LO3: codes and conventions of The ASA and Ofcom

The ASA: 

The ASA have many rules in place in terms of broadcasting advertisements laid out in the CAP Codes. This campaign would have to make certain that none of these codes are broken in the categories of: 

• Misleading advertising
• Privacy 

Privacy:

As that the simplest of these issues is privacy i will begin with this. This ruling relates directly to people appearing within advertising materials (models etc.) and the distribution of their image. However it is also of vital importance that no advertising materials are distributed to the public with members of the public (who were not asked for permission) appearing in them. Therefore in order to solve this issue we will first take the provision of only taking photographs in places where there is unlikely to be large amounts of people due to them being relatively isolated, all the models who we ask to be in our advertising materials will also be provided with a release and consent form to sign before any photography takes place in order to ensure the legality of their image being used in the materials being produced and any members of the public who do by accident end up being in our advertising materials will have their faces blurred out in order to ensure their image is not used illegally.

Misleading advertising:

The subject of misleading advertising is far ore complex and therefore will require much more deliberation over the course of the project. The main thing that it is vital to keep in mind for this is that we are not putting out any statements about the product we are advertising for
 example the bag possessing quality it clearly does not and other blatantly untrue remarks. We will also ensure that the pieces we make will not give any inaccurate representations of the product.

OfCom:

The office of communications (OfCom) also have a list of their own codes in relation to advertisements that will be presented via the Internet in order to be suitable for consumption by an audience.   

After reviewing the codes that this organisation enforces via the communications act of 2003 I have decided that the advertisements we have made must not contain anything blatently inapropriate such as violance, drug use or sexual themes due to the fact that it will be due to the fact that it will be approprate for all age groups and therefore suitable for mass advertisng via public distrobution.

LO3: Evaluation

Evaluation of Unit 20: Advertising: 

 For this unit me and my partner Oliver Fletcher were tasked with creating a media campaign for The Vintage Leather Company, a local business which creates clothing which is available for purchase all over the world. It was of up most importance that the pieces we created to advertise this company were made to a professional standard as that they would be viewed by people all over the world in order to create a first impression.   
 I have attempted to justify all of the materials we have created below: 


Advertising piece one: posters 






The posters we have created for the Vintage leather company aim to demonstrate the urban and vintage themes of the brand in order to effectively target our audience. We did this by using models who are part of the audience, that being students and young professionals living ABC1 lifestyle. I feel that the poses as well as the settings that i chose for these photos perfectly reflect these themes. 
If i was to create these again i feel that it would be be fit to create several different styles of advertisement in order to show that the brand can be presented in many different ways to the client. This would leave far more flexibility for our client to decide which of our pieces they feel is the best for representing their vision for the brand which they have created. 



Advertising piece two: Web banners 





 When creating this pies of our campaign we had the vision of it being synergistic with the posters we had created previously. This ,we thaught, would help to make the brand stand out further due to t havng a clear and constant tyle which can be remembered. This would also help our target audace identify the brand and therefore buid up a subcouncus assosiation of correspod the look of the brand.  
If we were to create this aain i feel like it would be very benifital to create them in muliple sides so that they would be accsessable across multaple platforms incluing the main banner on the vintage leather companys website. 








Advertising piece three: stopmotion video. 





When it was decided that i was in charge of creating the video for the advertising project I put a great deal of thought into how i would effectively encapsulate the target audience that i was trying to reach in the work i was doing. The first idea we had was to have a video where the bag is emptied at a restaurant where the model who is wearing it (a  member of the target audience) would take out many items aimed to make light of the particular subculture that the target audience is associated with. This advert was to be humorous and after putting in a great deal of thought i decided that between the long time it would take to film and edit, the job of trying to gain access to an inner city cafe or restaurant and the absence of any vintage iconography within the idea it would be more appropriate to create something more simplistic such as a stop motion video. 
Stop motion was the very first style of animation ever to be used professionally. It consists of taking a large number of photographs of the subject of the piece moving it slightly each time in order to crate the illusion of the item moving on its own when the images are played one after another individually. I decided that this would be a brilliant way of creating the advertisement due to the simplicity of creating it as well as the vintage connotation it carries with it.
 If i had the opportunity i would have created both advertisements however and decide on which one was better when they were finished by presenting them to the client. As well as this i feel like the images within our stop motion advertisement were not perfect at creating the vintage theme that the company wants to be known for. 

