HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCTS AND ANCILLARY

TASKS?

Question 2

What is a brand?

It is a specific image that people link to a particular product, giving that product a personality and identity, giving it commercial appeal. This makes the product different from the others because of its brand image, as consumers want a variety within the actual product.

An example of a famous brand is Nike.

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In defining what a brand is, Naomi Klein said, ‘branding came about as a product of mass production. There was so much of a choice, people needed image based differences to define brands, to give them personality. It makes people want to buy one more than another.'  

In the music industry, differences between brand images are required, as to make the music appeal to the audience; different artists within the same genre would need their own personality and unique image to give them a particular sort of appeal.

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The artist’s particular brand image makes their fans associate with them; their looks, what they stand for, what genre they are within especially, their clothing and style.

An example of a certain brand image would be Bat For Lashes, who is known for being quirky, strange, mysterious.

What is your brand image?

Because we decided on a song of the indie rock genre, we had to do research into our chosen genre and so looked at bands such as The Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, etc.

This helped us establish our brand image and gave us ideas. Our artist is called Jess Vs The World, and is summed up in

three words; quirky, fun, and young.

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We pushed the brand image of our artist by using a comic book theme throughout the music video/album; she is quirky due to the use of the superhero theme, and the video shows Jess as being young and having fun.

How have you constructed a sense of brand identity using media language?

In the video, we showed Jess as quirky as she is a geek girl turned superhero, and she also plays a villain who is established as insane; this is done through use of the costumes, make-up, edited backgrounds, etc. The different shots also add to this, i.e. the shot of good Jess flying, and the shots of bad Jess peering into the camera looking crazy.

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As we portrayed Jess as young, this is obvious as Jess looks to be around 18, but also her geek girl/superhero costume also makes her look young, as her ‘normal’ costume makes it seem as though she is still in school, and her superhero costume doesn’t look like what normal superheroes would put together, and also makes her look young.

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Jess also comes across as fun, as she is able to portray both good Jess and bad Jess in the video, as well as fighting regular criminals and saving people, which definitely gives the video a fun feel, in the sense that people would greatly enjoy watching it and would want to watch it again and again.

Ancillary tasks – Zaynab & Aaron; magazine advert and album inserts

Ancillary tasks – Teigan; magazine advert, album cover and album insert

Ancillary tasks – Ross; magazine advert, album insert and album back

Ancillary tasks

For our ancillary tasks, Ross, Teigan, and Aaron and I who were working together, decided to split up the different print projects. Using pictures from a photo shoot whilst shooting the video, we each came up with slightly differing themes all based around comic books that are consistent with the video; Teigan incorporated a space element from ‘vs. the world’, whereas Ross, Aaron, and I stuck to our theme of comic books, also incorporating elements of video games, such as the pixielated images. The character is wearing her costumes, the fonts are all the same, and the light/dark colour theme for good/bad Jess are consistent throughout, and all the print projects reinforce Jess’s brand image; good Jess is shown to be fun as well as funny with the different comical expressions she makes, whereas bad Jess looks purely evil. Jess also looks very young in the adverts, and the print tasks themselves are definitely quirky, what with the use of different backgrounds etc, which is all very eye catching and puts across Jess’s brand image.

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The fact that there is an array of colours, particularly bright primary colours, in all three ancillary products, especially mine and Aaron’s, reinforces Jess’s image as being ‘young’, as older artists would have more toned down colour themes. Also, Ross’s print tasks also contribute to pushing Jess’s image as ‘fun’, as he has used pictures of her pulling faces and also giving her a Godzilla-esque pose within one of his album panels. Teigan has also done this through use of the picture she drew, which gives connotations of Jess as being a ‘cute teenage girl’ looking very cheeky, reinforced by the wink and her pose. The font is also not what older artists would use, as it is bright and bold. All three are quirky, due to the Godzilla style picture Ross created, and the costume used for both Jess’s, particularly bad Jess, as well as the cartoon towers/space backgrounds within the products. Mine and Aaron’s products makes use of cartoon images for the background, as well as comic book fonts and lots of bright primary colours, which especially ties in with her brand image of ‘young’, whilst also pushing forward the ‘quirky’ and ‘fun’ side of Jess (with the use of bad Jess and both pulling faces).

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Mine and Aaron's print projects collaborates with the colour theme of the music video which also makes use of bright primary colours, as well as making use of mise-en-scene, i.e. the costumes of both good and bad Jess, the settings in the city etc. Within the video there is also a comic book font, which links to our product. We have used pictures of Jess from the making of the video, so she is dressed the same as within the video. Teigan and Ross also made their product match the video with the same use of the colour schemes, mise-en-scene, fonts, etc.Overall, I think we managed to successfully push through Jess’s brand image as being quirky, young, and fun.