Task 8

Before making my designs for my adverts I had to do a lot of primary and secondary research to understand the codes and conventions of other adverts similar to mine. I began by researching cross-media campaigns from competitors with similar target audience and similar products to see what worked for their audience and see how the structured their adverts. This part of pre-production helped and was an important step before beginning my own adverts as it allowed me to understand what is best to add and what works effectively with my target audience. It also allowed me to have a solid base for my adverts and allowed me to stay competitive against them. I took inspiration from Dominos and Prime throughout my advertisements. Dominos focus on keeping their colour scheme consistent throughout all adverts which works effectively and allows the audience to eaily identify the branding. Prime uses consistent fonts (typography) and uses informal language throughout all advertisements which works well for their brand and works well with their target audience.

The brief highlighted my target audience for my adverts and set the audience to be a wide age range, 13-30 year olds. This is something I needed to consider when making my adverts. I decided to use travel as a focul point for my adverts as this is something people enjoy and allows them to reflect on holidays they have experienced throughout life. I think by using both traditional forms of advertising and digital forms of advertising allowed me to fully explore this theme and allowed me to appeal to all age ranges and keep the drink interesting for the audience. I wanted Berry Blitz to be memorable and stand out against competitors so by using such an interesting and relatable theme allowed me to ensure people are reminded of the drink often. This theme is also something very adaptable to my audience and can be relatable and interesting to my audience.

The images above are some examples of Prime and Dominos billboard adverts. These are some of the billboards I took inspiration from when designing my billboard. I researched their billboards and noticed the similarities and differences between the two brands and the aspects of both advertising campaigns they both used consistently. Dominos keep a consistent colour scheme throughout all billboards and have little to no text on them to ensure the audience would pay attention to the billboard as a whole yet having something to ensure they would remember. In this advert they used rhyming to add emphasis to the billboard. This is something I found interesting, however, this is something I wanted to stay away from as I feel this is something too generic and I wanted mine to be different and out there. Prime used their bottles in all billboard adverts. This is something consistent throughout all adverts made by Prime. This is something I felt was important when creating my drink adverts as it allows the audience to full understand the branding of the drink itself and get familiar with the drink. When looking at other adverts made by both brands, they included their website name to ensure people were able to find them with ease. This is something I planned to include as I believe it would encourage people to view the site and gain their attention and time.

My billboard was designed to fit within my theme of travel and ensure people knew the theme with little to no need to see the rest of the adverts to understand the theme. Travel is something people enjoy and talk about a lot. By marketing my drink to be associated with this, it would allow people to think about Berry Blitz next time they are thinking about travel. I ensured to add the drink as a focal point of the advert to ensure people would get used to the branding of the drink itself and the vibe I am trying to set for the drink. This also allowed the audience a bit of an insight into the drink as the drink has lots of fruit on meaning people will understand the flavour of the drink without seeing it in person or trying it. I added minimal text as this is something I found when looking at all types of billboards and is something I have found works well, for not only my target audience, but in this form of advertising in general. My colour palette is a prominent aspect of the billboard. The background is shades of pink which matches the background of the drink. This is an effective marketing technique as it creates an association between the colours I am using and the drink. This is something dominos did within their advertisments and is something I believe would work well with my target audience.

My magazine advert was interesting to create and felt very different to the billboard design. This design had to be portrait which allowed me to create a longer advert and felt like more room to play with and design on. Nike is a magazine advert I found that interested me and gave me an idea of the type of conventions that I should include in my personal advertisement. They had a large image with dark colours with pops of bright colours. The brighter colours allowed the product being sold to be the focal point of the advert. They use negative space to their advantage and use it to highlight the product further. They use their usual font to gain the attention of their audience but included a new font to highlight different aspects. The 'FIT' of the text was done in a different font to allow the advert to feel interesting and differnt and brings the attention of the audience to this part. I also looked at other drink magazine adverts to see what my competitors are doing. This mocktail brand 'Tropical Summer' was advertising their new drink to consumers. They used bright, yet complimentary colour as the background to allow the drink and the advert as a whole to standout to their audience. They use consistent typography to keep their branding consistent and keep the attention of the audience and not confuse them. They use the drink as a focal point of the advert which is something I planned to use when designing my own. They used their slogan at the bottom to ensure people got familiar with this part and became easily recognisable to their audience. 

