Factors of Advertising

In this essay, I will be talking about 3 major factors in advertising. First, I will be looking at examples of different platforms of advertising and I will be assessing different advertisements from each of these different forms of advertisement and analyzing the codes and conventions of each as well as the techniques used by the advertisers to sell their products to the audience watching the advert. And I will also be comparing different adverts that are selling similar products and how they try to one up their competitors through their advertising e.g. (coke vs. Pepsi). And finally, I will be discussing how different types of people are represented in mainstream advertising e.g. (Race, Age, Gender).

Firstly, I am going to be looking at a multitude of forms of advertising. These are: Broadcast advertisement (TV, Radio and Cinema), Print (Newspaper, Magazine, Billboards, Posters, Handouts), Web (banner ads, video ads, pop up ads, website). Throughout my analysis I will be talking about Content/Narrative, Branding, Imagery, Sound, Style, Form, Lighting and Camera Techniques Within the adverts. For television adverts, I will be using two examples instead of one because tv adverts have more options when it comes to presentation so to give a more cohesive and strong analysis on television adverts I feel comparing two helps give a better impression of the conventions of television advertising. Just to clarify the reason why I am doing this exclusively for television advertising and not for any other form of advertising is because the other forms of adverts all follow the same formula and while Tv adverts do follow a formula that they all share there is more room in Tv adverts for more creative opportunities both visually and content wise.

Just for context these are the links to the 2 television adverts that I will be analyzing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEPthI_uMvc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo 

 I’m going to start by looking at television advertising. The two TV adverts that I am going to be analyzing are the Peter Kay john smith dog show advert from the early to mid-2000s, And the advert is the famous gorilla drum kit advert form Cadburys that was released in 2007.First the john smith ad. First, I am going to discuss content.  The advert opens with a dog show and we see woman and her poodle going through the obstacle course. The commentators providing a voice over through the entirety of the advert giving more enthusiastic over the course of the advert. After the woman and her poodle finish we transition to peter Kay’s character who is called john smith throughout the entirety of the ad campaign. We are also introduced to his dog Tonto and as soon as we are introduced to john and his dog by the commentator’s john smith points to the door and tonto rushes away out of the obstacle course as a stopwatch in the bottom left corner begins. We then see john cross his arms as he waits for his dog to return. At the 7-second mark, we see the dog run back into the arena with a newspaper in his mouth. We see john’s facial expression change and he seems very impressed and proud. As the dog brings the newspaper to john as he raises it in pride with the audience cheering and the commentators losing their mind. We then cut to the dog with a medal as we see a can and a pint of john smith next to the tagline “No Nonsense”. The narrative of the advert is very simple and provides a nice dose of humor which helps make the advert overall both more memorable and more enjoyable for the audience. 

The simplistic set up makes the advert easier to digest and doesn’t dilute the fact that its purpose is to sell a product to the viewer. The narrative is very mundane in the sense it’s a dog show which isn’t something outlandish or inherently mass appealing or immensely exciting but this helps sort of mask the blatant buy our product thing with it actually having some substance and doesn’t feel like a blatant advertisement and feels more like a sketch that just happens to double as an advert.

Next, I am going to discuss the branding used within the advert. John smith’s primary color is green. The arena in which the advert is set within is primarily green this is to subliminally make the audience not only associated the shade of green used with john smith which could lead to people buying john smith lager. The badge worn by tonto in the end of the advert has the same color, which again is a subliminal method of making the audience associate that color pattern with john smiths. The tagline for john smith “No nonsense” works in context with the adverts featured and aired in the peter Kay ad campaign. For example, with this advert it works in the way that instead of teaching his dog to do fancy tricks he instead teaches it the practical skill of getting the newspaper with incredibly quick speed. The use of green is ever present within the advert and while noticeable blends in with the setting of the advert. The advantage of setting the advert within a dog show is that they are primarily green with the ground being covered in AstroTurf and the walls being green. This works in john smiths favour as their primary colour is green this makes it so much easier to incorporate the iconography and also helps make the iconography less forced and helps make it feel more natural. Speaking of iconography, the advert also uses a variety of imagery throughout the duration of the advert. The imagery used in the advert is mostly animal related with dogs in the forefront. The use of dogs is to associate the image related to dogs which is loyal, friendly etc with john smith and to associate the qualities usually associated with dogs and with john smith’s alcohol. This again is a way to associate john smiths with things most people would see day to day and in some way with things most people see in a positive light e.g.  dogs are seen mostly in a positive light hence the phrase “man’s best friend”. The imagery is used to help link and associate John Smith’s lager with things people come into contact with on a day to day basis like for example dogs which may seem like quite the leap but the aim is to associate John Smith’s lager with things people mostly see in a positive light like dogs.

Next is the Sound and style within the advert. The advert doesn’t feature much in the way of sound. The advert in terms of sound. The only things we hear in terms in sound is the commentary team’s voices and the audience. The audience only cheer during specific moments within the advert, the audience for the most part stay silent apart from low clapping. The commentary team on the other hand are speaking throughout the entirety of the advert with their comments becoming increasingly more enthusiastic as the advert progresses. The style of the advert is very similar to a television sketch you would see on a comedy show like snl. The style of the advert is as previously mentioned is similar to that of a sketch show which helps make the advert feel like less of an advert and more akin to something shown on a comedy show. The style of the advert reinforces the concept of the ad being presented in a similar way to a comedy skit.

