Advertising project.

Task one

First advertisement

The first advertisement campaign that I have chosen is for cream eggs.

Around this time of year, Cadburys use a wide range of media to advertise their cream eggs and other Easter related products. Starting off with tv, from the start of the year, we're plastered on tv with cream egg adverts with memorable ones such as asking how you ate yours. The advertising next follows on via You tube on the adverts you play before you can view your chosen video. Next the adverts at put on Facebook, the Cadburys page is promoted across home pages inviting you to like the pages to be involved in games and the chances to win things, this is clever because through joining in, you'll from then be shown their advertisements for their products on your news feed and in the adverts bar on Facebook too. I think their advertisements are really effective, they get across and appeal to a large market, they don't have a niche market, it appeals to everyone. I also think their Facebook tactics are clever, by inviting you to like their pages to be involved with competitions you're inviting yourself into being advertised to daily. Because cream eggs only come out as a seasonal thing, the adverts start coming out after Christmas building up your need to buy the seasonal product. In supermarkets also they advertise well, the stands with the products on are usually near the tills or on the end of isles, with them being in those places you're more likely to be stood waiting for the till, the bright cardboard stand to catch your eye and you be interesting in buying one for yourself. Creme eggs also sponsored the last years Olympics cleverly named the 'goo' Olympics. By sponsoring something that made people quite patriotic people feel like they're supporting their team buying products branded with the event, They also made parodies of the opening ceremony with creme eggs as people. Also as well as bringing out the same product back each Easter season to go along with them they also bring out new products with a creme egg theme such as the splats, and because creme eggs have such a reputation you're more likely to pick up the new product to try it out, then buy more because they're only on sale for a limited period of time. Over all I think creme eggs are advertised really well, they're produced for a large market of people, and each market is reached through different advertisements in different media sections. Through the bringing out of new products along side of their existing product and such wide media show of it, they insure year after year their products are sold successfully. Due to them only being a limited time period product too, they're bought as a tradition and as a have to since they're on sale, so through this their sales continue.

The next advertising campaign I decided to look at was Pret a Mangers advertising because they use it both around the store to represent their natural products, but also as branding. Here's an example of some of the images that are displayed around the store. I haven't seen Pret a Manger really advertising on any social networking, their advertising is normally done around town on display boards, like this one that’s been pulled around by a bike. What I think is really effective about Prets advertising is it's a very natural products and they cleverly put this across with their images. All of their images are animals, inanimate objects, etc made made out of natural food, they're blown up as massive posters around the shop, then little versions are printed on the packaging. I think this makes them memorable, since I was little when I've thought of Pret I've always thought about how lovely all the little pictures were that they had around the shop. I think it good that a shop has got people to associate a happy memory enjoying their photos in their shop, showing their natural food.

I went into Pret to go take some photographs around their shop, he's an example of them using their advertising as branding as well.

Then here I took some of the wall photographs that they have around the shop.

The next advertising campaign I had a look at where the Benetton adverts, I decided to next look at this in contrast with the happy advertising of pret. Benetton is now infamous for the shock tactic billboards that used to advertise their clothing. There's a statement that all publicity is good publicity, but I think I tend to disagree with their tactics. There's nothing wrong with some sort of difference in advertising, something different, but their adverts started to make people feel uncomfortable and offended, so they went on the other side of the scale and got known for their bad advertising. Here is an example of one of the advertisements that they used. Their adverts were completely un related to the product they were selling which was clothes, this isn't always a bad thing every day we're shown adverts with images selling products that are completely unrelated but Benetton took it too far. The image here shows a man dying and his friends and family gathering round, then the brand Benneton’s logo is just places in the corner. Adverts not related to the product they're selling can be extremely effective and popular, for example the Cadburys advert with Phill Collins in the air tonight playing, while the gorilla plays the drum to the song. This became a hit, suddenly everyone knew about this advert as well as the song, and Cadburys got known for that advert against all their others. 

But looking at a screen grab of the advert maybe it had more to do with the product than we think, the Cadburys purple is the background in the image. Cadburys chocolate is branded with this royal purple traditionally, so maybe the purple background was put in for reliance to the product despite the irrelevant advert. 

