Assignment 1: TV ADVERTS- a CRITICAL REVIEW and ANALYSIS

 

Introduction

There have been obvious changes in the styles of advertising from the 18th century when branded product showed up in print advertising. A successful advertisement absorbs viewers, listeners or readers attention and desire. A certain technique in advertisements helps to achieve an increase in sales and makes the customer believe they are gaining from the purchase.

In this review, I will look at some persuasive techniques employed on television advertisements and its most commonly used form and narrative structures. I will also demonstrate methods by which the audience is considered and measured and may respond to television advertising.

 

 

Advertising Techniques

Intertextual references

‘Embrace Life’ Ad created by Alexander Commercials made for Sussex Safer Roads in the UK, released on 20 January 2010 on YouTube and had over a million views in the first two weeks which reached to over 16,599,000 views by March 2013.

The ad has a powerful emotional impact. Embrace Life uses intertextual references where the text is absorption and transformation of another text or meaning. This commercial persuades the audiences to wear their seatbelts. The transition of the family hug into the family seatbelt represents that if we wear our seatbelt, we will be more able to continue to have time with our loved ones.

 

 

Promise a Specific Benefit

The persuasive elements of an advertisement which promises something specific comes from the importance of the benefit to the target audience. In 2016 American Family Life Assurance Company, AFLAC introduced a new marketing campaign which claims that changes in a person’s health care would not impact their lifestyle. The campaign released a television commercial, ‘Ski Patrol’, which featured the Aflac Duck’s sixth appearance in advertising. Directed by Martin Granger, Ski Patrol opens on a mountain with a young man after having a serious fall. It communicates how this injury can make him appear as a ”moving-back-in-with-his-parents,” type person. The Aflac Duck makes a comedic appearance in this commercial, and explains to everyone, including younger consumers, that their lives don’t have to change when their health changes.

 

 

Solution to a problem

A problem/solution technique might be used in advertising when a product or service is a problem solver in which the director tries to grab and engage people who have the problem, or people who want to avoid getting into a problem situation. This technique particularly works well when the target audience has a big problem or concern and the bigger the problem, the better it works.

John Lewis traditionally makes a big Christmas advert for the consumers of the UK. This particular advert symbolizes the beginning of the festive season and the start of Christmas shopping. In 2017 it released ‘Moz The Monster’ an advert which features a little boy called Joe who struggles to stay awake during the day after playing all night with Moz. He has trouble sleeping until Moz gives Joe a Christmas gift, which is a starry night lamp and then he is able to fall asleep. After this Moz disappears. The target audience of this advert is mostly parents especially those who have little children who may have difficulty of sleeping during the night.

 

 

Here is another example of a problem/solution advertisement in which the advertiser directly mentions his technique in the opening of the shot. ‘Gaps on Gaps on Gaps’ advertisement introduces TITE FOAM product made by the German-owned American brand of Adhesives to fill cracks and gaps around the house.

 

Repetition

Repetition technique in advertising simply which makes the audience believe in the product or services. The combination of sight and sound in this technique let the advertiser disguise the repetition of the intended message by changing its delivery from visual to audio form. TBWA\Chiat\Day Agency has produced “Hard Work Work” advertisement for its long-time client Gatorade. The agency has used repetition technique to dedicate athletes around the world who all know what it takes to win.

 

 

Celebrity Endorsement

Celebrity endorsement is a worldwide strategy in advertising. Advertisers employ celebrities, athletes or professionals to praise enthusiastically the virtues of a product and recommend the audience the use of the product. After George Clooney became Nespresso global brand ambassador by extending his relationship with the brand in North America, a couple of students at the University of Exeter made an interview with people in the streets of Exeter to see how effective celebrity endorsements were for the brand. Here are the Nespresso George Clooney commercial and the street interview the students arranged.

Methods by which audience is considered, measured and may respond to television advertising

In order to achieve the effectiveness of an advertisement, advertisers need to measure how their audience will respond to it and target television advertising strategies which engage the right audience. Their planning needs to pinpoint the TV channels and times of day that are best suited for the target audience. Different audiences are determined by their age, gender, occupation, disposable income, hobbies/ interests and cultural differences. Different audiences’ understanding of the same message is not always the same. Audience measurement techniques can vary from ratings, face to face interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, BARP and the use of television research agencies.

Here I will have a look at how BARP rates the audiences viewing of commercials.