The next thing I want to talk about is the form the advert is presented in. The form in which the advertisement is presented is very snappy in terms of the way things play out. The advert is presented in a very similar way to the rest of the peter kay john smith adverts from the campaign. The presentation of the advert is with a comedic tone and is very realistic in terms of colour grading. The colours are all the same colours featured on a can of john smiths. The adverts use of iconography is very apparent and consistent. All of the Peter Kay John Smith Adverts follow the same basic narrative formula but use it in different scenarios and situations. The formula is as follows. People are just doing something and its fairly mundane and ordinary then Peter Kay turns up and does something extravagant, ridiculous or funny and then we cut to either a glass or a can of John Smiths lager. This the base narrative for every advert in the Campaign. Finally, I am going to be talking about the Camera Techniques and Lighting used in the advert. Firstly, the lighting is very bright and is in line to what is used in most live events like sports broadcasts on television or the news broadcasts. The lighting quality is good and is very bright as well as soft but is above the subject. The lack of shadows and the clear view of everything that is happening within the shot. The Camera techniques are very similar to that of a sporting or live broadcast. Which fits well with the lighting. The Camera shots consist mostly of wide shots, aerial shots and close ups with the odd pan or tracking shot. The steadiness of the camera helps the audience see everything clearly in frame. The position of the cameras makes the presentation feel closer to the style and form the advert was going for.

The Second television advert I am going to be talking about is the 2007 gorilla advert for Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate bar. To begin with I am going to talk about the content and narrative of the advert. The advert opens with a pan of an extreme close up of a gorilla’s eyes then as he takes a breath we cut to a close up of the gorilla which is followed by a sequence of cuts between close ups and extreme close ups of the gorilla’s face. We then slowly pan out to the gorilla’s face revealing the background and the surroundings including the drum set in front of him and also reveals the two drumsticks in each of his hands. And as he takes a deep breath and begins playing the drums along with the song which ramps up. As the advert continues the camera continues to pan out as the gorilla continues to play the drums as we slowly dissolve into an image of the dairy milk bar with the tagline “a glass and a half full of joy”, Which is written below. The advert is very memorable because of its simplicity and its use of a popular song in Phil Collin’s in the air tonight. The advert is also three times as long as the average advert clocking in at one minute and thirty seconds. The length of the advert gives the creators more time to catch the audience’s attention and to cement the advert in the audience’s mind as well as sell the dairy milk chocolate bar.

Secondly, I will be talking about the branding and imagery used in the advert. The advert uses the colour purple in relation to the packaging colour for the dairy milk and Cadbury’s primary colour used in their marketing. The background in the advert has a similar colour scheme to the packaging of dairy milk bars which I assume is to subliminally make the viewer want a dairy milk. Well that’s the aim of the marketing team when creating the advert. The use of a gorilla and a catchy song helps the audience remember and thus they will talk about it and in turn bring more people to see the advert and hopefully in turn bring more people to buy Cadbury products and make Cadbury more money. The advert is full of memorable imagery which helps the advert stand out among the rest and in the mind of the viewers. The use of the colour purple as previously mentioned is very prominent within the advert. The colour purple is prominent in practically every Cadbury’s advert over the last decade. The gorilla featured in the advert has since become iconic among viewers and has also become a staple of Cadbury’s advertising history.

Following this I am going to be discussing the sound and style of the advert. Now Besides Phil Collins in the air tonight being played in the background through the entirety of the advert which the gorilla is playing along to on the drums. The use of a popular song in Phil Collins, in the air tonight is used to make the advert memorable for the audience and the memorability of the song helps the ad gain more exposure with more people telling their family and friends about it who then go and seek out the advert and continue the cycle. The style of the advert is very simple with only the gorilla, the drum kit and a handful of speakers. The style of the advert is very similar to that of a music studio which works with the gorilla playing the drum kit. 

The style of the advert is similar to that of a music video which similar to the peter kay advert in that it presents the advert in a way that doesn’t feel like a deliberate advertising, rather something other but still related to advertising. What I mean by this is that while both television ads I have discussed make an effort to not make their ads feel like a deliberate advertisement but the styles that they chose both relate to advertising in the same way, that way being that both live events and music videos are full of product placement and advertising. With live events, it’s in the form of sponsorship like for example American football matches in the NFL tend to be sponsored by either Budweiser or bud light while in music videos the advertising comes from the product placement scattered throughout the video an example of this would be the beats pill which appears in a huge majority of every popular song. While these are two different forms of advertising they both link the style of both the Cadbury’s gorilla ad and Peter Kay’s dog show ad to advertising.

Anyway, back on topic I will now be talking about the Form in which the Cadbury Gorilla ad is presented in as well as the camera techniques used within the advert. The form in which the advert is presented is very simplistic in design but works in the adverts favour. The simplistic design of the advert helps the advert maintain the audience’s attention on the main attraction of the advert being the gorilla and in turn make the appearance of the dairy milk chocolate bar at the end of the advert more noticeable although not out of place and in vein of the rest of the advert.

Next, I will move on to cinema advertising. Now cinema advertising is very similar if not identical to television advertising. The only major differences in the technical side of the advertising. What I mean by this is the only major difference between cinema advertising and television advertising is the way it is presented. Cinema adverts are obviously shown on a cinema screen, now the advantage of that is that a cinema advert can create a better atmosphere and make the audience experience the advert rather than just watch it like they would a television advert an example of this would be car adverts which when played during a cinema screening are able to capture the desired effect which is intense and visually stunning. This give advertisers and marketing executives the chance to not only grab the audience’s attention but bring them to the world.

The Advantage with video advertisements being played in the cinema is that advertisers are able to utilise the different aspects of video and sound more effectively due to the technology used in the average cinema screening room. This technology allows advertisers to give the audience a more eventful and immersive experience. A great example of this like I mentioned previously is Car adverts. They are more prevalent in cinemas because they feature lots of cars revving and so with the eight speakers in the average cinema screening room the sound is amplified making the experience more intense for the audience. The amplified sound helps makes the car sound better and in a way, plays a factor in incentivising the audience to go out and purchase the car.