On the topic of adverting I decided to have a look at subliminal messages, they are any sensory stimuli that’s below the threshold for us to pick up and recognise. The use of subliminal messages in advertising sound or picture is illegal, in the past it was widely used but eventually brought up a lot of controversy. It's illegal because the use of subliminal messages actually did increase buying behaviour when it was used in advertising. Even though it's illegal in advertising campaign it is actually legal to use subliminal messages for personal use, such as self development tapes. The most famous advertising subliminal messaging campaign was the James Victory movie theatre study. For a six week period, for over 45,000 movie viewers, he flashed two advertising subliminal messages to them during their film. The two adverts said 'Drink Coca-Cola' and the other 'Eat popcorn' and were shown to the public every 5 seconds for 3/1000s of 1 second. The results were worrying and astounding at the same time, within six weeks compared to their usual sales, pop corn sales had raised by 57% and coca-cola by 18.1%. At the time people were absolutely shocked by his findings, and further research was conducted into the wide spread use of subliminal advertising and it was after then banned in the advertising world. Since then his results have been questioned and scrutinised to have been fabricated, fake or not, it started the panic and research into subliminal advertising that managed to bring it's use to an end, which is very important.  

We have two advertising tasks to complete with this project, one to advertise a cutlery set and then the next to advertise a digestive biscuit. Firsty here's my work about the biscuit adverts. We started off by sketching down a few ideas about different advert ideas we had. My idea is to have a picture of a night sky, then have a bitten into biscuits in the place of the moon and have something about how these biscuits are a good way to end the night off, possibly 'end the night right' or something along those lines.

We also had a look at existing biscuits adverts that are out there to gather some more ideas, here are my favourite ones that I found. 

Like my idea of the moon, these adverts caught my eye because they were putting biscuits in the place of something else like for here hay in  field. I thought these were the most effective ones that I found. 

This adverts strap line was one of its main features where as with the other adverts the images did the talking.

These next adverts rely on comedy to sell the product making it seem family friendly and for a memorable advert, such as the fully Adli adverts.

This advert showed that you don't need an image of the product to be able to sell it effectively, like the chocolate advert I talked about above. 

We next started to take our test shots of the products and making up mock ups of our final adverts.

Here's the lighting set up that we used for our photographs. 

We had to adjust the lights to be able to get the right shadows on the product, the shadow had to be underneath the product, and the shot straight on. To make the shot look as clean as possible we tried to brush all the crumbs off the biscuit making the writing on it easy to read. We also had to make sure the colours were correct on the image because with advertising photography the product needs to be exactly how it is pictured. 

I am yet to be able to get a night time photograph for my project because of the heavy snow tonight, so for my mock up I have been using one that I found on the internet. 

Here's my mock up of my advert with the product shot in the corner like in a traditional advert, I am still undecided yet on a font. 

Here is my work towards my final knife and fork advert.

I firstly had a look at existing adverts.

I struggled to find adverts exactly advertising knives and forks, like this advert that I found it was involving knives and forks but advertising another product, for example here it's pizza hut.

Same with this advert for jelly.

After a bit of having a look on the internet I remembered Alessi products that we studied in graphics in highschool.

Alessi are a company who specialise in bright and arty kitchen products, these aren't really adverts but as close as I could get to pack shots of knives and forks from a specific company. 

Here's an example of some of their advertisements.

I really like their adverts, they're really interesting, like Prets where they create something else from a different product.

I started having a think of different ideas for knives and forks but was having difficulty, I then decided to do something like the evolution line then have the cutlery seen as the next generation of utensils. 

I wasn't in at college for the practise shots of the cutlery so I did the photographs at home

Here's the set up that I used for both my biscuit pictures and cutlery. 

I used two umbrellas to light my shots, and with the camera settings F16, 125/1 shutter speed and on an Iso of 100.  

I was having trouble with the colour balance, when set to flash because of my lights the biscuit went a red colour, then I used the colour balance to get the biscuit the right colour for the advert.

