Pop-up analysis

For our second subsidiary task we have chosen to do a pop-up advertisement. They are a form of advertisement on the world wide web. They generally appear as new web browser windows and have many pros and cons. Although they are clearly effective, as any type of advertisement acts as promotion for the product, they have a reputation for being annoying and intrusive. Above is an example of a pop up. Note that it is a screenshot of a screenshot of a pop-up. It is rather simple, and this is because the attention paid to it will not be as much as that paid to a less intrusive advert. Therefore only a small amount of information is able to expressed to the audience. The brand name is in large font making it easily seen and the brand's theme colour, which is bright and eye-catching, is used as a background. The combination of the two make the advertisement easily identified as Netflix. As well as promotion of the brand, this pop-up specifically promotes their product which is an offer of dvd rental deliveries for $9.99 a month. The words "DELIVERED" are in bold, attracting the viewers' attention. The picture of the house reinforces the delivery aspect of the advertisement. Visual codes are very important in advertising as it takes the viewer much shorter to take them in than words meaning they're more likely to take in he images. Without the image in this specific advert I think what Netflix are promoting wouldn't be nearly half as effective. A huge benefit of using pop-ups is the interactivity of the world wide web. As you can see, if the audience is interested in the product they can easily access it. In relatively large font in the bottom right corner is a link "Click here".  This uses Todorov's narrative theory in that the delivery of the dvd's is a resolution to the problem of how to physically gain them. In this way the link is a direct, easy way to solve the problem. It is common in advertisement to place important aspects in the bottom right corner. This is because people read all texts from top left to bottom right. My research into pop-ups highlights the importance of our pop-up being eye-catching and informative. There will be less room for creativity and humour in respect to our TV advertisement.

Choosing our target audience

We have decided to use one of the categories from Young and Rubicam who devised a system of categorizing people into seven groups; The mainstream, the reformer, the aspirer, the explorer, the succeeder, the resigned and the struggler.. After having researched the seven categories and what they each represent we have decided on 'the Mainstream':

 'These are people who live in the world of the domestic
and the everyday. A daily routine is fundamental to the way they live their
lives. Their life choices are ‘we’ rather than ‘me’.
As their name implies, they are the mainstream of society.
They are the largest group of people within 4Cs across
the world. They respond to big established brands, to ‘family’
brands and to offers of value for money. Their core need in life is for security.'

From this, we can highlight a few elements which we will apply to our target market including
1. Affordable prices (perhaps also with family deals)- as value for money has been noted.
2. Fashion glasses- mainstream keep with popular current trends.
3. Our advert will relate to them- we will create a typical daily routine and lifestyle to work our 'message' around.

Reason for choice of category: they are the largest group of people within 4C's across the world (make up 40% of population) meaning we are reaching to a great number of people and therefore increasing sales because of our advert appealing to a wider audience. We have also found research that corresponds with the 'mainstream' views such as Consumer Reports National Research Centre who surveyed 92,000 eyeglass buyers and found that less than half reported that they were satisfied with the price they had paid for eyewear. Using this secondary research, we have noted the importance of price in selling our product. It is also currently a popular sales technique in the glasses market today to emphasize 'value for money' for example the 2 for 1 offer at Specsavers. As a group, we also have most knowledge on this particular category and therefore it will be most beneficial to us to choose it for our target audience. 

Audience questionnaire

Questionnaire to finds how our advert will reach our target audience most effectively. 

-We preseneted to those involved in the questionnaire brief desciriptions of the 7 categories (Young and Rubicam) and asked them to choose which one they felt they fell under (as they would with age groups).

1.What category do you fit into out of the following?
      a.The mainstreamer
b.The reformer
c.The aspirer
d.The explorer
e.The succeeder
f.The resigned
g.The struggler

2. What Glasses would you normally buy? (please tick one of the following)

a. Designer Brands

b. Non-Designer brand

3. How much are you willing to pay for a pair of frames? (please tick one of the following)

b. Between £10 and £30

c. Between £31 and £60

d. Between £61 and £90

e. Over £90

     4. What is your most desired choice of eyewear? (taking into account prices, please tick one of the following)
        a. Eye Glasses

        b. Contact Lenses

        c. Laser eye surgery

       

    5. Ideally, what would you consider to be the best deal? (please tick one of the following)

        a. 2 for 1 on glasses
        b. One pair of glasses with free trial contact lenses for a month
        c. One pair of glasses plus free glasses for member of family under 16
        d. Other- please state

   6.  Do you base your choice of eyewear on:(please tick one of the following)
       a. Fashion
       b.Comfort
       c. Necessity

TV advertisement analysis

The majority of Specsavers adverts follow Todorov's theory: Situation, problem, resolution, the resolution being going to Specsavers; 'Should have gone to Specsavers'. The comedy of the adverts is achieved by exaggerated unexpected situations in which the characters obliviously find themselves in. It is a surprise for both the characters and the audience. The adverts almost suggest that a lack of glasses results in a sense of ignorance, therefore encouraging the audience to buy glasses to avoid this undesirable intelligence. One advert that we found especially funny is shown below. The advert is promoting a new deal of "30% off for over 60s" so the target audience is over 60s.