Next, I will be moving on to radio advertising, now before I begin discussing radio advertisement I’m going to put a link to the specific radio ad that I will be talking about and analysing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTdKhhtedY

To begin with I am going to be talking about radio advertising in general and then I am going to be analysing the Amigo Loans “Amazing things” radio advert from 2016.  What makes radio adverts different to other broadcasting forms is that radio adverts are very much reliant on the narrator’s skill. The disadvantage with radio adverts is there is very little iconography and no visual imagery, branding or iconography. The reason for this is that radio adverts are exclusively audio and so the advertisers lose the advantages video advertising provide. Radio advertisers are in turn limited in the way that they can present their adverts.

To analyse the codes and conventions of radio adverts I am going to use an example, as mentioned previously I am going to analyse the amigo loans 2016 radio advert “Amazing Things” as mentioned previously. First, I am going to be discussing the content and narrative within the advert.  The advert opens up with a rhetorical question, followed by the narrator explaining what amigo loans are and how to get them. He presents the process of acquiring an amigo loan in a way that is intended to intrigue and entice the listener to at least consider taking out an amigo loan. He then states the terms and conditions at a brisk pace and the advert concludes when the advert closes with the amigo loans jingle which hopefully sticks in the listeners heads and make the advert more memorable. There isn’t so much of a narrative within the advert like with a television advert but instead the advert is more straight to the point and just just focuses on laying down the facts as well as make a case for why amigo loans are a good thing and are reliable.

Next, I am going to move on to the branding used within the advert. The way amigo loans use branding within the radio advert in two main ways. The first is by saying all the benefits and upsides to using and claiming an amigo loan. The second is the jingle featured at the end. The use of the jingle is to make the advert more memorable and catchy which could make the audience tell their friends and family about amigo loans and further the brand and help raise amigo loans notability, popularity and profit. 

Following on from this I am going to be talking about the Sound and Style of the advert. There is no sound except the voice over and the little jingle at the end. The style of the advert is incredibly simplistic, as mentioned previously the advert focuses on mostly laying down facts and making a case for amigo loans and why not only are they a good thing but to an extent why you should take out a loan with amigo loans. The simplicity of the advert’s style is unavoidable because of the fact that the advert is exclusively audio and is without any video footage like a television advert as well as the fact that the advert consists of one voice speaking throughout the entirety of the advert. The way the voice over has a sense of enthusiasm helps the audience become more engaged with the advert as well as the fact that the voice doesn’t seem bored in their tone of voice which helps keep the audience engaged because if the narrator is enthusiastic and interested then that will keep the audience engaged as if the narrator was dull and uninterested then the audience wouldn’t care because if the narrator doesn’t care then why should they. 

Finally, I am going to be talking about the form in which the advert is presented in. The form the advert is shown is in an audio format as the advert was created for radio broadcasting. The advert is presented in a simple way with the narrator talking about amigo loans and a jingle featured at the end. The reliance on the narrator’s capability to hold an audience is quite risky but very common within the radio broadcasting industry but considering how cheap it is to produce a radio advert it is a risk that seems worth taking and to some extent not really a risk as these types of adverts are commonplace.

Next, I am going to be talking non-broadcast media. Otherwise known as print advertising most commonly shown in magazines and newspapers. Other forms of print advertising are flyers, posters, brochures and handouts. I am going to be focusing on a newspaper advertisement as they are the ones which receive the most exposure. The advertisement that I have chosen for the print section of this is a newspaper advertisement for an M.O.T and servicing garage. For context, I am going to show the image of the advertisement.

Firstly, I am going to be talking about the content featured within the advert. The ad features very big lettering and is very straight to the point and includes the number to get into contact with them. The advert also features the location of the garage as well as the prices of their services. The advert is very crowded in terms of content and the advertisers have shoved as much information as possible into the ad. The advert lays out the essential information in large and distinctly coloured fonts as to attract the viewers eyes. The advert in generally colourful and is intended to catch the attention of people browsing through the ad pages in the newspaper, although the downside to the advert is that it is quite straining as there is an abundance of text which presents the risk that it might detract people because it feels redundant as the text could easily be condensed to make it more appealing.

 Following this I am going to be talking about the branding and imagery in the ad. The ad features a lot of text and large lettering so it contains as much information as can be crammed into the small size available within the newspaper advertisement page. The ad features a lot of bright colours as to make the advert stand out among the packed advert pages within newspapers.

Next, I am going to be talking about the sound and style of the advert. There is no sound present on in the ad which is fairly obvious considering the fact that it is a printed image. The style of the advert is very crammed and very vibrant and is absolutely packed with information about the business. Finally, I am going to be talking about the form that the advert is presented in. The form in which the advert is presented forces the ad to be straight to the point and very direct. The form in which the advert is presented doesn’t give the ad much breathing room and basically forces it to cram as much info into the ad to insure the maximum amount of knowledge being passed on. The downside to the ad is the over reliance on information over trying to attract people to the advert and in turn attract people to the business itself. 

