Question 2

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

 

 Our main inspiration when looking into the indie genre is "The Script". We believed that this band have done a great job in creating simplistic promotional packages, which work exceptionally well together and thus, leading to the large sale of the bands albums.

 

 The main focus of our digipak and magazine advert, is to stick to the conventional idea of black and white/monochrome throughout. The script demonstrate this clearly for us. Although both albums look aesthetically pleasing, one of them is a white background with blac writing, and the other a black background with white writing. Although the change seems similar, the difference between the two and the ideas we get off them shows the hidden complexities of the images.

  The white background shows the innocence of the band, having indie bands shown to usually be teenage, this could reflect their tender age and the innocence they offer to the wide world of music. It also makes the band appear slightly light hearted, similar to a pop band. When reviewing our track, the hy-brid genre of our band is more "Indie Rock" than "Indie Pop" for the particular song, and so the black background would work more effectively than the white background. The colour black is often refered to as deep and dark. This shows the rock side of our band off, and shows the passion behind the music, as the audience can conote the strong background colour with the strong talents within the band, and drive for the music industry. The white writing shows the contrast between the narrative and performance within our video, and that the band as a whole offer a deep and meaningful video aimed at the young generation usually classed as "students."

                                       

 The three media aspects which we have designed and made, work well together as a complete promotional package for a range of reasons. Firstly, we wanted to ensure that all three have a basic colour scheme we can stick to throughout. A monochrome background gives the indie band the urban edge and having only the band in colour, they appear a strong image on the foreground of a camera shot. Due to knowing the indie market appeals to students, we wanted to ensure that fashionable clothing was seen through each of our media creations as people of this age idolise band members, producing maximum record sales. Each member of the band is shown in clothes of the indie fashion, but with great differences between band members in order to show them as a versatile group. This allows the audience to stereotype each of them as a positive.
 

 

 

  We have also repeated the font style and sharp red colour of the font for the bands name across both of our promotional packages. This allows their audience to recognise and associate “4 kicks” with the bright red colour and the type of font we chose to use. This association will be key to having potential future customers buy into any other products from the band.

 These different elements of media will be exhibited. Two main options are available to us and we would take both approaches on if we’d chosen to sell our products. Both traditional and newer methods could benefit an indie band such as ours. Record stores and music channels are the pasindustry promoted new and upcoming bands, these would benefit the band, due to a wide range and large amount of potential customers walking past our magazine advert and digipak, the main focus is to maintain an eye catchy style. These still have a large amount of customers which result in many sales in store. However, our indie band appeals to a much younger audience who are often criticized for the amount of time spent on computers and other technology. It would appear very beneficial for our band to use modern ways of exhibition such as youtube, itunes  and facebook.
 A potential music channel such as 4music would be a great way to exhibit our band. Not only is this company 50% owned by Buaer media showing its global availability to sell and advertise, but it is also a channel regularly watched by our target market, and playing 24/7 due to its popularity. A good magazine to put our band in would be "Q" magazine. This not only sells monthly to its consumers unlike many other magazines, but also appears online and can be looked into and found easily through a search engine such as Google. It promotes many up and coming band, such as 4kicks and would be able to inform many people of their music, posting polls and other interactive activities which potential customers can vote upon after hearing the track in question. This would not only make many people familiar with the new track, but also increase sales and profit once it is listened too and hopefully enjoyed. This magazine is also owned by Bauer Media, and so by dispursing the band across a very large audience (19 million consumers in the UK alone) is bound to hugely benefit the band.

 Popular video’s on youtube gain millions of hits within a number of days. Facebook is the biggest social networking site to ever grace the internet, allowing hundreds of millions of people to have access to a page on our band, giving it the ability to potentially spread like wildfire. The larger part of our target market will look online for bands, rather than in store and pay for individual songs online when they have the money in their student life, rather than buying a large album in one go. These internet methods of music are growing rapidly, giving our band the ability to potentially grow in the same way once they begin to become discovered. Avoiding internet sales would cause us to miss out on a huge amount of sales as this is our most valuable way of getting our band out there. The more people who know about an existing band, the more likely the chance of sales, thus, largely increasing profits.

 As well as having a regular colour scheme, throughout the magazine and digipak ancillary tasks, we wanted each band member appearing in a shot to appear equal i.e. same posture, same stance and same direct look into the camera, allowing the audience to recognise the band as a unit rather than individual artists. The same neutral look was intended to appear on each member of the bands face and this worked successfully, allowing people to look and see the band as a serious contender in the musical industry.