For my Unit 4 production, I decided on a marketing campaign surrounding the fictional band The Heretics.
The aim of the campaign was to both promote the band and convince the target audience, as well as a wider audience, of the band's new musical direction.
I decided that the best way to go about this was to use a different colour palette, using brighter, more primary colours, rather than the previously used dark blues and blacks.
I thought that this would make the campaign stand out from others of a similar ilk because most bands, upon deciding on cover art and a colour palette, usually produce other, similarly-themed works for their other albums, instead of taking a completely different approach.
Despite having a new colour scheme, i wanted to keep something of the older iconography.
I went about this by using ballroom masks for the album iconography, as well as that of the campaign in general.
This way, the newer, brighter iconography still had a link to the band's older motif, the Plague Doctor.
The presentation i made to a group of peers provided some interesting feedback.
Several members of the panel observed that, whilst the ideas for the campaign were original, they lacked a clear aim, and others claimed that certain aims were not carried out throughout the campaign, making it seem half-hearted.
Others commented that the campaign could possibly be seen the reinforce the Emo tag that the campaign was aiming to erase.
The panel commented on the new colour palette, claiming that it added a "pure" tone to the iconography.
Also approved of was my use of QR codes, linking the ads and posters to the website, although also stated was the proposal that some of the ads were a little too revealing, possibly even obvious.
Whilst the campaign revolved around important calendar dates, it never really corresponded with them.
The panel felt that this was a missed opportunity.
Overall, the panel felt that, whilst the campaign would excite pre-existing fans of the band, it would do nothing to gather a larger audience.
To improve the campaign, several steps could be made.
The first would be to make the ads a little more vague, perhaps even excluding dates or the album's name until a little later in the campaign, rather than having all the details there from the start.
Another could be to align the campaign to key dates, instead of having it revolve around them.
Dates such as Christmas and Boxing Day were mentioned, but never elaborated on.
Another idea may be to release a public survey before the start of the campaign, to find out what people would actually want to see in the band taking a new direction.
A final issue was the merchandise, which the panel thought looked like clothing found in JD sports.
A step to rectify this could be to detail several T-shirt designs, and presenting them to a panel before deciding on a final design.