The final form of advertising I will be talking about is web advertising. Now there are 7 types of online web advertising. They are as follows:

         •        Display ads (e.g. static images, text, Floating banners, Wallpaper, popup ads, Flash and video)

         •        Social Media Ads (Organized and Paid)

         •        Search Engine Marketing 

         •        Native Advertising

         •        Remarketing/Retargeting 

         •        Video Ads

         •        Email Marketing

Web advertising has come a long way in the last decade and the internet is very quickly becoming the most used form of media on the planet. Advertises are making the most of every opportunity to advertise on the web. There are three key reasons why advertisers advertise in large quantities on the internet. Firstly, web advertising is relatively cheap compared to tv and cinema advertisement which means that the profit margin for advertisers and investors is wider and they can make more money as well as be able to take more risks in advertising as there is a lower chance of losing large quantities of money. Secondly, Web advertising will be seen by the whole world and by Billions of people and will be seen and spread all over the world. Finally, the internet is one of the most used platforms in the world and is rapidly becoming more popular than other media platforms which means that advertisers who advertise through the internet can reach a larger audience and is able to connect advertisers with their target audience through social media which helps them know what the target audience is interested in which makes their job easier and helps them keep up with the times and lowers the risk of their adverts causing offense or turning off the target audience and damaging their brand of course this still isn’t impossible and ironically happens more often than you would think. 

Moving on from forms of Advertising I will now be talking about how different adverts of similar products try to both sell their products and top their competitors? To answer this, I will be using the example of Pepsi and Coca Cola who both sell sugar and caffeine filled soft drinks. Pepsi and Coke are both very popular but just how do they compete with each other and stand out considering they both sell virtually the same product. The answer I think is branding. What I mean by this is the way both companies associate themselves with popular things to help distinguish their brand, these two companies among many others makes attempts to integrate into both popular culture and into people’s everyday lives. Coca Cola is more prone to doing this then Pepsi as they have advertised on basically everything forms billboards and television to having a semi-truck drive around the country delivering Coco Cola.

Coca cola’s focus on mass marketability and sponsorships to keep their company and products in the limelight. While Coca Cola is responsible for the production and distribution of a huge variety of products they seem to focus on Coca Cola itself, this is most likely due to the name recognition and the fact that it is the corporation’s bestselling product by miles. Coco Cola makes for monopolistic competition.

Now while Coca Cola is very much ingrained into the public consciousness and is one of the most recognisable brands on the planet. Pepsi’s marketing is more niche then Coca Cola but not out of the spotlight. Whereas Coca Cola focuses on pushing the product solely on the brand name, Pepsi prefers to use celebrity endorsement to sell their product and to incentivise viewers to purchase Pepsi. Now I am going to discuss how both Coca Cola and Pepsi attempt to one up each other in trying to incentivise their audiences to purchase their soft drink over the other. Coca Cola tries to one up Pepsi by associating coke with joy and “positive things” with the slogan “Open happiness”. Coca Cola also sponsors and provides its product to a huge quantity of fast food restaurants with more than double the amount of restaurants then Pepsi has sponsored and provided their product to.

Pepsi on the other hand try to make themselves stand out from Coca Cola by using celebrity endorsement to incentivise people to go out and purchase a bottle of Pepsi rather than a coke. The reason that Pepsi don’t use the same marketing techniques as Coca Cola is because no matter how hard Pepsi try they will never be as globally recognisable as Coca Cola. This is obviously because of Coca Cola’s brand dominance due to its shear amount of exposure since its founding in the 19^thcentury. Pepsi’s reliance on celebrity endorsement is because if the audience members see a celebrity tell them to go and buy a Pepsi then they are more likely to go and buy a Pepsi as they will put trust in people that they like. 

Coca Cola relies on brand recognition and so doesn’t feel the need to rely on celebrity endorsement to sell their products, more specifically coke itself. Pepsi knows that they won’t be able to outsell competitors and match up to Coca Cola purely through brand loyalty and know that if they use celebrity endorsements to help sell their products they will have a better chance as they can bring in fans of the celebrity who endorses their product as well as consumers who prefer Pepsi over Coca Cola and purchase the product regardless of who is endorsing it.

So, to summarise and conclude Coca Cola and Pepsi have fairly different marketing strategies with Coca Cola using its global recognisability and its huge library of brand associations and also its association with joy, happiness and positive things. Pepsi however prefer to use a wide selection of celebrity endorsements over the course of its many advertising campaigns over the years. The use of celebrity endorsement is to give Pepsi access to a larger customer base through their celebrity endorsements which help maintain sales figures and helps Pepsi maintain their spot as the 2^ndmost popular fizzy drink corporation/company.      

Finally, I am going to Talk about how Different groups of people are represented in media, more specifically in advertising,I am going to be talking about 3 representations in advertising, these are as follows: Race, Gender and Age. I will be starting by analysing the representation of race in advertising and then gender and finally age. Different races are represented quite stereotypically in advertising.People of caucasian heritage (white people) are in the majority of adverts following people are the most prominent and are represented as the average person as they are personality wise represented in accordance to the context and narrative of the advert.They are not represented the same in all forms of advertising as their representation differs depending on a multitude of factors. These factors are: The product being sold through the advertising, the form that the advertisement is shown in, the setting/location the advertisement takes place in and the role of the characters in the advert. So in summary what i am saying is that white people are represented in advertisement in all sorts of ways from the brave hero coming to save the girl in men’s cologne adverts, as male members of a family in every advert featuring families and products that are aimed at families. 

So basically white people are in pretty much the huge majority of adverts in television and web advertising with the occasional appearance in print advertising and in radio advertising since it is exclusively audio you can’t really tell nor define someones race just based on hearing their voice and their voice alone. Next i am going to talk about how people of african heritage are represented in advertising. Black people are represented in advertising as stereotypically comedic and used fro comedic purposes.There is two representations of black people in advertising these are the high pitched and overly enthusiastic comedic relief and the huge muscular fitness nut the size of a building.Now both of these representations are more than racist but they are sadly very common. The use of these stereotypes is to add comedy to the adverts. Apparently according to the representation of black people in advertising is either a earlier 2000s comedy starring Eddie murphy or a steroids psa. 

