After the focus group, there were a couple of certain things that we had to change about our products. This was our design before the feedback:
For the digipak, we had to go back to the drawing board in terms of linking the panels together better whilst also using a photo of Yasmin where she wasn't lit so harshly with light. This would make her appear warmer and suit the conventions of Indie Pop. Eden redrafted the design. This is what she achieved:
Eden started by experimenting with another photo that I took on the shoot day, which presented the artist in a much warmer light which suited the conventions better. Another change that we felt was necessary was adding more tracks to the back cover and inserted the legal and copyright information and a barcode.
After these changes, we reviewed our product and realised that the front and back covers were too similar. Although the change did work there was still something not quite right. We decided that we needed to do another photoshoot with our artist to gain new photos to use in the design. I then changed the back page photo to create this design.
The focus group liked the idea of having a signature so Eden added it again:
The final change made was to the font changing it from Baskerville to Georgia and in reading the size with larger spacing between. This made the name of the album stand out more.
The main changes needed to be made to the website was including the new album cover thus placing 'Bex's' sugnature on the homepage as well as changing the colour of the font with her name and the tabs above:
After developing our focus group, we reviewed our devlopment thus far. We compared our products and agreed that between the digipak and webiste there wasn’t enough variation. So we considered using a different image from the shoot still linking in with the campaign but not paralleling quite so certainly.
Later we considered that in order to make our homepage look more diverse and visually intriguing, we decided to see what a animation would look like. Taking screanshots of alternate frames of footage, I created a Gif to created a fragmented yet moving image.
Here is the video of the focus group that Eddie filmed as Eden asked the questions and I presented the website:
Here is a write up of our feedback that we compiled as a group:
Website Response: When asking our focus group about whether they though the website was accessible and easy to navigate, they all said yes and showed an general liking towards the overall look. We asked about whether or not the genre was clear and they said no however when following this up, asking what genre they thought it could be the majority said pop whilst others swayed more to an 'independant' artist like Adele.
As a group, we anticipated that largely due to the colour scheme, the audience may not be able to clearly identify what genre we're complying to. So, we asked them what they thought we could alter to clarify it. One person said that we could consider changing her costume making it slightly more welcoming and potentially use lighter colours to add some variation as well as making it more appealing to a commercial audience.
We then asked them if the product seemed authentic at this stage, if it looked like a genuine site or a site made by students. The respones were all positive stating that it looked like a site they would pull up themselves. One thing that we thought made it seem slightly unauthentic was the tabs and whether we had enough and if the ones we did have were relevant. When asking the group, they said that the tabs worked but if we wanted another, we could concider designing and including merchandise.
We wanted to find out more about what engages our audience so we asked if there were any specific things that they liked and disliked about the site. These included things such as the way I presented the tour dates with the alternate colours, that the background stays static as you scroll down each page and also how accessible her social media is, making her seem very personable. When it came to their dislikes, the main issue was the colouring of the text. Although they found the colour scheme appealing, having her name and the tabs red made it seem a little bit washed out which I agree with. As a new artist, her name really needs to be a focal point so when developing the site, I'll experiment various other colours.
Digipak (the content below was curated by Eden from my production group):
From the initial look at the digipak design, the focus group had mixed opinions on what they believed the genre of the artist is. Firstly, one person in the group said rock, however through some discussion, other people suggested indie rock and alternative rock, which other students then agreed with. As for the people who did not agree with these suggestions, we assumed that they believed the genre to be pop, as when we showed them the website, they all agreed it was pop, so we can make an academic assumption that they think the genre is pop. This overall opinion is shown in the graph below.
•When we asked the group if they believed that the design was realistic and looked like it belonged to a real music artist, there was a total agreement within the group.
• As for what they liked particularly about the digipak design, one member of the group said that they liked the use of the artist’s signature on the front of the design, and a few other people agreed.
•In terms of what they didn’t think worked in the design, the same person in the group said that they thought the font needed to be more continuous through the panels e..g the front and back fonts needed to be the same.
•When we asked if they thought the four panels complemented well, one person said yes because of the use of colour scheme that allowed the panels to look related etc. However, we also had another member of the group saying that they didn’t think they complemented well, because they thought the two inner panels did not work in conjunction with each other, although they looked good individually.
•When gaining the groups opinion on the use of colour scheme in the design, they all collectively agreed that even though it majority just black and red, that it still worked well.
•When asking them if they thought the design looked like it was for an album or a single, they all agreed yes it was obvious, however when asked specifically why, no one said because of the fact that there were multiple on names on the back page of the design (which seems like the most obvious reason) but one person said it was because of the album title on the front page of the design.
Music Video (the content below was curated by Eden from my production group):
We started off with the music video questions. These were stared off with asking if anyone lost interest at any point, the focus group all said the video kept their focus throughout the whole three minute runtime. The next question that we moved onto was to see if anyone had a favourite part of the video. We received a few responses, these included, the group of dancers with the red cloth background, when the blinders turn on behind Yasmin, the close up shots on Yasmin’s face when she is filmed in front of the blinders, the active and wandering camera during Daisy’s and Chrissy’s dance section.
We then moved onto asking the focus group if they had a least favourite section of the video. We also received a few responses for this, they included, the third element where Yasmin is sat down on the floor and some people thought that the fade out was a weak ending, but this was contested in the focus group as some people like the fade out at the end.
