The combination of the documentary, radio advert, and print advert was effective because they all used the same name ("Emergency Stop"), slogan ("emergency stop, brakes on"), central image (a ripped learner plate), and voiceover to clearly link the different media together. Scheduling the documentary on the same channel (Channel 4), date (Thursday), and time (7pm) across all texts also helped create connections for the audience between the products and reinforce what the documentary was about. The use of consistent branding, graphics, and elements like vox pops further tied the radio advert and documentary together to keep the audience engaged across both media.

1. 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

2. Throughout our documentary all 3 of our products linked together, the radio advert, print advert and the actual documentary all linked together via name. They all withheld the name of our documentary ‘Emergency Stop’ this meant that people would be aware of what the documentary was actually about, driving. Having the name within all 3 texts meant that people were able to gather this clear message that all 3 products were for the same documentary. Once using such things, we decided on a specific slogan for our documentary meaning that this would also link all 3 texts together. Our slogan for the documentary was; emergency stop, brakes on. This was a clear indication of what our documentary had to offer thus creating a distinctive meaning and understanding for what our audience. Having these things within all 3 texts meant that the audience were able to relate each thing to one another.

3. There was one central image within all the 3 texts, we used a ripped Learner plate which resembles learner driving. And that its not only for younger people, that older people can also be learner drivers. However, within our documentary, the first image the audience would see, was small images of cars, this then related to what our documentary was about even though they didn’t know what the documentary was actually called. Whilst the audience watched the titles, they began to understand what the documentary would entail and that it was in fact about driving. To reinforce what the documentary was, we had a car driving towards the camera, were the title of our documentary was placed on the licence plate. This then gave the audience the attention, and it felt like the title was actually on the licence plate of the car.

6. Another thing which linked together was the voiceover, the fact that the voice over was used within the documentary meant that people would have a clear distinctive feature when listening to the radio advert, this meant that the audience would feel this connection when watching and listening to both texts. Within both our radio advert and documentary, the theme and brand was specifically designed to sell the product, that the brand was used to advertise the documentary, therefore using the same voiceover within the documentary and radio advert meant that the audience would again feel this connection.

7. Another thing which linked both the radio advert and the documentary was the vox-pops used within both texts. Within the radio advert we used vox-pops to related both items together. This then would keep the audience in sync with both texts.

9. The scheduling for our documentary was very important, and this needed to be linked together with all 3 texts. We needed to use the same time, date and channel throughout all our items. Thus it was important that that we used this throughout all 3 products. We scheduled our documentary to be on channel 4, on Thursday at 7pm and this was used in all of our products. This made the audience feel the need to watch it, because it was placed on a channel our target audience watched, thus timing was again an important factor within creating our documentary.

10. The graphics within our documentary was reflected by the audience feedback we got. We were told that the audiences favourite colour was blue so it was foreseen that the colour we would use would be blue. However with our print advert we thought that using the red channel 4 logo would be a good idea, because of the red learner plate. Then we had to change the original colour scheme from blue to black because it clashed with the red within both the channel 4 logo and the red learner plate. Therefore we thought that having the titles of the print advert would be more suitable in white. Therefore keeping the text plain wouldn’t distract the audience’s attention when looking at the print advert.

11. ‘Emergency Stop, Brake Now’

12. Voice-over

13. Titles

14. House Style – Channel 4