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

          The three products I have created – music video, magazine advert, and digipack – all act to promote the sale of the album, as they have a symbiotic relationship. Together they have a ‘house style’ that gives the album a recognisable theme. A music video has many purposes: it acts to entertain its audience through telling a story or providing a performance, it sells the song by acting as a promotional tool which can be showcased in a variety of places, and it can amplify the lyrics or message of the song, giving it more of an emotional impact. I would say that my music video does all three of these things: the intertwining narratives and overall idea of my video entertain the target audience, making it interesting to watch; the way in which it would be shown on music channels and in cinemas would raise awareness of the band, the song, and the album, and stimulate word-of-mouth sales or a ‘buzz’; and the video, particularly the colour narrative, is very reflective of the lyrics of the song, and the black-and-white narrative helps to create an image or style for the band.

            The purpose of the magazine advert is purely to promote the album and contribute to the image and style of the band. I think my magazine advert does this as it displays the fact that the album can be purchased in-store at the moment, on iTunes, and on limited edition red vinyl. Additionally the review quote and five stars at the top of the page act as a way of convincing the audience that they should buy the album. By using images from the video and the same colour scheme of red, white, and black, the audience can recognise the band from their music video, and if they liked the video they may then purchase the album.

            The purpose of the digipack is to draw the customer’s attention and then convince them to make the final step of buying the album. To do this, I used the same colours that had been featured in my magazine advert and music video: red, white, and black, with the addition of blue, which is used occasionally in my other products through the model’s eyes. I used a blue star because I thought it gave the album cover an American feel, as Cake is from Sacramento, California. Additionally it parodies the typical decoration featured on birthday cakes. Just as in my video where I had a colour narrative, using vibrant footage, and a black-and-white narrative, which had darker tones, my background photographs for my digipack cover are of a brightly coloured cake, whilst the text is then written in a printed label-esque font, called Impact Label, which is rougher and edgier. I used this font in my magazine advert as well, adding to the ‘house style’ of my products. For the inside of my digipack, I tried to make it in keeping with the style by using the colour red for the band’s name and making an image of a speaker for where the CD would be, as the black-and-white narrative for my video uses lots of musical equipment.

            As this is not the band’s first album, I did not feel it was necessary for them to be featured in any of these products as they have already established themselves as successful artists and their name would be recognised. However, it is Cake’s first album since joining Columbia Records, and so they have had a slight ‘revamp’; hence I tried to create an air of mystery about the band by only featuring a very short shot of them at the end of the video and cutting it before the action.