Exam Question

2013 Q1. To what extent are stars and/or celebrities important to the promotion of your three main texts? 

Stars/celebrities are clearly very important when it comes to the music industry, they help to promote their music and can create huge fan bases. For example, the three main artists I studied; Adele, Jessie J and Amy Winehouse all have their own individual fans. Adele is known to appeal to mostly females who are between 25 to 44 and with children, according to Nielsen. This factor is important to consider when looking at how Adele is promoted. Maria Bailey who is an author of eight books about marketing to mothers said "By appealing to moms, Adele had a built-in marketing machine in place." This is because on average, mums share six times more on social media than any other demographic. Jessie J's fans even refer to themselves as "heartbeats" which highlights the amount of support she has and is a promotion of her in itself. However, an article found in the Daily Mail from 2015 was about Jessie J "unfollowing all of her fan base" on Twitter, which left her loyal fans very upset and tweeting negative things about her. This is an example of when celebrities could have a negative impact on their own promotion too. Amy Winehouse too has a very loyal and supportive fan base, even after her death. This is clearly seen as the outside of her home in Camden was filled with flowers, candles, pictures and messages from devastated fans after her death.

The appearances of celebrities are also a key aspect of their promotion. The fact that Adele is often described as "plus size". In fact, in an issue of the Rolling Stone magazine she admits "Sometimes I'm curious to know if I would have been as successful if I wasn't plus-size," which clearly shows that the physical appearance of a celebrity clearly has an impact on their promotion. Jessie J however is known for her amazing voice as much as for her quirky sense of style. Her fashion choices are often spoken about in the media, including 'glamour' and 'elle' magazines. This shows that she is a style icon which promotes her image and therefore her music. Similarly, Amy Winehouse had a unique style which caught people's eyes. This is evident as she even has a "style file" dedicated to her on the 'Vogue' website, which has images of her most memorable fashion moments. This clearly displays that her physical appearance is very important when it comes to her promotion, as it is still one of the main aspects why people remember her today. 

Exam Question - June 2014

B1. Discuss the marketing strategies used by your selected industry. Refer to your three main texts.

Most if not all blockbuster films use cross-platform marketing strategies in order to raise audience awareness of the films release. Films which have a bigger budget such as Skyfall (2012) directed by Sam Mendes had an estimated budget of over $150 million and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) directed by Matthew Vaughn with a budget of $81 million have more opportunity to create effective marketisation. Whereas lower budget films such as Weekend (2011) directed by Andrew Haigh had around £120,000 (almost $150,000) meaning it didn't have as much money to spend on the marketisation of the film.

One of the most prominent ways of marketing in the film industry is the use of trailers, once trailers get released they start getting shared across multiple social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Some films take it a step further, for example, Kingsman had an interactive experience which allowed the audience to step inside the world of Kingsman by completing Secret Service missions through their electronic devices. This helped to create thrill among the audience and made them further anticipate the release of the film. Furthermore, Vaughn teamed up with Mr Porter; an online retail destination for men's fashion, to create a 60 piece collection of clothes and accessories which are identical to the ones seen in the movie in order to invite fans to dress like a Kingsman. Realistically, this would've helped to promote the film to a more middle-class audience as they're the ones who can afford the pricey products, with the cheapest blazer being £895. Once again, this would've helped to fuel the audiences anticipation for the film.

Similarly, Skyfall's theme song "Skyfall" being sung by Adele is a form of marketisation in itself as she's an extremely popular and respected artist. This means her popularity will attract a large amount of people into listening to the song with the hope of it leading them to watching the movie. The song reached number two at the UK Singles Chart and Adele also won an Oscar and a Grammy for the song. This information shows that the films marketisation strategy was successful as it released more excitement about the film, which is why it was purposely released on the 5th October as part of the Global James Bond Day; just weeks before the film was released in cinemas.

However as previously mentioned, films such as Weekend can't afford to use marketisation to the same extent. Additionally, the fact that the film is focused around homosexuality makes it difficult to promote. For example, in America the film wasn't immediately labelled as a 'gay film', which allowed it to branch out to a wider audience. Haigh himself mentioned in an interview that it is hard to promote a gay film as there is a resistance to accepting it as a serious piece of work. Nevertheless, the director Andrew Haigh and producer Tristan Goligher both went onto creating a movie called 45 Years (2015) which was a huge success and was nominated for an Oscar. This could've helped to promote their movie Weekend as their fans might've been interested in their previous work.

In conclusion, it is clear that the film industry has a number of techniques when it comes to marketisation, however it depends on a film's budget to see which ones they can afford to make use of.