In Conclusion:

Over the course of creating this advertising campaign i have had many challenges to overcome. I have had to learn to use new software in order to create the products I have. I feel that while the materials we have created are up to a professional standard and could be distributed by a real life company without issue however there are several changes that i would make to change them.
Firstly for the posters and banner adverts i feel that it would be more inclusive to the wide target audience we have chosen to include a more ethnically diverse group of models. This would mean that no group of people is made to feel left out due to lack of representation.
As well as this the stop motion advertisement would have been better if i had taken images on closer intervals. This would have made the movement of the bag more fluid and less clunky than on the actual video.
Overall I feel that the merits of our work outweigh the detriments that can be made against it.

LO2 Photography relese forms [Oliver]

Work to be completed [Oliver]

LO2 Call sheet [Oliver]

LO2 Banner ad material analysis [Oliver]

LO2 Creation of twitter account [Oliver]

Creating Twitter

Social Media Creation

As a result of our primary target demographic it was relevant to create a range social media accounts, below is evidence of the twitter page for the Vintage Leather Company. Social media will be used in the campaign as it will appeal to the younger demographic and is effective as a means of easily communicating and interacting with an audience, it also has the benefit of being free. 

LO2 Methods of gaining feedback [Oliver]

Methods of gaining feedback

Feedback Answers

LO2 evidence of contacting client [Oliver]

LO2 Gannt for relese of ads

 Which type of campaign will we use for The Vintage Leather Bag Co?

There are three methods to running an advertising campaign. Firstly all of the material can be released at the same time meaning that there would be a high Chance that the Target audience will see it as that it is included in all of the forms of media where it was planned to be represented. Secondly the campaign could gradually release all of the promotional materials which means that the audience will see the same product advertised with the same message, House style and theme over a longer period of time. Lastly the campaign could use a "Tease and Reveal" strategy wherein a brand will use something recognisable to make an established audience anticipate the launch of future advertising material.

This last strategy is often employed by large film studios (for example the first official piece of advertising for 2016's "Batman Vs Superman Dawn Of Justice" was a short teaser trailer featuring the recognisable iconography of Henry Cavill's updated superman costume which had been seen previously in 2013's "Man Of Steel" by the audience the studio was targeting. I do not think that this method would be effective for our campaign as that it is usually used to promote well established brands which have recognisable iconography to encapsulate the atheistic of their product and therefore it will not work for an upcoming brand such as The Vintage Leather Bag Co.

Due to the nature of the vintage leather bag company as a business and the audience we are attempting to attract i feel that it would be illogical to use either an "all at once" or "tease and reveal" campaign because the audience is unfamiliar with the brand making the use of subtle iconography redundant as well as the fact that the product itself would probably benefit most from being advertised for as long as possible and not (as the "all at once" campaign would do) give the product the maximum amount of exposure possible to the detriment of the campaigns longevity. Again i don't feel that this "All at once" strategy would work at all as that we don't want the brand to be forgettable and a huge amount of exposure for a small amount of time would only serve to put the name of the company into the public eye.

Having cancelled out these two methods the only one we are left with is the "slow release" strategy. We will likely carry this out by releasing different mediums of advertisements at different times as to maximise the length of the campaign. By doing so the target audience will become more familiar with the brand and are therefore more likely to invest their money in the products which they will now see as coming from a well established brand. A slow release method of marketing the Vintage Leather Bag company would therefore be the most appropriate.

In order to be successful in this campaign strategy we will need to release the campaign pieces in an orderly fashion for as long a period as possible maximising the exposure while minimising the amounts spent for each advert.

LO2: Evidence of development, creation - MoodBoard, logo design, mag ad design, photography [Oliver]

LO2 Mindmap of ideas

Storyboard for stopmotion [Oliver]

(LO1) Analysis of existing advertising campaigns.

NHS Anti-smoking adverts

In 2013 The British national health service (NHS) launched a new advertising campaign in an attempt to stop people smoking. In this advert they claimed that they were trying to reach all smokers but particularly the young who didn't understand the side effects that the addiction risks creating in the body. This means that the target audience would be people of both genders from about 1 onwards as that they wanted to reach everyone who may be in danger of starting to smoke.

