Evaluation question 2

1. How Effective is the Combination of
your Main Product and Ancillary
Texts?
Gemma McDougall

2. • My advanced portfolio for media coursework required a 5-minute
documentary and ancillary products of a DPS TV Listing and a radio advert.
The radio advert and the DPS were created to promote/advertise the
documentary and to explain the date it would be aired and the channel.
Because of this it was vital to ensure we kept some familiarities through all
three products, this could’ve been things such as colours, imagery, or vox
pops/interviews.
• In order for the products to link and create a brand identity, the magazine
needed to advertise the documentary so that people could clearly see the
link and how they relate. The radio advert needed to be clear and
relatable to the documentary to show that it includes key points from the
documentary in order to gain an audience

3. Radio Trailer
• Within the radio trailer, sound bites have been used directly from the
documentary; these were important or vital clips which would present an
idea of what the documentary is about. Some clips included VoxPops
from college students and Solihull residents as well as short clips from
the expert interviews. An example of one of the sound bites used from
the documentary VoxPop’s is when our expert interviewer Mike Pattison
says ‘I think it affects students both negatively and positively’. This is a
key point within our documentary so we saw it vital to include this in the
radio advert. Another way where we effectively linked the two products
together is the background music; this was the same music that was
throughout the documentary. This allows for the viewers to see the
similarities between the two products and recognize the link.
• The trailer was to be advertised on BBC Radio 1, this supports a realism
aspect as it corroborates with the documentary being aired on BBC3. The
target audience of both BBC3 and BBC Radio 1 reflects the target
audience of my products. Within the radio advert and the documentary
we incorporated Levi Strauss’ Binary Opposite theory as the males
present in the documentary has different views to the females in the
documentary.

4. Radio Trailer
• One male says: ‘I don’t think it’s useful’ when expressing his view on
social media whereas on female challenged this view when pointing out
her best friend lives far away and ‘it’s quite important to have social
media’ to be able to keep in contact with her friend. I feel the radio
trailer was relatively effective in creating a brand and promoting the
documentary as it has a large weekly reach in comparison to other radio
stations.
• Also, I believe the background music; voiceover and sound bites are all
acceptable to be aired on BBC Radio1, as they do not have any explicit or
inappropriate language.

5. Double Page Spread
• For the DPS, we researched into real media products, which we would attempt
to base ours on whilst researching the codes and conventions. We looked into
DPS’ from Radio Times magazine so we could see what would be acceptable and
appropriate to include. It was evident that the spread would need to have a
professional approach yet still attract our desired target audience. This became
slightly difficult to do so, Radio Times average readership age was 51 but its
reach was of 8.1M.
• However, I do think we made it work with the colour scheme, heading and grab
quotes. To ensure the two products would link and the audience would see this,
we used the title of the documentary as the headline, but to make it based
directly on the subject of the documentary we decided to be creative and spell
out ‘Social Media’ by using the letters direct from different, popular social media
apps. The main image was a print direct from the documentary itself.

6. Double Page Spread
• - this presented a clear identity to the audience of the type of people who were
featured in the documentary and allowed them to already become familiar to
them. Other images on the DPS were also from the documentary itself. Quotes
were used direct from the voxpops and interviews to give the readers an
impression of what is mentioned throughout the documentary. For example:
quotes from both expert interviewers:
• Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralism theory could be applied here, as we
followed a structure/pattern in our three products with the use of a voiceover
and presenters to create a pattern that is recognised by the audience.
• Overall, although the magazine has a higher target audience than what we
wanted, I feel like we successfully and effectively linked the products together
via a bright colour scheme and made it suitable for 16-24 year olds - but could
give an impression on the secondary audience of 36 years + of parents and
teachers who may not necessarily normally listen to radio one to hear the advert
or typically watch BBC3.

7. Overall
• In saying this, I do not think the DPS was as effective in linking the three
products together as it could’ve been. Although we used expert quotes in all
three products, we did not do this for the Vox Pops. The Vox Pops were
incorporated into the radio advert and used simply to state social media apps,
however we did not use this in the main article which, looking back, would be
effective in proving the amount of social media apps that are out there.