Exam Qustion

Explore the different ways audiences respond to your three main texts.

This question relates to Stuart Hall's reception theory, where an audience either has a preferred, negotiated or oppositional response. My three main texts are Skyfall (2012) directed by Sam Mendes, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) directed by Matthew Vaughn and Weekend (2011) directed by Andrew Haigh. Media texts are generally polysemic, meaning that the audience form various responses since the texts can have multiple meanings.

A good example of an audience having a largely preferred reading is when it comes to the James Bond franchise. Skyfall being the 23rd movie, there was no surprise on the popularity of the film as it already has a well established target audience as well as fan base. This can be proven by looking at the James Bond 007 official Facebook page which has over 4 million followers. The fact that Skyfall was the 23rd movie in the franchise, automatically implied that it will receive a largely preferred response. This suggests that the spy theme in movies is majorly enjoyed by the general public, which explains why there's now an infinity of movies consisting of similar themes and genre. Leading onto another one of my studied texts, Kingsman. Matthew Vaughn, the director and one of the writers of Kingsman is well known for his other work such as Kick-Ass (2010) and X-Men: First Class (2011) which also gained generally positive responses from the audience. This is clear as X-Men is a franchise and Kick-Ass got a sequel released. Similarly, it has been announced that a sequel of Kingsman is due to be released this year, "Kingsman: The Golden Circle". This simply highlights the fact that the movie received a preferred response from its audience. However, lower budget movies such as Weekend don't always get the desirable response. Upon it's release in Italy, Weekend was restricted to just 10 cinemas after the country's Bishops described it as "indecent", meaning it received an oppositional response. This had an impact on the audience response as it limited the scope of its release as many people would've been discouraged from watching the movie. On the other hand, others may have been encouraged to watch the movie as according to The Guardian, the movie "has proven a surprise box office smash in Italy" which led to it being shown on 21 screens the following weekend as a result to the audiences preferred response.

Another way of measuring audience response is by looking at the awards movies have been granted with. Skyfall being the most successful of my studied texts, won 2 Oscars along with 64 other wins and 115 nominations. Although Kingsman was more popular due to its larger budget of $81 million, it received less awards than Weekend whose budget was only £120,000. Kingsman received 6 wins and 21 nominations as opposed to Weekend with 20 wins and 18 nominations. Furthermore, Andrew Haigh went on to directing a movie called 45 years which was a huge success being nominated for an Oscar as well as winning 20 awards and having 20 nominations.

Exam Question - June 2015

Explore the different audience appeals of your three main texts.

My three main texts were Skyfall (2012) directed by Sam Mendes, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) directed by Matthew Vaughn and Weekend (2011) directed by Andrew Haigh. These movies have clear differences in the audience appeal, the fact that both Skyfall and Kingsman have been created from a much higher budget than Weekend, automatically means they have a higher audience appeal. This is because the marketisation for the movies was able to extend much further and therefore reaching more people globally. Whereas a low budget film like Weekend is focused on appealing to a more niche target audience.

Firstly, the uses and gratification theory helps to explain the appeal of the texts to the audience. The movie Skyfall being the 23rd movie of the James Bond franchise already had a huge fan base who were looking forward to the movies release. This implies that many people would therefore watch the movie in order to be able to discuss it with their friends/colleagues, which links to the social interaction explanation from the uses and gratifications theory. Moreover, the use of star power with Daniel Craig was likely to be a part of the audience appeal. Similarly, the Kingsman cast also consists of star power, for example Colin Firth who plays Harry Hart and Samuel L. Jackson who plays the antagonist Valentine. These actors are very well known, meaning their fans were attracted to watching the movie. The fact that the movie was based on the comic book "The Secret Service" written by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons who were credited as the writers of the film, along with Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn means that the film will appeal to the fans of the comic book. In reference to uses and gratification, Kingsman offers a sense of personal identity through the character of Eggsy played by Taron Egerton, who is a working class boy with no real opportunities to make something of himself. Some audiences may be able to identify themselves with his character as he is extremely relatable. Weekend however has no such thing as star power included, this is due to the very low budget of the film as well as the niche audience it was aimed at. The movie largely focuses on the issues among homosexuals, allowing the audience to have insight into a world we don't usually have such explicit access to. Just like in Kingsman, the protagonists Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) are very relatable and the low budget of the film helped to add to the realism of it. All three of the main texts offer the audience entertainment and a form of escapism as well as the things previously discussed.

