Evaluation 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Within my A2 portfolio I have created two TV adverts, two radio adverts and two web pop-ups I believe these creations combine to promote my product/service effectively. I believe that they are effective because of the common conventions I have used to attract my audience’s attention. I think I had used a variety of techniques and features that are used within the media industry to get the attention of people and convince them that what I am selling is what they desire. I have done this in a variety of ways, one of which being the continuity between each of the advertisements I have created.

When creating each of the individual ad’s I knew that it was in the best interest of my product/service to develop an ongoing theme, this would help to ensure that when audiences see one of the adverts for the specific product/service they will instantly associate it with said product/service and this will increase its reputation, hype of it. When we created our television advert for ‘Star Suds’ there was a strong comical element, this was created by using different camera angles and props. We knew that we had to carry the comical element on throughout the radio ad and the web pop-up, however it wasn’t as straight forward as we didn’t have the advantage of the visual aids as we did in the TV ad, so we had to find other ways to keep the comedy element present. Where our radio advertisement was concerned we did this by using traditionally comical voices, voices that have been used throughout different eras within comedy. Doing this helped with the continuity between the adverts, it kept the same theme and increased the likelihood of people connecting the two adverts and then in turn thinking about the product they are promoting.

Keeping the comedy element present in the web pop-up was something we didn’t do as well as in the radio ad. We went in a completely different direction and had the pop-up as a representation of the products long lasting ability. The pop-up was done in a grey colour scheme so that it looked like an old picture, the concept we had in our heads was that if the picture is set multiple years ago we can portray ‘Star Suds’ as a detergent that will stand the test of time. This was the concept we decided on because we thought that it was a good advertising technique and audiences could relate to it. However, whilst doing this we lost the comedy factor that the other advertisements had, this could be damaging when promoting the product as people wont relate it to the radio and TV adverts when they see it which may mean they wont instantly relate it to ‘Star Suds’ and that’s an important element when dealing with web pop-ups because people only pay attention for a short period of time if any at all.

As well as having the existing comedy element in all of my productions I think that having the house style I have adopted is also effective in linking my TV advert with the other two advertisements. When planning for my adverts I had to come up with a colour scheme that was going to catch the audience’s attention straight away but at the same time make it something that will stick in their mind. I had tried various colour schemes when I decided on the green and yellow, it coordinated well with the products packaging and the way I presented it made the yellow eye catching. This is a benefit for my product because even if people don’t particularly pay attention to adverts, they wont be able to help being slightly absorbed when they spot the colour scheme because its so eye catching. This could help as it could lead audiences to pay attention and in turn purchased the product. I used this house style throughout both my visual advertisements, in the television adverts we had the strap line appear twice in the selected colour scheme. Having it there twice was just an attempt to give ourselves the best chance of catching the audience’s attention. We also continued the house style in to the web pop-up, we had our strap line for the product in the yellow and green colour scheme in a large font. This was so that it was the first thing people would notice, the fact that people only look at pop-ups for a few seconds means that its imperative to make the most important things highly noticeable. “Advertising slogans are short, memorable group of words used in advertising campaigns. The advertising phrases are means of drawing attention to one distinctive feature (an aspect of a product).The purpose is to emphasize a phrase that an entity wishes to be remembered by.” This is the definition of slogans/strap lines and I think that I achieve this, I use a short statement that should catch the reader’s attention instantly and it is emphasising that my product is the best you can get.

I think that when analysing all of my productions for ‘Star Suds’ you can see that they are effective in grabbing an audiences attention but weather are not they are to the professional standard that they should be, there’s a lot that can be criticised. When looking at the television advert its clear to see that nowhere near enough attention has been payed to the finer details; the background of the setting, continuity of costumes, background noise. Also I think the editing was unprofessional, it helped our advert look better than it originally was but I don’t think it added much more. It wouldn’t make someone look at the advert and think that we are a renowned brand, it looks like juvenile and animated. We had never filmed or edited anything of this calibre before and it was noticeable in the ad, I think it looks quite amateur and it wouldn’t be something that you would see on television. I think to improve this advert we would have to make some drastic changes. We would have to pay attention to the small details so that the original filming looked professional, it looked like we put hardly any effort into it because of the bad quality of camera angles and filming. Also we would have to work on the editing and use techniques that are more common in ads rather than transitions and animations that would look more at home in a children’s cartoon.