We then moved onto questions regarding the overall campaign, these were started off by asking the focus group if they believed that the who campaign had a consistent aesthetic. Of the 11 people in the room 9 people thought that the campaign had a consistent aesthetic. The focus group thought this because the red and black colour scheme is extremely consistent, and the artist is very clear on all three of the products, she is also wearing similar clothes in all three of the products.
Finally we asked if it was clear that it was the same artist for the music video and the Digipak, the focus group aid that it was very clear. This was due to the fact that we see the artist face very clearly on the front cover and the colour palette between the two products is very similar.
When it came to preparation for our focus group, each member of the group prepared what was needed based on what element of the campaign they were looking into. I made some final alterations to my first draft of the website and ensured that it was live and published, sending the link to my teacher ready to be accessed easily, Eden printed 5 copies of our digipak design and folded it in the configuration of an actual album and Eddie exported our initial edit of the music video onto a harddrive formated soecificallyto be compatable with our teachers computer.
As well as conducting these small tasks, we all wrote questions about our products. Some of the questions were repeated for multiple products because they were relevant to them all. As well as writing questions for the individual products, we wrote questions that compared the digipak and website as well as the campaign overall. You will find the questions below:
FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS
Website Questions:
Does the website seem accessible and easy to navigate?
What genre do you think we’re conforming to?
Why is it this genre? (refer to pictures, layout, font and use of colours)
If they think we aren’t conforming to our genre, what could we alter to clarify it?
Does this look like a real website? If so why? If not why?
Is there anything in particular that you like? Why?
Is there anything in particular that you don’t like? Why?
Is there anything you’d like to see more on the website?
Is there anything you on the homepage you think is missing?
Are there any tabs missing that you’d expect to see?
Do you think you should be able to purchase the album on the homepage or have to search for it in other tabs?
Although these are meant to be open questions, there were specific things that we wanted to target such as the tabs in the website and the genre projected from the design. Other than that, the reason why these are our final questions is so that we can understand how the audience view our products. Our opinions are bias as it's our work so getting outside opinions is necessary to know whether what we thing is effective really is.
Digipak Questions:
What genre do you think we’re conforming to?
Why is it this genre? (refer to pictures, layout, font and use of colours)
If they think we aren’t conforming to our genre, what could we alter to clarify it?
Does this look like a real album? If so why? If not why?
Is there anything in particular that you like? Why?
Is there anything in particular that you don’t like? Why?
Do the panels compliment one another? Do they belong to the same album, is there an obvious link?
What’s your opinion of the colour scheme?
If the response is negative, ask how we can alter it to make it more visually intriguing
Is it obvious that the digipak is for an album not a single?
Many of the questions for this section are the same as those from the website as there are certain things such as the genre and level of engagement with the audience that is equally important for both. There were aspects of the digipak that we weren't sure helped us connote the 'pop' genre such as the font and colour scheme, hence why there are some questions aimed specifically towards them.
Website and Digipak Questions:
Do these two elements of the campaign link together? If so, how? If not, why?
Are the backgrounds in these two elements too similar?
Is it obvious these are for the same artist?
Before even attempting to present the music video, we needed to compare these two products to ensure they look like they belong to the same artist as well as tackling the range of how similar and different they can be
Music Video Questions:
Did you lose interest at any point?
Which element did you enjoy the most? (We might need to specify what ‘element’ refers to)
What was your favourite part of the video? -- Did you have a favourite part?
What was your least favourite part of the video?
The video is essentially a marketing technique to promote the album so if the don't find it interesting, would they be likey to follow up on the album? We wanted to identify what caught their attention and what let it go.
Overall Campaign Questions:
Do you think our aesthetic is consistent throughout the campaign?
If there was something you would change about the overall campaign what would it be?
Does the music video and album clearly belong to the same artist?
Our campaign has to be consistant in order to show clearly that it belongs to one artist as well as seeing if there were any details that they would ideally change overall.
A focus group is a step taken within the music industry to gain accurate and honest feedback from the artist's target audience on a campaign. It involves presenting the campaign beginning with the website, followed by the digipak, and ending with the music video. The reason as to why you present the products in this order rather than showing the video or playing a song first, is so that you can gain a candid opinion as to what genre the audience think we're appealing to. It would be more valuable to find out how you could alter our campaign to impliment the genre conventions rather than have the audience view our products with a pre-conscieved idea as to what it is. In order to gain specific feedback, you prepare a variety of open, unbiased questions on each product individually as well as questions comparing the website and digipak and finally the campaign on the whole. The reason why we conduct 'focus groups' rather than surveys is so that we can get more accurate opinions fresh from their first viewing of the product without any outside influence.
Although our products at this stage aren't complete, it is good to test them on our target audience at this point as there is still time to develop them. There is still the advantage that we're not likely to be too attached to the work we've already done therefore making alterations shouldn't be hard.
We want to find out how to engage the audience, whether the genre is clear and if not, how we can make it clearer and whether our products link together clear to make one overall campaign. We need to avoid closed or biased questions as we won't get a precise response.
Eden's main focus was on the digipak, making it look as though it belongs to the same campaign and artist. Below is a video of her process as well as screenshots of the development:
When constructing our three products, we split the work between us all focusing on one product each. Eddie Beck focused on editing the music video, creating a performance cut and then a rough cut before going ahead and finalising the product.
