Evaluation Report
In this essay I will evaluate my Identities project, for which I chose to do E4; I will evaluate my research, project management and the finished product.
I chose to do the E4 project because I felt that it was something I already knew about in detail through past experience which has been approximately four years.
Through my research I concluded that E4 was a freeview and digital tv channel and was a product of the Channel 4 company. The programs shown include a lot of American import programs such as Friends, E.R., The OC, Smallville, The Sopranos, Desperate Houswives and Scrubs, as well as some British programs like Hollyoaks, Big Brother and Wife Swap.
A music program created by E4, named ‘E4 Music’ has also been running since August 2005, everyday in a 6am to 2pm time slot everyday and is very ‘viewers choice’ orientated.
E4 also has ‘First Look’, an incentive to its viewers where a program is shown before it is aired on C4 (Channel 4), although this is only with Hollyoaks and Big Brother.
Another feature of the channel is the ‘Timeshift’ channel called ‘E4+1’, this channel shows what was on E4 one hour ago and therefore useful for people who miss programs or want to watch them later.
Further to my research on the background information of the channel, I decided to produce a questionnaire in which my main aims were to find out the target audience of E4 (i.e. age group and gender), find out what people knew about E4 and to find out why they liked it.
My questionnaire consisted of nine questions in total, as well as a starter question in order to decipherer whether or not to continue the questionnaire.
After I had used my questionnaire to interview people, I drew some research conclusions; these were that the target audience were 13-30 yr olds, both male and female. These people like the choice of programs, especially the vast array of American import programs.
More research led me to discover previous E4 promotional campaigns, although these campaigns were only used on E4 and were not used for advertising purposes (e.g. posters, billboards, etc). The trailers shown on E4 “often make use of dry humour and phrases which at first do not appear to make any sense”[1], some of the phrases used include; “In 1884 we invented music telly. We just didn’t bother telling anybody”[2] and “Second chance Sunday – not just a bunch of repeats – honest!”[3]
The material that I researched enabled me to make decisions on how I wanted to re-brand E4 and how I wanted to achieve this re-branding, although I firstly needed to discover and research re-branding in able to fully achieve this.
Looking at how brands are viewed and different thoughts behind a successful brand helped me discover that brands are unique and differentiated; they maintain personal connections in the sales process, whilst associating themselves with a clear set of values, as well as fulfilling a need or expectation for the target audience[4].
A quote that I found helped me realise success behind brands was “Brands are more that logos. Many elements combine in a brand to generate an emotional bond with a customer. Brands are about personality”[5].
Once I had researched I decided that I would produce six stings, three for E4, three for E4 Music (with three both split as one animation and two videos), with each being six to ten seconds long and the format would be MiniDV.
The programs I chose to use were Fruityloops for music and sound, Adobe Premiere to edit all the videos, and 3D Studio Max 8 for animation.
The website, I concluded would be separate to the C4 website and would be made user friendly and accessible, I would make this using Dreamweaver.
The poster campaign would follow the same theme as the website in terms of colouring and simplicity, with the aim being to create brand awareness and audience recollection, specifically by creating a slogan or tagline. I decided to use Adobe Photoshop to create them.
Once I had confirmed my intentions for re-branding, I looked at project management and created a schedule of works, one for the stings, the other for re-branding, this was because of different project deadlines.
The final project I produced was a website and three posters. The first of the posters was part of my ‘4 YOU’ concept in which the target audience was included, therefore denoting that E4 was exclusively for them. The poster kept with the original colouring theme for E4 (purple and white) as I considered that they were already associated with the brand.
On the poster, four slogans were used, once again denoting the link with E4, these four slogans were; ‘TV 4 YOU’, ‘MUSIC 4 YOU’, ‘MORE 4 YOU’ and ‘ALL 4 YOU’. In each the slogans the ‘4’ used is the E4 logo, the use of this logo 4 times in the poster was to initiate audience recognition of the E4 logo and in turn create audience recollection in the future for the E4 brand.
The composition of the image is the four slogans from left to right across the poster, each equal in size and inline with each other. The poster is done in landscape; this is so that the text could be created larger and therefore be more eye catching to the target audience. This was the same case for the colours, purple is quite an eye catching colour and has connotations of royalty, spirituality and mysteriousness[6]. The colour white on the other hand has connotations of purity, cleanliness and innocence[7]. These colours go together as white combines well with every colour. The overall composition of the poster allows it to continue the idea of simplicity which this poster conveys well.
