The document provides a critical evaluation of a music campaign created for the band "United Freaks Organization" and their song "Take It". The campaign included a music video, Instagram page, and digipak. The evaluation discusses how the campaign portrayed and challenged social representations of gender, youth rebellion, and personal branding. For gender, the female drummer was presented in a counter-typical way. For youth rebellion, the narrative and posts portrayed the band breaking rules. For personal branding, the band cultivated a charismatic but unconventional image to appeal to audiences. Overall, the campaign aimed to attract younger audiences by using and challenging social representations in a realistic way through various media products and portrayals.

1. Name: Fabian Warriner
Candidate number: 3525
Critical Evaluation
We have worked on producing a music campaign for a band named ‘United Freaks Organization’
with a song named ‘Take It’. We have attempted to follow and challenge social representations
through the use of media products such as social media, a digipak and a social media page. In this
essay, I will discuss the decisions made and how they were designed to represent different social
groups.
One social representation presented by our
music video is Gender. You could say that we
have presented gender stereotypically in terms
of the masculine gender, however this is
contradicted by our use of a female drummer,
the only female cast member in our band. Our
drummer Neave has been presented as a ‘tomboy’, in the sense that she is involved in a group of
four, with three other boys. We decided to give Neave a counter typical outfit which matched the
outfits of the boys in the group. This consists of baggy black jeans which have been distressed with
graffiti on the legs, as well as a black sleeveless jacket which also has the same graffiti styling on the
back and front, with cuts and slits to make it look a bit more rugged. We also chose not to give
Neave a full face of makeup as we felt that this would help to assist the counter typical idea that we
were going for. In the narrative for our video, we had our cast running away from police. This gives
light to the social norms of young teens getting into trouble and being rebellious against the law,

2. however this is usually subject to the male gender stereotypically, which helps to define the counter
typical view of our female drummer. During these running scenes, we have a shot of the cast
running up a skate ramp. In this part we can see the 3
boys running up first which gives the archetypical
impression that boys are more agile and sporty than girls
can be. We also perceive the boys helping Neave up the
ramp which insinuates the idea that the boys are
protective of the girl and that she needs help. This decision to create both stereotypical images as
well as counter typical, shows the audience that girls can be mischievous and rebellious as much as
boys which can help to entice the female audience who don’t feel as comfortable being ‘girly’ and
can help to attract a female audience as well as male.
Another social group portrayed in our video could be that young people are traditionally rebellious
and conflict rules and regulations given to them. This idea comes from teenagers and children not
wanting to be controlled or told what to do, which we have presented through the
narrative aspect of our video. We have also produced an Instagram page in
order to simulate band promotion as it would be in real life. On our page
we have posts of our lead singer and band pulling outlandish facial
expressions and poses in order to attract our younger male demographic.
Boys typically show more expression and bigger body language than girls,
as well as not being self-conscious about how they look online or in real
life, so these types of posts promote that idea well. We also have posts of
our band standing on a wall which could be seen as an off-limits area, which could also
help to produce an idea of the band breaking the rules, even if it is something smaller, as well as it
standing out from a normal Instagram post. This rebellious stereotype could also relate to the

3. protests against the authorities after the death of George Floyd. As much as this was massively a
racially motivated movement, it still gives a clear image as to how our generation has helped to
make this protest such a big deal, compared to how big this story may have been if it had been 10 or
20 years prior to when it happened.
My next point I’d like to discuss is the production of brand image we have created through the use
of our products in order to appeal to the attitudes of our audience through understanding the
psychographic. A media theorist named Richard Dyer said that an artist is a construction rather than
a person, which describes the artist themselves as a product. In our music video we have tried to
promote a charismatic and mischievous image especially in our narrative which gives the impression
that our band are running from authorities. This image gives the idea that our band are
unconventional and don’t abide by the rules set for them. This gives a relatable idea for our
audience, as, as previously mentioned, the younger demographic is becoming more and more
rebellious to the police after recent years of the
police being visualised as the real criminals after
more recognition to police brutality. We have
also produced an idea that our band are rather
abstract, similarly but a more contained version
of the band Prodigy. We felt that this type of
band persona keeps our band from mixing in
with all of the others and helps them to stand out
above the typical alternative rock band. In terms of
Mise En Scene, our cast have typical haircuts for a
rock band such as a mullet or unnatural hair dye, to
add to the connotations of a rock band. On top of
this, our distressed and spray-painted black denim
outfits further promotes the depiction that our band