When designing my advert I wanted to ensure the drink was the focus of it. This is something I found consistently in magazine adverts and was something I felt would work well with my target audience. I wanted the background to be a solid colour to allow the drink to feel like it was enough on its own, however, when creating the background it felt too plain and was not as effective as I had thought. I decided to take inspiration from Nike and put a plane silhouette in the background of the drink. This allowed the drink to be the focus while there still be other parts of the advert with things happening (Nike did this through the person and the textured floor). I wanted to add my slogan on as this is another thing I found consistently through my adverts. I think this worked effectively in gaining audiences attention and gaining the familiarity. The simplicity of the advert allows the theme to be obvious to the audience and continue the theme as well as being interesting but not overwhelming to the audience. Overall, I think the codes and conventions I found in other adverts allowed me to design and create an effective outcome for my magazine advert.

My visual advert was difficult to create as there was a lot of planning and ideas I had to come up with before making my final idea. I looked at two video adverts before coming up with ideas for mine. I analysed Coca Colas Chrismas advert and Pepsis advert. Both adverts were very different but shared some conventions in different ways. Cola used Santa as the main focus of the advert. They used him throughout the advert to create an association between Christmas time and Sanata to the drink. This is something that worked well as people often associate christmas adverts to Cola which allows Cola to become a market leader. The advert utilises a popular christmas song throughout the advert. Their use of song allowed the audience to have background noise throughout and allow them to stay focused on the advert itself. They use common senerios such as having fun with friends and eating dinner as situations throughout the advert. This allowed the audience to connect to the characters and relate to the storyline which is important in an advert to allow the audience to imagine themselves in the situation. I think Cola did this well as it gained them 3.2 million views on YouTube and millions more on TV. Pepsi uses similar ideas throughout their advert but executes this in a very different way. Pepsi also uses a song in the background of the advert to reflect the atmosphere they are trying to create. They chose an upbeat and happy song for the background to reflect how the drinks makes people feel and the visuals in the background of the advert. They focus on product placement throughout the advert with the can being in the centre throughout. This worked well for the advert as it gave people a clear idea of the product being advertised. The background was full and had lots going on. This gave the audience something to focus on in the background and, again, uses familiar and relatable situations to keep audience attention and allow them to picture themselves in these situations. 

For my advert I had to do a lot of planning into how I wanted to show off the can of the drink while still having relatable situations, all while following my theme. I created a document full of ideas that I came up with on how to use these aspects to my advantage throughout my advert. I decided my advert was going to follow a young girl as this is a relatable character to follow. The teenage audience will be able to relate to the girl and create a connection wih her and the older audience will get a sense of nostalgia by seeing their youngerselves through this character. As my theme is travel I decided to have her pose in different tourist landmarks. I decided to chose Paris as the destination as it is a popular tourist destination and is a popular place for people to want to visit if they have not already. I felt having her feel like she is walking across the screen felt interesting and added a unique aspect to the advert that I had not seen in competitors adverts. After creating the advert I felt this was not enough and wanted to take inspiration from Pepsi. I wanted to use fast-paced images to replicate the fast-paced feel of the Pepsi advert as this is something that the target audience enjoyed. I think this added an intriguing aspect to the advert and changed the pace to keep attention. At the end of my advert I included a still shot of the can design. This allows people to easily identify the can design and get familiar with it. 

The range in angles and shot lengths added an interesting twist to the advert and kept the audience engaged with the advert for a long period of time. I ensured the advert was not too long as this is something I believe the target audience would benefit from. Shorter adverts tend to do better with the target audience as they have shorter attention span and enjoy shorter form content. Overall, I think the advert turned out well and I was able to learn a lot from the inspiration I watched before filming.