Monday 2 February 2015

TV Advertisement Evaluation.

TV Advertisement Evaluation.


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Questions in my survey:
1: Age, name and gender?
2:What do you like about the advert?
3:Who is the advert aimed at?
4:What age is advert aimed for?
5:What is it selling?
6:How effective is the advert?
7:Would you purchase this product?
8:What time of day would you like to see this advert?
9:What should be improved?
10:What TV channel would you place this on?




The original brief was to re-brand a Unilever product in order to appeal to a new audience and achieve this through creating a new TV advert. The brief of our advertisement production was ‘We are currently conducting research into the relationship viewers have with television advertisements. We are trying to determine which advertise effective and which are failing to capture the intended audience. In order to complete our research and improve the quality of advertising on UK television, we are asking that you provide us with information regarding your own viewing experiences and habits.’we had to create and develop an idea for a TV advertisement and produce a TV advertisement that reflects near profession standards. Our chosen product was ‘Vaseline’ aiming to create a re-branded product that is now aimed at ‘Men’s toiletries’. Our group decided that we would take a piece from each person’s different ideas, we all agreed we liked the idea of a situation where a male was trying to impress a female because we believed we could make the advert humorous. We had an idea to produce a recce on our local pub as we wanted a realistic setting and one that could relate to our target audience and places that they socialise. We.We had a local pub near our college and decided to take a look at the setting and see if it fit the idea. As a group we wanted to re-brand the lip balm of Vaseline in order for it to suite the male target market, as currently it is promoted as a female product and we wanted to expand the target market to a broader range of people. 
To receive feedback of the advert we created a survey with questions that included who the product was aimed at, how effective the advert was and what we could improve on. The audience gave good feedback on the acting and this was the most popular option for what worked well, followed by the camera work, this was effective because we had doubts about the camera work and this reassured us. The response we received on who the advert was aimed at came back as males which was the exact target market that we wanted to attract to the product. The age that the audience said the advert was aimed at was 19-30 at 95% of people who took the survey, however we were aiming more to the teenage generation in the 0-18 category which only 5% of the people who took the survey responded to that age group. Even though it wasn’t the response we hoped for it was still an effective response that made us think about what part of the advert made the audience think this. In the response we received about what the advert was selling, 95% of the response said Vaseline and 5% said how to get a person’s attention; this is effective because we did not want to advert to come across as selling anything but the product however the majority of responses said the product. In the last question of what should be improved there was a mixed response however the 50% of people that responded said lighting and the dialogue audio was where improvement could take place. As a group we understood as we had a few technical difficulties with making the audio sound more clear and also making the light more visible. Overall we were happy with the feedback we received and it gave us a different perspective on our advert and also gave us pointers on how to we could improve next time.

This print-screen from the end of the advert reinforces what we
were selling to the audience with a picture of the product to make
it recognisable by the audience.
Using the feedback we received on the target audience question I believe we targeted the male audience successfully with the actors we used to relate with an audience member of similar age. Also with the pub setting we made it a realistic situation and also a situation that teenagers go through with trying to impress another person that they have an interest in. However we didn’t want to send a message across of how to get someone’s attention or encourage drinking as a ‘cool’ activity to do, with the feedback we received about what the product was selling and 95% said ‘Vaseline’ the actual product we believe that this gave an appropriate impact towards our target market.
The Idea for characters we wanted to have in our advert was two males trying to impress two females, we started off with this idea of one of the males playing really bad at pool and not being able to get a drink and not being able to get the girls attention, then his male friend hands him the product of Vaseline lip balm and he applies it, after he applies it he starts to play well at pool and successfully buys a drink and as a result impresses the girls. To put the idea together we had to do the paperwork and knowing exactly what we wanted the setting and advert to look like. For the lighting we wanted a dull tone that really gave a pub setting feel and also that made the advert seem more realistic. However when we took the footage back and uploaded it ready to edit it was darker than we thought it would be, therefore we had to edit the saturation and contrast to brighten certain parts of the footage. Camera work came with a few difficulties as in one scene an actor approaches the bar to purchase a drink and there was a mirror behind the bar which meant that we had to be cautious that you couldn't see the reflection of the camera. To overcome this we made sure Jack, who was our camera man, stood diagonal to the bar so that he was in no view of the mirror and the shot was still successful.


 The editing side of the production was the most difficult for me personally because I did not have much confidence or experience with editing however my group pointed me in the right direct and helped me with certain parts I got stuck on. A majority of our editing was based around our audio sound because we had music and we had dialogue occasionally the music would sink out the dialogue, to fix this we had to turn the music audio down and turn the dialogue up. However the dialogue still sounded muffled as it had the pub background music and other people who were in the pub, also  because we had the video camera that picked up the audio for us, we tried to slow it down and cutting out the music in the dialogue parts, although this was unsuccessful. It was suggested that we should re-dub the dialogue parts to make it sound clear, we rented out a mic and went to a quite office and re-recorded the exact words in the footage, once we got back to college we uploaded the audio and dragged it to the audio 3 bar because other audio bars had the music and original audio for other dialogue parts. It was crisp and had no background noise which made it sound obvious that we had re-dubbed it, so we added the music audio in the background to balance the sound. Overall that was the hardest part of the editing because we had to try everything possible to make it so the audience could understand. Last part of the editing included Adobe After-Effects software this was the part I really felt I could grasp quickly, we needed to create a part at the end where text comes onto the screen to tell the audience what the product it. How I did this was to download an image of the Vaseline lip balm we used and upload it onto the soft wear, then include text ‘Vaseline’ with a catchy slogan, our group spent a while coming up with slogans until we picked the best one which could best advertise the product, ‘Anything is possible’ this not only fit with the advert however presents the audience with a feel of confidence. When exporting Adobe After-Effects ready to import it to our footage we were confused on what bar on the timeline in premiere pro to put it on, eventually it worked out that an available video line is where we put it on underneath the last piece of footage, so it appears at the end of our advert. Overall the editing section was where we had the most problems however we overcame these by helping each other and also asking for any assistance if we got really stuck on something we had not come across before.

