The document discusses a promotional campaign created for artist Caro Emerald that includes a music video, digipak, and magazine advertisement. It analyzes Emerald's typical "metanarrative" portrayal using red color, femme fatale style, and voyeuristic shots to appear sexually provocative and powerful. The campaign aims to develop this metanarrative through similar stylistic choices. Red lipstick, 1920s clothing, and shots that present the actress as glamorous yet unattainable are used across all three texts to signify sexuality, power and intrigue as in Emerald's work. Consistency of color palette, typography and visual motifs link the pieces to effectively promote Emerald's image and genre of electro-

1. Question 2
Combination of main product
and ancillary texts

2. BRIEF
The brief was to create a promotional campaign for our chosen
artist; which consisted of a music video, a digipak and a
magazine advertisement.

3. Caro Emerald’s Metanarrative
Caro Emerald is frequently
portrayed with focus on the
colour red through costume and
makeup. The colour red holds
connotations of love, passion
and desire, surrounding her with
a very sexually provocative
image. This conforms to the
presentation of her as a
powerful, yet intriguing artist.
Emerald uses a lot of non-
verbal language, and portrays
a lot of her metanarrative
through body language and
posture. For example, her
head turn and averted eye
contact with the camera,
portrays her as powerful and
superior, which furthers her
appearance as a ‘star’.
Emphasis is put upon her 1920s
stylised clothing, hair and
makeup, which are consistently
in shot, and are often a
contrasting colour (red) to the
rest of the shot’s colouring. This
connotes her feminine artistic
representation.
She is shown in a femme fatal-style
nature, furthering her presentation
as a seductive yet powerful and
dangerous female. This is signified
through the use of bright lipstick,
dark hair and makeup, and a
neutral/strong facial expression.

4. OUR METANARRATIVE
We consistently used red, black and white colouring, with heavy
emphasis on the colour red, which is a noticeable feature within
Emerald’s metanarrative. We built upon this to show how we conveyed
the genre, as well as marketing features.
We attempted to develop
Caro Emerald’s
metanarrative in our piece
through our use of 1920s
clothing and makeup.
Similar to Emerald’s
metanarrative, we
continued the use of
statement red lip stick and
a contrasting item of red
clothing (we chose a
dress). This helped
elaborate on the concept
of red to connote sexuality
and desire, but also
continues the aesthetic of
the 1920s.
We used voyeuristic
shots of ‘Caro’
throughout our three
texts – which is a
generic convention in
Electro-Swing
campaigns to have the
lead singer as the
feature.
She is presented as a
Femme fatale through
our use of costume and
makeup; more
particularly so in our
Pantiles scene, through
the use of dark colour
grading, which helps
present her as both
seductive and
dangerous/mysterious
Vampire female.
We used a lot of
voyeuristic shots, which is
a generic convention in
Electro-Swing campaigns,
and allowed us to
elaborate upon her star
image and presentation as
a female artist.

5. DYER
Furthermore we showed
her as consistently
glamorous, showing her as
extraordinary, which is
unattainable for her
audience. This would
create a relationship
between Caro and her
audience as she is
‘unattainable’, which
would lead to intrigue and
further consumption of
her products.
By applying Dyer’s critical framework on the construct of star image, we emphasised the glamour and stylistic features of
Caro as an artist. By applying Dyer’s critical framework on the construct of star image, we emphasised the glamour and
stylistic features of Caro Emerald as an artist.
We attempted to construct star
image by having some shots her
looking into the camera, which
makes her appear present and
grounded and similar to her
audience.
However, in final production we chose to use the
images where she wasn’t looking at the camera, as
we felt that this went with her metanarrative better.
This signifies the idea of present and absent,
whereby she is present in the image, however she
averts eye contact with the camera, making her
appear absent from the scene and her audience.

6. THE ADVERTISEMENT
We designed the advertisement to run in Time Out Magazine as a half page spread. We
chose Time Out Magazine due to the urban, London audience that normally read it,
which is our target audience.
We chose to only feature her in a half page spread due to her popularity and perhaps
limited budget.
They have also featured an article on her before which helped
influence our decision.
Our main objective of our magazine advertisement was to develop
Caro Emerald’s metanarrative through our use of typography,
colouring and visual motfis, such as costume and red lips.

