Davina Okoronkwo
“Explain and analyse the structures and techniques of television advertisements.� Within this essay I will be exploring different television advertisements and what makes them appeal to an audience. In addition to this, I will also be examining what elements contribute to music videos, e.g facts, emotions, comparisons etc. I will analyse different companies/brands use different techniques or structures to promote their products and how an audience reacts differently to each one. Television Advertising is a way for a brand or company to promote/pitch a product within a minimal amount of time. Regular TV adverts last 90 seconds or less, however they are longer in cinemas lasting up to 3 minutes. Every TV advert varies, whether that being the time of the ad or what product they are trying to pitch everyone has a different way of trying to increase sales. When creating or crafting a television advert there would be a certain type of structure in place. A structure is how the advert is presented to the audience, whether it being in a cartoon or in an informative documentary style. Different forms and styles are used by brands in completely different ways, however they all have one thing in common which is to gain some kind of sales from the advert. Researchers found that ads that linked with a narrative and not just about solely people purchasing are more remembered by the public. This type of advertising is called linear advertising. Linear advertising is advertising that is based from a narrative. Any type of a narrative is in a style of a story meaning it has a clear and precise beginning, middle and end. A reason why this may be so popular for the audience is as it clear, and easy to see how it relates to the product they are trying to promote. A very good example of this is the Halifax home finder app, 2013. It was released in 2013, and promotes their home finder app, which helps house movers find an ideal house. Just like the other advertisement, it has a distinctive beginning middle and end. In the beginning, the couple meet with an estate agent to discuss housing. They later go to view houses and find that most of the houses have internal issues/problems that come with the house. Finally, at the end they are tired of disappointment so look at the Halifax housing app and find their perfect home. It suggests the app can help customers get their desired home a lot quicker than struggling and to do it themselves. The advert will lead to many people to then go and download the app, meaning customers and potential sales similar to the other ad. An alternative advertisement was by a Thai life insurance company and also winner of best advertisement, 2014. The advert shows a man that goes out of his way to single handedly help others, in return for nothing. The man would do acts such as watering plants, using his own food to feed animals, giving homeless people money for education, giving money to the old etc. Whilst doing it every day, many people
Davina Okoronkwo would look at him weird or frown upon him as he didn’t have to do any of the charitable acts that he did. Just like any narrative the advert has a beginning, middle and end. The advert started with the man doing charitable acts helping people, the middle showed him doing the same thing on a daily basis and how people would react to it. Again like most narratives, the end linked to all the other parts. In the ending of the acts he had done had some significance. The plant that started off as practically just seeds has grown into a big plant, and the money he had been giving to the homeless for school lead to the little girl actually being enrolled into a school. It shows that the man didn’t do it for any personal benefits for himself, but for the emotions and happiness of other people. Additionally, suggesting that helping others was his life purpose and desire the ad quotes “what is it that you desire most”. The company then promote their product, being life insurance at the very end. This relates to the audience as it would make them, want to make the most of life so could possibly be interested in the product. The advert was very popular due to the emotions triggered by the video. However, both advertisements have their differences, such as the first advert was more surreal and un realistic scenarios but had a very positive and emotional message. The second advertisement was a lot more relatable as many people understand the stress, hassle and disappointment of moving. Additionally, they both have different target audiences. The first advertisement would be 18+ in my opinion as it’s a life insurance advert, for them to protect their future. Nevertheless, the second advert is about protecting your feelings. This is as, house hunting can lead to disappointment and anger because of not finding the right one. Personally I would say the audience would be 21+ as its for people who can afford or can buy/ move into their own property. The life insurance advert used a very popular and successful technique of using an emotional appeal. An emotional appeal advertisement technique is where the advertiser will relate or trigger an audience’s emotions e.g joy, sorrow, guilt etc. it is effective as emotions can make the audience want to either do something about the issue talked about within an ad/ purchase I etc. This was the method used within the ad and it worked very well. The message behind it was very heartwarming, and emotional. Many people even commented that they ‘wish people could be more like that in real life’ and that it even made them shed a few tears. This perfectly backs research scientists made about adverts. They found that adverts containing real humans showing emotions or some kind of humor was the adverts that generally performed better. Surprisingly they even came before adverts with hard facts attached to them, such as documentaries. A documentary styled advertisement is an advert that is shown or based around a documentary. It borrows conventions from real and factual programs. Following this it relates to people working there giving their own personal experience about the product/job or thing they are pitching. This can be done by conversating and explain the product/job or giving information about it. The most common adverts that use the documentary style are toothpaste/oral hygiene advert. A great example of this, is the Oral B Tri Zone 5000 advertisement. The advert consists of a woman
Davina Okoronkwo explaining facts to the audience and comparing a normal toothbrush to the product they are trying to pitch. They found that the Oral B toothbrush removes a lot more than the average brush. Additionally, they also show the different brushes doing the same action in which the Oral B one performs better. The advert used 2 techniques. The techniques being repetition, and facts and figures. Repetition is repeating something that has been said or written previously. This is a good technique as it means the thing being repeated such as the brand/logo or message will stick with the audience for a long period of time. Nevertheless, using facts will also intrigue or interest the audience. This is due to facts being real and actual statistics and cannot be made up like the rest of the advert. I think the ideal audience for the advert would be 18+. This is as children do not really care about teeth or oral hygiene and adults would be more concerned or interested about the matter. Following this this type of advertisement structure would only really work for older audiences, due to the information and topics being talked about. A structure that would be more suitable for kids would be an Anti- realist advert. An anti- realist is an advertisement that includes something that could not possibly happen in real life. Usually adverts using this technique use animation or cartoons some interact with humans. A good example of this would be the Cadbury, released in August 2007. The advert consists of a Gorilla playing the drums in a purple background. It didn’t have much correlation to the product, but was very well received. Nevertheless, the purple background is the same colour as the product so can be linked. The advert was a campaign by Cadbury. It even till this day is one of their most popular adverts, and gained many reactions and even parodies. Many said they enjoyed the advert because it was humerous and had a positive message. Rearch shows that most funny or amusing adverts are well received by its audience. This can be the reason as to why the advertisement was so well received by its audience, it had a good message to it and also has comedic value. Following this, not only did it gain a lot of consumers from humor but also brand recognition. The main colour of the advert was purple which is the main colour of Cadbury meaning many more people are likely to recognize the brand or even associate the colour purple with it. Both have benefits for a business, as they both generate market share leading to an increase in sales which is the main reasoning for adverts. It shows how an advert cannot be so serious, or include factual knowledge or statistics like other adverts but still be very well received. However, television adverts aren’t very straight forward, producers have to do a lot of research, planning to make sure they let out the message they want to portray across. This means that advert and overall message should link and correlate in some way. Following this they have to make sure they keep a good brand identity, look at the demographics of potential audience members and are aware of any potential moral/ethical issues the advert may have as that will ruin brand identity and get bad media press. There are many different ways people can do research that can be useful and helpful for the TV advertisement. Examples being, qualitative and quantitive/ primary or secondary. Qualitative data is data that is non numerical. Examples of this is open questionnaires, un structured interviews etc.
