1. A2 Media Evaluation
2. How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
Tia Campbell

2. The name of my local newspaper is called The Journal stylized as “thejournal”
and the slogan of my newspaper is “Your personal paper”. The connotation of
the journal is to suggest a sense of personal privacy, and personal belongings.
A journal is a book people keep to write about specific events, secrets and deep
thoughts, so by calling my product a journal it indicates a sense of personal
possession to my readers/audience. The idea I wanted to achieve is that the
newspaper would be a personal product to the audience, something personal to
them that they can read. The slogan is the idea that consistently runs through
all my product and ancillary tasks, so I think the combination is effective
because the idea of thejournal being a personal paper is reinforced. The
advantage of reinforcing the theme of a product creates a fun advertising and
makes the product popular and recognizable to the audience.
Slogan
(featured
on the
front page)

3. The combination of the newspaper masthead and the billboard are
also effective through the use of consistent house style in colours.
The colours used in my masthead are black and orange. The
difference in design on the billboard where the word “personal” is
stylized as the masthead on the newspaper normally would be. The
effect of it being highlighted and designed in this way is to
reinforce the theme of the journal being personal. The colours
would also be recognised by the audience when they see the
billboard. The font of the masthead and the word personal are also
the same which triggers recognition.
Masthead
design
Even though the billboard is simplistic with whitespace, the
advantage of that is that the colours can be more noticeable and
capture the audience’s attention. On the billboard the fact that
“thejournal” does not have any design does not make the
masthead less important, the attention has just been taken away
from the name and placed onto the word “personal” to keep the
theme consistent. The regular masthead is also in the corner of
the billboard to show the readers which newspaper is being
advertised if the design itself were not enough.

4. The journal as a local newspaper is “published” in Black Country (Wolverhampton). So
the characters used in the radio advert would emphasise this idea through their
accents. The character who shouts “Oi! Hands off my journal” is performed in a
“common” accent to portray a working class man from the Black Country, which
represents the region that the newspaper is published. In the literal script where it says
“Hands off my journal” also echoes the theme of the newspaper being a personal
product to readers, in the scenario someone has obviously taken the man’s’ journal and
he reacts defensively taking possession of what he knows is rightfully his. The character
also performs a tone of shock in his voice, to be surprised someone has even dared to
touch his “personal” newspaper. At the end of the advert the slogan is also reinforced
“The journal…Your personal paper”
Overall I think the combination of my product and ancillary tasks are effective because
they continuously reinforce and continue the theme of the product by linking with each
other with different features.
(Click link to be directed to radio ad extract: Oi! Hands off my journal)
http://snack.to/azu8wkcz