7. THE ADVERTISEMENT
Clear inspiration was taken from our use of
font and text space. On the original you can
see they use a large, bold, period-style font,
which takes about a third of the page space.
We attempted to recreate this by using a
similar, period-style typography, with large
text which is dominant on the page. This
clearly shows how Caro puts large emphasis
on her brand name and music. We show a
clear reading path, with main emphasis on
the title, leading to the call for action.
Similarly, we took inspiration from the
voyeuristic aspects that Emerald frequently
uses in her campaigns. In the original you can
see that besides the title, the focus is placed
on the image of Emerald. We reflected this in
our work using a large image of our actress,
which takes up a similar amount of space as
taken in Emerald’s. This connotes the idea of
star image, and continues our presentation of
her as a glamorous and empowered female.
We differentiated our advert by using the band in the
image too, which differs from Caro’s brand imaging
where she usually only features herself. However, we
kept focus on her (with the band out of focus), which
allowed us to continue this representation of her as a
independent and strong female artist.
Furthermore, we used post-production editing in our use of
blurring (which although isn’t normally used in Caro’s
campaigns) does draw focus onto Caro, which is a generic
convention within her marketing. Furthermore, the blurring
creates a ‘dream-like’ aspect to her metanarrative, as
signifies this idea of Emerald being absent and
extraordinary.
This signifies
her status as an
artist and as a
female, and
strongly
connotes ideas
of seduction
and desire,
emphasising the
Femme Fatal
nature of her
metanarrative.
We show use of the colour red in ours through
the text and also in her makeup (which is a
technique used in Emerald’s advert).
This is supported by the ‘vampire-chic’
narrative, that builds upon this elusive
representation of her.

8. THE DIGIPAK
Similar to the original, we took
inspiration for the use of heavy
imagery of Emerald. The
frequent use of voyeurism
within Emerald’s promotional
campaign was a feature that we
wanted to replicate in our own
production. This develops her
metanarrative of star imagery,
and helps to develop her
presentation as a stylised artists
as well.
We decided to have a pattern as the background for the
disc. The image was created using Photoshop. We thought
the black would contrast the heavy use of red and white in
the other images, and then the disc would be white to
contrast the dark background. We stuck so only black, white
and red as these are the stylistic features of Emerald’s
metanarrative, and therefore strongly signify her 1920s
aesthetic.
We decided to use photos of parts of Caro’s body with
different props – this gives the illusion of her being present
in the images, however her eyes are always cut out which
presents her as absent. This dismemberment of her, with
photos of her body party, and fetishistic shots of her chest
and lips furthers this seductive and feminine presentation
of Emerald.
We used similar colouring in
our digipak, as used in Caro’s
marketing campaign. We
focused on the colour red,
and then used black and
white influences, which is
evident in both the original
and our production.
Caro uses a simplistic font for her track list, which puts
some focus on the image on her and title as well. We aimed
to recreate this by using a simple font, in a medium size,
which shows how we are aiming to recreate her stylistic
features. Our typography is the same one as used on the
advert and in the video, which creates recurring link, and
also clearly connotes our 1920s theme.
In Emerald’s marketing and promotion, mid-shots are
regularly used to present her. We decided to put more
focus onto our props and 1920s style; we never show an
image of her eyes, or show her making eye contact with
the camera or a connection with the audience, which
emphasises Dyer’s theory on star image and absence.
However, we still present her glamorous metanarrative.

9. VISUAL MOTIFS
Although the fangs are specific to just our video, we thought
this would continue her presentation as a strong and powerful
individual, and was also a clear narrative link between all three
texts.
Within our digipak we have images of props, such as the
feather boa and pearl necklace, this reinforces the idea of
our 1920s aesthetic, and thereby conforms to the
convention of Electro-Swing.
We also continued with our three statement colours (red, black
and white) which are conventional in the Electro-Swing genre.
We heavily focus on the use of red in the digipak, which helps
to support the signified ideas of sexual power, desire and
power; thereby enhancing her metanarrative, and also
supporting our vampire narrative.
The voyeuristic stills of our actress consist of a variety of visual motifs to represent our period of music. The use of
motifs in our digipak furthers her band image and clearly signifies her style of music.

10. LINKS BETWEEN TEXTS
We also used our three
statement colours (red, black and
white) throughout all three texts,
which are conventional in the Electro-
Swing genre and within Caro’s
marketing in general. We used these
three colours in our colour grading in
the video and in our costume,
makeup and typography throughout
all three texts.
We used the same few period-style
typographies for the track list, album cover,
magazine advert and music video titles,
which shows how we continued consistency
throughout our three products. We used
quite large fonts to grab attention of the
audience, however had smaller fonts for the
track list which created a sufficient reading
path.
You can clearly see
how the colours red,
black and white were
incorporated into our
production, editing
and mise-en-scene
decisions, as
evidenced from these
video, digipak and
advert stills.
Our vampire narrative and
representation of her as a
sexually provocative yet
powerful female artist is
present in all three texts.
Our use of visual motifs to
signify our vampire
narrative is the most
apparent, but also our
elusive visual
representations of biting
and a lust for blood, also
support this.