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advertising evaluation-
https://youtu.be/cho3L4UCtmE (Our video advert)
The brief that was given to our group is that we were to
create a thirty second advert. The advert was to recreate a unilever product of
our choice. Unilever is a company that promotes a range of different brands
like: Dove, Lynx, Lipton and Ben and Jerry’s. It’s aim was to change the
demographics of the product that we thought was best suited.
The finished product and feedback-
What product did I choose?
As an induvial, we all chose different products and had original
advert ideas before becoming a group. When we became a group, we all decided to
choose a product that we thought was best suited to our style of filming and
that would make it easier to fit the brief; therefore, we decided to choose Ben
and Jerry’s. We chose Ben and Jerry’s because the advert was bright and fun,
and we all had additional ideas to improve. This was like already having ideas
for a slogan and how we would have certain shots, it made it feel more creative
compared to the other choices.
Who
is the current target audience for the product and who did you decide to appeal
to? Why?
The current audience for Ben and Jerry’s is ages five to
twenty-four. As a group we thought of changing the target audience to an older audience
such as ages sixty and above. We chose to do this as the ages were aimed at
younger people already and we knew the product can be aimed at all ages because
it is a food product that mostly enjoys. In addition, we chose this product as
we knew with the advert, we could use certain materials or styles to aim to the
older generation. With this, we focused on colour design, slogans, lighting,
costume and sound. We knew if we were aiming it to this audience, we would have
to at least include an older person in the advert and as a group we were able
to easily have an older actor.
How did you collect the feedback (comments / responses
from others) on your finished advert from your target audience? Provide a
summary of the main points.
I collected my information by using a google doc quiz and emailed and sent it out to people. We gave them a survey of questions such as what they think of the advert we have produced.
Looking through the results we begin to get an idea of how people view our advert. With the age range we knew that the average was seventeen year old's which means it may affect how they view the advert due to them thinking differently compared to a forty year old. In addition to this, the majority voted that the age range was sixty and over which is what we wanted the target audience to be; it helped us see that we were successful in reaching the target audience. Using a questionnaire helped us see if we were successful in producing an advert that hit the main targets.
Appropriateness to audience: do you think you managed to
get the main message to your target audience you specified in pre-production.
Would the advert have an appropriate impact on them?
I personally think the main message/purpose of the advert was
reached. Our main message was to get an older target audience to buy ice cream
and relive the taste. The ice cream is meant to make you feel young and free
that you won’t want to put the ice cream tub down! In pre-production we had to
plan our vision out and is why we decided to put two generations into the advert.
The original storyboard is that the first part is of an older man looking down
and picks up this Ben and Jerry’s tub. When he takes a bite, he becomes shocked
and goes into a flash back of when he was younger. In the flashback we see him
moving about quickly and everything is bright and free, he looks happy. It then
goes out of the flashback back to the older man and he decides to take another
bite. We think this was an appropriate advert as it wasn't discriminative and followed the rule of the bcap regulations. This means making sure my advert didn't have any: swearing, influencing younger people or discriminative actions or comment in the adverts. I think the advert would have an appropriate impact on the audience as I feel like it would give them a nostalgic feel and make them think of the good times in their childhood/ teen years.
Think about the technical and aesthetic qualities of your advertisement. Analyse your use of: mise-en-scene; camera; editing and sound.
For our advert, we wanted a summer aesthetic. We wanted this cause of having bright colours in our advert as well as ice cream being a summer food. With mise-en-scene, you have nine topics to focus on when creating a film; these are: colour design, costumes, iconography, setting, make-up, actors, props, lighting and sound. These are all key factors you have to think about when creating a film/advert,
Colour design-
The colour design is such an important part of our advert. We had to think about what colours we wanted to be featured into our advert. We knew that we wanted bright colours so we knew that would be like blue, yellow, red and green. Blue was a key colour of our advert as the weather would have a blue sky and the Ben and Jerry’s tub has a lot of blue on it. When thinking of colour designs it was important to think about editing as well. This was like in the editing process we realised we wanted everything to be a bit brighter so we decided to bring up the saturation. However, because of certain shadows from the weather it made certain parts look like a colour it wasn’t meant to. This made it difficult in the editing process. It meant for next time when we did a location reccy on Em’s grandad’s kitchen we focused on colour. We realised he had a lot of white in his kitchen and with a window of natural lighting it would look more blue on camera. This is not what we wanted. So when it came to filming we made sure not to film at certain angles to get that colour.