Since 1981, Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) has been presenting the official viewing figures for UK television audiences by commissioning research companies such as Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media, and RSMB to collect data which represents the viewing behaviour of the UK’s TV households. BARB data offers broadcasters and advertisers a minute-by-minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels. This information is vital for assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have performed and provides the basis for airtime advertising trading.

Below are two videos that explain what the BARP does, including how the BARB panel works and how it retrieves its data.

 

 

 

BARB reports viewing to commercials, known as commercial impacts, in the same way that we report viewing to programming. These data are relied upon by advertisers and agencies looking to assess the return on investment of their advertising campaigns.

BARB was the first television industry currency in the world to deliver a measurement of dynamically served advertising; They have been delivering a solution for Sky Ad Smart since 2013. Their measurement system gives all BARB customers the ability to see the extent to which commercial impacts have moved into this new commercial format. For example, its data show that Sky AdSmart impacts increased by 92% year-on-year, based on all individuals for the calendar month of January in 2017 and 2018. In January 2018, Sky AdSmart ads accounted for 1.15% of all impacts sold by Sky.

Below is a chart by thinkbox which demonstrates classifications for the UK TV audience  to further target the audience and view their TV habits.Audience profiles chart.jpg

 

 

Reception Theory (Encoding & Decoding)

Reception theory refers to Stuart Hall’s theory which suggests that a media texture is first encoded by the creator and then decoded by the audience. Reception theory discusses the audience reception from a texture in three different ways: dominant or preferred, negotiation and oppositional. Dominant reading happens when the audience views the text as it was intended by the creator. Negotiation reading is a compromise between the dominant and oppositional reading. The audience accepts the creators intended meaning of the text but has their own input into the text as well. In oppositional reading of the text, the audience completely rejects the intended meaning of the creator and creates their own reception of that.

 

Main Form and Narrative Structure of TV Ads

The narrative structure is usually used in advertisements so it can tell the audience a story and keep their attention. Examples of the narrative structure of TV advertisement could include stand-alone drama, serial drama, comedy drama, animation, surreal narrative, parody, pastiche, realism, anti-realism, surrealism, avant-garde, and expressionism. Below I will have a look at a few of these forms and structures.

 

Stand Alone Drama

This is a single advertisement introducing a production or service, which is not linked to any other existing advertisement for that brand, product or service. ‘Hovis’ released in 1973 can be mentioned as an example of stand-alone advertising. Carl Barlow was 13 and at stage school when he first scaled the hill to star in a commercial that earned itself a place in British television history.

 

 

Series Drama

This format develops a story in different episodes mostly to communicate a special message. Founded by businessman Thomas Siebel, the Montana Meth Project (MMP), as a saturation level advertising campaign seeks to reduce methamphetamine use, particularly among teenagers. Its Common elements are the deterioration of each teenage subject’s health and living conditions, moral compromise, and regret.

 

 

Animated Drama

Including various visual elements of animated techniques, animated advertisements nowadays are the most powerful and profitable way of promoting a company’s products. They may attract consumers with more effectiveness than other methods. It allows the advertiser to create campaigns, which work well on both television and internet platforms. Colourful button-shaped chocolates and the flagship product of the Mars Wrigley Confectionery, M&M’s when they released the ‘Human’ appearance of the product, put a new twist on BBDO’s “Irresistibility” campaign. According to Bayne, the enduring effectiveness of M&M’s campaign (running since 1996) is that the brand has successfully and credibly integrated an animated candy universe with that of the real world.

 

 

Comedy Drama

Advertisers use this style to attract the audience to their product as they might pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a serious one. The key to funny advertising is assuring that the humour is appropriate to both product and customer, and the advertiser must be certain the positive effects outweigh the negative before making their commercials. Showing off the “car finder” function on the new 2016 Hyundai Genesis, Kevin Hart plays a dad watching his daughter go out on a first date.

 

 

Evaluation

When we started the course with Katty for the advertisement, I had no idea of the advertisment techniques, styles, form and narrative structure of producing them. I always had thought about commercials just as like other kind of media productions. We had a look at different techniques with examples, the way the audience is measured or responses to an advert and how they target television advertising strategies which engage the right audience. All these materials helped me to have good references to have a review of different techniques for writting my article. I had research on a few advertising websites and tried to find good examples of various techniques that the advertisers use for making their production. I could get to a range of commercials that I had never seen. My favorite part of this assignment was how BARP rates the audiences viewing of the commercials.

I hope you will find my article both helpful and informative.

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