The actual content of the texts is what also makes them appealing. For example, the action driven story lines in both Skyfall and Kingsman will be appealing to the thrill seeking audience. Kingsman also offers scenes of humour in order to keep the audience entertained throughout, in my opinion the humour included is the reason why so many people loved the movie. Whereas Weekend offers a very exclusive and real insight into issues which we don't usually hear about in our day to day lives. Although Weekend wasn't as successful as Skyfall or Kingsman, the audiences who did watch it gave it much praise. It can also be argued that Weekend wasn't as popular due to its issues revolving homosexuality, however this is disproved by the movie Moonlight (2016) directed by Barry Jenkins which won abundance of awards, including 3 Oscars. However, it did have a much higher production budget of 1.5 billion USD as opposed to Weekend's £120,000. Although it could be suggested that Moonlight had a stronger audience appeal as homosexuality has become more normalised.

To gather a better understanding of the audience appeal of the texts, it's interesting to look at the amount of followers the movies have on social media. I looked specifically at Facebook as it's one of the most popular and longest running social media websites which includes people of all ages. For example, the James Bond 007 franchise has over 4 million followers, while Kingsman has just over 750 thousand and Weekend doesn't even have an official facebook page. This shows us that there is a correlation between the audience appeal of movies and their social media accounts.

Film Comparison

Kingsman - 2014 - Matthew Vaughn -$81 million
Skyfall - 2012 - Sam Mendes - $200 million
Weekend - 2011 - Andrew Haigh - £120,000
Pride - 2014 - Matthew Warchus - N/A

Age Ratings (UK):
Kingsman - 15
Skyfall - 12A
Weekend - 18
Pride - 15

The above age ratings help our understanding of what sort of audiences the movies were supposed to attract. Although Kingsman and Skyfall are both Action movies, Kingsman has a higher age rating due to the explicit bloodshed and violent scenes (church scene) as well as nudity and profanity. Whereas Skyfall being the 23rd James Bond film already has a very large fan base meaning a lot of families would be going to watch it, therefore making the film appropriate for children as well as adults. Although there are scenes of sex and nudity as well as violence, the film was likely rated a 12A due to the wide fan base it has, meaning more people could go and watch it.

Due to the very revealing sexual content of Weekend, it has been rated an 18. Profanity and drug use is also included in the movie, all these aspects have been included in order to make the movie as realistic as possible, and in my opinion it achieved that. Due to it's sexual nature the film was restricted to just ten cinemas on it's release in Italy after the country's Bishops branded it as "indecent" and "unusable" in the country's many church-owned film theatres (AFP news site). However the film won much praise after premiering at the SXSW festival in the US. It has also won 20 awards. Pride also covering the issues of homosexuality, was rated a 15, this is because it doesn't consist of scenes as explicit as the ones in Weekend. The MPAA gave the film an R rating which is the nearest US equivalent to the UK's 15 certificate. The Independent published an article calling the MPAA's rating "draconian". Additionally, any references to homosexuality were removed from the DVD cover in the US. Overall the response to the movie was clearly good as in 2014 it won Best British Film Award.


Kingsman and Skyfall are both high budget films, meaning they would've been more popular as more money could've been spent not only on the production of the films but also on the advertising of it. This is seen through the gross earnings of the movies, with Kingsman earning 414.4 million USD ans Skyfall 1.109 billion USD. 
Whereas Weekend and Pride both had very low production budgets, Weekend being £120,000 and Pride's production budget being unavailable but assuming to be fairly low with production companies such as BBC Film and BFI supporting it. The gross earnings of Weekend was only around 484,000 USD and Pride 7.5 million USD. (information from Box Office Mojo)
These figures show that the more money is put into the production and marketing of the movie, the more likely it is to be popular and therefore earning more.

Film

We are looking at the films, Kingsman, Skyfall and Weekend to form our main case studies.

Kingsman (2014) - Matthew Vaughn - Action/Adventure/Comedy

Skyfall (2012) - Sam Mendes - Action/Adventure 

Weekend (2011) - Andrew Haigh - Drama/Romance

While Kingsman and Skyfall both represent masculinity through their male protagonists such as Harry Hart and James Bond who both wear expensive suits and have strength, wealth, skills and good manners. Such traits represent the dominant ideology of white, heterosexual, middle-aged and middle-class men. However the protagonists in the movie Weekend do not fit into any of these categories as they are homosexual and seem to be from the working-class judging by their style of living, dress code and use of language. The movie is largely about their homosexuality and the issues it brings forward, this might immediately portray the protagonists as emasculate to the audience since the typical stereotype of masculinity is deeply ingrained within society.

