Evaluation Question 2 - Package Combination

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

Evaluation question two asks, how effective were our combination of main products and ancillary texts:

The first point to make when tackling this question is that normally one company wouldn't make all three products. For our own coursework we produced all the texts ourselves. In the real industry it would be likely you would get a company which specializes in creating a music video, digipak and magazine ad separately. 

Examples of these would be: 

• Disk factory a CD and DVD packaging company which offers versatile CD packaging solutions which includes digpaks.
• Project 11 is magazine advert design company providing modern full two page or single page design ideas for companies, events or products.
• Londonmusicvideo are a music video production company which specialises in affordable band promo and music video.

Theories and Audience:

Daft Font

We can look at a range of theories when looking at this question. Blumler and McQuail's uses and gratifications model suggests that people get what they want from the text they are viewing. The viewer of our work will take what they want from the text for example someone from our younger audience bracket may pick out certain aspects such as the party scene or the travelers quirky and amusing appearance. An older audience who are fans of the original Daft Punk songs may spot some of the intertexual references added into our piece of work. An example of this would be in the digipak where we used the recognizable 'Daft font' which older viewers will be able to pick up on as it was used on the 1996 album cover for 'Homework'. Small details like this have helped us appeal to a wider range of age groups and is important to consider when designing our texts.

Another idea we can look at is Web 2.0. It is a term associated with web applications that focuses on a user-centered design to facilitate an interactive and increasingly content generating audience. So what does this mean in terms of our video and ancillary texts? An example of this would be the viral campaign in which we encouraged fans of our video and product combination to go out and participate in our work. Web 2.0 suggests that the gap between producer and audience is being blurred. In our own work we have encouraged this. The idea was to have fans go out and take photos of the magazine ad in the most interesting and unique places possible. This was available by scanning a QR code on the magazine ad which would then direct you to a post on the Quack cuts blog. This would give them instructions on how to participate in the competition. The winners pictures would then be included in a remixed version of the song in a new video. This was encouraged through our twitter site and the idea was to create an overall buzz about the competition. 

Magazine Ad

Blog Post

Twitter Post

Target Audience:
We set our target audience as males and females from the age ranges of 15 to 24. This is due to the genre of music we have chosen appeals to this age range the most. This music is likely to be played in clubs and at festivals where you will find people of this age. 

Primary target audience as shown in
our video.

The genre of music is also listened to by those aspiring to go clubbing or are interested in the dance music scene and we have found this age range to be 15 +. The act itself has a very broad following due to the fact that Daft Punk have been around since 1993 and have had many hits in the UK charts. 

We are aiming to appeal to audience which were of the ages 15 to 24 when they first became famous and a current audience of this age range. Meaning our secondary audience will be aged between 35 to 44 years old. We aimed to appeal to this audience through all parts of the project by referencing parts of videos which where around at that time.

We are also targeting another parallel secondary tween audience. Many younger teens 12+ listen to music often associated with an older group and will have been influenced by people around them and figures in the media. This age range will aspire to act in a similar way to our primary audience.  During our filming and project we have taken this audience into account by being careful not to reference anything which would lead to our video being played post watershed time.

Exhibition:

We considered how our products would be exhibited in a real world music magazine. We did some research and looked at a few different magazine before deciding Mixmag was probably the most appropriate choice to advertise in. Mixmag is a magazine that provides clubbers DJ's and music enthusiasts the latest new on a range of dance music related topics. We found the advertising specification online which we took into account when designing the magazine ad. We also used their audience demographics information to further aid the creation of our ancillary product as well as target audience. 

Addressing Audience:
To reflect our target audience in the texts we featured a variety of characters which we thought would appeal to the target audiences we had defined. More details on this are mention above using the uses and gratifications model. 

Younger character

Older character

Distribution:
To address our core audience we would aim to distribute our product online and in stores. We would likely make most sales online as that is most accessible to our primary target audience however both our secondary audiences would be more likely to make sales in high street shops. Sites like Amazon and Play as well as the itunes store are great places to sell our products as they appeal to a young audience living in technological age. 

As for the shops we would probably be gaining most sales from shops like virgin as well as independent record shops. The independent stores would also be able to buy into the competition idea. If we were to have this as a real life product independent stores would be were the contestants images could be exhibited and submitted. We could also feature the limited edition digipak in these shops as well as advertising the using the magazine ad tying the two products together. We saw this in action in Leeds when we visited Jumbo records on a shoot. 

Daft Punk Vevo

A prime place to exhibit our music video would be on music channel such as MTV as well as other popular cable music channel. Daft Punk are popular among many audiences so television music channels are an ideal place to show the music video. An area not to forget about is Youtube. Due to the rise in digitization and viral advertising music videos which go on Youtube can get many millions of views. Most popular artists are partnered with Vevo who help advertise music videos on the channel. Daft Punk's latest song Get Lucky has already racked up over 10 million views on the official video, not to mention fan made remixes and lyric videos.  

Social Media:

Social media sites like Facebook or Twitter have played a large role in sharing our products and gaining feedback. By setting up a company twitter feed we could access non bias responses and share developments or advertise through posting tweets and and statuses. As a package we have gained audience feedback. We have found our magazine ad, digipak and music video are viewed as a coherent campaign that is tightly linked and appeals to our target audience in the right way. 

Viral Campaign:
Firstly our viral ad campaign, we asked fans who have seen the advert used in a magazine to take a picture in an un-specified location with the advert. The most inventive picture would then be included in the ending sequence of a remixed and re-edited version of the music video. Next, using new technology QR codes, Youtube, and image uploading to group our ancillaries with our music video whilst involving the audience as much as possible. 

Initially we had plans to create a suitcase digipak that emulated the suitcase used in the video. However this idea developed to use more original images from the from the video as well as viral campaign pictures. The magazine ad also developed from a suitcase leather style with stickers to the current and in our opinion, more eye catching design with detail on tour dates and release. Overall I think all three of the products link together well and create a complete package. 

• Matching Fonts
• Use of the same image
• Poster referencing the competition and digipak
• Links on poster to the digipak and where to view the music video
• Suitcase and 'Traveller' images on both products
• Matching colour scheme

Images used on previous digipak are taken form the viral campaign to

to photograph the poster.