A comparative analysis of a selection of advertisements produced for television.

The colour scheme throughout the ad is black and white, except for the product it self. This makes the product stand out, drawing the attention of the viewer’s to the drink. If this did not catch the viewer’s eye, the polar bear brings the product close to the screen to show what he is drinking. This is a close up shot of the product which is trying to be sold, which lets the target audience know exactly what is being sold.

The Cresta commercial is animated; they have chosen to use a cartoon bear to help sell their product. This is instantly tells us that the target audience for this ad is aimed at children and parents. The polar bear character used has been used because polar bears are presumed to be cool, we can also associate this by where they live to back up this ‘cool’ point. The polar bear has been humanised with a cool deep voice and also with a lazy/cool posture to really achieve that ‘cool’ effect. This in effect with the black sunglasses will not only use the persuasive strategy conformity, our desire to fit in and be ‘cool’, it also inspires aspirers to be cool and can persuade them to go out and buy this Cresta drink, maybe a pair of sunglasses too.

There are multiple diagetic sounds within an ad that’s just less than 35 seconds, the sound is exaggerated due to the character being really loud and shouting, this grabs the attention of the audience as the volume increases. The camera angle also shakes when the character shouts and falls over. A continuous longshot is used to capture this throughout the animation as the character changes height and shape frequently. This all in effect intrigues the viewers as everything is loud and continuously moving.

Throughout the ad the persuasive strategy humour has been used to enlighten the mood of the audience. The polar bear reacting wild after drinking the product would make the target audience laugh, especially at the end of the advert where the character is getting up from his fall with wonky glasses. The slogan “its frothy man” followed by the little giggle also is used to make the audience laugh, the effect of using the persuasive strategy of humour is done because laughing makes puts us in a good mood, the better the mood the more money spent with pride on products!

This advert I would class a low budget ad as it is all animated and is a short duration ad aswell, there are not many processes of post production and a lot of editing, however in comparison to the Honda ‘Hate something, Change something’ ad, you can easily tell it is a high budget end ad as there are lots of evidence of post production editing which must of took hours because so much goes on in this advertisement.

Unlike the Cresta ad that targets aspirers, the Honda ad targets reformers as there is a nature theme throughout the ad which implies that their product is safe and eco friendly. Evidence of this is the polluted engine that is causing a disturbance in the environment; the surroundings around the engine react negatively to the pollution and disturbance. This reassures the audience that buying their product is the right option.

The coulor scheme used in the Honda ad has many vibrant colourful coulors used throughout the ad to represent that peaceful nature. The use of the bright coulor scheme implies to the audience that purchasing their product is a good thing and it

will benefit. The contrast between the engines which is apposed to the coulors as it looks dirty and stands out in the vibrant environment, grabs the attention of the audience as it is telling them that the motor they are already using will not be as efficient as the Honda diesel engines they are selling.

The Honda ad uses a non diagetic happy soundtrack to enlighten the mood of the target audience. The lyrics are contrapuntal to the soundtrack itself as it is positive happy music talking about hate, the voice used to sing the lyrics to the soundtrack brings a warmth and feeling of hope, suggesting that everything is going to be alright. This in combination of the use of the persuasive strategy humour puts the target audience in that good mood, throughout the ad there a multiple funny ways of the polluted old engines slowly disappearing. This is similar to Cresta as Cresta has used humour to enlighten the mood of the target audience throughout the use of the cool polar bear character in effect with diagetic sound.