Skills development/evaluation

The most recognisable development has been my theoretical understanding of the advertising and marketing procedures. Our task is centralised around the publication of a new soap we have thought of and so, this has extended my general knowledge upon the whole process of developing a TV programme and marketing it as a product.

The general nature of the advertisement world is to force people into purchasing their product whether they want it or not. A successful marketing campaign will target their audience and embed within their minds a need to purchase their product (or, have ever thought to agree with the message). This aim highlighted to me the importance of having researched the disciplinary market your product is aimed at and emphasised the importance of comprehensively understanding your target audience.

Soaps attract a broad audience and within this broad audience there are smaller audience groups. I felt it was compulsory for me to conduct extensive market research. I had arranged a focus group meeting, within the location we chose to film, with staff members we hoped to replicate. I had done this independently from the group, i believe this highlights my improved abilities of planning and research. Consequently, the focus group had us re plan our entire trailer due in invaluable information that was fed back and so we accepted that the focus group was a tremendous success. Not only had we re planned our trailer but the theory we based our soap on had changed. The characters that were to feature (hypothetically) in our soap were exaggerated stereotypes that subtracted from the realism. After having evaluate the response from our focus group members we accepted what they had to say with open minds and agreed to transform our characters into more refined archetypical characters.

Once all the research needed had been acquired we began grasping the difficulty of creatively solving the problem at hand. Fundamentally, what generates success through marketing strategies and advertisements is the ability to think of new and innovative techniques/methods of attracting and sustaining an audience. I therefore believe my ability to think creatively (outside-the-box) has improved.

We'd begin group discussions after we had researched conventions of media texts to discuss whether we'd like to adopt them or develop them. I believe the most innovative idea we've had was to transform the traditional communal location featured within a soap, which most often revolved around a minuscule geography location, and develop this in a working environment which can feature story lines that transport audience away from the offices and into their homes. We hoped this will give an extra dimension to our soap and generating a new genre of TV that converges the conventions of Drama and Soaps to offer something new.

Our initial intention was to have something that showed greater diversity in the representation of characters, which is a vague objective although we concentrated this to social class, gender and religion. We also wanted to include current affairs and communicate some kind of political message for a more intellectual audience. My having an office environment it can show employees in different levels of the organisation that will have different salaries, and therefore having different lifestyles/class. The boss is a female Muslim which in itself fights off any preconceived assumptions that women are not dominant in the working environment, brings awareness to sexist issues that are forever being disputed, highlights the awareness of the Muslim faith and the current affairs that are currently being highlighted in other media forms. Here we are sending out a strong message through one character that can reach out to many people due to the characters broad characteristics. We have two strong features to this character and this can be interpreted by two main groups of people; females that are career orientated and people of the Muslim faith that wish to see someone practicing their faith without having explosives tied around their waist. We're highlighting these two concerns and sending out a political message which may also interest some one of a political nature.

Our communal area based in the offices of a company dealing in the fashion trade. Someone who is interested in business can also be attracted to this. We have creatively thought of a way to communicate an impression that this business exists amongst our viewers as this will generate a more loyal fan base (seen by Eastenders, actors have been harassed in the street by fanatics), the idea is to feature on the website a business profile. This business profile would appear to converge with a business website, which would subsequently reject the conventions of a colour contrasting, 'over-loaded', traditional soap website and contain statistical information of the businesses finances through this economic climate and inform viewers of other corporate information to give our soap a real identity.

I believe it's crucial to have an understanding with technological advancements. Using the website to target all the new-age 'surfers' is crucial in generating a fan base. You must generate features that are seen to be addictive, or habit forming, to attract users to continue visiting the site. Due to the development of TV it's hard for shows to generate high viewings due the amount of TV channels that can cater for very narrow audiences. The same applies to websites, if not more so as the number of sites is mammoth, so in theory, to generate those large numbers you must have that 'hook'. I believe this business profile highlights our creative and innovative thoughts as amongst the research we have conducted there has been no evidence that this has been thought of before.

Also our awareness of technological advancements is predominantly because our generation has been introduced to mobile devices from a young age. Today mobile devices are not a luxury, but a necessity to life. Everyone has a mobile, people are able to be contacted at any time, at almost any place and about anything. Another way to tackle this problem of locating this broad audience is to add a text marketing strategy. This basically means people can register to receive up to date information about the soap, off the hours of broadcasting to create a further dimension to our soap (to add to the impression that it exists in reality). This feature can be diverse and can be sent from characters, general updates as though from a narrator or can be from producers themselves asking for feedback such as whether the company should accept this new business deal. This text strategy is becomingly increasingly popular although it has not been done with soaps. We are expanding our creative thought and incorporating the use of technological consumables in alternative ways to market our project.

Our project is a convergence of main disciplinaries and a development in soap opera's. We have established a foundation for this soap to be a replica of the ever changing, realistic setting of London suburbia. Originally we were predominantly inspired by Eastenders as we felt we related to this more so than the stylised Hollyoaks. We have introduced a new edge that's innovative and fits in perfectly with the current state of the nation that can appeal not only to the rich but the poor, not only to the young but the old, not only to the business men but the business women, and not only the intellectuals but the dim witted.