Question 2:How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?Scott Craig

What is a brand?

• A brand is not the same as a product. A brand represents the face of a product.• E.g. Kenco and Nescafe both make coffee, but they

look different.

Why does branding matter?

• Branding separates a product and allows it to stand out from the crowd of similar products around it.• By using branding it allows us to mentally link an

image to a certain product.• Once we know what a brand is, it should be

mentally impossible to forget it. Almost as if we have been mentally branded by a mental hot poker that is a particular brand image.

Why does this affect our project?• Our project is a new product that we will be

introducing to the public. It requires promotion and the ancillary and main tasks are about advertising and promotion. Naturally brand identity and promotion go hand in hand.

What is our brand image?

• Cheeky-ness and youth is our brand image. Since our target audience is young (16-25) we decided to show a soap that reflects them. Instead of showing our audience model like figures as characters we chose characters that reflect what an actual person around that age would look like. An example of model actors in a program with a similar target audience to ours would be Hollyoaks which reflects the institution E4. E4’s brand image is that it is cool and shows programmes made for a younger target audience.

Spicer’s Life and Hollyoaks

Uses male gaze. Other posters also incorporate female gaze.

Heavily gender orientated. Uses gender symbols in title.

Main appeal is sex appeal.

Characters are causally clothed and the gazes are not really present.

Graffiti symbolizes a more rebellious theme.

Personality feels extroverted

Main appeal is enigma.

Comparing Hollyoaks to Spicer’s Life: Differences• Hollyoaks relies on voyeurism to appeal to the

audience, unlike Spicer’s Life which does not.• As shown in the previous slide the main appeal of

the Hollyoaks poster is sex appeal where as ours uses enigmas as the main appeal to our audience.• The unique selling point of this product is that the

youths portrayed in it are normal allowing out target audience to sympathize with them better. • Hollyoaks unique selling point is the use of sex

appeal as younger people are attracted to this.

Comparing Hollyoaks to Spicer’s Life: Similarities• Both Spicer’s Life and Hollyoaks use young actors

allowing our target audience to emphasize and relate with the actors.• Another similarity is that they both appear on E4

allowing them to share a similar brand image through the brand image of E4 which is that of a channel that promotes and shows quality programs for a younger target audience.

Construction of Brand Identity• It was necessary to create a

brand identity so that out audience would know that what they are seeing is Spicer’s Life and not something different.• We made our brand identity

by incorporating a logo, name, channel identity, plot, colouring, and use of characters into our video and ancillary tasks.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 1• First thing to talk about is the logo. In the Spicer’s Life

commercial throughout the commercial we can see the words Jamie Spicer and at the end the audience gets the name of the show in the same font. We wanted the font to be primarily aimed at young women and sensitive men so we picked out a font made out of stars from DaFont.com called Queer.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 2• We used a yellow font as it connotes things such as

happiness, joy, excitement and adventure.• The black scratchy background reflects darkness and

the presence of an enigma. The blue scratchy background represents obstacles.• This appeals to our target audience as they like to

feel good whilst like an escapist text that the enigma can offer.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 3• We used this font because it fits the target audience

we wanted because it creates connotations of glamour and femininity. One problem of using this font is that the little spaces in between the stars can make the font difficult to read when larger. However we solved this problem by using bright colours on a darker background. This technique is called chromatic reversal. Used

yellow as it’s a colour that can connote happiness and joy.

Scratchy background helps add to contrast out the logo and give off a graffiti look.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 4• Another important part of the logo is the successful

use of a name. We chose the name Spicer’s Life as it rolls off the tongue and is easy to say. We also chose this name because we used it as a pun as the main characters last name is Spicer and it also connotes that it will spice up your life. Once the logo was completed we have used it in our posters and main commercial. We did not use it in the magazine front cover as we had to uphold the house style of the existing magazine.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 5• We also took advantage of channel identity to make it a

part of Spicer’s Life’s own identity. E4 is known for airing shows aimed at a young target audience. We decided on E4 because it does not air a soap aimed at our audience in the way that we have as our unique selling point is the realistic representation of youths. E4 has Hollyoaks, but it does not directly relate to someone of a younger age like we have.

By having this logo people will trust the show because they trust the channels reputation.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 6• We used an exaggerated plot so that we could make

our soap commercial an escapist text by using a role of absurd fantasy. In our commercial we conveyed the story using the talk show genre. The commercial showed no actual footage of the soap itself and only showed the characters that would be in it. This could be compared to the Jackson 5 EastEnders commercial.• Spicer’s Life Commercialhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eZkkIqw6o• Jackson 5 Commercialhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhMogwLsS-s

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 7• We made the colours resemble the colour scheme

from our posters. The colouring we used in our commercial apart from the audience was bright colours. We made the background blue and made characters such as Marco and Stacey wear bright colours so that they can be easily recognisable. We made Geoffrey wear black clothes to contrast with the others making him recognisable and stand out as a potential villain.

Marco is wearing Pink.

Blue background

Geoffrey is using a black jacket.

Stacey is wearing scarlet red.

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 8• We have used similar colours from out commercial

in our posters. We have used the bright colour blue in our commercial for the angel wings in our posters.

I used the light blue edges for the background to match the inner wing and the darker blue centre to match the outer wing.

Same font

Construction of Brand Identity in our Project: Part 9• To create our brand identity we also used character

continuity. All of our ancillary tasks and main use the same characters wearing the same clothes. Reinforcing the main storyline of the soap opera.

Proof of Continuity and Brand• By combining all these facts together we have created

our brand identity.

Continuity of Spicer’s Life logo and channel logo.

Consistent colour scheme.

Same characters are in the magazine cover and commercial.

Eccentric looking characters reflect the plot.

Problems of the Magazine Cover With Branding• Magazine covers

stopped me from extending our brand identity as in a magazine front cover you have to keep to their brand identity. The magazine we decided to use was InsideSoap. The only piece of branding we could use was character continuity.

Sticking to the Magazine Covers Conventions

We have managed to recreate the banner and footer correctly.

Layout is compact.Use a direct mode of address.

Highlight certain words.

Pictures of Finished Posters

Pictures of Finished Posters

Pictures of Finished Magazine Front Cover

Pictures of Finished Commercial• Spicer’s Life Commercialhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eZkkIqw6o