A Shot from The 2013 Advert 

The television advert featured a man standing outside of his house with a cigarette which grows a tutor out of the side of it more whenever he smokes it. This takes place as a voice talks about the dangers of smoking. The use of a man standing outside of his house is quite appropriate in reaching a British audience as that they want to be as general as possible and the scene in the advert is quite average. This means that people will relate to it more and that means that when the disturbing imagery begins the people watching the advert are more likely to project the idea of them getting cancer from a cigarette more on to themselves. As well as this the advertisement was run between December and February which could be because among all of the happy new year adverts a seriously disturbing advertisement is even more likely to stick in the minds of the people watching and leave more of an impression on the people viewing it. This helps people to understand the message of the campaign more. As well as this television advert the campaign also included the use of several posters which kept the same message however I do not feel that they would be as effective as reaching the General audience that the television adverts do as that less people will see them and the goal of this campaign was to make sure that as many people as possible would.

 This is one of the posters used for the campaign. It relates to the TV advert although it uses the imagery of a physical hook to the addiction that smokers will attain. This advert is again trying to show the public that smoking is lethal in the clearest way possible. It also contains a pun and a call to action in the tag line "get unhooked". however I do not feel like it is presented in as clear and concise a way as the television advert as that it doesn’t actually feature a cigarette in the picture instead just opting to use smoking in the tagline. This makes me think that people passing by the poster as they would if it was hanging up would be would most likely miss the message of the poster. This makes the poster less likely to appeal to the general audience and stop them from smoking as the campaign was set up to do.

As that the NHS is a government agency the advertising campaigns they send out do not violate any laws as that they have many lawyers and other legal officials around to oversee the project. The campaign does have some very serious ethical issues centred around it. For example, is it alright that the NHS have used the threat of death to persuade people to stop smoking or is this a clear case of emotional blackmail?

The Blair Witch Project.

In 1999 directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez set out to create a new type of horror picture and on a relatively low budget it was very difficult for them to create a large marketing campaign for the picture. The film itself had a relatively young target audience which is likely why the marketing techniques were so successful.

Due to the young age of the films target demographic the posters have been designed to use quite dark colours. The dark colours connote the sinister atmosphere of the product that is being sold with this film and will likely attract the attention of the films intended target audience. I would say that the intended target audience for this film would be late teen to late twenties people of both genders likely with a NRS C or B lifestyle. They would be attracted to the film by the fact that they can relate to the characters featured in it (as that they are in the same age range and will be the same gender as one of the characters.) which is probably why the main protagonist (Heather) is featured on the films second poster (shown below).  
Another poster design (also shown below) features pictures of the three main actors of the film in a "missing poster" format. This advertisement blends quite well with the other aspect of the Blair Witch Project's marketing campaign which was mainly focused on making the movie going community believe that it was real. There were several aspects to this strategy which included:
1. Making Missing posters for the actors such as the one featured below.
2. having the actors not be involved in any of the marketing for the film (interviews and the such.)
3. The now infamous tag line "In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found." was used to promote the film in every trailer and poster released for it and is written in such a way as to tell the audience that what they are seeing is a real film shot by a girl who is really missing.
5. The makers of the film managed to secure a deal with the US "Sci Fi" channel in order to broadcast a "mini documentary" on the Blair which before the movie came out which again gave audiences a chance o see the film as real.
The idea of making the movie seem real to the audience who will be viewing it seems ridiculous to people now but when " The Blair Witch Project" was created in 1999 people didn't have the Internet to quickly disprove such claims of legitimacy and this meant that it was a much easier task to convince people that they were seeing real footage and caused the target demographic to become far more interested in the premise of the film as that it is typically the type of people who  would be interested in consuming  that challenges traditional modes and conventions. As well as this the advertising campaign's message that the people and events in the film are legitimate calls an important ethical question. Is it alright to use a supposedly real life tragedy to profit? and more so. Is it alright to fabricate a story such as this which could upset and offend people who have real life missing family members while drawing attention away from their real life searches with the fake missing people that this film has created?

Snickers: You're not you when you're hungry.