Costume-
Costume can represent a character from their emotion or even how they act. For our advert, we decided we didn't want any costumes that were out there and that we wanted it to be simple. So with our actors we made sure that there was no logos or labels on. The clothing was normal clothing like jeans and jumpers ect. We wanted to do this because it would have more of the audiences focus on the product rather than the actors.
Iconography-
Iconography is having certain aspects of genres embedded into your film/tv advert. This could be like a gangster genre being included into the advert. It is stereotypes of what you would think to be in a film. So sci-fi would be like colours blue and gray and scientist and technology. In our advert, I personally think that we didn't include many iconography as we wanted it all bright colours and we didn't get any inspiration from films to create the advert.
Setting-
Setting is a key part about a narrative/story line in film. With setting it sets the scene of what is happening to the character. With our advert, we had two settings which were: the kitchen and a park. We chose a kitchen as it was realistic and made it more authentic as well as causal. Our idea was to keep it natural because if you just have a person going into the kitchen to get ice cream it's not making the product look that in your face that you don't want to try. We then chose a park because it is the flashback of when the man is younger. We thought park would remind the audience of childhood as most of us spent our time on a field or at a park. The setting helps with our adverts story line so it makes it easy for the audience to follow along.
Make-up-Make-up can be used for special effects to create a character or to match with the costume. In our advert we didn't use make-up but if we couldn't find an older actor we could of got a different actor and used make-up to make them look older.
Actors-
For actors we didn't need a lot, we only needed two. We needed someone who was or looked over the age of sixty. We was able to use Em's grandad for this as he was willing to help us and it made it easier if we needed to re film something as Em always had contact with him. Our next person had to be younger but didn't need a specific age. This is why we chose my friend Reece has I also always had contact and it was easier to collide a production schedule as we had a similar timetable.
Props-
For props we didn't need a lot. We wanted the main focus on the Ben and Jerry's tub. The only props we got for the advert was : the Ben and Jerry's ice cream, the spiny hat and the plastic spoon. We didn't want to go over board on the props because of the cost and to keep the advert simple. We knew having too many props would making filming harder such as keeping up with the continuity. The ice cream was used because it was the main product and the spoon was so it linked with the scene before. The spiny hat was to represent that it was his younger self and it also had bright colours which matched the theme.
Lighting-
For lighting, we were shooting in the day time so we had a lot of ambient lighting to use. Luckily, the day we were shooting the younger person we had quite bright lighting as it was sunny. This meant that we was matching the aesthetic we wanted to. The only problem we faced was making sure we were shooting at the right angle because of the lighting. We knew we couldn't film at a certain angle where there was a lot of shadow as you would see the camera crew throughout it; it would also mess up the continuity as the shadows would change.
Sound-
When thinking of sound for the advert, we knew we didn't want it to be too extreme. The sound had to match with the target audience well. We didn't want music that wasn't pleasing, we knew that is could annoy the audience and it wouldn't reach the target we wat which is to sell the product. We also wanted the type of music and sound to match up with our target audience which was sixty and above. So we went with elevator music because it wouldn't be too annoying and matched with the advert well. In addition, we used non-diegetic sounds such as a voice over in our advert. We used it right at the end to say ' relive the taste' so we were highlighting our slogan.
Effectiveness of content: Do you think your finished advert effectively sells the product to the specified audience through its storyline/narrative?
Personally, I think the finished advert sells the product to the
specified audience through the story line/ narrative we created. I think this
because, we used actors that matched up to the target audience. The story line
would link well to the audience because we have a flashback reference so that
if the audience get this product the feeling they get when they eat the ice
cream is what you felt when you were younger. In addition, I think that the
storyline is easy to follow and means that people are more likely to buy the
product. As well as this, we knew that this storyline wouldn’t offend the
audience as an older target audience may be offended more easily. We made sure
things like sound wasn’t too quiet because as people get older you lose your
hearing.What was the effectiveness of the persuasion techniques you used to sell the product?
