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

I think that our combination of our main product and ancillary texts works effectively and brands our band, creating an explicit artist identity and creating synergy across our 3 texts. We wanted our music video to introduce us as a new indie band, and show the audience that our lead singer was the lead singer, dominating the other band members. We wanted our music video to help promote our band website in order to bring in the audience and generate revenue through the website, making it important to create a consistent brand across an integrated marketing campaign.

We took influences from other bands with a strong female lead, such as Florence and the Machine, Paramore and Siouxshie and the Bandshees. 

With Arianna being the lead singer, we wanted to create her identity as the crazy, outgoing band member, who almost outshines the other members. This was done through her choice of clothing; although similar style, always stood out in red. It was also achieved by Arianna having more screen time than any other member of the band, to show that the band are clearly backing. The band identity, facing Arianna as the lead singer continued on the album cover and the website, as the album cover featured Arianna on the front and throughout our albums on the website, in the majority of photos Arianna stood out from the band members through her poses and outfits.

This pictures show that Arianna stood out as the lead singer, with a wild side to her in our studio shoots (left and right photos) as well as in our promo shoot (middle photo)

Our band logo and name was another crucial part of our band representation. The band name 'Chaos killed the Dinosaurs' is unusual, and taken from the film Heathers, about a girl who meets a rebel that influences. This can be associated with our edgy lead singer, and the audience may have seen the film, helping them to connect with the band through pop culture. Our band name influenced out logo, as we have a washed out image of a dinosaur in the background creating synergy with the name. The colours red and black also expand onto the logo, our branding colours, used in the music video and on the website too.
 

As a group we came up with the name Revolutionary Records, for our record label name and designed a logo for it which we then added to the bottom of every page on our website, and featured on the back of our album cover, creating synergy between the ancillary texts.


Throughout our A2 lessons, we have learnt that audience interactivity is a crucial part of any marketing campaign to engage them. We therefore provided the audience with a number of opportunities to get involved with our band including; links to twitter, instagram and facebook on our website, competitions and the opportunity to buy merchandise. Social media plays a huge role in our campaign, so we ensured there were social media links on every page of the website to target our audience. Online platforms were exploited as people as less people buy hard copies of music, CD's, due to the availability of online platforms such as Spotify, soundcloud and iTunes. We therefore integrated an iTunes link onto our website to help create another money making opportunity.

This chart shows what has been making the most revenue out of physical and digital music, and concerts. It also shows predictions for what will happen up to 2017. It estimates the most money will be made from live music.