(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.