Merlin Parr - Creative Media Production: 2016

1. BOOST BAR EVALUATION

Before I created my advertisement I looked at who I was going to be focusing it towards and what sort of target audience I was aiming for. The research that I had done at the start of the unit helped me identify my target audience and how I was going to specifically target them. As well as researching other advertisements for the product I aimed to advertise, I had to come up with a plan which would help me structure my idea for the advertisement. I’d planned to create a 1 minute advert about a young individual who needed to clean the house before his mother got home from work. The individual acquires and consumes the boost bar left on the table, gaining super speedy powers, cleaning the house within seconds before his mother arrives home. This advert being in the form of a mini-fiction, centered on the idea of a very short story with a main protagonist. I think this is a strong and comfortable form to work with as most advertisements these days use it as it can easily connect with the audiences in relatable ways depending on the narrative. When looking at other advertisements for the Boost bar, I realised that most of them adopted a stylistic humor to grab the audience’s attention. I took this technique of using humor as I thought it would help audiences connect with my product. I also thought it was right for the product I was advertising as it is aimed towards the younger generation.

To create some of the visual effects that I wanted for my advert I needed to use video editing software like After Effects to help create the effect I was after. In my advert the individual gains super powers which allow him to run at super speeds. To be able to create this visually, I edited my footage in After Effects to create the illusion of this individual moving at super speed. I think that the use of these visual effects makes my advert more appealing to the audience, therefore passivity promoting my product. One of the down sides from using these visual effects is that it could perceive my product in the wrong way and mislead audiences. I carried out a survey to help me evaluate my advertisement and a couple of responses (4.2%) (2/47) said that this may be a problem.

The First two pages of my boost bar advertisement

2. My idea at the start of the unit was to create an advertisement for some sort of snack or food product. I looked at a few products from the company ‘Cadburys’ and ended up choosing a personal favourite, Boost. My original idea for this advert was to create two 30 second advertisements which both explore a certain situation where the subject needs extra energy to perform certain tasks, completing them in super speed. I also wanted to add a humours style to these adverts, so I decided to give my subject super powers once he had eaten this chocolate bar. I came up with two situations where in the first advert a young boy has to clean up his room/house before his mother gets back home, having only a few minutes. He finds a boost bar left in the fridge and when consuming this chocolate bar, he gains super powers, cleaning up the whole house in super speedy time. The second advertisement had a similar narrative but instead my subject needs to finish his homework in time before the next day, eating the boost bar, giving him super powers that allow him to complete the tasks at a super human speed.

Planning sheet of boost bar advertisement

These were my two original concepts for the advertisements, which I ended up changing once I had started writing up my storyboard. When I was drawing up my storyboard I quickly realised that in order to be able to pull off this advertisement well, I was going to have to make it longer so as to fit in the proposed scenes. I think that if it was any shorter the general feel and flow of the narrative would have been compromised. I went with my first idea of the young boy needing to clean the house before his mother got home, as well as changing it to a 1 minuet advertisement instead of two of 30 seconds. I went with this idea because I thought it would be an effective way to use the special effects as it would be visually more interesting to show the boy cleaning his room at super speed, rather than doing his homework. People who watched the advert commented; “The part where the boy is cleaning his room looks very interesting and very effective.” This confirms that it was a better idea to stick with the cleaning concept instead of the homework concept.

Synopsis idea's for the two 30 second advertisements

Following are examples of other ideas I changed from my storyboard to the final outcome. In some scenes where my subject was cleaning his room, I had planned to set the camera up at a birds-eye view angel but instead I went for a long shot as it would have been too difficult and less effective to set the camera up on the ceiling. I also changed a few shots from my storyboard where my subject is cleaning the house. I shot other sequences of my subject cleaning the house, but on reflection I took them out because the shots where too long. On my survey a few commented that there wasn’t as much house cleaning as they expected. This was mainly due to time restrictions for the advert and the length shots were filmed for. Personally I don’t think this took away from the feel of the advert but it could have been a positive improvement to the overall outcome.

The original boost bar advertisement uploaded 04/05/16

Re-Uploaded version of my boost bar advertisement 26/05/16

4. When researching on how I was going to create my advertisement I looked at other adverts of similar product to the one I chose. I mainly focused on reviewing adverts that had been created for the same product as the one I was going to be creating an advertisement for. These advertisements took similar approaches using comedy as the selling point for their product as well as other aspects such as surrealism and parodic/intertextual references. One of the adverts I look inspiration from and will be making comparison with is from a series of Cadburys boost bar adverts created in 2010, this one named ‘Gas Bill’.