Next I am going to be discussing how other groups of races are represented in advertising. Now as I mentioned before the majority of adverts that feature people of Caucasian heritage with some featuring those of African heritage. Very rarely adverts will feature Asian people. Now in advertising Asian people are represented as workers or as a supporting role but never the main “character”.Again similar to black people and other minorities they are sparingly featured in advertising and when they do appear they are represented as a stereotype and it just feels awkward and actually leads the audience away from your product.

I will now be moving on to how people of different genders are represented. Now I am going to start with how women are represented in advertising. Women in the advertising are represented and shown as objects for the most part.Primarily in cologne and perfume ads. The way women are represented in advertising is very similar to the way that women are represented in action movies. That is of course that they are treated like nothing else but eye candy and something/someone for the hero to save and protect as well as making the main character look even more like a hero. Women in advertising are pretty much always scantily clad and are half naked in pretty much every advert all the time. The rare occasion women in advertising are not half naked is when the women in the advert is over 50. Or they are selling a hair product but then even then as sometimes they will find away to squeeze them in the shower at some point in the ad. Women in advertising nine times out of ten are conventionally attractive and it is very clear why that is. This being that a lot of people will gravitate to an attractive female in advertising because a lot of people will gravitate to attractive people both men and women due to their “Primal instincts”. Women in advertising as I mentioned previously are objectified outright. And are overly sexualized within advertising as well as the majority of “modern” media. Now of course advertisers will objectify and overly sexualize women because it sells and it sells a lot so I don’t really see advertisers stopping because it benefits them.

To summarize this section women are objectified in the media, this is most common in advertising where attractive women are used to sell products which is in a way is fine, if the women is ok with doing it and willingly makes the choice then I guess its ok,At the end if the day it’s a businesses and the end game for businesses is to make money and sell products and so at the end of the day it makes sense why they represent women the way they do in advertising because that’s how they attract the audience’s attention and that’s how they are able to market their products and how they get their products to sell. In recent years this trend of advertisers using the technique of oversexualizing attractive women in adverts to sell products, this technique is used most frequently used in beauty product advertising like perfumes, colognes and make up advertising. And the use of this technique is still making advertisers buckets full of money and profits. Now the representation of women advertising is fine if all parties agree and benefit (this includes the model or actress who is being overly sexualized within the advertisements). Also as a quick bonus, when women aren’t used as objects and or overly sexualized they are stereotyped and represented as passive and submissive in their roles in adverts especially television adverts. Now in recent years women in advertising have been shown as more dominant and independent but this representation in sparsely shown with these kinds of adverts being few and far between.  

Now I am going to move on to how men are represented in advertising. Men are represented in advertising are stereotyped much like women. Men are constantly represented in advertising as these shredded 6 foot something successful businessmen. But in personality men in advertising are represented as more focused on their occupations and are shown to be more likely to reach success. This representation does give the impression that you are not a man unless you have these stereotypical things like lots of money. Men are represented in advertising as the main focus. This is in basically every add that isn’t an ad for “female products”. 

The representations of both men and women in advertising are stereotypical and reinforce the outdated old-fashioned gender roles. These representations have the potential to have a huge impact on young impressionable children who upon seeing these outdated sexist gender roles and stereotypical representations especially for young girls, who could upon seeing every woman on television being represented as a housewife who is submissive. This could influence young girls into becoming more submissive and instead of pursuing their dreams they could give it up just to fit a stupid outdated stereotype. With the male stereotype, this could affect young boys emotionally. The stereotype of men is that they put their careers first and they are encouraged to be more aggressive and show strength. The stereotype of men is that they are not supposed to show emotion and that they should not cry as it makes them weak and that if they show weakness they are considered worthless to society. Well that’s what the stereotype and representation suggest. This can lead boys and and feeling alone as they become afraid of showing “negative emotions” like sadness because they fear being seen as weak by society. This mindset leads many boys and young men into depression, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues. The age group of Young men under 40 contains the highest percentage of suicides this is partly due to society’s stereotype or image of a man. Society’s image of a man is stupid and anyone who tries to embody that is left emotionless and empty as they have nothing emotionally so this usually leads to them taking their own lives because of what society has told them they have to be and they cant.Anyone who has the persona identical to what society considers is an empty person who has nothing and no one because they have shut themselves emotionally which leads to their friends and family being unable to connect with them and vice versa and this hurts the families as it feels as though the person they loved has died and all that is left is the shell of them and it destroys not only the person’s life but those closest to them as well. men to shut to hide their emotions and focus on their career leaving them empty 

And Finally, I am going to be discussing different age groups are represented in advertising. I am going to focus on 4 age groups which are represented and they are: children (under 12), the elderly (over 60), teenagers (13 to 19) and adults (20-40). Firstly, I am going to talk about the representation of children (under 12) in advertising. Children in advertising are represented in 2 ways. The first way is that they are shown as loud, annoying and frustrating. This representation is commonly used in adverts that are marketed to parents to purchase for their children. This is representation is used in those advertisements to incentivize parents into buying the product for their kids to keep them quiet and or distracted so the parent can have a break or get something productive done. This representation is also sometimes used in car adverts to advertise aspects in the car that is being advertised which is a family car like an SUV, anyway the aspect that is being showed off through the irritating child id by having the child shutting up or calming down after the device or feature is activated. The other representation of children in advertising is that of innocence and the child being adorable and always overly happy and excited. This is more common in advertising then the first representation. This is because this representation is more enjoyable because a lot of the adverts that feature this representation of children are more heartwarming and while the adverts that the first representation can be quite funny the adverts that feature the second representation are very popular because they give off a sense of warmth and happiness which makes the audience feel better and gives the audience a very loving and sweat feeling, especially if the audience members have children. Which Is the usual target audience for those types of adverts as the product that they are selling is aimed at families with young children. Next, I am going to move on to the entirely other end of the spectrum with the representation of the elderly. The elderly is rarely represented in advertising but when they do they represented as placid and kind with a spark of joy. Elderly are represented as gentle and peaceful. The elderly is mostly featured in adverts for pensions and health insurance. This is because the target audience of adverts that feature the elderly are the elderly. So, advertisers use the elderly to help market to the elderly. The elderly are also shown in advertisements for pension and over 50 plans because that is the age group that purchase those products and the age group that the products are created for. The elderly are also shown in some other adverts but they are very few and far between as they are not the target audiences for a lot of products that are being advertised except the odd one like as previously said pension plans and other things that elderly people specifically purchase.

