A2 Media Blog

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

It is very important when advertising a large media product over a number of different platforms that you make the image of your product recognizable. It would not be effective to have a strong film trailer with weak secondary material, and vice versa. The secondary promotional materials such as posters and magazine covers need to be just as strong as the trailer with a similar layout to make the texts link in together, making them recognizable as part of a brand for the film. I believe that on the most part I achieved this with my film poster and ancillary texts, as I used features such as a consistent colour scheme and house style to make the texts blend together.

Here are some examples showing similarities between my products:

As you can see I have used similar colours for both the magazine cover and the poster. Not only does this help reflect the genre, but also helps to connect the two texts and make them associate with each other. When you put them side by side you can see that there is a similar house style. Although it is not exactly the same as they have some different colours, you can still tell that they are associated with each other as they use the same shades of red and grey, and share some of the same font types, especially in the film title. Having the film title the same on each text makes it easy for the audience to connect the two as being part of the same product. This helps the audience to gather more information about the film, making it recognizable so that it stays in the audience's mind and makes them want to see the film. Another thing which is similar between them is the use of colour for the main and secondary text. On the magazine cover the tag lines are in red and the smaller detail is in white. This can also be seen on the poster where the small print is white but the larger release date is in red. This is one of the elements that shows to the audience that they are associated with the trailer and with each other.

Although I think that my main product and ancillary texts are effective, my audience may not agree with me, so I decided to do a quick questionnaire with a group of 11 people of both genders, 7 female and 4 male, from my target demographic. This is useful as it will help to highlight elements of my products which I may not have noticed. I can also get my audience to suggest places to improve so that I can see where I have not used conventions effectively to tie the different products together. Here is what I found:

From my audience feedback I found that on the whole people agreed that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective. 9/11 people said that my ancillary texts fit with my main product, 8/11 could identify the genre, so maybe I could try and make the genre more obvious. 10/11 people said that they would link my texts to each other, which is good as it means that they have achieved their aims and are recognisable to the audience. 10/11 people also agreed that my products have the same house-style, which is a critical part of making sure that the audience can associate the products with each other. My respondents named the film title as the most recognisable element of my products, with colour being another popular response. This is a great response as it means that I have managed to establish a brand for my film, making it easy for the audience to recognise my main product and understand that the poster and magazine cover accompany this.

I finished the questionnaire by asking my audience what they would improve about my products to make them link together more effectively. Multiple respondents commented on the background colour of each of my products being slightly different, which I would agree would make them associate better with each other. Another response which came up more than once was that the grave from my poster was not seen in the trailer, and my main character can be seen on all products apart from the poster. I could have made the combination of my products more effective by making sure that there are multiple repeating elements in each of my products, so I could have put the grave in the trailer somewhere or re-designed my poster to include my protagonist.

In conclusion, I believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts was very effective and met their aims. Although there are some small elements that could be improved such as colour and background, I think that overall my trailer and ancillary texts all worked together to advertise the film well. I could have made them even more effective by using more of the same features across all three texts such as having the exact same background colour on them all rather than just similar ones. To do this I could have added some texture to the background of the text in the trailer as the other two products have a grey fog texture where as the trailer is just a bold colour. I could also have improved by making the poster more similar to the other two texts. Although I think my poster is strong and achieves its purpose, I do believe that the colour scheme is not as strong here. I think that I needed to add more darker colours and add more red text to make it more similar to the other products.

Although there are some things which could be improved I still believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective and achieves it's aims as advertisement material. The re-occurring features throughout the three texts helps the audience to recognize and associate the texts, each time finding out more about the film through the different texts. This is effective as not only does it mean that the film will stay in the audience's mind as they will keep recognising it each time they see it, but this leads to more audience members going to see the film once it is released, which is what the materials are for after all, therefore making them effective.