TV advertisements are something that is well known by many, some look forward to see what the advert is showing, others look forward to see if the advert will make them laugh and some get annoyed as it means they now have to wait and see what happens after the commercial break. One aspect many do not consider is the long process that is taken to make an advert and just like a film if it does not tick certain boxes to the audience it will fail. Due to this the process of creating an advert can be just as complex as a film from its conception to its creation.
Just like when producing a movie several factors need to be considered and they are pretty much the same as for a movie. Budget, style, cast, crew, locations and research all need to be conducted to help ensure an advert is a success. Below are three different styles of adverts which I shall break down to help illustrate how these adverts ensured a successful marketing campaign and how they also still had problems regardless of their success.
Adverts also need to take in to account many ethical and legal issues in addition to just coming up with an idea and implementing it. These regulations are sometimes obvious covering aspects like swearing and violent imagery, however there are many more intricate regulations to be followed. These are implemented by Ofcom and ASA with both websites giving full details of what they can and can not do in and advertisement. For example, alcohol have very strict regulations making it difficult for a creative team to come up with a workable idea. Ethically they have several issues to decide on such as the ethnicity and gender of their cast.
Just like when producing a movie several factors need to be considered and they are pretty much the same as for a movie. Budget, style, cast, crew, locations and research all need to be conducted to help ensure an advert is a success. Below are three different styles of adverts which I shall break down to help illustrate how these adverts ensured a successful marketing campaign and how they also still had problems regardless of their success.
Adverts also need to take in to account many ethical and legal issues in addition to just coming up with an idea and implementing it. These regulations are sometimes obvious covering aspects like swearing and violent imagery, however there are many more intricate regulations to be followed. These are implemented by Ofcom and ASA with both websites giving full details of what they can and can not do in and advertisement. For example, alcohol have very strict regulations making it difficult for a creative team to come up with a workable idea. Ethically they have several issues to decide on such as the ethnicity and gender of their cast.
Skittles - Touch the Rainbow.
This advert by Skittles never fails to make audiences laugh and it works for the simple fact the product is literally all over the place by the end of the advert. Also even thou there is only three cast members they use diversity in gender and ethnicity to help appeal to more people. So instantly it is using a comedy format which is set to appeal to the masses. The majority of the the budget for this film would have gone into the effects of turning the objects into skittles. How they achieved this is a complete mystery even to myself. It is most likely CGI but I would not rule out a clever cinematographic technique to pull off the effect as the skittle look very real. So by doing this they are using a smaller budget on the cast as all three are unknown actors/actresses. The fact they set it in a distribution style office would have been relatively cheap on the budget and with the paler colours used on all props and costumes makes the product stand out more. The advert also allowed them to play with their classic slogan "Taste the Rainbow" to "Touch the Rainbow". By doing this it has also spun a series of viral campaigns where views would touch a part of the screen and be part of the advert as the "Touch the Rainbow" also, below is one of the viral videos.
So all in all Skittles would have put a large amount of money to produce this advert based on the special effects alone, so they would have to sell thousands of small packets of Skittles to make the money back. Also one note that the production team did over look was how some viewers saw the advertisement as a representation of death. Where the poor employee can not touch any thing without turning it into Skittles it would mean anyone who touched him would be killed and turned into Skittles. Even thou this thought only appears to the minority it is still something Skittles clearly did not foresee people seeing their product accompanied by death.
Marks & Spencers - Food Adverts.
For a year or two Marks & Spencers ran a series of adverts all in a similar style to the one above. It is clearly extremely different to the Skittles advert despite both selling food products. The simple reason is the Marks & Specners advert is aimed at an older demographic than the Skittles advert. By using a simple music sample and saying what the product actually is also benefits as it is simply telling you what it is, there is no guessing what the advert is selling like some adverts that you see. The other major factor Marks & Spencers win on over the Skittles advert is on their budget. Where the entire advert is simple an artistic portrayal of the foods designed to make the mouth water along with a simple audio track and voice over the budget would have needed to be only a fraction of what the Skittles advert was. They also use a slogan at the end of their advert "This is not just summer food, this is M & S food". Now granted this slogan is not rhythmic, funny or a play on words, but instead is a statement. The company is so confident of their products they are willing to say it is better than the rest.
Subaru Forester - Attack on Titan Advert.
Now car commercials are just as common on TV as food/drink adverts. The pair probably are the most commonly seen advertisements of all. Car adverts tend to be either seeing the car itself driving wildly around the country roads, city streets of mountain roads or they are a rotating view of the car to show of the look of the car instead. The reason I chose a commercial from Japan is to illustrate three points. First off it is using a format known in car commercials used across the world, a car driving dynamically across wild terrain, showing advertisement styles are universal across the globe and formats work across the board. Secondly another trick used by advertisement, endorsements. These can come through celebrities or via already established franchises. In this case they were utilising the mass craze caused in Japan by the hit anime series Attack on Titan. This made audiences go crazy as they saw the 2D animated monsters brought to the TV screen in a live action format. This aided Subaru and the companies behind Attack on Titan as it tied into an announcement of a live action movie. My third point is simply Attack on Titans is amazing so I had to choose it, OK I admit it personal reasons. On a side note also, like the Skittles advert they clearly used CGI which would have required a large budget to make it look real enough to sell the cars. However unlike Skittles Subaru would need to sell fewer cars to make their money back.
I hope next time you are interrupted from your favourite show that you will think a little about how much work may have gone into the advert. The three above are just an extremely small percentage of what adverts are available for viewing so it is clear there are plenty more to consider.
I hope next time you are interrupted from your favourite show that you will think a little about how much work may have gone into the advert. The three above are just an extremely small percentage of what adverts are available for viewing so it is clear there are plenty more to consider.