Here's my contact sheets for both of my shoots.

The numbers on the pictures don't add up because I deleted the accidental shots and the ones where I was testing the auto focus. 

I next had to get a silhouette of someone with a knife and fork, but this I used my mums stood against a white wall.

The next photograph I needed for my final adverts were an image of the night sky for my moon biccy to go on. I went out at night time and with a 5 second shutter speed, and 100 ISO I took an image of some cottages near me.

For the knife and fork advert I had to get the images of the evolution of a man off the internet because I wouldn't have been able to get all the shapes of the different people. 

I next had to change my mums photograph into a silhouette then put it all onto a white background. I then edited the pack shot of my biscuit onto the top left hand corner then chose a font and a strap line to go onto the advert. This is my favourite advert out of the two, I think it looks really clean and effective.

I next edited my biscuit advert putting my night sky photograph as the background, I then put on the picture of my biscuit in the shape of a moon and used the dodge tool to add a glow behind the moon. I next added the pack shot to the top left corner and chose a font for my strap line. I changed my idea for the strap line, I think 'end your night with a bite' fit alot better and was more straight to the point.

Considering I was really worried how I'd come up with something to advertise such simple objects, I'm really happy with my outcome, I really enjoyed looking up different adverts as well, graphics and advertisements have always interested me definitely if they have an interesting story such as the Benetton, and you have to decide what your views are over it. I've really enjoyed this project so far.

For the next part of our project we have to create a three part advertising campaign for a chosen product out of the list given to us.

The list of products that we had to choose from was

- paper clips

- socks

- bin bags

- dish cloths

- plastic cups

- take away carton

I'm not really sure which one to choose yet so I have decided to look at existing adverts for each of these products to hopefully inspire a idea. Of all these products there was hardly any advertising campaign if any, but here's what I managed to find.

Paper clips.

The first image I found wasn't really an advertisement, but it gave me an idea that if I chose paper clips for my advertisement, instead of photographing a regular paper clips I could create things out of the paper clips. The next paper clip advert I thought was really good it states 'keeping all your company’s data together' then the paper clip is lit up to look almost like electricity or reminds me of a circuit board which could be standing for data, be it on a computer or on paper being held by the paper clips.

Socks.

This was really one of the only adverts I'd managed to find on socks the advert states 'Vog socks on the web now'. Meaning, I think, that now this brand of socks/clothing was now available to purchase on the internet as well as in store, it's a very clever advert referring to the internet as the 'web' then the imagery of the lady in their branded socks representing a spider on a web.

Bin Bags.

The first advert here isn't directly an advert for bags, more an advert for the company and actions of the distributers of the bin bags. It tells people the receivers of the bin bags on their doorstep to put in any old objects in their house and donate it to the company, it's put across in a humours way for example asking for things with unicorns on. 

The next advert is probably my favourite one out of the ones I found for all of these products, it was hard to read but the line in the corner says 'scented bin bags' then the lady in the picture is hugging a bin man who's covered in muck. Saying that their scented bin bags are so good, it will mask the smell of any of your rubbish that's put into the bags.

Dish Cloths.

I really struggled finding any advertising for dish cloths, but chose to include this simple advert because it was a very clean advert, complete white background. Maybe symbolising how clean everything will be if you buy their dishcloths over someone else’s. The advert and dish cloths are very simple colours and the writing is clear meaning it's straight to the point. This advert made me think if with my final adverts I wanted to have a very clean advert that's simple and straight to the point or take it down the more arty side of things. 

Plastic Cups.

I couldn't really find any adverts specifically for 'plastic' cups so I decided to look for just cup/mug adverts, there still wasn't much but I found these two that I really liked.

I am completely unsure about what the first advert says on each of the cups as a higher resolution image was not available, but I thought all the different coloured mugs caught your eye and I liked the idea of stacking cups. The second advert I liked because it started to characterise inanimate objects going on less of a formal approach to advertising, which I do think works very well. I could put googly eyes on my chosen product and give them a personality or a strap line to be saying.

Take away carton.