Following this I am going to be talking about how teenagers are represented in advertising. Teenagers are represented in advertisement in 2 different ways. The first is the stereotype that is grumpy, moody and generally un responsive. This representation is most commonly used in adverts featuring and gearing towards families as the stereotypical view of a teenager in a family scenario is that they are the one that doesn’t talk to anyone and is the one that is always on their phone or doing something distinctly different and detracted from what the rest of the family are doing. The second representation of teenagers in advertising is when they are in groups and in that representation, they are happier and more joyful. This representation is most common in tech adverts and soft drink adverts (e.g. Coca Cola 2016- ad campaign). The reason why this representation is most common in tech advertisements is because the target audience for the tech adverts is teenagers so obviously advertisers would represent teenagers in a positive light as if they see that they are represented in a positive light then they could be more likely to go and purchase the product. Another reason why the advertisers are representing teenagers in a positive light is because if they didn’t represent teenagers in a positive light then teenagers may decide to not buy the product and in turn the advertisers and the product creators will use huge quantities of many and that would be an incredibly stupid business decision. The products that are being sold in the adverts that featured the second representation are products that are mostly purchased by teenagers and are targeted to a teenage audience.

Finally, I am going to talk about how adults between the age of 20 and 40 are represented in advertising. Now the huge majority of adverts feature adults between the ages of 20 and 40 so this section is probably going to be fairly short. Anyway, adults between 20 and 40 are the most featured age group featured in advertisements. They are also the age group that buys the most products as they tend to be the age group with the highest amount of disposable income. Now this doesn’t mean that people in this age group all have a high disposable income. What this means is that overall out of all the age groups the 20 – 40-year-old age group have the highest amount of disposable income. Anyway, the main target audience for the majority of advertisements is people within the 20 – 40 years old age group. Car adverts specifically are advertised to people within this age group as they are the age group that is most likely to purchase a new car. Car adverts do either feature people within this age group driving and enjoying the car or a celebrity that people within this age group are likely to be fans of as well as the celebrity being popular with people within this age group.

In conclusion Advertising varies in techniques depending on who the product is geared towards, Television adverts follow the style and form of other genres of video media like sketch shows, comedy and music. Broadcasting advertising focuses on imitating what the target audience like as to attract their attention and helps with the advertising. Print media and other forms of non-broadcast media use colors and eye-catching things and try and keep thing simple and straight forward in an effort to catch a passer byers attention. Some adverts try to fill the ad with as much information as possible, sometimes this can work if the information is interesting and isn’t boring. Many brands try to sell similar products but they avoid losing out by using varying marketing techniques to make their product stand out from their competitors. Finally different groups of people are represented in the media in a very stereotypical way and this is mostly because the people in charge of these corporations are older men who think that the stereotypes for these different groups of people are true, clearly they are wrong but that’s how they think so the stereotypes are common and are pretty much how these groups of people are represented in advertising because the people in charge are about as the stereotypes that they present in their ads.         

Next I am going to be talking about Donald Gunn’s 12 types of advertising. First I am going to be explaining each of the 12 types and then I will go on to use examples and talk about their purposes and usefulness within modern advertising. The 12 types of advertising are as follows: 

          I.     Demo

        II.     Show need/problem

      III.     The product solves a problem

      IV.     Comparison 

        V.     Exemplary story

      VI.     Benefit causes story

    VII.     Tell it

  VIII.    On going characters and celebrities 

     IX.     Benefit of the product

       X.     Associate user imagery

     XI.     Unique personality property

   XII.     Parody of borrowed format

I will now explain what each of these 12 types of advertising mean and why they are used within advertising as well as how they are used. Firstly, I will be talking about the first type of advertising suggested by Donald Gunn. This is Demo; Demo basically means to show the uses of the product within the context of the advert and in general. A great example of this is the Cilllit Bang adverts where the majority of the advert is spent stating all the various things that the product can do. Demo is used very common and is an integral part of every advert as well as being the focus of most if not every advert. Next, I am Going to be moving on to the second rule of advertising which is too show a need/problem within the advert, this is used like the first thing is used in pretty much every advert, examples of this rule being used include Duracell, Foxes adverts etc. This like the use of a demonstration of a product is used to show the audience the uses of the product or a scenario that audience members, specifically the target audience of the advert will be or have been in. the showing of a need or a problem within the advert is to present a scenario that can be most efficiently solved by the product.

Gunn’s third rule of advertising ties into the previous rule as the third rule of advertising is showing the product fixing the need/problem introduced earlier in the advert. The reason for the advert having the product fixing a problem is to show the audience the benefits and uses of the product and how it works, this is to show the audience members what the product can do and how it can be used to fix the problem and or need presented by the advert. Moving on, the fourth rule of advertising according to Donald Gunn is comparison. Comparison between two products is frequently used in adverts that are selling either a product similar to something very popular or a is selling something within a crowded market full of options for consumers, this leads to adverts adding comparisons to make their product seem better because in comparison to a different product are shown or presented to be superior to the other product used in the comparison. 