We decided to go more with a sub-conscious persuasion. This was like giving the nostalgic feel for the audience and making them remember what they were like as a child/teen. Having this persuasion links to our slogan relive the taste as the audience will be able to relive the feeling. It makes them think that they might be able to relive the taste of Ben and Jerry’s and make it feel like it is their first time trying it all over again. I think this makes it effective as it is such a nice feeling to be able to reflect on your personal life just by an advert; it makes it feel like the main focus is the audience as well as the product, and that it is the important part. In addition, it makes the older generation realise that it’s a product they can involve their family. So this is like if they have grandchildren they know they can share.
Clarity of communication: what was the message you were trying to send to the target audience? What were the main techniques you used to send that message? e.g., I wanted to tell teen audiences that drinking Bovril is not just for older people so I used younger actors and hip/colloquial language to appeal to them in the hope that young audiences would identify with them.
The main message of the advert was that the taste is so good that you want to relive it. In addition to that, it is for everyone to eat; this is why we used actors of all age ranges from 17-60. Having the story of the older man eating the ice cream and then having a flashback to when he was a teen eating the same ice cream; the flavor never gets old, and no matter how many times you have it, it feels like you are reliving it for the first time. However, our appeal was to the older generation and I feel like we did this well as our main character was the older person who we was aiming our target audience to. For once a fun product is something that everyone can use and tastes good.
Overall, do you feel your advert is fit for purpose? i.e., does it look professional and does it comply with advertising regulations? You must extract information from the ASA / BCAP code here as it will meet the requirements for Unit 2: GC1.
I personally feel that our advert fits the purpose. I think this because, it looks professional as we have logos of the product as well as keeping up with the continuity. What I mean by continuity is that everything is the same throughout each scene. An example of this is, if in one of the clips a girls hair is tucked behind her ears but the next scene its tucked in front without the audience seeing the action of her moving the hair forward, the continuity is off. It needs to be able to flow through the scenes even when changing camera angles. In addition to this, we made sure the advert was appropriate and was not rude. So this included: no swearing, no sexual comments and no racial comments.
Personal reflection?
How does the final advertisement compare with your original intentions? Reflect on your documentation, e.g., you storyboards and other pre-production, final advertisement and audience/peer/tutor feedback.
Overall, I feel like the advert matched up to the standards we wanted it to be. With our original idea, it was a bright and colourful advert and we mapped that out on our storyboard. This means that, we had an idea that could blossom into something great and in the end the advert matched up and was similar to the storyboard. When it came to the pre-production documents it was very organised and very thorough with the detail we put into it. We knew as a group that the pre-production documents were important and it is something that we could fall back upon if we needed to change something in our advert. Finally, the audience's feedback was positive and it is what we wanted the outcome to be; the advert was meant to make people smile at it and think that is actually quite creative how you have produced something that matches with the slogan. The advert meant that people could sit back and relax and have more of the positive side of social media and advertising.
Self-evaluation: Reflect on how satisfied you are with your final advert. Would you do anything differently if you were to undertake the task again? Finally, evaluate your own involvement in the project.
In conclusion, I feel like the advert was really successful. Although we had challenges, we overcame them and still managed to get the advert all edited and uploaded in time. If I had to undertake this task again I think what I would do differently is change the location. I feel like location was a problem in this task as everything about the location got changed quite quickly. I feel like if we were to choose a location I would choose the beach to match with the bright colours and to match the summer theme; especially when it focuses on ice cream. Personally, I feel like I did a lot of the work load. Em and I did a lot of the pre-production documents as well as filming because a member didn't want to contribute and another member got added to the group late. However, I feel like it was a positive thing to happen in the group cause it made me realise what i can produce to people with a lot of pressure on me. I think this advert went successful and that if I had to undertake it again I wouldn't change a lot cause I thought it was good.
References-
https://iceboxmnl.com/products/ben-jerrys-pint-473-ml
Ben and Jerry’s photo accessed 9th May 2022