I really struggled with trying to find anything for this product, and didn't really know which specific type of carton it meant, so I don't think this will be one of the products I intend to use as I've got more ideas for other products.

I have decided to take on advertising paper clips for my project!

Today I've borrowed some paper clips from college so tonight I will take my practise shots.

I will use the same lighting set ups that I did for my biccy and knife and fork advert.

Here's a scanned image of my ideas page that I came up with in class for this project.

What do I need? 

- Camera

- Paper clips

- Tripod

- Sheet for backdrop

- Studio lighting

- Triggers

- Photoshop

- Paper

At home that night these are the images I came up with as a mock up. I did these paper clip images on my table, then had great difficulty trying to photograph them from right above them, I have learnt for the next time I'll do my shots from on the floor. 

For this picture I have learnt that I will have to take the image from right above my tree, because I took this from on the table 

This one is probably my Favourite idea, from this idea I have started to think about doing a stop motion advert of the tree growing to go with my slogan for this image 'Helping your business branch out' 

This next idea I have decided that it will work better on a blue background like my first image, if they're all shot on the same coloured background it ties them all in together, similar colours tie in adverts to the same campaign, such as the chocolate Cadburys purple. Going with my before Idea of possibly doing some moving adverts to go with my 3 other images, I was thinking the sea could move and the boat could sale across the screen and I could maybe have a sun shining and some birds flying. 'Helping your business set sail' 

'Helping your business take flight' - I plan to have the plane flying across the screen and the clouds moving in the wind. I think this will look really effective 

This was probably my least effective idea, the black background didn't really work, and my sky blue idea for the shots wouldn't really work for this idea because the tracks are on the ground, although I was quite happy with this idea, it isn't as strong as my others and doesn't fit in as well in my advertising campaign. 

Last night I did my still advert shots for my adverts 

For the background I decided to do use a bright blue backdrop to represent the sky in my images

For these images I used this lighting set up

I used soft boxes for the images because the light needed to be as soft as it could to not create a harsh look to the paper clips, the soft boxes on their own were too harsh I learnt this from my practise shots, so I clipped two table cloths over them both to soften the light, it worked really well. Here's an image from my practise shots, then one from this shoot to show the difference in the lighting. 

Here is the lighting set up I used in my practise shots, although using soft boxes the light was way too harsh to photograph the paper clips without a massive contrast on the reflective paper clips.

Then here's one taken with the soft boxes with the table cloth over them, it really helped to diffuse the light. The paper clips look alot clearer, not harshly contrasted and burnt out like with my other image and the blue background is more evenly lighted. 

Here is the contact sheet from that shoot. 

For camera settings I used f14, 125/1 shutter speed and 100 iso.

Here's my three final shots ready for my pack shot to be edited, add text, and for them to be made into three different media.

Here is one of the first adverts nearly complete; I just need to add a pack shot to the photograph. I used the same font as in the video and the same text as I'm going to add in the video advert too.

I also zoomed into my images and cleaned up any specs of dust or dirt that was on the photograph. 

Here's my next edited image ready for my pack shot.

After I uploaded this image I decided I wasn't happy with the writing location and having it over the tree didn't fit with the boat writing that was in a clear space in the sky so I redid this image.

I do think this is better than the one before, but I'm not entirely happy with this image yet, I plan to continue working on it. 

Underneath is the pack shot image that I need to use on my advertisements. Despite the photograph looking quite clear on my camera, when opened up into Photoshop the image looks quite blurry and I'm not really happy with the outcome of it. I plan to re shoot this image tomorrow to then put onto my final advertisements. 

Here are my final three adverts with their pack shot edited onto them.

I next needed to make my three adverts versatile for three advertising mediums such as a billboard, internet banner etc. 

My video I think classes as one of them because I made my advert suitable to be shown via tv/internet advertisement.

I next will create a web banner with my image and a billboard. The web banner will be a long vertical banner that would fit down the side of a webpage to advertise a product. 

the next mediums of advertising I would like to put my advert in would be on a billboard, I think this image would be most effective. I didn't have to edit the shape of the photograph because it was the right size for a bill board advertisement. 