This is a print-screen to show where we struggled with the audio
and how we had to get the right balance between the music audio
and the voice over audio. Additionally shows the mirror behind
the bar where we had to stand the camera man diagonal so that he
could not be seen.
The content of our advert hit our aims well, we received great feedback on who the product was aimed at with 95% of people saying males was what the advert was attracting.  However after the actor is rejected the first time of buying an alcoholic drink and then applies the Vaseline and purchases the drink we did not want it to put across this idea that drinking was ‘cool’ or that we were encouraging drinking in order to impress someone, we simply thought it would give the advert humor and a realistic perspective. The feedback we received on the age it was aimed at was mostly people thought 19-30 which we thought more 0-18 even though it includes drinking we believe that the 0-18 age gap aimed more towards behavior of trying to impress someone and get their attention. One of the other questions asked was how effective do you think the advert is? The feedback from this was 55% of people said it was slightly effective and 45% of people said it was very effective and nobody said it was ineffective which was successful for us to know that our advert had an effect on our audiences we were trying to appeal to. This links with the 65% of people that said they would purchase this product, overall I believe our story line presented the product in an effective way using the feedback as our evidence of this. 

The message we were trying to present is that you don’t have to be a female to enjoy products like Vaseline because they affect each individual in the same way, we also wanted to broaden the target range this way Vaseline receives more exposure and effective feedback which equals more money to the company. As mentioned before we did not want to encourage drinking in any way or form and looking at our feedback of people who took the survey nobody selected that it encouraged drinking, this is why the feedback was successful to us and reassured us of that one possible downside that could have been. Overall I believe the advert served its purpose to present Vaseline in a different light and also to attract a different target audience. The B-CAP code that we must abide by especially in our advert was the code on alcohol’ Advertisements for alcoholic drinks should not be targeted at people under 18 years of age and should not imply, condone or encourage immoderate, irresponsible or anti-social drinking.’ Looking at our advert  and the feedback we received anyone who watched the advert believes alcohol is not the main focus, the actor we used who purchased the drink from the bar was 18 which means we were not condoning any underage drinking at all in our TV advert. Another part of the B-CAP code that we must comply with the advertising regulations is code 4.2 – Advertisements must not cause serious or widespread offence against generally accepted moral, social or cultural standards.’ In this advert we did not aim in any way to put females in a degrading situation where they were seen in an inhumane way, judging by the feedback we received there was no complaints about this and after showing it to the class the oral feedback did not include anything in the way the females were presented or for that fact the males. We simply used this situation and idea because that is how a realistic situation that a majority of people go through, also wanted a vision where the audience could find it humorous and relate to it and I believed we achieved that.

As you can see in the print-screen we used an actor that was of
the age of 18 so that our advert was not promoting underage drinking.

Our finished version did not differ too much from our original idea and aims; our original idea was to have 3 ‘lads’ however we converted this to 2 males because we could only get hold of two females, it also seemed more realistic. Instead of one of the males buying a drink for just himself our original idea was the male to buy the females drinks however the budget of our production was £5 and one pint cost £3.50 so as a result we changed it to the male being able to by himself a drink showing confidence that attracts the females towards him. The shots from our storyboard stayed very similar of the exchanged of the Vaseline and the shot of the male’s feet when approaching the bar to build tension in the scene that kept the audience engaged, additionally the over the shoulder shots when attempting to purchase drinks at the bar. Overall the feedback we received on the advert I found effective because we found out how the audience took the advert and what their experiences of watching it was, it also helped if we were to improve or develop another TV advert like this one because we know the main factors to improve on is lighting, and mainly the audio next time we could possible connect a microphone to expose the sound in higher quality. 

Overall I'm content with our final advert piece because it hits our aims and I believe we re-branded the product successfully, including the feedback that said it was mainly aimed at our target audience of males and also what the advert was selling is the Vaseline product. Beginning the project with barely any confidence in editing and leaving this project with the confidence in editing that I believe I could do parts of editing individually now. People in my group were not aware of where the pub was when we were planning to film so I lead the way when we took a trip to the pub to analyse if it was suitable. Within filming we agreed jack could be the camera man because he had experience with the camera and we believed it was appropriate for him to film if I and Lois were to be the females in the film. If I was to do it again I would possible rent out an attachable microphone in order to receive clearer sound because that was the main difficulty we came across, having to try every possible way of editing to make our sound clear, other than that there is nothing specific that I would change, I am very content with the piece we produced.





1 comment:

  1. Alana,

    I can see that you have put a lot of thought and effort into your reflection on the advert and it's inception. You have covered everything required and you have written about some well-chosen moments from the adverts and pieces of audience feedback.

    For me, the biggest issue is your phrasing; often I will read a section and not really understand it. I wonder if you try to use difficult language that doesn't always fit. Keep it simple - you can get the highest marks with easy to understand simple language as long as you define terms clearly, explain them clearly and use clear examples. Your chosen examples are great but there is no evidence to back them up.

    To improve:
    - proof read your work and check that it all makes sense
    - embed the advert at the top
    - embed your questionnaire / type up your questions
    - add evidence (screenshots from your ad and feedback) throughout when you make a point
    - break long paragraphs of text up (it's hard to read).

    EllieB

    ReplyDelete