music videos, the promotional photography featured on posters and the artist’s website, I identified that there were often several underlying features used to maintain continuity across the medias. This was a convention that I decided was necessary to include throughout all of the products so that the audience could easily group them under one brand image.

Examples of this include:

Repetition of the band’s logo and artist.

‘House Style’During my research I came across the term ‘House Style’.

What is it?

A style guide is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication. The style guide provides consistency in style and formatting of a document. Many publication use style guides to demonstrate the preferred layout and formatting of a published page. They often are extremely detailed in specifying, for example, which fonts and colours to use. Such guides allow a large design team to produce visually consistent work for the organization.

Why is it important?

The quality of the corporate identity reflected in all printed matters and all online marketing emphasizes the excellence of your products and your business attitude. The colours have to match and the design must be original. The house style must reflect your branding strategy and the values of the brand.

Plan of Synergy

Made during the construction stage of the product and ancillary texts.

Synergy of the main product and ancillary tasks.

Music Video

• The Music Video was a good basis to start generating forms of synergy that could be adapted across the 2 ancillary tasks.

• Use of the band’s logo drew attention to brand immediately within the opening seconds of the video.

•By using the MTV Logo, this conformed to a ‘real life’ production company that would often host Britpop/rock bands on their TV channel, ‘MTV Rocks’.

• The shot scene above is an example of a ‘notion of looking into the camera lens’ (1 of Andrew Goodwin’s 7 characteristics when addressing music video theory.)

Poster • I then took the still shot from the Music Video and used this as the main photograph for the poster.

• I retained use of the band’s logo that had been shown at the start of the Music Video.

• I also featured the MTV Logo along with affiliated music/magazine companies and endorsements (shown at the bottom). This was done to credit the idea of creating an official London Relentless Garage poster.

•Therefore I used the official ‘Relentless’ logo; a company that is associated with endorsing bands as well as owning the London music venue.

• I also used the name of a real Relentless Garage promoter, ‘Silver Bullet Promotions’ and their logo (shown in the top-right corner).

• The front cover of the band’s album was also put in the top-left corner of the poster. This put an emphasis on the event as being an ‘album release show’.

Wix Website

The website then took content from the Music Video and Poster, which drew attention to the synergy of the products.

• Band Logo – Use of Photoshop to put the logo onto the wall, thus created identity on the homepage.

• Featuring the Music Video in the top corner on autoplay, drew attention to another media that the fans would be acquainted with.

• The poster was also included to draw attention to the album release show, as the band’s only current show. This was significant to the whole project because it brought all three products: the video, website and poster, together onto the homepage. The video had provided exposure of the band in co-ordation with the release of their album, which was promoted by the poster.

• The main photograph was also taken down the same street as the Still from the Music Video (shown on the poster) and this therefore bears resemblance.

•Across the website I used a similar colour scheme to the poster.

The ‘Releases’ page featured the band’s album cover, which had been featured on the poster that promoted the release of it. The ‘Video’ page drew attention to the recently released Music Video as well as other music videos from the band’s back catalogue.

The merchandise from the ‘Store’ page reflected further considerations of planned synergy.

• The band’s logo was put onto the T-shirt, Shirt and Polo.

Research into Psychographics showed me that my target audience are often associated with wearing Oxford Shirts, Polo Shirts and, in some cases, Tie-Dye T-shirts as part of the Britpop Culture.

In the store, my audience were able to purchase Tickets to the album release show that had been the focus of the poster.

The effective photography from the homepage was available to buy as an A2 Poster, (suitable size for bedroom walls).

The mug was a nice British Gimmick, that used a commonly coined phrase.

The photography in the Gallery was also taken in one of the same locations the music video was shot. This creating synergy between these two products. The stone walls and floor were iconic mise-en-scene that was demonstrated in the music video and poster.

Across the different products I maintained using Close ups and Mid-shots, which I found was a popular convention of posters, websites and music videos during my research.

The copyrighting on the bottom of each website page also linked with the Geffen logo on the poster.

Effectively establishing a brand.

With all of the Synergy taken into account, I felt that a brand was established and the combination of the main product and ancillary

tasks was effective.

I chose to adopt this particular aesthetic seen across the products, because of the various interlinks that could be made as the project progressed and I began working on the ancillary tasks. Brand awareness and the construction of the band’s image was

split across the three products down the many different avenues, for example: how the merchandise was catered to this specific

audience and how it increased awareness of the brand.

I also upheld a desired House Style across the website and poster which feature similar colour schemes to one another.