In 2012 snickers begun their now infamous advertising campaign centered on the slogan “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry” with a television advertisement featuring a gym changing room with three men getting changed while a woman in a dress associated with the “diva” persona within the 1980s and 90s gives an upset speech about somebody “stealing her deodorant”. After some back and forth dialogue between the characters one of the men offers the woman a snickers bar, which she eats and transforms back into the man that she supposedly was before getting hungry and becoming a “diva” as the man who gives her the bar.

The advertisement focused heavily on the idea that men don’t want to appear womanly which is an effective use of stereotypes to create the precise message that the company was trying to create.   

While this advert focused very little on the chocolate bar in which it was trying to sell it was its humorous message, which resonated the most with the target audience of the product, which is mostly comprised of young NRS C or low B citizens who likely spend lots of time watching television or on the internet which is why having a humorous message is so important. As is the nature of social media the slogan “you’re not you when you’re hungry. Eat a snickers” quickly became a widely used joke (or meme). This essentially gave snickers a free form of online advertising as a product that would prevent you from making a fool of yourself in public (relating back to the original advertisement). The campaign has even featured endorsements from "you-tubers" (people who make youtube videos for a living)  to make videos which utilised the campaigns slogan. The channels featured were mainly "tutorial" channels which teach people how to do things through their videos. however in the videos featured they were performing far below their usual standard. At the end of each advert the snickers logo as well as the slogan "you're not you when you're hungry" was shown in a way that related back to the channel that was featured (for example the channel "Ultimate Handyman , which usually features a man showing the layman how to achieve success in DIY tasks around the house,  had the logo featured on the side of his drill.) This form of advertising would help the slogan reach a huge audience of different people all of whom utilise youtube. 

The fact that Snickers used the style of comedic advertising which they did as well as utilising social media connotes that they are attempting (and succeeding to) appeal to the the style of comedy which this band (NRS 2) of people would find amusing. This makes people remember the brand because of the joke and makes it for more likely that they will buy that chocolate bar next time they see it in a shop



A large bill board put up in a city centre (a place likely to contain the young people who snickers are trying to appeal to due to universities usually being in the city centre.) The advertisement features the famous image of Marilyn Monroe's dress blowing up with a mans face edited onto it which again connotes (due to the slogan being featured) that you will become more feminine if you don't eat the chocolate bar that Snickers is trying to sell you. Again the message is portrayed comedically which keeps this advertisement in line with the rest of the campaign.

Another series of posters from the campaign which portrays the message that you cannot act like yourself when you are hungry although this time it has been done slightly differently as that the message has been applied directly to the product itself. In the advertisement here the snickers name is featured on the wrappers of other chocolate bars owned by the same company that owns them (Mars.) this shows the message that you can't act normally when you're hungry.

campaign one; Coca Cola 2015 "Choose happiness"

In 2015 Coca Cola chose to unite their 4 separate brands including their (then) new Coca Cola "life" beverage into one unified campaign. They did this by creating billboards with all 4 upon them each sporting the colours of a different Coca Cola beverage. As well as this they changed their slogan from "open Happiness" to "Choose Happiness" and then made this slogan into a hash tag to increase their Twitter and Instagram presence.

The line "choose happiness also serves as a call to action which implores people to choose which coca cola they would like to drink and ten buy it. The use of simple block colours is also an interesting technique used by the company to sell its product as that it helps to build up the association between the brands and the colour featured therefore when people see the colour red they will associate that with the coca cola brand.

It is difficult to distinguish a particular target audience for this advertisement and it is my guess that as that coca cola has such a vast consumer base they are trying to make the advertisements accessible to as many people as possible. The product of Coca Cola is a soft drink which contains no alcohol therefore I would expect the advertisements for such a product to be aimed towards children and younger teenagers and in many ways this can be seen in the advertisements simplistic art style (see the picture below). This simple picture seems to be designed to appeal t young people due to its use of extremely bright colours and instantly recognizable imagery (t-rex) both of these factors connote happiness and nostalgia both of which are very good driving factors when convincing people to buy your product.

Explanation of Media choices for client (LO2)

What forms of media have we created and why?

In this task we have chosen to create three different forms of media. I have explained each below. 

1) posters 

Print advertising was a clear choice when deciding to make this campaign. If the product is to appeal to the young target audience that has been assigned to it then it would be clear that print must play a part. Young people consume large amounts of print media like those concerning music and local events. Creating a print advertisement means that the company itself would be able to pay these publications to feature it in their work and therefore reach this audience. 

