Task 4- Regulation

Explain why the regulation of television advert is important

Adverts are an essential part of the urban world and our everyday life, it is important that people are not mislead by what they see on TV through adverts. It is important to regulate advertisement because majority of the public count on them as guides to new things. Most adverts are the selling points for a lot of companies because that is the first thing out before the

What is the purpose of ASA/Ofcom?

Ofcom means Office of Communication but it is commonly known as Ofcom. It is the Government approved Regulatory and Competition Authority for the Broadcasting, Telecommunication and postal Industries of the United Kingdom.

It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from anything that may seem offensive or harmful material. Some of the main areas Ofcom presides over licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio spectrum from abuse. When dealing with advertisements, Ofcom will often direct you to the ASA which specifically regulates advertisements.

ASA means Advertising Standards Authority. their job is ensure that advertising i all forms of media, from newspapers, magazines and billboards through to television, radio and the internet is legal, decent, honest and truthful. If an advert fails the test, the advert would either be amended or withdrawn.

Explain which areas of advertising are particular concern to the ASA

Magazines and Newspaper

Radio and TV

Television shopping channels

Posters

Cinema

Direct mail

All these are used by the public and are seen by different age groups, the ASA needs to be certain about what type of adverts are put out for the world to see.

Explain the two questions The ASA ask of a particular advert

The two questions the ASA ask of a particular advert are,

The Accuracy of the advert

If the advert is Offensive or not.

ASA stands for Advertising Standards Agency.

The ASA is an organisation which enforces advertising rules. It takes action against advertising companies which break the rules. They deal with complaints from the public and investigate each one. They actively check the media and take action against misleading, harmful, or offensive advertisements. If the advert is found to be in breach of the UK Advertising codes it has be taken off or changed to make it acceptable.

Ofcom is an independent regulator which issues a broadcasting code for, and regulator T.V, radio, fixed line telecoms, mobiles, postal services etc. It sets out rules which is T.V. and radio broadcasters must follow. The code includes protecting under 18s - observing the watershed on TV and music videos. There are rules about offensive of language in lyrics in music tracks, live music performances/ interviews or studio conversations. Listener do not expect to hear strong language during the day on radio. Where during live interview someone swears, a broadcaster has to give and immediate apology. Ofcom make sure that everyone in the UK gets the best from the communications services and make sure they are protected from scams.

Regulation of Advertisement

Advertising is a key part of television and is a regular occurrence on TV. There are adverts around every 15 minutes. It is a crucial part of the economy. Adverts are used to sell products. The adverts gain money. This means that audiences do not have to pay as much TV licence. TV license is used as a way of the bcc who do not have adverts, to make money. Regulation is important because adverts need to be controlled. If there was no regulation, adverts could be misleading and might not give accurate information. This regulation controls whatever goes into an advert. If they do not like what is in the advert they do not allow it to be shown. There are rules set up to stop adverts being offensive or misleading. Regulation is especially strict on adverts involving or aimed at kids.

Roles and purposes of Ofcom

Ofcom (the office of communication) is a board who are government approved. They are the regulatory board who controls advertisement. They deal with television radio and the postal sector. They are there to represent the view of the general public and make sure their view of advertisements are correctly represented. They are there to protect the public from offensive or morally wrong adverts. They deal with licencing, research codes and policies. They especially deal with complaints from the public. The board listen to the public and deal with them if needed. If their was enough complaints they would take down the adverts.

Roles and purposes of ASA

ASA (Advertising standards authority) is there to make sure that all advertisements going out can all be trusted not to cause offense to the public. They were set up 50 years ago. It observes all media including TV radio and internet. They have to make sure all adverts don't break the law. They also make sure it is not misleading and is decent to show to people including children, the elderly or women. If the adverts fails any of the criteria they will be look at, changed or withdrawn.

They control a range of areas including

Magazine and newspapers

Radio and television

Posters

Cinema

Leaflets

Internet

DVDs and CDs

Their main role is to listen to complaints by the public. They have to act and make sure changes are made to respond to each complaint. They have to watch each advert making sure it it is not offensive or misleading to the general public.  Each complaint can make an advert be looked into and maybe even banned. In 2011 31,458 about adverts. 4591 adverts had to be changed or withdrawn due to complaints.  94% of complaints.

Areas concerning ASA

The ASA always have to be careful what adverts go out and have to watch what times adverts go out. They take certain products into considerations.  These include Alcohol, gambling, food and fizzy drinks, health and beauty products and tobacco. They have to make sure they are not selling products to the wrong demographic, e.g. tobacco for kids by not putting it on when kids are watching and not aiming it for kids by putting kid imagery. They set up rules to protect people. These rules protect people from harm and offense, environmental clams, racism, children and advertising, stop misleading clams and make sure adverts are in the right times and places.