4. aren’t concerned about how they look and don’t have a problem with looking messy. This may help
to minimalize the typical clothes and looks of a ‘Good – looking’ man or
woman. This is specifically directed at girls as a social issue which has be
created alongside social media is that they have to look a certain way, so you
could say that our female drummer and how she is dressed in the video aims
to break down these common social barriers created by the media. The spray
paint on our costumes could also help to connote rule breaking and
vandalism, which links back to the mischievous image which we are
conveying. This could also relate to the skate park scenes where we can see
spray paint on the ramps, possibly suggesting that they have done this
themselves which is the reason they are running from the police.
We also have attempted to present our band
having fun together through our narrative, with
happy facial expressions and
shots of them having
conversations and laughing
with each other. This
represents an almost ‘down to earth’ image where even if they are a big band
per say, they still meet up as friends as stereotypical people of this age range
would. This also helps our audience to relate to the band as these are typical
things for this demographic to be doing. We also promote the band having fun
in our Instagram posts, as well as meeting up for ‘jam sessions’, which relates to
the audience members who play musical instruments themselves and meet up
to have fun and improvise together. We have also produced a cool and serious

5. side to our band where we have them showing less lively expressions to demonstrate a more
dangerous side to them to show that they also have a persona where they are more dedicated to
their music. This is presented in our Instagram, where we have a post of our lead singer looking into
the camera with a serious expression along with the rest of the band behind him. Richard Dyer
suggests that the star or band is the commodity which is sold to the consumer.
Jay Blummer and Elihu Katz have presented us with the uses and gratification theory. This describes
how the main reasons which our audience consume media is entertainment or diversion, personal
identity, personal relationships and education. A large portion of the entertainment aspect for our
young male and female demographic would come from the music and the music video. This is the
main product which would generate recognition for the band rather than the Instagram or the
digipak, however these products will also play their part. Both our Instagram and music video will
help to target the personal identity aspect of the theory. When our audience visualises, our band
running from police and breaking the rules, and
even just spending time together, it generates a
more personal connection as there can begin to
see similar attributes which they themselves
might possess. Through this, individual audience
members begin to idolize members of the band
and might begin to copy or mimic their actions which helps to spread a new image and style in a viral
manner. In the scene where each band member is running towards the camera with the fish eye
lens, we can begin to develop an emotional attachment to our audience through the clear images of
their emotions and how they are feeling when filming this scene, because they look directly into the
camera, this acts as a direct address to the audience and makes it feel personal to them. Our
Instagram assists personal connection, as our posts have captions which speak directly to our

6. audience such as ‘Who’s ready for the drop of our music video?’. By asking questions to
our audience, they begin to feel more included in the production and are able to
comment on the post in order to generate this association between artist and consumer.
Our digipak also has some input in terms of social interaction as on the inside cover it
says, ‘Thank you for buying this compact disk’, which has the opportunity to feel like a
personal thank you to each and every member of the audience who has bought the
compact disk and gives them a sense of gratitude from the band themselves.
We deliberately chose to be conventional yet still unconventional with our video as a
media theorist, Steve Neale, thinks that audiences enjoy the familiar aspects to a genre as well as
the forever dynamic attributes which are constantly occurring with the endless release of new music
and other types of media. Our music video has both challenged and met the typical conventions of
an alternative/indie rock music video. In terms of the performance section, typically in a lot of indie
rock videos we can see a live performance aspect to the video, however this would have been
difficult in order to build a set and hire a
massive cast or even edit the audience in.
This is why we decided that filming our
performance in a real shop window would
work, as we can include real life people
who have come to do their shopping in
our video with very little difficulty. We
have also included a narrative in our video as this is represented across a lot alternative rock videos.
Our digipak helps to meet typical conventions as usually they are quite abstract and strange as it fits
the type of music. It also however, challenges the fact that normally the band isn’t shown on the
front of an alternative rock digipak, yet we felt that by showing the band we can generate more
recognition for the individual performers, as well as demonstrating their diverse personalities
through dramatic facial expressions. Our social media has been roughly based off of the Instagram

7. page for the band ‘5 Seconds of Summer’. This is because they represent a similar type of music and
has interesting posts which stand out from other bands. We recreated posts from this band to a
similar but not identical level and created our own promotional captions as they have. These are
posts from much closer to the start of their career as our band are, as this will be a lot more realistic
than posting about a worldwide tour they will be going on.
In essence, we have used and challenged social representations by distributing visual and literate
examples of each mentioned group. This is how we have attempted to attract our younger
demographic and appealed to this audience in an appropriate manner, as it may have been
conducted in a real situation. If I was to do this entire production process again, I would have
attempted to promote the problems faced by young people when rebelling and challenging the law,
and how this may have affected them in the long term.
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