The other group of adverts we created were for ‘H&B’ solicitors firm, so the conventions and techniques we used to make the advert effective in promoting the service were quite different. When planning for these adverts I knew that continuity would be vital, there are so many adverts out at the moment for solicitors so I had to make sure that mine not only stood out but stuck in the audiences mind so we would be the choice over our competitors. Our advertisements fitted into the legal genre so we knew that we had to use appropriate themes, techniques, etc. The advert consists of an actress getting injured and then visiting the firm to get help. One of the continuous elements we had throughout our adverts that included audio was the same narrator’s voice, the voice we chose sounded empathetic, sympathetic and trustworthy and these are all characteristics that potential customers will be looking for when choosing a firm to use. Also by using the same voice in our radio and TV adverts it will help people to establish us from other firms, when they hear the voice they will know its promoting ‘H&B’ solicitors, this benefits the company as it is memorable so it will always be in the back of peoples mind so if they ever need a solicitors we will be there first port of call.

Obviously this couldn’t be continued into the web pop-up so similarly to the other group of advertisements we had to find another way to portray the tone of our company on the web pop-up. Even with all the planning we did we couldn’t find a way to do this very effectively, we had the idea of putting a compassionate, sympathetic quote on but we felt that it could take away the attention from the essential details (contact details) also we felt that this would be a waste of time on a pop-up because people don’t spend that long looking at them and we decided it would be more beneficial to just include the basics. We finally decided that we couldn’t continue the tone of the other advertisements on to the pop-up, so we just included the basic details that were essential to get in touch with us and hoped that people would recognise the name from the other forms of advertisements and know we are a well established company that cares about our customers and audiences.

The house style we chose for when promoting this service was one that fitted with common conventions of legal advertisements well. We chose a colour scheme that was suitable to the service we were providing, we couldn’t have bright bold colours because people wouldn’t then take us serious as a solicitors firm as they would see us as not taking ourselves or our clients seriously. We chose a mixture of blues, greys and blacks because we knew from common knowledge that these were all colours that were associated with business and the corporate world so using this spectrum of colours would portray the company as professional to audiences and potential clients. We carried this house styles through both of our visual advertisements, they were the colours used in our web pop-up and we even chose an image that matched well with the colour scheme. The house style was also used in the TV advert, the slogan was written in blue and black and the credits at the beginning and end of the advert were corresponding to the house styles, including the same colours and showing the same tone of professionalism and sympathy.

I feel that the group of advertisements for ‘H&B’ solicitors were up to a far more professional standard than the others. We had a small amount of experience from filming the first advert so we knew that we had to pay more care to our surroundings when filming and that even the smallest details e.g. someone walking past the room, a noise in the background could make the biggest difference when trying to film an effective production. I think the finished television advert for this service looked quite professional and to me looked like something that could be put on television to promote a company. The transitions and animations we used when editing this advert were a million miles away from the previous production, they were simple and clean cut and I believe were overall a lot more effective. The other animations may have caught audiences attention, but for the wrong reasons. The transitions and animations we used in the ‘H&B’ solicitors advert made the company look professional and I feel that doing this would make the advert effective in gaining the company customers and not just catching the audiences attention because its ‘funky’ or eye catching. I think the radio advert also sounded a lot more professional, by using the narrator I think we increased the professionalism of it. The other radio ad was basically just a conversation and wouldn’t have given audiences any desire to want that product, with this radio ad we structured it in a way that would maximise its effectiveness. We tried to make it personal so that the audiences would believe that our firm is one they can trust and this will in turn promote the company the best we can. There isn’t much I would change with this group of advertisements as I believe they were effective in both promoting the service and catching audiences attentions. However, if I had to change something to make it look more professional I would probably spend more time on my web pop-up. Even though it does the job of promoting the service excellently I think with a few more effects or animations it could catch the audiences attention even more as it’s quite simple as it is.

We uploaded our productions on YouTube so that we could gather feedback from our audience and see what other interpretations were of our advertisements. We wanted to see whether they thought there was anything we could improve and what they thought we had done well. The majority of comments on the advert for ‘H&B’ solicitors were positive and said that it looked professional and if they were looking for a solicitors firm the advert we created would convince them to choose us. However, the people who commented on the other advert for ‘Star Suds’ weren’t as impressed. They said that it looked amateur and juvenile and that the way it was constructed was poor. There was a comment that said “the setting is inadequate and this advert isn’t effective in promoting your product,” this confirmed what we already thought and highlighted to us that the setting is one of the most useful tools when filming and that mise en scene is vital to the effectiveness of a production. The feedback we got from the audience just clarified for us all the positives and negatives that we already knew there were to our adverts, the feedback would help us to improve next time we had to create a production.

To conclude I think that the combination between my television adverts and my other productions were effective in catching audiences attention and promoting my product/service to my audience. I think they worked well as a collection and if they would have been a single production they wouldn’t have as been effective because they wouldn’t have the continuity, audiences wouldn’t be able to make the links between the adverts and the advert wouldn’t have been as memorable to the audience.