Advert Research

Advertising is used (most of the time) to sell a product, that can be anything from underwear to deodorant. For example the product ‘Lynx’ uses attractive women and men to sell their product because ‘sex sells’ after all. Clothing brands tend to go that way as well. Comedy is sometimes used and even ‘pulling at heart strings’ is also a tactic.

But there is another type of advertising, adverts that aren’t selling products but warn and educate you, anti-drug, anti-drunk driving and anti-bullying advertising. A very famous anti-drug advert from the early 90’s named ‘This is your brain on drugs’ that depicted your human brain as an egg, labelled the frying pan as ‘drugs’ and fried your ‘brain’. Saying drugs will destroy your mind and so on. This ad was based in America and was ridiculed tremendously due to its terribly executed depiction. Bill Hicks (an American comedian) has his most famous joke based around this advert, making jokes over every aspect of it. Saying things like ‘that’s not a brain that’s breakfast!’

1950’s

 

This advert isn’t great compared to modern day ads. Its too simply and obvious that its selling you something, adverts should be subtle. The product shouldn’t smother you. This advert has the product on screen constantly, using a ‘doctors’ say so as recommendation and also uses a woman to sell the product to men.

1960’s

 

 

I didn’t set out to find sexist adverts at all, I wanted to find an advert from the 1960’s that were based around coffee. Although thinking back; i don’t know what i was expecting. This advert, putting aside the sexism, isn’t all that bad. There was a little story attached to it and a point. Having a connection to the characters in an advert will intrigues the viewer. A viewer will lose interest very quickly if the product is pushed onto them.

1970’s

 

This Advert is much better compared to the other two, although the product is constantly seen, its a comically charged advert. They even created a little rhyme for the ‘Big Mac’ that rhyme would then get caught in the viewers head, causing them to remember the product for a little while. The rhyme will have people challenging each other to get it right and so the word of the product will travel far and wide.

2006

 

This advert is brilliant, I love how over the top it is. They attached a classic song to it to show allegiance, the variety of colours shows the vibrancy of there selection. And the set is another thing that the company is trying to say ‘we can make a bland block of flats look beautiful’. They purposefully chose the most plain looking place to shoot in, just to give the paint another boost in looks. The advert is just pleasing to look at, making a very well made advert.

I want to go against the grain a little bit with my project. I want to make it weird. You know when an advert comes on that’s so weird you just sit and stare? That’s what I want. I want  a completely black background. And person just sitting there, listening to music, that you can faintly hear from his headphones. His eyes closed head bobbing up and down. He is clearly enjoying the song/songs. Then i want to camera to shoot to his forehead and then he will be playing in a band, that is playing the music he was listening to. Bright lights, costumes/or not. And then when the song is done the camera zooms out of his head, slowly orbits around his head into it gets to his headphones, showing the logo. It should only be about 30 seconds long, short and sweet.