Next, the fifth rule of advertising according to Donald Gunn is exemplary story. What this means is a story in advert being presented in a light hearted and happy, joyful tone. The idea behind this for advertisers is to give the audience a sense of happiness when watching the advert, the idea is to also in presenting the product in a happy way helps the audience members see the product in a brighter and happier light, which influences the audience members to go and purchase the product as the product will look better. Following this the sixth rule of advertising as believed by Donald Gunn isBenefit causes story. What this means is that adverts will tell a story that shows the benefits of the product throughout the advert and by the end of the advert the story will demonstrate and show the various benefits of the product that is being shown and advertised. The idea behind this is to craft a story in the advert that revolves around the product, This type of advertising is most commonly used in deodorant and perfume adverts, examples of this are lynx adverts, diesel adverts and Dior adverts. Next, I am moving onto the seventh rule which is tell it. What this means is to tell the audience the uses of the product, how to use the product and other important information about the product. This is important for both the advertisers and the audience members as it allows for the advertisers to convey the essential information about the product through the advert, it was also important for the audience/the consumers because they need to know the information about the product so that they know what the product is prior to the decision to purchase the item, and without the advertisers providing the essential information about the product, the consumers may not purchase the product as they lack the knowledge on what the product is, how its used, the benefits of the product and why they should purchase the product.

Following on from this, I am going to move on to the eighth rule in advertising as proposed by Donald Gunn which is Ongoing characters and celebrities. What this means is using celebrities or popular mascots in adverts, and marketing campaigns. A good example of this is jean Claude van Damme for cools light beer. A lot of adverts will incorporate the appearance and endorsement of celebrities and popular mascots if they had established one. The use of celebrities in advertising is used because people like to see recognizable faces in media and if they see a celebrity they recognize and or like in an advert for a product as they are more likely to listen and pay attention to the advert as they are more likely to listen to someone that they like. Also the use of celebrities is to encourage people to purchase a product, this is because the hope of advertisers when using celebrity endorsement in adverts is that audience members will see the celebrity and think if its good enough for them. Then it must be good enough for me. Which would most likely lead to the audience members that feel that way to purchasing the product.

Moving on, I am going to talk about the ninth rule of advertising according to Donald Gunn which is benefit of the product. What this means is that advertisers need to show the benefits of the product that they are selling within the advertisement. The reason for showing the benefits of a product is that the more you show the benefits of a product, the intention is to make the audience members feel like they need the product. The idea is for the audience member to be incised by the product due to its benefits of the product making the product more enticing to the audience member. Moving on I will talk about the tenth rule of advertising according to Donald Gunn which is Associate user imagery. What this means is to show imagery that is recognizable to the audience members, this also means that advertisers will show relevant and similar imagery within adverts, the use of imagery within the background and foreground of adverts is intending to subconsciously make the audience feel as though they should go out and purchase the product. A really good example of this is Cadbury’s adverts, more specifically the 2007 Cadbury’s dairy milk advert featuring a gorilla playing the drums over Phil Collins in the air tonight, this of course is the advert I featured earlier in the essay, when discussing the codes and conventions of advertising. The adverts use of the color purple in relation to the color on the packet of the dairy milk chocolate bars to subliminally make the audience members associate the color purple with dairy milk bars, this hopefully for the advertisers will lead to people who watched the advert to associate the color purple with dairy milks when they see things in their everyday lives that are the color purple. Cadbury in general use the color purple as a main feature in all their adverts promoting and advertising the dairy milk bars.

Moving on I will be discussing the eleventh rule of advertising according to Donald Gunn which is unique personality property. This basically means to make both your product and your advert for said product different from the rest. Basically the idea behind it is to make the advert stand out among the rest and make it stand out in the mind of audience members. The aim for advertisers when advertising a product is to make their advert and advertising campaign as a whole stand out in people’s minds, but specifically their video adverts which have the widest reach in terms of viewers compared to the rest of a marketing campaign, good examples of this is are the skittles touch the rainbow advert, The Go compare adverts featuring the opera singer architype, Lynx adverts, Go compare the markets adverts featuring the 2 meerkats and adverts for cleaning products e.g. Febreeze, Lenor and fairy liquid. And of course the yearly John Lewis adverts that always seem to be the biggest thing every Christmas, even though I still have no idea about John Lewis or what they sell. Anyway what all these adverts have in common is that they all stand out in people’s minds and as soon as people see the advert on television or online as soon as it starts they recognize the product that the advert is selling. The idea for advertisers is for people to recognize and remember the advert fondly and in turn go out and purchase the product. The intention is also to use the fond memory of the advert in people’s minds is to then use a similar structure or concept in future adverts as due to the original adverts success, advertisers will use the concept and or structure of that advert in future adverts to have the same effect on people leading to an increase in sales and profits for the company which leads to more money for the advertisers.

Finally I am moving on to the twelfth and final rule of advertising as proposed by Donald Gunn. The Twelfth and final rule of advertising is parody of borrowed format, what this basically means is to poke fun and “parody” other adverts and the tropes and clichés of those adverts. The idea behind this for advertisers is to show that they are self-aware, this kind of plays into the previous rule of advertising in the sense that while the first adverts that would poke fun at other adverts and make fun of clichés in advertising would have stood out in most people’s mind as more and more advertisers caught on to the idea to poke fun and “parody” other adverts and the tropes within both those adverts and in advertising as a whole, people remembered less and less of tem as since a lot of them would follow the same formula fewer and fewer stood out in audiences minds and so it became the majority of adverts making the idea and the use of parody less and less unique, however some adverts broke this trend by utilizing the concept of “parodying” other adverts and the clichés and tropes of advertising as a whole in a unique and creative way that would make their advert stand out due to its unique style and structure. Anyway the reason why this idea is quite effective is because when something is self-aware it allows for the audience to pay more attention to the advert because it doesn’t feel like a formulaic and uninteresting corporate thing but instead feels more like something that someone genuinely put effort into and doesn’t just feel like a whole bunch of spreadsheets and pie charts smashed into video form. Another reason why an advert being self-aware gives the advertisers more free reign to create something genuinely unique and creative. As most adverts now are self-aware, the notion of being self-aware alone is not going to stick out to audience members, so advertisers should and some are using the fact of the advert being self-aware as a baseline to expand upon by adding more original and distinctive ideas and ways of selling a product and crafting a story.

