Evaluation task 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

STAR IMAGE:

Richard Dyer’s Star theory can be split into three areas: The star as a construction, The star as a commodity, and the star as an ideology. Dyer also suggested the paradox of the star that the star must be both ordinary and extraordinary and that the star must also be both present and absent.

The star image of our artist is an organic one. similar to those such as Marshmello, Daft Punk and Sia. one thing these artists all have in common is the fact that they don’t want to falsely portray themselves for the attraction and the attention of the media. As opposed, they want to grow themselves through their music.

We used our music video to feed into the ideology of our artist portraying an organic impression. As for example within our music video, we only exhibit our main artist a number of times. Whereas the featuring female lead has been shown significantly more, creating a more dominant presence than our lead artist supporting the theory of the paradox of the star, that the star must be both present and absent.

The digipak’s title ‘Coup D’état’ strongly reinforces the idea of Dyers star theory that the star is an ideology. Coup d’état translates into overthrow, rebellion, revolution and uprising which also adheres the colour scheme of red which I have used. It essentially means a sudden and decisive action in politics especially one resulting in a change of regime illegally or by force. 

The songs listed on the back of the digipak are majorly all of a dark subject matter for e.g. Cyanid and Nuclear. This indicates that our artist ‘Adolescent’ has very strong political views and is obviously not happy with the current status of the policy. Essentially showing how independent the artist is, plus, how he does not want his constitutional perspective to be altered based on mass media's political preferences. Therefore our artist is a ‘real person’ and not a star of construction or commodity. People may then potentially look up to him and see him as a role model. 

Our website is very similar to the style of our digipak. The image which is on our website home screen and front of digipak cover are the same and establish a corporate identity in which the audience can then relate to in remembrance of the artist, Once again supporting the star as an ideology. 



The layout of the website overall is quite simplistic. It consists of 7 separate pages including Home, Tour, About, Music, Videos, contact and a Photo Gallery. Additionally, the photos seen on the photo gallery depict the organic style of the artist as they portray behind the scene footage of him working on his projects. This makes it visible to the audience that the artist is indeed organic as they see he is just a normal individual having to put in the work to achieve the final product. Furthermore, the photo gallery does give a synthetic hint to the audience as it proves that his music video is not really as natural as it seems. All this fancy equipment, make-up, set design, that are revealed in the photo gallery also shows the amount of work put in behind the final products. As a conclusion, it shows the artist is indeed attempting to remain as organic as possible, however still going through the requirements needed in order for the product to be industry standard, giving himself a slight synthetic quality. 

Moreover, the ‘About Me’ section of the website establishes a friendly connection between the audience and the main artist. Having a page where the audience can “get to know” the backstory of an artist helps with his organic nature as it explains himself starting from the bottom and having to make his way up into a successful career. Being very open and honest about his past, the artist is able to prove people he has not been manipulated by the media in order to make his image fake and constructed.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Adolescent primary produces and creates house music which is now part of the EDM genre. Our determined target age is between the ages of 17 and 25. The political nature of our artist and our target audience connects on a personal level as this age is primarily when young people begin to question and establish their own constitutional ideas. In the music video, the lyric ‘I just want to have some fun’ helps establish a sense of closeness to the main artist because it adheres with some conventional behaviours of teenagers and adolescents nowadays. Additionally, as it is featured in the digipak, hand-written by adolescent himself, it helps create an even stronger connection between the artist and his audience, similar to an autograph. 

CROSS PROMOTION:

Cross promotion helps to advertise related products and activities. I have used cross promotion in all three of my products to help push the campaign forward, receiving more awareness from the public. Regarding the album the cross promotion helps to advertise both upcoming tours and EP’s. Through the website fans can subscribe and be given regular updates meaning they would be the first to know about events such as tours and album release dates. Also the music video can help promote awareness especially to the album where ‘You Know You Like It' has originated from, gaining more attention and popularity, intriguing audiences to listen to more.