The initial situation is always an everyday event that the target audience can relate to, in this case the old couple are sitting down on what looks like a pier, implied by the diegetic sound of seagulls, to enjoy their cheese sandwiches. It then becomes apparent that they have sat down on a roller coaster, the rest of the advert is a sequence of shots showing their journey on the roller coaster in which they do twists and turns and are smacked in the face with an explosion of water. Fast changing shots are used to create a sense of speed and energy. These contrasts with the initial simple shots at the beginning. Contrast is used to emphasise how old the characters are by showing the roller coasters' other passengers who are a much younger and are obviously supposed to be there. Close-ups of their faces are used to show how horrifically alarmed they are and their ignorance is reinforced at the end when the man says "what kind of cheese was that?". It's extremely funny because the characters are so out of place and the situation is so out of their control, and secondly because their oblivion to getting into that situation is clearly grossly exaggerated. Comedic adverts are incredibly engaging because they cater to the audience's desire to be entertained. In my experience they are very memorable and they become a hot topic for conversation and so secondary promotion of the product takes place as well as primary promotion (the advert).
In respect to the representation of our target audience we must be careful not to offend. The Specsavers advert has done this by showing them walk off at the end, apparently unaffected by their experience. This implies that the old people are not physically or mentally challenged and that their only impairment is their bad eyesight.  

This is another good example of a funny Specsavers advert which I have heard fuss about among my friends. It's use of dramatic irony make it very funny. It has a more general target audience and doesn't promote a specific deal. 

Notice that the association of Specsavers with humour goes against any preconception that glasses are 'nerdy'. Especially in the case of this advert when the characters, at least those who represent the target audience, are young and attractive.   

We want to apply this mistake in an everyday action to our advert. We want to do an advert for a new product and not a specific deal like the one above. Therefore we must relate the advert to as wide a target audience as possible. We all agreed that the most common daily activity is getting up and getting ready for the day. This includes waking up, washing, getting dressed,eating breakfast etc. During one of these tasks our characters will make a mistake that will result in a negative reaction, be it from the character themselves or other characters. Some brief ideas follow:

- Using the wrong product while applying make up or brushing teeth. This will insure that the mistake is visible to other people the character will see during the day (or at least the beginning of the day as is the case for the toothpaste).
- Putting salt in the tea of the character and perhaps other characters. This will be unsavoury to the character themselves. They could even spit it out on to another character; the more negative results the more likely the audience are to see the need for going to Specsavers. 

We have come to the conclusion that being humiliated in public is far more undesirable than being in personal discomfort for a short period of time. Therefore are narrative will involve this. 
Our favourite idea is the toothbrush idea, as we all agreed this is the funniest, we asked a few of our peers and they shared the same opinion. We decided that the toothpaste should get mixed up with black paint as it has the same packaging, however this is when we came to a thinking block as we weren't sure how or why the paint gets into the bathroom and near the original toothpaste. Now that we have the starting point to our new idea we are going to expand on this and hopefully plan the entire storyline.

Update- Change of plan

After doing some brief research into energy drink adverts we have decided that this is not the product we want to advertise. For an energy drink advert to be effective it must convey the theme of energy and make the product desirable to the target audience, young energetic people. This is an example of an energy drink advertisement that does this well:

The advert is cleverly designed to give the audience a boost and to encourage them to go out and do something similar, with the help of Lucozade of course! The advert uses montage editing and the overall impression given is young, energetic and cool. The use of fast-cut editing suggests a sense of energy. The characters featured are thin, good-looking young sportspeople dressed in in-trend clothes implying that the use of this product will result in similar appearance. The main characters are rolling blading, which in my eyes is an alternative sport, alternation generally being a desirable attribute among young people. The location's palm tree's and sunlight have connotations of LA which is the home of a lot of celebrities and so therefore seen as a cool place. By using location, style, characters and activities desirable to young, energetic people, the target audience consequently associate the product with these features, encouraging them to buy Lucozade!

To create an advert for an energy drink we quickly realised that we would have to find a location/s, props and actors with an impressive sporty talent. We came together to brainstorm and came to the conclusion that our available features, listed above, would not constitute an effective enough advert. So we have gone in a completely different direction and decided to do an advert for an opticians. We have been largely inspired by the Specsavers advert and will imitate the comedy aspect of the advert campaign 'Should've gone to Specsavers'.