Research into auxiliary products

By Sarah Walley

What is an auxiliary product?

An auxiliary product is a product that is produced to compliment the main product.so in the case of a music video and song the auxiliary product would be the digi-pack and a poster/magazine article. They are important as it gets the brand of the artist out into lots of different products that you can buy. It creates more revenue for the artist as well as promoting them. It is also important for fans as they will want to buy these products to show support for the artist, but they will expect synergy between the products.

Album Cover

This is the album cover for the single ‘Mine’. Noticeably on the front of the single the title text is the same as the artists signature type name on the front cover. This is good as it shows the artists input in the album and especially with the title being ‘Mine’, it makes the front of the album look more personal and diary like. This will make people want to buy the album as they think that the artist, will have written a song about themselves and they may be able to relate to the song. The faded writing on the cover also makes it look as if we are going into the private life of the artist, a trait which most audiences will like.It has been set in the country side, and the background of the single displays this. This really shows the genre of the music before you have even listened to the artist. On many of the albums she has not had a picture in the country, but she has always been in a place with wide open spaces, which also represents the genre. In the picture she is wearing a white dress. This juxtaposes the genre a little as country music is associated as being farm type music, with mud and dungarees and denim. But she wears a dress, this makes her look angelic and innocent, which adds to the mise-on-scene in the videos as we are expected to think that she is the innocent party and she is the perfect girl and we should all look up to her.

Album Cover (2)

In this cover it is much like the other CD cover ‘Mine’. The title of the single is called ‘Fearless’ and has a dark cover. However, the artist on the front still looks really confident, which compliments the title of the CD. The photographer has taken a close up shot of the artist as the title implies an emotion, so Taylor Swift is showing a tense emotion, but big enough for it to be picked up on. The darkness of the background is a juxtaposition of the genre, as country genre tends to have a brighter colour scheme, but this would play to an advantage ion the competitive market as it would stand out on the shelf, but also cause intrigue between the audiences that normally buy country music. The title of the album has been written in a block font. This could suggest the emotions of the song, that the song is going to be able to display fearlessness and stand apart from the rest of the cover. Also the colour of the writing is a juxtaposition in itself. This is because she is supposed to be fearless but she has a white font, which does not standout on many of the backgrounds. And the text is harder to read than the Taylor Swift text. This could imply that’s he is fearless but wants that emotion to remain slightly dormant.

T-Shirt

This is a T-shirt that matches the album ‘Mine’. It is important that the t-shirt has synergy with the other products as people would not recognise the brand as much. In this case they have just put the CD cover on a t-shirt. However, for the size of the t shirt the graphics are quite small and this may play to a disadvantage from a selling point of view. However, the t-shirts are for sale in many store where the album is for sale as well. This may entice people to buy the CD more, which is the main purpose of an auxiliary product.

What have I discovered when looking at these products?

• I have discovered that there is definite synergy between the products that I have looked at. The title is the same in both the album covers that I have looked at. This means that I will have to carry this on when I create my music video and digi-pack. I have noticed that the genre that I have looked at has a lot of wide open spaces on the cover of the album, something that I feel could achieve on my album cover.

• I have also found out in my research that emphasis on the emotions of the songs are very important with the genre but also within the audience as they are still young.

• On all of the covers that I have looked at I feel that the artist has had a minimal amount of make-up on, and this also displays innocence but also purity of the artist herself, a trait which I hope to recreate.