DRAFT ANSWER: Question 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

I don't think my final digipak entirely matches the music video. However, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing because I have seen it commonly used within the indie genre, which is the one our band is classified under.


I think my original digipak idea gave the impression of 'branding' much more than my final idea. This is because the band's name is 'The Skeleton Boys' and on the front of the album cover was four different coloured skeletons. This gave each band member their own image, and the idea was then reinforced when you opened up the album to see each coloured skeleton have their own panel supposedly 'singing' parts of the band's songs. However, there wasn't a clear link between my album and poster and I believe this is where my original idea failed. If you look at other artists album and poster to promote it, they usually match so the consumer can link the two together. Whereas in my idea, there was not.

 

I definitely believe my final idea for digipak and poster has a clear link between which then goes on to help create a sense of branding between those two products and the music video. The main link between the three products is definitely the name of the band. The band's name has the word 'skeleton' in, so by using images of a model with a skeleton face painted on should help make the poster and album more recognisable as to who it's by and what they are advertising. I don't think it was essential that the digipak had to have similarities with the music video because it's nothing something typicial of the indie genre.
Vampire weekend are a good example of this typical convention. The first single released from their second album 'Contra' that had an official video was 'Cousins'. After watching the video and looking at the album cover and poster and then comparing it against the video, there is no link between them. This reinforces my idea that the album and poster should match but it is not a necssity for them to match the video. I have observed that the idea of all products matching is usually only seen within the pop genre.





I think all three products will appeal to my target audience but in a different way. The video is "uber quirky" and fun which is what you would expect with an upbeat like One Night In October. The whole disjuncture and 'antics' in the video  help to portray the band as  a care-free group of people having a laugh which is seen often from indie bands. If I was to carry on with the idea of fun through to the digipak stages I think it could have put off the older range of my target audience, so by lowering the tone with darker colours and a real life image instead of drawings, I was able to raise the maturity level of the band and hopefully making them appeal to the whole age range of 15-25 year olds.