As well as this the distribution of posters containing print advertisement is a very old method of adverting which has been shown that if done correctly can bring large amounts of customers to a brand. An important faster to remember when distributing posters however is that when they are put up it must be in places where the target audience would see it such as at music venues or near university accommodation sites as that this is where they will spend the majority of their free time. 

Print adverts in magazines etc.
As that the company does not have a huge budget for advertising it is likely that we would not be able to advertise in large magazines with huge readerships. For this reason we would likely have to reach our rtarget audiance motre directly advertisng in low budget magazines that cator to the same niche interests that our 16- 35 target demographic would be fasinated in such as local magazines (Like Exposed) or alternative music magazines. This means that we can maximise the amount of time advertising our product insted of spending the entire budget on one huge advertiment.

2) web banners 

Again this decision was made with our target demographic in mind. It is a well known fact that young people make up most of the usership of the internet and therefore there are hundreds of sites dedicated to them. This means that the vintage leather company could pay these websites to feature adverts featuring their brand in order to bring in customers who will see it on a website they frequent. 

3) Video advertisements 

There are two reasons we decided to create a video advert the first being that the advertisment could be broadcast on television in order to attract a far more general audiance as oppose to the other two advertising techniques we are creating. This will help people see the vintage leather company as a well established brand who they can trust the quality of. 

The second reason to create a video ad was (much like with a web banner) it could be used to advertise the product on YouTube. This is becoming a very popular way for brands to reach their target audience as that it is very easy to find the types of videos that young people are likely to watch and put the relevant adds on.



4) A new twitter account for the company.

This fourth and final idea should be one of the best for attracting customers to the vintage leather company as that it will make people far more likely to discover the company on the mass (not just our target audiance) and would allow people to interact with people in the company about potental queaies they may have. 

Identification of Target audience for our advertising campaign (LO2)

Who is the Vintage Leather Company for?

The vintage leather company is a company completely focused on making bags that have the conventions that would be expected of a bag made 60/70 years ago. This means that in terms of advertising this campaign will be looking at a rather large target audience as that the idea of leather bag is not something that appeals to just one Gender, age or ethnic group. I have decided that as that this business is rather small and does not have much experience with branding that the best way I can find a clear way to market the product and an audience who it can be marketed to. 

Upon searching the Internet for other products which appear similar to the vintage leather company i found three which I think it would be beneficial to take inspiration form. These companies are " Asos Market place", "Beyond Retro vintage clothing" And "Rokit London." A screen shot of the home pages of each can be found below.

 

These images (as can be seen) all contain young models. This makes me think that companies such as these (which all contain similar themes to the vintage leather company) are all targeting young people. Therefore the most lucrative market age wise for the vintage leather company would be young people. I therefore believe that the appropriate audience for this advertising project would be the students and young professionals as that these are the people who appear to be targeted by companies who provide similar products. 

Location recce for Advertisments 1 and 2 (posters and web banner) (LO2)

location scouting



Location one: hallam lane

I felt that this location was appropriate as that it is very good at connoting the urban themes that i wanted to connote with this advertising product due to the red brick walls and the graffiti. The location will work well for the advertisements.

Location 2: Cambridge street

Again this is a location very much in tune with Sheffield's urban history as that it has existed longer than much of the city. Today it is the site of a large piece of street art that i feel would look great for a project which must appeal to young people.

Location 3: The Plug

The Plug is  a 1live music venue that hosts large acts in the city centre of Sheffield. I felt that this would be a good location to take photos for the advertising campaign that we were creating however i later decided it would be better if we created no photos in this area as that sing the brand could create copyright concerns.

Location 4: Carpark and surrounding streets:

I feel that these locations would be best for the photos we are taking as that they are good for displaying the whole Sheffield skyline and therefore portray the urban lifestyle we are trying to convey with this campaign.






Location 4: The peace gardens:

This area of inner city sheffield is located near both the university and  many local offices. This makes it a very popular location for the students and young proffesonals to visit. I therefore decided that this would be a good spot for the vintage leather company to base its advertisments as that it would be reenforcement of familiar iconography which will reasure the audiance that the brand is legitamate.