Album Advert Analysis

Charles Skoulding

All Time Low – The Party SceneThis advert is extremely conventional in that is follows the exact trend of the album, except it is followed down the screen.The advert reads that there is a special edition DVD/album combination released. It catches the eye of the viewer because anybody who is interested in the band will associate the already released album with this and it will catch their eye.The colour scheme of the album is fairly usual, featuring a floral pattern in the background.The band logo and album are in a bar across the near top of the album and then the CD information is at the bottom with a gap in-between. This is conventional and is featured on seemingly lots of adverts.

All Time Low – The Party SceneThe information at the bottom features things such as ratings to draw the attention of the public to the critics reviews which pull in a 4/5 stars.At the top of the album there is a boarding pass. This carries the theme with it that, as the album is called ‘the party scene’, the bands party escapades led them to be on a flight to a different country. This adds a sense of awe and pulls on teenage heartstrings, the presumed target audience. This furthermore brings a sense of realism to the band, making the audience feel more in touch with the band being ‘real people’.The other fact that led me to believe this was aimed at the teenage demographic, and party related was around the band logo the use of ink spots, skull drawings and drink bottles. Also the album name has been written on lined paper, commonly associated with school students.

Blink-182 - NeighborhoodsThis poster is from possibly the most well known pop-punk band – blink-182. This is from their debut album neighborhoods and the poster follows a constant colour scheme from top to bottom. The album name and picture seamlessly blend to show the band logo made up of a neighbourhood of houses. This adds brand identity.The font used in this image is a complex font made up of different shaped straight lines. The font is like this because of the similarity of the letters to streets and neighbourhoods. This ties in well with the album title.The information at the bottom shows the key features in big font and the less key, descriptive information in a smaller font.

Blink-182 - NeighbourhoodsThere is, as usual, record label information at the bottom of the advert.The band have addedTo the album cover. This single was released before the album and so by doing this, the band are able to draw people who have heard the song and want to hear more into buying the album. This also increases album hype. The background of the image adds the contrasting piece of the colour scheme. Everything else on the page is in white, whereas the background is in black. The white font and image could be to represent an image that the band are trying to give, but to me it effectively makes the image and text stand out from the page.The advert is very dark with low-key lighting effects. This contrasts the previous advert and shows different moods.

Conclusions

• There seems to be a strong sense of brand identity between the likeness of the albums and the album adverts.

• There seems to be a typical theme in the layout of album adverts.