To meet the objective of promoting the band Good Charlotte’s new album to existing fans and potential new fans (the target audience) I had to create a package of promotional materials that would complement each other and reinforce the Good Charlotte brand.
I therefore did a combination of three media products: a digipak design, a music video, and a website for the band. Each media product is supposed to, to a point, advertise the other media product so I utilised every opportunity to cross-link. The black and pink colour scheme I have chosen is very distinctive, and has been transferred across all the promotional pieces. The typeface and style of font is also consistent throughout, which helps to make everything instantly recognisable as the Good Charlotte brand. If we look at the website first, we can see what makes it effective as a promotional piece in its own right as well as achieving synergy with the other pieces.
Within the website, there are lots of devices used to draw fans into the site and get them involved with every aspect of the band. For example, I’ve got an advert right at the start promoting the digipak. The slider then moves on to advertise tour dates, apps, and a fan based club. I’ve also got a store where fans can buy promotional clothing, a calendar to show exactly when the band may be playing near the fans, and most importantly in the modern age, I have included links to the band’s social networking pages in order to create discussion and build community within the fanbase. All these are designed to get fans talking and raise awareness of the new album. The website comes over to the fans as slightly gothic, with the heavy use of black, but a bit of punk colour thrown in for good measure. The cover photos are also distorted to give the impression of dark mystique. I particularly enjoyed designing the website as I feel there was lots of potential to be creative and demonstrate my design skills.
The video is the most visually engaging piece in my opinion, with a few subtle hints to a gig, and a gig poster advertising the band in front of the grammar school gates, which is later seen on the intro page to the website. The song itself is from the new album, and serves as a taster of more to come. I used some jump cuts and cut to the beat, especially with a throw and catch of a drumstick, to draw the fans in more and get them talking about “what they did” in the music video. Another example would be the thriller aspect of the storyline. The video starts with a text conversation with someone we don’t know about. In the bridge, it says “It’s Ovr”. We’re left asking ourselves who said it, why and what happened? We then see the person deleting images and ‘unfriending’ on facebook. This cunningly uses modern technology and social networking to enhance the video’s themes of love and the betrayal. It’s only at the very end of the video, that we can see clearly who the supposed “girlfriend” was. The fire used to burn the photo shows us the sort of image the band want to promote, that they are not afraid to be threatening and dangerous when they want to be. This would fit with the punk rock genre, punk being the constant yelling and criticising of the government, and authorities. Good Charlotte also show this in other songs: In “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” for example, the lyrics include “Money, is that your problem?” and something about solving the problem by robbing ‘them’. There is a certain edginess in the lyrics and this is mirrored stylistically, in my colour scheme and the style of all my promotional materials.
The third piece of media I created is a digipak where I have continued the punk feel, by simply adding thresh hold to a photo, (which turns the image black and white) and then replaced the white with bubblegum pink. In terms of the text on the digipak for the front cover I used a couple of fonts downloaded from Dafont, called “Jenna Sue” and “Olde English” to give the consistent Good Charlotte logo look.
When we look at the combination of my three promotional pieces, there is a clear mise-en-scene that I have constructed through my use of the gothic/punk genres, (colour scheme, typography) and the strong attitude messaging. In my opinion, this creates the desired synergy and a strong branding for Good Charlotte. I think fans of Good Charlotte would definitely be interested in buying the album. Therefore, I believe the promotional package is fit for purpose and would achieve its objective of appealing to and engaging the fans (target audience), both at the time of, and way beyond, the release of the album.
I therefore did a combination of three media products: a digipak design, a music video, and a website for the band. Each media product is supposed to, to a point, advertise the other media product so I utilised every opportunity to cross-link. The black and pink colour scheme I have chosen is very distinctive, and has been transferred across all the promotional pieces. The typeface and style of font is also consistent throughout, which helps to make everything instantly recognisable as the Good Charlotte brand. If we look at the website first, we can see what makes it effective as a promotional piece in its own right as well as achieving synergy with the other pieces.
Within the website, there are lots of devices used to draw fans into the site and get them involved with every aspect of the band. For example, I’ve got an advert right at the start promoting the digipak. The slider then moves on to advertise tour dates, apps, and a fan based club. I’ve also got a store where fans can buy promotional clothing, a calendar to show exactly when the band may be playing near the fans, and most importantly in the modern age, I have included links to the band’s social networking pages in order to create discussion and build community within the fanbase. All these are designed to get fans talking and raise awareness of the new album. The website comes over to the fans as slightly gothic, with the heavy use of black, but a bit of punk colour thrown in for good measure. The cover photos are also distorted to give the impression of dark mystique. I particularly enjoyed designing the website as I feel there was lots of potential to be creative and demonstrate my design skills.
The video is the most visually engaging piece in my opinion, with a few subtle hints to a gig, and a gig poster advertising the band in front of the grammar school gates, which is later seen on the intro page to the website. The song itself is from the new album, and serves as a taster of more to come. I used some jump cuts and cut to the beat, especially with a throw and catch of a drumstick, to draw the fans in more and get them talking about “what they did” in the music video. Another example would be the thriller aspect of the storyline. The video starts with a text conversation with someone we don’t know about. In the bridge, it says “It’s Ovr”. We’re left asking ourselves who said it, why and what happened? We then see the person deleting images and ‘unfriending’ on facebook. This cunningly uses modern technology and social networking to enhance the video’s themes of love and the betrayal. It’s only at the very end of the video, that we can see clearly who the supposed “girlfriend” was. The fire used to burn the photo shows us the sort of image the band want to promote, that they are not afraid to be threatening and dangerous when they want to be. This would fit with the punk rock genre, punk being the constant yelling and criticising of the government, and authorities. Good Charlotte also show this in other songs: In “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” for example, the lyrics include “Money, is that your problem?” and something about solving the problem by robbing ‘them’. There is a certain edginess in the lyrics and this is mirrored stylistically, in my colour scheme and the style of all my promotional materials.
The third piece of media I created is a digipak where I have continued the punk feel, by simply adding thresh hold to a photo, (which turns the image black and white) and then replaced the white with bubblegum pink. In terms of the text on the digipak for the front cover I used a couple of fonts downloaded from Dafont, called “Jenna Sue” and “Olde English” to give the consistent Good Charlotte logo look.
When we look at the combination of my three promotional pieces, there is a clear mise-en-scene that I have constructed through my use of the gothic/punk genres, (colour scheme, typography) and the strong attitude messaging. In my opinion, this creates the desired synergy and a strong branding for Good Charlotte. I think fans of Good Charlotte would definitely be interested in buying the album. Therefore, I believe the promotional package is fit for purpose and would achieve its objective of appealing to and engaging the fans (target audience), both at the time of, and way beyond, the release of the album.
No comments:
Post a Comment