As well as my three adverts to be produced for three different types of media I have decided that I am going to create 3 short stop motion adverts too.

Here a had a look up a few different stop motion videos on the internet that have been created, looking up ones that have been created for advertisement purpose. Here's one I recently saw on tv, which I thought worked really well. Stop motion doesn't have to go completely smoothly for it to work, the jolty movements to the images, I think add to the hand made effect to the animation. 

For my three stop motion videos I set up three of my lights up, put the blue background over my table, and set up my camera on a tripod facing down onto the table. I used a remote to trigger my camera, using the settings f20, 125/1 shutter speed and an ISO of 100.

Here's a photograph of my lighting set up 

(The wine and the tins were keeping the sheet straight on my table.)

I again used table cloths over my soft boxes and used an additional umbrella light on low to add a little bit more light to my images. 

Here's the contact sheets for this shoot. 

With these three sets of images I opened them into premiere a set at a time. For the tree images I made them play quite fast, I set the still image rate at 1 second a frame, but for other sets such as the boat, where the animation was slower I set it at about 5/6.

I added a sound track which is the opening to semisonic - closing time. I then added my strap lines using add title using the font Nueva, then underneath my strap line adding 'Paper clips: Evolution Office Supplies' Evolution was the made up company name I used for my knife and fork adverts too. I added a dissolve effect onto my titles so they faded into the video. Here's a print screen.

Here are my three final stop motion adverts.

Evaluation.

When we first got given the advertising brief I was quite worried about how we'd advertise such simple unbranded objects. I found the initial research for the project really interesting, subliminal advertising is something I've always found really interesting and having to think in detail about the adverts we see around us every day has proved interesting and made me notice things a lot more now. For our first mini projects we got the task of advertising knives and forks and some biscuits, I did quite a bit of research on the internet for different ideas, but when I managed to come up with one, I really got into the project. If I could change one thing with it it's that on the cut outs of the knife and fork advert, I learnt that I should have now have used the pen tool for a smoother line around the images, but I've now got that knowledge for next time. We next got given a list of mundane unbranded objects and we had to choose one to advertise in our own little advertising campaign. I was quite stuck on which to choose, so I started looking for existing examples of each, some proved more difficult than others. I finally decided to pick paper clips, I quite quickly managed to come up with some ideas, and was really excited to go home and practise them. Despite the really crinkly background of my practise shots and some bad angles to the photographs, I was really happy with how my ideas were developing. I learnt how to light the paper clips properly, and shiny objects in general  which I think is really evident when you compare my practise images to my final ones, so that has been really helpful. I next took the final shots for my images and shot my stop motion video images. My final shots came out better than I'd expected, I'm maybe not as happy with my tree image, as the boat and the plane, because I think it was difficult to place the text in an effective place on the image without effecting the photograph of the paper clips. I was next editing my images into Premiere to put them all together for my video, from doing more practise on this program I feel I am more confident now in using it, I've now learnt how to add titles to the video and more about still image frame times to control how fast my images appeared one after another.  I am really happy with the end result of my images, I do think they could have run a bit smoother, and in one or two of them a hand appears for one shot, but I have learnt for next time how much of a delicate process stop motion is, and how one wrong movement and you have to start again, I learnt this on my first try half way through. To say I was pretty worried about this project and where I'd go with it, I am really happy with the outcome, I think the research I did to go along with the work as I did it helped me greatly and kept me going with strong ideas for a good final out come. As for the three mediums of advertisement I did a banner, a tv advert and a poster, I think my strongest is the poster and the tv advert although I am happy with my banner I feel there I things I could do differently next time and also when I took the photographs I didn't think about how I'd have to edit it into one long photograph otherwise I'd have taken it a bit differently, or changed the set up correctly, but considering I didn't know I think the final outcome worked well. 

(For some reason the images have disappeared, and It won't let me re add them) I have a word document with all of my project in including images in, but I'll try and fix the problem tomorrow. If not I'll upload the videos to youtube and post the links here.