Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

My main product worked effectively with my ancillary texts in order to create a strong brand identity through the use of synergy and a cross-platform marketing campaign. I found that there were many band marketing campaigns that influenced me when creating three products that worked symbiotically, in particular Panic! At the Disco.

The aim of this project was to persuade audiences to spend their money, therefore each element promotes another through a synergistic, time-limited campaign. Below I have created a timeline of typical promotion used for Panic! At the Disco.

I then looked at All Time Low's campaign to see how synergistic it is and how I can follow in suit with my project. 

All Time Low created synergy between their new album and their website in particular which was great for promotion and publicity for the band's first #1 album debut. 

Richard Dyer's star theory suggests that to be successful and have a lasting significance, artists and bands must have individual characteristics and be 'constructed out of a range of materials' to appeal to their target audience. I have created a word cloud to reflect our band's identity, shown below.

Below is a padlet I created to further demonstrate our band's identity and how our music video and website have helped show how we have constructed this.

Created with Padlet

To reinforce this brand identity we decided to include three main synergistic features across all three of our platforms and I have created a prezzi to demonstrate these. 

Our album:

The website:

Our website was very useful when incorporating technological convergence and social media links to market our band as Henry Jenkins states that social connectivity and being able to share what the audience finds is crucial.

We created symbiotic partnerships with institutions that are popular with our target audience in order to broaden our reach and appeal. 

 
Flashback records is popular with fans of the indie and rock genre and is known for hosting signings so will recieve positive publicity. All of our venues are popular amongst our TA, particularly university students. The O2's main demographic is 18-30 year olds which is ideal for our band.

It is very common for bands - particularly small indie bands - to try to raise awareness about their band by having signings, touring and having interviews. However, large mainstream bands, such as One Direction, also do this to appeal to their TA effectively.




We also have a Band page where our target audience can get to know more about each of our band members which will gratify their desires and interests about the band according to Blumer and Katz' theory.

This is synergistic with our album cover which allowed the audience to identify with each band member individually. The website develops their need to find out more about the members.

We made sure that our website was as interactive as possible so that our fans enjoy using our website as it is more interesting and fun, gratifying their entertainment needs. 

1) Using technological convergence, we included videos on our website which our TA could watch without having to exit or leave our website. 

2) We allowed the fans to keep up-to-date with all our news by posting photos to our news page. Panic! At the Disco posted very similar photos that were funny and quirky - reflecting their band image. We then decided to post a festive photo of two of our band members to entertain and interact with our fans, creating a more personal feel to our website. However I edited the photo so that it was in black and white so that it was still synergistic with our other platforms. 

3) After interviewing members of our TA I decided that it would be a good idea to add a timer so that they could have a live countdown to when the album will be released. This was very fun and kept the audience anticipating the release of our album. 

4) On our homepage was a widget that allowed them to view our instagram without having to sign in or open the app. This allows our TA an insight into our band members lives, encouraging them to like and follow our bands social media pages. 

 At the bottom of all of our pages we included links to all of our other social media pages. To the left I have shown how similar this is to Panic! At The Disco's website and how they advertised their social media.




We also included multiple purchasing opportunities on our website to allow our TA to buy into our product.

1) Our TA are encouraged to buy merchandise from our website where we sell various products and we have labelled whether the product is on sale or new.


2) Our tour is promoted on our homepage and we have a seperate page, shown in our header, where tickets are available to buy. When clicking 'Book Tickets' a new page will load which is very professional.

3) Our album is advertised on our home page, our news page and on our merch page. This repetition raises awareness and makes the audience want to buy the album as it is always on their mind. 

We also advertised our album release on our social media pages as I was aware that fans would not always check our official website but would use social media almost every day. This is very similar to The 1975 who use Facebook to keep their fans updated.