Question 2

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

I believe that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are very effective for a number of reasons. The first reason is that we have used our title, ‘I Want It All’ in all three products, our documentary, print advertisement and radio trailer. Also we have used the same voice –over, a well-educated male, for both our documentary and trailer, thus linking the two products together. Our slogan, ’The need for greed?’ has been used in both of our promotional texts, so that our target audience will keep on recognising our catchy slogan and be more likely to remember it, and therefore watch the programme. We have also included the channel, time and date in both our promotional texts so our audience will know where and when to watch our programme. In addition, we have used clips and quotes from our documentary in our radio trailer so that they intrigue our audience who will want to find out what other thoughts, feelings and facts are expressed in our documentary. For our print advert, we have used an image of a man fiercely biting into a large burger-bun full of money, which clearly illustrates the topic of greed in a surreal and eye-catching way. Due to the fact that our programme discusses the topic of greed, which includes the greed for money, food, drugs, alcohol and education, the tone of our topic is one of a serious nature. This is reiterated through our promotional texts as the print advert echoes this mood through his facial expression, and the radio trailer includes a voice-over of a man with a serious and matter-of-fact tone of voice. Furthermore, both our main product and ancillary texts appeal to our broad target audience of men and women of eighteen plus through the use of personal pronouns, topics that everyone can relate to, such as the recession and wanting more money and by making them want to find out the answer to our slogan : is there ‘the need for greed?’ We would have placed our newspaper advertisement in broadsheets such as ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Times’ and ‘The Independent’, and we would have placed our radio trailer on commercial stations which would appeal to our well-educated demographic. Our trailer would be played before 9.00a.m. and after 5.00 p.m. while our target audience is most likely to be listening.