The second poster that was produced was a different concept to the previous poster. The poster is in landscape, with a white background and is composed of a slogan as the title which is ‘WATCH E4’ (with E4 logo) and is in purple text. The title has a central image below it, which is the ‘Uncle Sam’ image, famous for its use in U.S. Army posters, along with the slogan ‘I want YOU for the U.S. army!’ which is very inclusive of the target audience and a very simple and direct phrase. This slogan was my inspiration for my slogan on the poster; ‘DO IT!’ this keeps to the idea of simplicity.
The composition of the ‘DO IT!’ slogan is based around the central image ‘Uncle Sam’ and is shown four times on each side in red text. I decided to use red text because of the use of red on the ‘Uncle Sam’ poster in the word ‘YOU’, this stands out as red has connotations of power (e.g. red carpet), danger, and emergency[8], meaning it will alert people and make them more aware. Red can also have negative connotations though, in terms of standing for anger and violence, therefore meaning it would be associated with the E4 brand, something I would not want.
The slogan ‘DO IT!’ was also influence in part by the company Nike, whose slogan is ‘Just Do It!’, which is a directive that commands the audience and has been very successful and well known for many years. With this in mind I believe that my slogan ‘DO IT!’ combine with the image of ‘Uncle Sam’ pointing at the target audience would be a powerful statement.
Although the poster achieves many things it does not entirely stick with the previous colour themes (i.e. purple background with white text) and also makes brand recognition harder for target audience. The frame seems too cluttered with eight ‘DO IT!’ slogans, therefore detracting from the simplicity. The composition of the frame also makes it less related to the ‘Uncle Sam’ poster as it is landscape, not portrait.
The third poster that I created is following the same theme as the second, with the ‘Uncle Sam’ image being used again. In this poster its composition is landscape, with the central image as ‘Uncle Sam’, on a white background and a slogan below this that reads ‘ALL 4 YOU’ with the E4 logo, the ‘ALL’ in purple text and the ‘YOU’ in red text. This slogan links back to the first poster and this is good for brand recognition between the two.
This poster is a lot simpler than the second poster and links more closely with the actual ‘Uncle Sam’ poster, therefore having more relevance, but having said this the image composition again detracts from the relevance as it is landscape, not portrait. The image of ‘Uncle Sam’ has massive connotations of Americanism, which can be linked to the amount of American import programs that E4 shows, but could also be a bad thing as it many detract from the channels sense of British identity which may be lost on these posters.
The website that I created was eventually made using a program called Adobe GoLive CS, I made this decision to change from Dreamweaver because I found the program easier to use whilst being very similar to Dreamweaver.
The website consisted of seven pages; this included the front page which was a site entrance. The overall website kept to the original purple and white E4 colour scheme, each page is the same, with the white side and top areas and purple in the middle with white text. Each page has its own title at the top of the page.
The start page is an entrance to the website and is all purple with the E4 logo as a picture with a link to the home page, this also includes links to other Channel 4 website pages, these are; Channel 4, More4, 4 On Demand, Radio 4 and Film 4.
The home page gives a short introduction to the website, telling the target audience what E4 is and giving a bit of background information. The page also includes two banner adverts; this is just for illustration purposes. The music page includes text describing E4 Music, a scrolling news banner, an interview section and an embedded music video (section called Video of the Week)The TV page also has descriptive text, a schedule and images of three programs shown on E4. The E-Speak page is a concept page which I took from the E4 website and includes text and an image. The E-Stings page is about the E-Stings competition and includes text and some images of previous Sting competition entrants. Finally the Contact Us page includes simple text with contact detail of E4 on.
The overall website is very simplistic, which keeps in theme with the posters, but it is possibly too simplistic and does not contain any further pages (e.g. Program websites) and is no better than the previous E4 website, although having said this it was a re-branding process and the website has been changed to fit in with the concept that was developed.
In this project my main downfall was my project management, this is because I did not stick to my schedule and so ended up rushing to complete the final products and this meant that they were not as good a standard as I would have first hoped for. The stings were especially problematic for me as I did not complete them in time and therefore did not submit them.
In conclusion the project did not turn out how I hoped, but was not a complete failure. The poster campaign did keep an undertone, but was unstructured and did not stick to the purple background colour theme with white text and logo. The website was simplistic and this was a good point, but it was not large enough or professional enough for a company like E4. If I had to do this project again I would focus on my project management and make sure that all my tasks were completed.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29
[4] Cyberbranding –
[5] Beyond Logos – New Definitions Of Corporate Identity, Clare Dowdy, 2004
[6] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/purple.htm
[7] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/white.htm
[8] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/red.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment