Ancillary texts

1. How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary texts?
By Billy Osborne

2. From a stereotypical/outsider view, the brand identity within the hip hop/rap genre includes big chains and jewellery,
baggy clothes and expensive taste. However from my prior knowledge of the genre and based on my research we
came to the decision as a group to focus on the more subtle artists of the genre, people who can make millions and
still stay humble and not spend unnecessary amounts of clothing and jewellery – Artists to the like of J. Cole, Isaiah
Rashad, Kendrick Lamar and more. In reflection of our work I believe that this may have been a bit of a contrast
creating the identity of someone who would like to stay humble but sings a song about accepting how the public
doesn’t like him. This caused a bit of fuss in the early stages of our planning and production as we wasn’t entirely
sure how to portray the artist as Kanye West, the original artist, very much contrasted the person we was trying to
create.
Introduction

3. How have you created a brand identity?
The persona of Chief was created as the artist in our music video who would take the
Runaway video over from Kanye. Chief was created with the idea that he is an artist
who wouldn’t do massive amounts of ‘flexing’ within their music and visuals and
would focus on more moral issues within his lyrics, but he is still a powerful force
within the genre and is one of the top lyricists. This identity was created through his
clothing. Chief wears a street style based outfit, something which is of course related
to hip hop genre which originated in the streets, the outfit consists of a thin grey
hooded jacket and blue ripped jeans – Something that isn’t too basic or ‘cheap
looking’ to be related to another genre like indie rock but is still street enough to
relate to hip hop, this challenges the stereotype of what is seen in the genre.
The video encompasses both narrative and performance, and in both sides of the
video the artist is seen to be fairly depressed. This relates to our idea of Chief being
an artist who focusses on human and moral issues as opposed to talking about money
and women. This resonates with the uses and gratification model as it is likely people
who are in a similar place in their life will be drawn to the media which represents
them most, theorised by Blumer and Katz. Similarly to this, the video shows us why
Chief isn’t an artist his always happy (because he is caught cheating). This allowed us
to portray the hypodermic needle theory and tell the audience if you are caught doing
wrong, whether in a relationship or not, there will be consequences and karma will
come into play.

4. How will your digipack sell the product to the audience?
What you see on the right is the front and back cover of the final digipack, however it is not
the original version of the front cover. The original version I created was evaluated by my peers
and said it did not resonate with the rap genre enough and was more fitting to an indie rock
album, and therefore I did not want to falsely market the digipack and came up with a new
idea. Through my research I found that something very prominent throughout rap album
covers is the sense of power and therefore I decided to display this on my front cover. The
front cover portrays Calum as a powerful and/or high status figure. This is done through the
emotionless look in his face, implying to the viewers that the cover is for a rap album – Not
only this but the fact that I have used a close up of the artist means that fans or anyone who
knows the artist knows that the cover is for an album from him. Another more simplistic way in
which the front cover sells the product to the audience is because the artist name, Chief, is in a
bold sans serif font that means it is near enough always legible and fans of the musician will be
able to recognise the cover.
The back covers technique to sell the product in a similar way to that seen on the front cover
by including another close up image, similar to that seen on the front cover and advert. I
thought featuring the artist on both the front and back covers would help to sell the product
because when seen in a store, even if the CD case is the wrong way round the audience will
still know that it belongs to Chief, this is also seen through the inclusion of the name ‘Chief’
above the track listing. Apart from the imagery, another way in which the back cover sells the
product to the audience is through the use of features. Myself and Josh, who were the main
fans of rap in the group, are aware of the importance of features and how they can bring
popularity to other artists and albums, this is why we chose to include well known features like
Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Big Sean – All people who are very big in the current rap scene.

6. How will your advert sell the product to the audience?
The advert I have created for the album uses the same main
image of Chief that is seen on the front cover, however the side
of the image has been stretched out so that there is space for
text. I thought it would be an effective idea to use the same
image of the front cover because it doesn’t only explicitly show
the artist through a close up image of him, telling the audience
who the advert is for, however the synergy of using the same
image allows audience to interchangeably recognise each
product, e.g if they know the album cover they will recognise the
advert, if they know the advert they will recognise the album
cover.
The colour scheme of black and white also helps to sell the
product because any white typography that is put on the black
background is immediately visible as the colours are binary
opposites, meaning all messages are legible and are hard for the
audience to miss. For example, the “Runaway album out now”
text box is not that big, however when the white font is put on a
black background it is immediately visible. In terms of the
substance of the text and how it will sell a product to the
audience, I included a one sentence review from XXL magazine.
XXL are a very prominent magazine company throughout rap and
when the audience sees such an important figure praising the
album audiences will be attracted to see what the hype is about.