How Effective is the Combination of your Main

Product and Ancillary Texts?

One way in which we attempted to make the combination of our products effective was through the consideration of the target audience. As our documentary highlights the dangers of teen drinking, our primary audience is teenagers. By creating various audience profiles, and being within that audience ourselves, we were able to shape our products around this. However, we also had to consider that this program may also appeal to adults, especially parents that may want to further educate themselves on the dangers presented in our primary task. With this in consideration we felt that we needed to keep a sophisticated feel to all of the tasks in order to increase the overall effectiveness as it meant that more people would be interested in watching the documentary. With this is mind, we decided on BBC Three as the channel that we would theoretically air our documentary on. This was chosen as BBC Three’s target audience is very similar to that of our primary and ancillary tasks. The BBC official website states that ‘The channel needs to be disciplined about focusing on the young

- its centre of gravity will be 16-34 year-olds: people who are young in spirit and mind-set.’ This shows that the main audience for the documentary would be teenagers but it would also need to appeal to adults. I think that by making sure that all three tasks are aimed at the same audience we created an effective combination between them.

Target Audience

Double Page Spread - Documentary

The design of our double page spread task adds to how effective the combination of all three tasks is. For example, the background image of the double page spread is a shot of a nightclub that is also used in the documentary task. This helps to create continuity between the two tasks and adds to the overall effectiveness of the combination. This was also achieved through the use of an image taken from an interview in the documentary and also through the text used in the double page spread. As displayed in the images, the text used on both tasks is the same font and colour, again helping to create continuity and a familiarity between the tasks.

Also, we decided that the main image of the double page spread should be something related to the topic of teen drinking (i.e. a nightclub) but that we should not use a lot of images of teenagers. This way, we do not limit the audience of the article to just teenagers but the overall topic of the article is clear through the large title.

The pull quote on the article is also taken from an interview used in the documentary. This helps cement the subject of the double page spread and means that if people were to read the article and then watch the documentary, they would easily be able to draw comparisons between the two. This also adds to the overall effectiveness of the combination as it means that people would be more likely to take in important information such as this which is one of the main aims of the tasks.

Radio Trail - Documentary

The content of our radio trail also adds to how effective the overall combination of our products are. Again, we managed to create continuity between the three products through the radio trail. We added in extracts from interviews in the documentary. For example we included the question ‘What is the legal age to drink alcohol’ and the responses. We also included some information provided by the voiceover in the documentary which talks about how alcohol abuse can lead to liver failure. This adds to the effectiveness not only through continuity between the products but by engaging the audience with interesting information. As the ancillary tasks are meant to advertise the main product, adding interesting information would make people more likely to want to watch the documentary.

In addition to this, by adding the time and channel that the documentary will be broadcast, it is clear what the radio trail is advertising and provides the audience with when they will be able to watch the product. We also decided that the radio trail would theoretically be broadcast on BBC Radio 1.

The reasons for this being that it reaches a national audience and is one of the most popular radio stations in the country with around 11 million listeners per week. Also, with our documentary being aired on BBC Three it would make sense for the BBC to advertise it’s own products. Finally, the remit for BBC Radio 1 (taken from bbc.co.uk) is as follows ; ‘Radio 1 is to entertain and engage a broad range of young listeners... Its target audience is 15-29 year olds’.  The target audience of Radio 1 is very similar to the target audience of our documentary. This means that the people that our product is targeted at will be able to hear about our product on a large scale. Showing how the combination of the radio trail and the documentary would be very effective.

Conclusion

Overall, I think that the combination of our primary and ancillary tasks is very effective. The ancillary tasks both display continuity and solidarity with the primary task by using the same images, text and extracts and information used in the documentary

Also, I think that it is clear on all three products that our target audience is primarily young people. The choice of radio station and channel on which we would air our products is evidence of this as their primary audiences are very similar to ours.