Q1 p2

Q1 p2

• 1.
  Q1: Digipak andAdvert
• 2.
  Digipaks and Adverts Thepurpose of both marketing products is to promote the artist adnt eh album as well as sell Dyer’s concept of the star persona, constructing a particular representation of the artist, cementing a firm brand identity. Given the age of my genre and examined artists, when it comes to advertising and digipak, there is a limited pool of resources to pull from. However, in my research, I did discover some common factors that were frequently apparent and adopted them for my own products to give them an assured authenticity and industry standard professionalism. For the most part, the construction of my ancillary products was a fulfilment of the base conventions of these products, adhering close to my research examples while drawing specific connections between my video and these advertising materials though I feel that the actual visual aesthetic of the imagery, specifically in what influenced it, is an interesting break from the norm.
• 3.
  Conventions - Firstly, thereis a constant emphasis on star persona and the overall presentation of the artist, themselves being the prime point of interface with an audience, either attracting or cultivating a fan base who aspire to be like the artist or have some means of relating to them. Images are mostly, if not totally, focused on them or some important iconographic element of their iconography, to continually reinforce their star image and communicate their overall aesthetic to an audience succinctly. In my case, there is the added element of emphasising the artist’s legacy, drawing on widely known connotations that connects to people’s nostalgia, affection or relation to the artist over a storied career. In this Elvis digipak, you can clearly see the repeated use of close up/medium shots of Elvis, playing on his iconic appearance as well as featuring him in a classic Elvis costume.
• 4.
  This repetition ofimagery is something I keenly adopted and is readily apparent in my own products – The magazine advert is entirely based around a medium shot of my artist and he features prominently in the majority of the digipak images. This continually reinforces his star persona since his costume and featured props are highly reminiscent of the Sinatra/Bobby Darin image I wished to play upon. This star image is key to attracting my audience and I positioned Cinnamon Hague similarly as having a career behind, using an implied legacy to frame the whole persona.
• 5.
  Conventions (cont’d) – Vitalalbum information such as the title, release date, where the digipak can be purchased and critical acclaim have all been featured on my advert. These features were taken from non-genre-specific examples such as the one above, to provide a basic template for my own product but also due to the fact that magazine adverts for digipaks for my chosen genre are rather hard to come across given the format didn’t exist in the genre’s heyday This is all basic contextual information that serves to promote the artist and album by informing the audience of all the necessary information they need to purchase the product, allowing them to form a connection to the artist should their interest be peaked while also playing upon existing fans by prioritising the artist himself who is the major draw.
• 6.
  Conventions (cont’d) – Additionally,I have included the appropriate institutional information (Record label) and external media links such as the artist’s website as well as iTunes and Amazon connections which allows the audience greater access to the album and its content as well as enabling them to follow the artist online. Once again, these are basic conventions that nonetheless were crucial in selling the product and my artist, feeding the audience the most information possible to maximise the product’s exposure. Elements specific to the digipak release such as a barcode, track listing and further small print were also included. The track list, aside from being a typical tenant of album design, also allowed me to play into the concept of legacy since it assumed a familiarity with the listed tracks, acting as if they were hits that fans could easily recognise.
• 7.
  Links to MusicVideo – Another common element of this type of promotion is a sense of synergy which demands a level of intertextuality between the marketing and the actual product, in order to maintain a consistent brand image across the whole campaign. In my case, there are a number of ways in which the digipak and advert relate to the music video, increasing their connection and therefore, the audience’s awareness of both. The links between them are largely visual. The costuming and locations in both the images and the video are identical - - Which draws a distinct parallel between the two products, making their relationship all the more apparent and generating an effective synergy between them.
• 8.
  Aesthetics – The aestheticsof the promotional products are the main areas where my products embrace their own sense of identity that is distinctly more in line with the presentation of the artists I emulated as opposed to a more modern sensibility. In accordance with the examples I researched, I found simplicity was the best means of creating an assumed legacy for my artist. For instance, in this Sinatra digipak advert, there is a lack of promotion for specific tracks or singles since it assumes the target demographic is already familiar with his discography, whereas modern advertising is keen to promote a single as a pre-ordained ‘hit’. This is apparent on my own product wherein I refrained from this type of promotion in favour of this simpler style as well as in my aforementioned continual focus on the artist using close ups and medium shots (also evident in the Sinatra digipak).
• 9.
  Aesthetics (cont’d) – Themonochrome imagery across both promotional products serves to connect them as well as linking to the use of monochrome in the music video but the choice of appearance goes deeper than that simple purpose. The imagery was inspired by the photography of Terry O’Neill (see right) and their use of the style whose chiaroscuro effect, I felt, really captured these legendary artists with a sense of history and were also extremely evocative of a certain time and place, connecting to a sense of nostalgia for the connotations both of those elements convey. I felt that this style was perfect to immerse my artist in his own assumed career, further selling him as a legacy character by aging the images appropriately. Though my choice of shots certainly emphasised my artist, using this style in tandem with my compositions, I felt I was able to create that sense of a revered, iconic figure, emboldened by the fact that the use of aging techniques such as monochrome and sepia are used in real-world examples such as that previously referenced Sinatra digipak. With the heavy use of shadows, he appears frozen in time and somewhat eternal, not only cementing his legacy but also linking to a conceit within the video that the central character is rooted within a time and place in the past while the world around him has modernised. The adoption of this aesthetic was a very successful means of not only capturing a unique style for my products but also gaining a sense of thematic consistency from video to advertising.
• 10.
  Personalisation – One finalcomponent of a digipak release that commonly features is a message from the artist to the fans, providing additional incentive for them to purchase this special edition by appealing to their identification or aspiration with the artist. Taken from Drake’s Take Care album When it came to my own digipak design, I felt that such a message would dilute the overall artist persona I was constructing since the type of artists I am emulating had a sense of mystique that engendered a sense of aspiration from the audience to be like them. Having such an open message to the fans reduced the distance that fosters this mystique.
• 11.
  Personalisation (cont’d) – Inorder to achieve the appropriate effect, generating some degree of connection between fans and artists that would speak to an artist with a history while retaining a suitably unreachable, iconic figure, I decided to deviate from the standard, conventional approach. Instead of featuring a direct message, I decided to overlay quotes from my artist onto the panel images. The quotes were created (or selected) to be emblematic of Cinnamon Hague’s persona, his outlook on life, the overall tone of his character and his music and their combination with the images proved to be quite evocative. I think that this approach was effective in giving my audience a personal insight into the artist, allowing them to relate to him while not removing the sense of romance and allure that surrounded him, cementing his persona while not pulling the curtain down completely.
• 12.
  Conclusion Overall, I feelthat my use of conventions found in my research in these products is successful in communicating with my demographic and conveying a star persona as well as adhering to the necessary standards of the industry, promoting the album and artist effectively. The deviations from the norm are few yet purposeful and unique to the type of artist I wished to portray. My success in this field was evident in the feedback on my final advert piece.