Advert Analysis

Typical features of the album advertisements include: the album cover (either in full or adapted to fit the entire page), dates of the album release, and usually the name of one or more of their hit singles that appear on the album. They all fall under the Indie Rock genre.

The advert for ‘Free the Bees’ has a simple white background, featuring the album artwork taking up most of the page space. It’s made up of primarily warm colours. Looking closely, there is an image of a city superimposed underneath the band in the tree. Underneath the album artwork are the words:

The new album by the Bees featuring ‘Wash in the Rain’ & ‘Horsemen’

‘Free the Bees’ – out 28^th June 2004 – Double vinyl & CD

www.thebees.info

The font used is a simple sans serif (including the album title itself, which is displayed on a banner underneath the artwork). The whole band is seen to be represented in the image, a trait which is commonly associated with Indie bands. Apart from the band name, there are no signifiers that are used in all of the band’s adverts. The record label which supports this particular album is ‘Virgin Records’, a very well-known and mainstream record label. This is odd considering most Indie bands tend to go with less well-known labels. On the other hand, this is The Bees second studio album, and only their first with Virgin. Their first studio album was released under ‘We Love You’ in the UK (which does not seem to have a website or any information about it anywhere, which could mean it was a short-lived record label, or a record label that the band themselves created for their debut. Ironically, the bands US record label for their first three albums is ‘Astralwerks’ who are a subsidiary of Virgin Records.

From this information we can deduce that The Bees music is aimed towards the Indie target group, although with Indie music becoming more and more popular, it can be seen that it is also aimed towards a more mainstream audience.