Cadburys boost bar advertisement 'Gas Bill' 2010

This advertisement uses the form of a mini-fiction/series advertisements which I had originally panned to do when I was writing up the synopsis for my proposed advertisement. I later changed this to a ‘stand alone’ advert due to a lack of time. Both advertisements use the stylistic feature of comedy entertainment audiences and establish a memorable connection to the product. In my advertisement I use a main protagonist who features thought the advert with a short show time of the mother near the end. In the Cadburys advertisement it used two main individuals who both converse throughout the advertisement unlike mine where there is no dialog between the characters. In the Cadburys advertisement it used two main individuals who both converse throughout the advertisement unlike mine where there is no dialog between the characters.

5/6.

5. I gained feedback about my advertisement from different sources. I carried out a survey, which asked participants to score and comment on my advertisement. I also gather feedback from my creative media class, peers and gathered feedback from a professional in the field of television (Bill Smith) who works with Latest TV. All of the feedback I received helped me understand the strengths and weaknesses within my advertisement.

PowerPoint presentation - survey results from participants opinions on my advertisement

6. My survey gained a total of 47 responses from a range of people such as family, friends, class mates, other students and teachers. The general feedback from the participants was very positive. Respondents commented that the acting skills were good, the narrative was clever, it was well produced with good use of complex editing techniques and looked professional. There wasn’t as much critical feedback as I expected but received comments like “it was clearly amateurish” and “it felt like an energy drink advert rather than chocolate”. This shows that some people thought my advert could have been better produced. Personally I think that there is room for improvement and it could look better but overall I was pleased that some people from the survey thought it looked professional which was my main aim when creating this advert.

I also asked participants to rate my advertisement on certain qualities such as aesthetic, creativity, narrative, camera techniques, editing and sound quality. Overall the majority of responses were around 8 out of 10 with the editing aspect coming out the highest rated at 8.45/10. I also felt this was the best quality of my advertisement. The lowest rated aspect was the aesthetic, which came 7.6/10. I also felt this area had the most room for improvement with some of my shots being slightly burly at times and an unbalance in key lighting.

PowerPoint Presentation -survey results of peoples thoughts on the qualities of my advertisement

I ask participants questions in order to gain a better understanding of their opinions on the advertisement, tailoring them in order to gain depth and detail. The questions I asked were: Did you find my advert entertaining? Did you find it misleading? Was the concept easily understood? Most results were positive with comments like “music and editing was engaging”, “it was very easy to understand”, “it was clear what it was advertising”. These comments confirmed what I was hoping to achieve with my advertisement.

There was some critical feedback from participants throughout the survey, which shed light onto what could be improved. A few people suggested that the advertisement could be misleading to others. The idea of gaining super powers from eating a Boost bar could be misleading in the way that it can power your body to do things that you can’t normally do. I can understand that from a certain perspective but I had relied on the humour of the advertisement to help outweigh this idea of actually gaining ‘super powers’ from eating a chocolate bar. I also had people comment that “it was clearly joking” which was what I hoped would get across to audiences.

Another aspect that people commented on critically was that some of the shots were blurry for example in the POV shot of the boy reading the note pad and that the shot was too short and didn’t allow viewers time to read it properly before it cut to the next shot. I agree with this comment and it could be re-shot at some point if there was time but in respect of the shot being too quick, it depends on how fast you can read. With the advert being around a minuet long I couldn’t keep the shot for much longer or otherwise the advertisement would have been too long.

In my survey I asked the participants what they thought the age demographic would be aimed at. For this advertisement I was mainly aiming at the younger target audience of 16 – 24 year old but I also wanted to broaden my age demographic to being family friendly whilst keeping the age target at young teenagers to young adults. The question being multi choice allowed participants to select what they thought specifically the age demographic was for this advertisement. Around 85% (40) participants chose the (13-17) age demographic with 42% (20) of participants who chose the (18-21) age demographic. These were the results I was hoping for, for a target audience of approximately 16 to 24.

