Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In producing my three media products it was important to create synergy and cross media convergence between the three products as they are used to promote each other and, more importantly, the new BBC 2 Soap Opera ‘The Wells’. This is important as due to developing technologies media products have now been made available on many different platforms, therefore it was important to use all three products to promote each other. The ancillary products of my magazine and poster both use the same tag line and main headline: ‘Whose taken Holly?’ I thought that this would be an effective way to create synergy between the products as the same verbal code will get people talking about the scandal and shock value of a child being taken away. The further create a sense of viral marketing and a talking point for the soap, the hash tag #thewells on all three products will create some much needed hype for the new trailer and also promote the new soap-opera magazine ‘inside soap weekly’ as being a trustworthy soap opera genre publication.

I used the same background image of an aerial shot of The Wells Estate from the point of call as the main background image on the poster creating brand identity for our new soap. This was important to present on all of three media products I created, therefore I also used the point of call as a form of promotion on my magazine and used verbal code such as ‘brand new soap’ to highlight the soap as a new soap opera and how it is going to compete in an already competitive market. The point of call is established at the end of the trailer linking all three products together. Another way we combined all three products was through the use of the magazine reviews in the trailer for example we used reviews such as ‘Outstanding- TV Revealed’ to link the trailer with our magazines. This was effective as it makes the audience want to know more about the soap as it is ‘new’ and also advertises the magazine as to where you can find information about the soap. All three products are also connected through mise-en-scene of costume as we made sure that every one of the actors was wearing the same clothing as they were in the trailer when the ancillary products images where taken demonstrating continuity. Also the facial expressions of the character in the magazine demonstrate the emotions of the characters in the trailer, for example the character ‘Gloria’ has a worried facial expression on the magazine because her husband has discovered her affair.

The three products are linked together well this was important because it is a new soap opera and therefore creating brand identity is vital. Also the brand identity of the magazine was important too so by having all three products linked they advertised each other for example the poster has the magazine website link on it

Esme Quantrill candidate number: 6094 center number: 64135