The Beautiful Occupation

Evaluation Question Two

How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

Graham Armstrong

The Products

Style & FeaturesThe style of the advert matches the style of the style of the album. This is a critical synergy which allows the audience to better identify the product.

“Icon”Represents

album

Oval shape

resembles eye

Band name in standard font and style

Deep red colour

representative of

war

Ghostly Text

Background

textures for

effect

Peace symbol

“broken”

Advert

Standard band

text – same font

for convergence

Good review from well-known critic

Positive text, create desire for audience

Highlighting of

key terms, draw

attention from

audience

Iconography

Digital

synergy

Clips from media

product, synergy

Release date, creates anticipation

DigitalConsumers≈The advert for the digipak offered the chance to download the media product online. The use of the website logo creates synergy from the fictitious popular music service and the song.As online music becomes more popular, it’s important for media products to make use of the facilities available as to better reach the target audience. Recent sales figures suggest most money spent on music in 2010 was spent online.

Digital Distribution

The video was uploaded to YouTube, which carries a message underneath showing links to the popular music services iTunes and eMusic, promoting the media product as downloadable content.

I also promoted the video through social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. The convergence of social networking allows fans of the song to share the video virally, creating a lot of interest between friends. These services can also be used for the collection of feedback which I will cover in question three.

House Style

The same theme, including colours, styles, fonts, effects and layout, have been used on both the advert and the digipack, this has the effect of linking the two–allowing the target audience who’ve seen the advert to more easily recognise the album in stores or online.

The theme is quite punchy and uses a variety of colours including a cascade of cooling blues and vivid reds, contrasted against a darkened grey. This colour mix is quite emotive, there are lot’s of strong emotions associated with red which are juxtaposed with the blue. This basic house style helps to relate with audience expectations.

I’ve used a standard font to create the band logo, tilted slightly between A and V to give a unique feel. A small glow encases the logo. The Travis logo I have created isn’t too dissimilar to the one used by the real band, I felt the logo need not be changed much as to represent its genre.

Narrative & Theme

The single itself is generally very political and anti-war, I’ve chosen to develop this theme as a representation of the digipack.The most iconic part of the cover is the peace symbol, shown clearly damaged and broken. The broken symbol represents the false-hood of politics and perceived “broken peace”.The peace symbol is placed below two red curves giving the impression of an eye, tainted with red – representing anger and, crudely, blood.The title itself also conveys meaning, the short-hand form “Who We Can” is intended to be an open-ended rhetorical question pertaining to aspirations and nature of man. My inspiration for this title is derived from the Travis album “The Man Who”.

Text & Language

The language of the advert is very positive, using lots of adjectives which portray the band in a positive light. Phrases like “Rock Sensation” make the product seem more desirable. The text is highlighted to show-off the desirable parts of the advert.Quotes are included from well known and respected music websites. The quotes are very flattering and help to increase audience desire for the product.Words such as “sensation” and “exclusive” aid the style of language, creating a must-have attitude for the target audience.