PowerPoint Presentation - survey results on what people thought at what time in the day my advertisement should be shown

I asked my participants to comment on what time they thought my advertisement should be shown, being a multi choice question. In my previous pitch presentation where I pitched my idea for the chocolate bar, I had given a time of day at which I think could be appropriate to showcase my advertisement. I had selected to show my advertisement at early peak (17:30 – 20:00) to late peak (20:00 23:00). My survey uncovered that 80% (38) of participants chose early peak time and in second with 36% (17) of participants chose a day time showing. After looking over these results it made sense that it would be a better to show my advertisement during the day since I am aiming at the younger age demographic.

I gained class feedback from 8 class members as well as my teacher. The results that I had received were mostly positive. Feedback was that the most evident technique was humour, which was what I was aiming to achieve. Most people got the idea that the advertisement was light hearted and fun to watch with a family friendly approach and tongue in cheek humour. Everyone said that they thought the target audience was 16 – 24 which was the age demographic I was aiming for and that they thought that this advertisement should be shown during the early evening through to prime time which I was also aiming to showcase my advertisement in. The participants said that the strengths of my advert were good visual effects, simplistic and effective narrative, humour, entertaining and relatable. Some of the critical feedback was that there could be a use of voice-overs as well as some sort of verbal interaction between the mother and the son. After receiving the feedback I have placed a voice over at the end of the advert.

I had also received feedback from Bill Smiths from latest TV who had some positive thoughts on my advertisement. The feedback was very positive, saying that the script was well written and that my advertisement was executed to a very high standard. One thing he said I could improve on was the presence of my boost bar in the shots, which could have been more heavily exaggerated with the use of over the top music. He also stated that it was just a personal opinion of his. I agree it would suit the advertisements style being humours and tongue and cheek

7. The research I had used like Primary and Secondary research all contributed to helping me produce the advertisement that I created as well as helping me understand the positive and negative aspects of my advertisement. It also helped my understand how to research and understand the different forms and regulations of advertisement as well as audience profiling, rights and regulations.

Questionnaire [primary]

My questionnaire/survey is a form of primary research as it requires generating your own questions to gain first hand new results. This form of research enabled me to gain a better understanding from a wider range of people on the topic at hand. It definitely helped me understand people’s opinions and thoughts on my advertisement. I gained a varied and vast amount of responses from my participants and received a good range of positive and critical feedback. One of the drawbacks from this was that some of the answers weren’t as detail as I would have liked and therefore sometimes I was confused as to the exact nature of the respondents opinion.

Market research and audience profiling/paper chase [primary/secondary]

One of the most useful pieces of research that I did was looking into existing product advertisements and researching audience profiles. This helped me find out what sort of person I wanted to aim at and it also helped me find out what sort of advertisement I want to make. Looking at previous advertisements by Cadburys Boost led me to the direction I wanted to take my advert. The audience profiling also enabled me to understand the target audience I was aiming for so that I could create my advert and tailor it to the right audience. Researching previous advertisements based around the idea of gaining energy like energy drinks (Lucasade) and bars (Japp) helped me understand the type of advertisement I wanted to produce. The down side of this though was that people might mistake the idea of my advertisement for being a sports energy enhancing chocolate bar, instead of a commercial for a yummy chocolate bar. This would be due to my influences from these other commercials but still, never the less it helped me and had a great influence my advertisement.

PowerPoint Presentation - My Idea for my idea audience profile

Advertising forms, regulations and audience theory’s [primary]

At the start of the unit I had been conducting secondary research on advertising forms, regulations and audience theories. This secondary research that I had looked into helped me understand the basics of advertising within the industry and all around the world. It was very useful to know about research techniques for example, how to conduct primary and secondary research as it helped me out later on during the course where primary research was essential to finding out peoples opinions on my coursework. Advertising forms helped me understand how adverts are structured and how to categorise them and was a great help when creating my own. Audience theories helped me create an audience profile using studies like the NRS Social grade and the Young and Rubicams 4C’s. Some of these aspects like the 4P’s and AIDA model I didn’t find relevant or helpful throughout my studies.

PowerPoint Presentation - Using audience theory's to explain my target audience

Channels & times [secondary]

Showing statics from websites like BARB or Ofcom was important for finding out what channels had the most viewings as well as helping me find out where I should advertise my product. I had originally chosen to show my advertisements during the early and late peak times as they had the most viewing. My survey results showed that the majority of people thought that the best time to show my advertisement would be during the daytime and early peak period. On reflection I realised that due to my target audience being aimed at the younger viewings that maybe it would have been a better idea to show my advertisement more during the day. Even though researching the channels and viewings helped me decide on my different showings it still felt like it I was inaccurate on my decisions.