Davina Okoronkwo Quantitative data is numerical data. It is any type of information that can be measured or includes numbers. Examples of this is height, shoe size etc. Primary data is original data obtained through person carrying out the investigation (first hand). Secondary data is data that is not obtained first hand by the investigator. It is research that widely available on different platforms such as the internet, and created by different parties’ e.g scientists. Following this, another useful thing producers can use is programmed profiling. This views overall who watches what sort of programmes at what time, e.g. after 9pm would be adult hours in which sexual or violent content would usually be shown. This is effective as it can be very protecting of younger audiences as tragedy may come if viewing some of the explicit scenes. Advertisers or producers would usually team up with BARB (Broadcast audience research board). BARB is a successful organization which gives TV shows ratings and measure TV adverts by what it suitable for the audience. Nevertheless, not all TV adverts created make it to our television screens. This is as many producers/ advertisers may be desperate to try and make an appealing video to audience without remembering safety or moral/ethical issues that the video may cause. Following this, there are things in place to try and prevent such things as from happening and causing much offense to viewers. An organization which caters to this is called, ASA (Advertising Standards Authority). As the name of the organization suggests it has certain rules and standards adverts have to follow before it can be aired on national television. Although, in certain scenarios viewers may still find some aired TV adverts offensive in which they will complain. The office of communications has the responsibility of going through the complaints and seeing if the videos do violate the codes given. Even adverts that may think are just some fun and have no real harm can be seen as offensive in some people’s eyes. An example of this is the most complained advertisement of 2016. This was Money Supermarkets advert in which ‘Gary the bodyguard’ was dancing at an appeared rally. Many complained it was ‘overly sexual’ or just plain distasteful. Although, the advert was meant to come across as humorous it caused a whopping 1600 complains about this advert alone. Nevertheless, ASA themselves did not ban it as they thought it was meant to be only comical and not distasteful in any manner, however can understand why some may see it that way. It also didn’t break any of their rules and regulations so wasn’t any real reason to ban the advert. Overall, advertisements can be a great way for producers or advertisers to get their products exposure and market share leading them to potential sales. There are many different varieties of ways advertisers can feel their advert would appeal to the audience. Such as factual documentary advert or unrealistic comedic anti realist advert. Depending on what the product is producers may want to use different styles so the product is perceived in a certain way. E.G if using factual or documentary like it is more likely to be taken more seriously and deemed as a professional product. Whereas, anti-realist may be deemed more fun and children friendly. Through research consumers prefer shorter adverts which trigger a sense or emotion such as laugher/sympathy such as the life insurance advert or Cadbury Gorilla advert. Although the average lengths of documentaries are 30 seconds to a
Davina Okoronkwo minute it can be very stressful process. This is due to the financial process and costs of making adverts such as actors, locations, products etc. Additionally, there are codes which have to be followed in order to protect viewer’s safety and ethical beliefs. Bibliography: Article title: The 21 most controversial banned advertisements Website title: The Telegraph URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/banned-advertisements/
Advertising Practice Article title: Rulings Website title: Asa.org.uk URL: https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/rulings.html? gclid=Cj0KEQjwhMjKBRDjxb31j-aesI4BEiQA7ivNHkBIvOh5JOA97ZLNQUMhprdYIw7u1IDs7a0sFumJaQaAlY78P8HAQ Authorseanofford Article title: TV Ads - Form and Style Website title: Slideshare.net URL: https://www.slideshare.net/seanofford/tv-ads-form-and-style AuthorBuchan Article title: Adverts: Structures and Styles Website title: Slideshare.net URL: https://www.slideshare.net/elliebuchan9/adverts-structures-and-styles Article title: BARB | Broadcasters Audience Research Board Website title: Barb.co.uk URL: http://www.barb.co.uk/ Article title: Website title: URL:
Unsung Hero" (Official HD) : TVC Thai Life Insurance 2014 YouTube ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWA2GbcnJU
Article title: Cadbury's Gorilla Advert Aug 31st 2007 Website title: YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo
Davina Okoronkwo