The Basis of being self-aware makes it easier for advertisers to market their products in more ways rather than having to follow a formula riddled with clichés and outdated ideas, they can instead use self-awareness to recognize what they can do to make the advert feel fresh and different while still following a formula that allows the advertisers to get the message across to the audience which is to show the audience why they need the product that is being sold by the advertisers which at the end of the day is the intention behind the advert as the advertisers are part of a business and they need to get the audience to buy the product so that the manufacturers can make higher profits leading to them continuing to employ the advertisers and become full time clients for the advertising company which in turn leads to the advertisers being able to make more money and due to the increase in work leads to long term pay for them. 

To conclude this essay I will be giving my opinions on advertising as a whole. To make this more interesting I am going to break my conclusion up into sections, to be exact I’m going to break it up into 3 sections. These 3 sections are as follows: representation, tropes of advertising and what I have learned about advertising from my research. I am going to start with representation as I find it to be the most interesting out of the three. To begin with I am going to provide my opinions of representation in advertising, granted my opinions are completely invalid and mean nothing so I probably shouldn’t bring it up but I need to make this essay longer so I going to do it anyway. Basically my personal opinion on representation within advertising is that it is a mixed bag. Basically what I mean by this is that depending on the advert and depending on the product being sold the representation of different people can range from very dated, stereotypical and borderline offensive to fairly positive and not just a stereotype. I also think that even then every representation in not just advertising but in media in general every representation of any kind of person always has elements of the stereotype that they are associated with. Most of the time its very clear and easy to point out which stereotype a character is built around, which is the truth of it, representations are always based on stereotypes and use the stereotype as a baseline to expand on top of and add layers to. Every character in media is rooted in a stereotype, and that’s not inherently bad. Just hear me out, while stereotypes tend to be quite offensive, dumb and pretty shallow they are actually fairly useful when it comes to writing characters and creating representations. When creating a character you know that that character will no matter your intention will be a representation of someone or a group of people, now even though stereotypes are a bad thing.

 The honest answer is that most people will recognize stereotypical qualities in a character much sooner than they notice actual character traits, I don’t know if that came out the way I wanted it to but I hope it did. Anyway, moving on to make it easier for people to understand who a character is using elements of the stereotype associated with that character type, obviously there are restrictions like if the using the elements of stereotype that aren’t racist, sexist or generally offensive is an obvious rule to using stereotypes as a baseline to creating a character. Another would be depending on how much you want to reveal about the character to the audience depends on how many elements you use. The idea isn’t to have your character become a stereotype but instead at the roots of the character have elements of a stereotype, what I mean by this is that when creating a character they should feel like a real person and if you think about it at some point in time there are elements of stereotypes that are rooted somewhere deep down in partial truth. Anyway my point is that a lot of characters and representations not just in advertising but in media as a whole are all rooted in elements of stereotypes and all have parts of them that are similar to a stereotypical representation but while the stereotypical ideas that they contain on their own are simply just incorrect, when taken and built upon with a more thorough and true to life representation as part of a more accurate representation while they play a small role in the grand scheme of things they are the basis of what can make a great representation. Right now that is out of the way I am going to move on to voicing my opinion on tropes of advertising, now I have spoken about this earlier on in the essay but I’m going to give another spin on it here by talking about how often these tropes are used, well I’m going to try my best to provide an interesting take on this subject without dragging it out for a page. Right no more stalling lets just get right into this then, so lets begin with how tropes are treated now compared to how they were treated 30 years ago. Ok, so this feels like an appropriate time to commence this undertaking, so I am going to begin by talking about how advertising tropes are treated in the current day. Tropes and clichés of advertising are treated as jokes and are often use for satirical purposes in a wide range of adverts. The list of which is ever-growing but comparing this to the way that tropes and clichés of advertising 30 years ago this would place us in the ripe old year 1988. Where being self aware and using satirical humor when addressing tropes and clichés of advertising wasn’t as common as it is now where as back in 1988 this was very much a rarity and in fact as far as I am aware the spoofing of tropes and clichés of advertising within adverts was virtually non existent. 

Finally I will be discussing what I have learned about the advertising industry through both my research and actually writing this essay. So to begin the most important thing that I have learned is that advertising is just a big game that if played right benefits all the players involved but if played wrong then everyone loses. I also learned that when it comes to making an advert every detail matters and I mean everything. The idea is to make sure that every element of the advert relates to the product and selling said product but it cant compromise the story of the advert or be obvious and or noticeable. The idea is to subliminally and subtly hint to the audience that they should buy the product. The reason for making sure every element and detail of the advert works with both the story and makes sense within the context of the advert but at the same time works as associated imagery for the user. The idea behind this is that for the associated user imagery to fully work the imagery should be noticeable but not obvious and or distracting for the audience, for lack of a better word it needs to be hidden to an extent. What I mean by this is that it needs to be noticeable subconsciously allowing it to stay in the mind of the audience members but it shouldn’t be noticeable outright the first time you watch the advert.