The genres of Kingsman and Skyfall immediately contrast with Weekend, which doesn't consist of any gadgets or weapons instead it is centrally focused on the relationship between the protagonists Russell and Glen. Although Weekend doesn't include any action scenes, the large use of dialogue makes the film a lot more realistic to the audience since it's a lot more relaxed and informal, which doesn't give off the impression that it was scripted beforehand. When looking at Kingsman and Skyfall which consist of many action scenes throughout, it is very clear that they both had a much higher film budget compared to Weekend. Kingsman had a budget of an estimated $81 million, Skyfall had an estimated $200 million and Weekend only £120,000.

Another feature of masculinity is often having sexual relationships with women, this is clearly seen in Skyfall where a majority of the female characters come across as sexual objects, this is particularly seen when Eve Moneypenny is shown shaving Bond's face and he starts to unbutton her blouse. Similarly, towards the end of Kingsman, the captured princess promises to sexually satisfy Eggsy as long as he saves the world. However, Weekend was unable to represent masculinity in this way as the protagonists are homosexual. Russell's character seems to be uncomfortable with showing he's homosexual out in public, one of the reasons for this is because he's worried about how people will react and will have a negative impact on his masculinity. However, by the end of the movie, we see that his interactions with Glen over the weekend have changed this as he kisses him in public at the train station multiple times, even after we hear someone mockingly whistling at them. This shows that masculinity and your sexuality should be two separate things.

Weekly News

Adele broke her Grammy award in two after saying it belonged to Beyonce

My source of information comes from the Independent, which is about the 2017 Grammy Awards, where Adele won the night's biggest awards, one of them being Album of the Year. During the acceptance speech Adele said "I can't possibly accept this award... The Lemonade album was just so monumental", after this she went on to breaking the award in half on stage as she declared it truly belonged to Beyonce.

However, there are only photos of this Adele moment as CBS cut away before it happened.

The Independent compared this incident to one of the main scenes from the movie Mean Girls where the protagonist (Cady Heron) breaks her Spring Fling queen crown into pieces to share with the other contestants.

Adele later added backstage "I thought this was her year. What the fuck does she have to do to win Album of the Year?" For such a successful artists like Adele to be saying such things I think it shows the public how constructed the music industry can really be, along with the rest of the media.

You can view Adele's full speech in the following SOURCE LINK

Exam Question

B3. How effectively were your three main texts marketed?

The Great British Bake Off (2010-present) is specifically constructed to attract a wide audience, this is done by having the structure of a competition, the use of Paul Hollywood the brutal judge and the humorous hosts Mel and Sue, contestants crying over failed show-stoppers and the imagery of delicious cakes. Even Mary Berry herself sells the text simply due to the older generation finding her familiar as they're likely to own at least one of her cook books since she's been releasing them since the 1970s. Not to mention the very colourful and well presented imagery of the many different foods in which the contestants have to bake have an impact on the audience as it's pleasing to the eye therefore they choose to watch the show. 46 percent of marketers say photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies and researchers found that coloured visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80 percent. This shows us that the images used to advertise GBBO are specifically chosen to attract the audience to the text. I'm a Celebrity (2002-present) similarly does this every year when choosing which celebrities enter the jungle, they have to be ones which the audience can relate to or are familiar with to keep them engaged. For example, in Series 16 (2016) they included a variety of celebrities of different age groups ranging from Larry Lamb (age 69) and Scarlett Moffatt (Age 26), this is to make sure the viewers have someone they find relatable and to attract a wider audience. Additionally, there is always further buzz created for the show through magazines and newspapers as they publish articles on "line-up rumours" each year, further encouraging audiences to keep up with the show. Gogglebox (2013-present) the British observational documentary also used a wide range of families in order to relate to a large audience, by creating a show based around real people, Channel 4 have made viewers feel they can relate to the various cast members lives and opinions.

The use of social media is a great way to further marketise texts. Twitter is a good example for this as it has over 320 million users, therefore shows are now advertising their hashtags to get more people talking about the show. At the moment The Great British Bake Off (#GBBO) has 558k followers on twitter, Gogglebox (#Gogglebox) has 237k followers, while I'm A Celebrity (#ImACeleb) has 1.13m. Makes sense that I'm a celebrity has the most followers as it's the longest running show out of the texts. The feeds are often updated in real time during the programme to encourage a 'tweet along' with the viewers, which creates a buzz about the show especially when drama unfolds. It then appears on many other people's timelines and therefore might encourage them to watch the show in order to keep up with what people are watching. This links back to the uses and gratifications theory, which suggests that people would watch the shows for social interaction, which means the media texts produce a topic of conversation between peers and colleagues. 

