Final Magazine Advert

After taking on feedback from the audience Made several changes to the magazine advert to make it more suitable for the audience and more appropriate in the context of the artist genre.

Taking away the idea of the criminal gangster I too a more subtle approach of the artist smiling and being relaxed in front of the camera, showing a happy side of the artist.

After remaining the album, I also made the advert title the name of the album and the main song that is the leading promotion package for the album which is the song ''Light Up the Dark" selling the product to the audience.

Having the reviews from GQ, Rolling Stones and Billboard link in well with the genre, as GQ target an aspiration audience. Rolling Stones and Billboard Cover a wide range of musicians who are aiming to sell the product to the audience.

Magazine Advert Feedback

For my magazine advert was inspired by the poster of ‘’Scarface’’ as it was a recognisable poster because of the scale of the production with a great actor such as Al Pacino ect. However, from the feedback I got from the audience it was relatively mixed. There was negative feedback and positive feedback, which I am able to act upon for my final cut of the magazine advert.

Positive Feedback

•           Creative idea, using the intertextuality to publicise the product.
•           The blend of colour that was used of the black and the reduced saturation on the face is effective, similar to the original poster.
•           Having the people who contributed on the side, along with the iTunes icon to tell people where to find the artist’s music is exactly what you would expect from a magazine advert.
•           The use of colour flows well with digipak despite using a different context and features.

Negative Feedback

•           The idea of a using Tony Montana’s character of a drug dealer does not fit well with the brand identity of a humble soul singer. This would give a wrong impression to the mass market of the artist.
•           The black and white colours would fail to stand out in a commercial status, there needs to take away the saturation and maintain the natural skin tone colours.
•           The plain text needs to stand out from the rest of the background, screaming at the audience to look at the advertisement.

I definitely used to the positive feedback to give me motivation to maintain some of the good qualities in the advertisement. However the negative feedback made me reconsidered some of the features of the final product. Such as the intertextuality which I was relatively confident with. Taking way the idea of a thug R&B and Soul artist. I concluded I need to maintain the codes and conventions of the genre which I originally began with advertising the image of the artist properly. As seen with artist such as Justin Timberlake and Ne-yo they form a classy look at the same time emphasise their sound of love and emotion. 

Magazine Roughcut

Scarface was the inspiration of the magazine advert for the promotion package for the artist.  Chose to do this because, the poster for the original is relatively recognisable it would be something nice to look at and reminisce this allows you to stop and take notice of what is being advertised. I used similar picture that I was working with during the photo shoot this is to show the consistency between the digipak product and the advertisement in order to sell the artist as a product.

I decided to replicate as much detail as I could to the original poster of ‘’Tony Montana,’’ for the text I chose the red that was the same as the original, however I could not go for a darker tint red to make it look retro. I was also struggling on how to put a yellow border round the writing like the one similar to the original poster. On the right hand side of the poster I put the people who are have helped feature in the album, they have am honourable mention as part of the magazine advert. I used the standard font however I brought laters close together which is one of the special tools that Photoshop has the capability of doing. On the left hand side I had quotation text of one of the producers of the album talking about OTTY. This is a common feature on the front covers of magazine, there is are emphasis of trying to sell the product.

As I am advertising the up and coming album ‘’Light Up’’ on the right hand side I replace some of the writing that are the credits. I replace that with other musical and life style magazines have given the review to the album. This a marketing strategy as these are well magazines and international popular, it fits in perfectly with genre. Billboard are based on a every single genre of music. Rolling Stones were once previous a popular rock band, however they made a brand of the Rolling Stones Album. The main idea is to sell the product to the mass market. Lastly the use of the GQ life style magazine is to emphasis the standards that ‘’Otty’’ has set, the recognition from fashion magazine (a portion of the full magazine brand).

At the bottom of the magazine, is the icons ‘’Download on iTunes.’’  As iTunes have become a large portion of musical supply that the world gets it is a good place to advertise the music in order to compete in a larger and more prestige industry. I have also put the artist website ‘’www.Ottymusic.com’’ this is to promote whom he is, on the website you get a lot more details than just his music. 

Final Digipak

Audience feedback Digipak

After showing my audience the rough cut of the digipak there was some critics and some positive feedback that I took from the information they gave me.

I went for the black house style for the final digipak cover. This was definitely admired by the audience because of the simplicity of it. ‘’It shows simplicity however it still manages to draw you eye, with the colour of the rose.’’ They also liked the idea of ‘’the model, flowing into the background of the album which shows that he is a part of it and the connection between the album and himself.’’ However the criticism that they gave the front of the album is that it doesn’t have an album name. I was going for the self-titled name for the album to introduce the album to the target market, however the audience recommended that I should relate the album name to the name of the music video song. ‘’Light up the dark’’ and they also passed a few suggestions such as, ‘’light, illuminate, shine’’ I thought it would be a good way forward to have a name for the album. 

In the inside there was no insert for the digipak where I was able to show the people who are involved in the album or any special feature I would like to include in the album. They picked up on that and they strongly recommended that I should do so, so that the audience would know who the artist is and what they are about, selling themselves to the new market. The next part of that was the CD, the liked the idea of the silhouette  which I took inspiration form Chris Brown’s Album, graffiti and the idea of using a side profile and putting more attention on the artist. However the there was a suggestion that I should use the majority of the space rather than half the CD to emphasis the brand identity of the artist.

The back cover was also kept simple, my attempts was to relate the main music video to the digipak by using another silhouette of the dance in a position and spreading it across the back of the digipak. Some of the comments for the feedback was it was working with the rest of the digipak, at some stage there should be a picture of the artist wearing casual clothes rather than consistently suited up, however I thought that I would use that for the insert of the digipak, showing a more sociable artist in which the aspiration audience can relate to.