Codes and Conventions

In advertisement codes and conventions can be split into three different groups, these include:

• Technical - these are camera techniques and what shots to use.
• Symbolic - what colours are used and clothing, these are sometimes used to match with the colours that are in the brand's logo.
• Written and audio - this is the type of music used to go with the advert that is being shown.

All of the above are very important when making an advert, they all help determine how succesful the advert will be and to give the audience information without directly telling them it. They need to be persuasive and memorable to be able to work and be a succesful advert.
However using these techniques can be difficult but if they're aimed at the right audience then they can be persuasive and work.

An example of one of these adverts is the Mazuma mobile advert, it is aimed at adults as it is giving them the chance to earn more money by selling their old mobile phones to a website, but it uses a catchy jingle that is memorable to all age ranges.

Introduction

Advertising is all around us and is integral to everyday life. It is one of the largest sectors of the media industry, adverts being presented in a wide range of media such as television, film, radio, magazines, posters, billboards, the press, and the internet. Of all of these, television advertising probably has the highest profile, some television advertisements being so effective and memorable that they become classics and part of the cultural background for a whole generation of viewers. Television is used to market almost every product one can imagine from everyday consumables, like washing powder, to extravagant sports cars, whilst some advertisements promote a service such as insurance, banking or vehicle breakdown cover.

Television advertising has become more and more sophisticated, utilising the very latest digital production techniques. Content and style can be simple or complex, using traditional narrative structures or less obvious surrealist imagery, and messages can be overt or understated.

In this blog I will show my understanding of the structures and techniques used in television advertisements.

I will cover the following structures relating to form, style and the codes and conventions used in adverts.

I will also discuss with examples the different techniques that advertisers use to promote a product.

Structures Of Advertisements

Form- Animation

Recently animation has become more popular in television and is used more frequently, Animation is often used in adverts where the target audience is either children or families, it can be used in different ways from hand drawn animation and computer generated animation as animation can easily be changed to go with time so they can run for long periods.

An example of an animated advert is Kellogg's Variety shown below.





This advert relates mainly to children as it has a friendly animated octopus holding seven nestle cereals and it is usually children that eat those cereals and he is playing a game with them. So this will help to attract their target audience - the children as it is animated with a friendly cartoon animal and involving things they do like eat cereal and play games.

Form- Documentary

A documentary is someones version of the truth that is made to look like it is the truth, they do this by using things such as historical footage, scientific claims, images and the voice of god so that they believe it, it is a way of convincing viewers that what they are being told about the product/thing that is being advertised is the truth. Documentary's are usually given the target audience of adults mainly, this is because they are more interested in knowing what they buy is what they expected and making sure they are getting what is promised more than children are and will be more the type to buy the things that they are advertising.

An example of this is the Dominoes turn around advert




This advert shows Dominoes managers and workers after getting bad criticsm and feedback from their consumers and critics, the advert is aimed mainly at adults as they are the person that will buy the food, in the advert the negative comments are shown and then the Dominoes workers are talking saying how they are changing what they used to do in the past to make things better, this helps to convince the audience that they have changed and because they have used real Dominoes workers they believe it and it will make the audience give them a second chance and believe they have changed. This supports the target audience because they are the people that would buy the food and woudnt want to buy it if their was bad reviews so a documentarty was made to make the consumers believe that they have changed and make them want to make them buy it again because they will believe what will have happened due to the documentary, as it makes it more real and believing.

Form - Narrative Structures

TV adverts main purposes are to try and convince consumers to buy their products, in order to do this they create different types of stories depending on the products that are being advertised and the target audience and a narrative is the name of the actual story they use, the way the actual story is revealed depends on on the structure of the narrative.
Another way to do this is the linear narrative this is the easiest way of telling a story as it is in corresponding order: begining, middle and an end.

Form - Stand Alone/Series

A stand alone advert is just a single advert that a company would have put all their money in to making one fantastic advert that will run through the entire of the product marketting, rather than getting a few to be shown, the companies spend a lot of money on single adverts and then the adverts are shown for a long time.


 A series of adverts is an on going advert that carries on over a peried of different adverts that when they are all put together they tell a story. This helps the advert become more popular because the viewers want to keep watching the advert due to the story that is being told.
An example of a series of adverts are the John Smith adverts




Comedy is also used in this advert, to attract the target audience which i would say would be middle aged people of both genders. It is aimed to make them laugh as well as getting their product advertised to the consumers, It will make the advert memorable and make them like it because it makes them laugh.