Social media accounts also regularly use clips and quotes from the shows to create memes and gifs. This is more engaging than a normal post and by doing so the shows are entertaining their viewers both on and off screen. Furthermore, Gogglebox go the extra step of each of the cast members their own Twitter profile, which makes it easy for them to interact with their fans. Even some of the eldest couples on the show are regular users of their Twitter accounts.

It seems that these marketing techniques have been very effective as the finale of the most recent series (7) of GBBO "gave the show its highest overnight audience ever" (BBC) with an average of 14 million people watching. I'm a Celebrity Series 16 jungle launch was "ITV's most watched programme of the year as 12.7m viewers tune in" (Daily Mail). And finally Gogglebox started with just 732,000 viewers in 2013, but eventually got moved to prime Friday night time, which captured the public's attention. Series 5 (2015) Episode 1 had 4 million people tuning in; "Gogglebox rules Friday night with biggest audience ever" (Radio Times). From this we can see that the marketisation for The Great British Bake Off is the most effective out of the three main texts I studied.

Music Industry Essay

Explore the mechanics of the modern music industry

The music industry is one of the longest running industries which has massive impact on the society we live in. Our access to music used to be quite limited as you'd have to go out and physically search for the album you're after. Whereas now it's all literally at our finger tips, you're just a couple of clicks away from accessing millions of songs. We've got the constantly developing technology to thank for that. At first it seemed like the music industry was struggling to adapt to all the rapid changes from mp3 to iTunes and now the wonderful world of streaming.

The value of the recording industry was $15 billion in 2015, this was also the year that digital (45 percent) became the primary revenue stream for recorded music, overtaking sales of physical formats (39 percent). 
The graph on the right clearly shows the decline in physical revenues from roughly $18b in 2005 to just above $5b in 2015. Whilst this was happening, the digital revenues were slowly increasing more and more each year, till 2015 where it managed to overtake physical revenues. 

Streaming remains the industry's fastest growing revenue source - jumping from just 8 million users in 2010 to 68 million in 2015. People like the idea of having pretty much any music available on their smartphone/tablet/laptop, as it's much easier than going out to physically buy the album. However, downloads remain a significant source in accessing music. It also allows you to explore and find new music very easily and quickly by giving you 'suggestions' or showing what others are listening to.

This is due to the music industry's success at being able to adapt to the rapidly changing digital age through services such as Spotify (2008), Apple Music (2015), Deezer (2009), Tidal (2015) being some of the most popular ways to listen to music.
Streaming is bringing significant changes to the way countries run their music charts, as many are now incorporating streaming into their charts to try to better reflect how music is consumed today.

Live music is the one area in the industry's revenue that remains reliable as a guaranteed source of cash. People still value the experience of physically going to see their favourite artists perform. For example, Adele's live tour in 2017 at Wembley Stadium in June/July is already all sold out - including the VIP tickets!

Adele who is currently with working with Sony through Columbia Records "with biggest ever record deal for British Musician" according to The Guardian. Her album "25" was number 1 in the global top 10 albums of 2015. Adele is clearly doing very well for herself, unfortunately that is not the case with all musicians.

After watching the documentary about the life and death of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, directed by Asif Kapadia; "Amy" (2015). It opened my eyes to how the music industry will stop at nothing to exploit their artists. Although everyone seemed to had noticed Amy's drug problems and eating disorder, not even her own father thought she needed help. If the music industry took better care of her, maybe she'd still be alive today, rather than exploiting her till she could no longer handle the weight on her shoulders. The same could be said for many other amazing artists such as Kurt Cobain. This shows how toxic the music industry can be.

Weekly News

"I hoped I'd DIE on operating table to en my anguish over face birthmark"

Rory McGuire (22) has suffered years of cruel taunts due to the birthmark on his face. It has deprived him from living a normal life as he'd always get stared at on the street and bullied in school. He told the daily record "I haven't had it easy over the past few years, juggling lots of operations with having to deal with ignorance and prejudice due to the fact I looked a little different". He felt so low at one point that he thought dying on the operating table would end this anguish.

Fortunately, his latest operation has Rory on the road to recovery, with the birthmark gradually shrinking after each operation.

Rory also mentions the members of Ayr Belleisle Golf Club as they treated him with kindness and respect over the years, which helped him a lot through his tough times. Additionally, social media posts triggered major support from around the world.

News like this highlights the massive impact the media has over what people think about their appearance. It advertises the act that people have to look a certain way, which means that in cases like this where someone might have a deformity, they are mocked and bullied for it instead of being provided with support. Therefore it is no surprise that Rory was thinking such dark thoughts about his life.