Evaluation - Question 1 MYSPACE

On our Myspace the text anchors all the images on the page and gives them a reason to be there. It is also aimed at grabbing the audiences attention and make them want to read on. Each image on the myspace is headed, therefore letting the audience know what it is about. It also emphasizes the visuals as the audience do not only have them to look at, but also the text to read as well. To make it clear to the audience that some pieces of text are more important than others we made them bigger and kept the less important things smaller. We also made titles bold and capitalled to make them stand out a lot more to catch the audiences attention and make it easy for them to find what they want to read.

The iconography used throughout the myspace is representaional of the band because the font is yellow and white on a black background which is very typical of New York as it looks like a New York taxi, therefore enforcing the theme of New York. Also on our website the majority of the images taken are from inside the dance studio, connoting to the audience just how important dance is for them. Our website is very much based around the two themes of dance and New York making it more central in the branding of the artist.
For the hiphop/pop genre there tend to be a lot of visuals of the artist themselves and a lot of advertisements for the merchandise and links to websites. We tried to encorporate this into our myspace to make it clear of the genre by using advertisements to our fashion store, links to our facebook and twitter, and having lots of images of each of us.

To entice the audience a myspace tends to give fans a more personal relationship with the artist. They usually include ways of contacting the artist, giving feedback and have elements where you can find out things about them you would not normally know. On our website we tried to use this insight into the artists life as much as possible with the use of behind the scenes pictures where you can see the girls in their everyday lives, links to their facebook and twitter to let fans become even closer to them, having personal information about them such as their likes and their background, being able to add them as friends and message them allowing them to become more personally involved with them and allowing them to comment on thewebsite, letting them leave their feedback and have an input into the artists life. Also the general tone of the website is very chatty and friendly making the audience feel more comfortable and giving the audience a more laid back interpretation of the artist letting them relate to them more.

On our myspace we have used the record labels email addresses as a way to market the record label. It is a form of viral marketing and word of mouth endorsement as people can see the email addresses and pass them onto friends via conversations, however they can also use the email addresses to email the label if they are interested, promoting the label entirely over the web. Also the fact that the fans can download the artist's music over the site and get onto other sites linked with them are all forms of viral marketing as they are promoting themselves over the web to their audience. We thought that as our artist was independant and would not have the money to do mainstream campaigning, viral marketing would be the most cost effective and useful way of promoting them as it can have a wide reach for minimal cost.