When the ASA deal with advert as they have to ask two key questions. They are "is the advert inaccurate or misleading" and "might it cause offense to people seeing it, or could it cause harm to anyone, especially children. These two questions are asked of every advert ma

How are the rules written

The ADS are judged by the ASA. They are judged using the UK advertising codes. These codes are decide by two groups the CAP (the committee of advertising practice) and the BCAP ( broadcast committee of advertising practice).The committee is made up of media owners, advertisers and agencies.  The codes involves a wide ranges of different types of advertising. The rules make sure adverts don't mislead, offend and are socially responsible for what is being put out there. The codes also mirror and enhance the laws already in place. The ASA uses the law to judge all adverts making sure they are right.

Example of advertising being banned.

Cigarettes was one of the product the ASA banned to protect people. In 1965 cigarette adverts on tv were banned but cigars and lose tobacco aloud till the 1990s. In 1975 new laws were introduced to prevent other forms of cigarette advertising. In 2003 an act was passed prohibiting the advertising promotion of tobacco products. But cover ads in rolling papers were still aloud. This started was because of a string of complaints about cigarettes.

Controversial adverts

Levis blind man advert

The advert is made by Levis Jeans. The advert is of a women who goes into a public bathroom to get changed. She sees a man with a white stick and assumes he is a blind man. She starts to strip , when she puts on trousers but goes up to the man face before he dose up her trousers she walk up to him and dose it in his face. Someone moves in the cubical, so she runs out. It turns out the man in the cubical is the blind man and the one who was sitting there was not blind. It brings up two controversy, which are the sexualisation of women and mocking of disabled people. The ASA started getting complaints about the advert saying it was making women look like they were sluts and mocking blind people. They responding by explaining that it was offending people and eventually decided to ban it. I believe that it should not have been banned because it was done as light humour and it was not offensive.

Ikea tidy up vibrator advert

The advert was made by Ikea. The advert is about a kid who is playing with his toys, then finds a vibrator. He starts to play with it like it’s one of his toys. He then makes it vibrate and starts laughing. This is controversial advert because it has children playing with adult things. This is putting a kid with an adult thing. This is making the advert inappropriate. The ASA started receiving complaints saying this is making it too sexual and inappropriate especially because it is involving children. The ASA responded by review the advert and decided that it was too adult and inappropriate and banned. I believe this was the right choice because it was very inappropriate and is putting a kid in an adult situation.

 Victoria's secret Christmas advert

The advert is made by Victoria's secret. The advert is of a group a famous super models including Tyra Banks. All the models were wearing lingerie. They were all posing say lustful thing like "tell me you miss me". This is controversial because it is objectifying women and made men desire thin and model standard women. Lowering women self-esteem of every other women making them feel worthless. The ASA started receiving complaints from women who did not have self-esteem. So they looked into it and said it was objectifying them so they banned it. I believe that they should have changed to include some non-models as well making it more women friendly.

Task 3 - Analysing a television advertisement in detail.

This is the McDonald's advert that involves two type of target audience. The director of this advert as successfully used four elements of Film Language to give this advert the everyday life feeling. The characters used in this adverts are the typical characters we see in real life.

For example the boys in a group are of several colours, in most cases nowadays boys of the age 16 to 18 usually hang around interracial group of friends (Black, Asian, White) also the boys were

This advert can be seen as a comparison of the life of young adults to the ones of elderly people but the only thing they would do the same is eat a McDonald’s burger. At the beginning of the advert the young boys are shown sitting on a pavement and listening to hip hop music and rapping to it, this is typical for boys of that age. The elderly man is shown listening to music but in an old fashioned way, the music player he uses is old school.

The second comparison is where one of the boys is getting a haircut from one of his friends and we can see them laughing and arguing, the old man on the other hand went into the barbers shop and has a serious face which is an opposite to the situation of the boys.

The third comparison is shown when the boys were walking down the street, one of the boys had his trousers underneath his backside which is popularly known as “sagging pants” which most young people see as cool. On the other hand the old man is shown pulling his trouser to the top of his belly which most mature people would see as appropriate.

The last comparison was when the boys played the Xbox and the elderly man played pool, again we see that the old man is a lot more focused on his game and the young boys were shouting during the whole period they played the Xbox.

Finally both the elderly man and the young boys got into McDonald, one of the boys and the man both produced the same kind of behaviour. They both poured the fries into the cover of the burger box at the same time, they both dipped the fries into the sauce at the same time, and when they realised they were doing the same thing they looked at each other and smiled and carried on eating.

At the end of the advert there was a short quote that said “We all have McDonald’s in common”. This was very useful because it referred back to the video where everything the young boys and the elderly man did were opposite but the only time there behaviour we alike was when they ate McDonald’s.

The Cinematography the shots used to follow the boys and the man were mostly long shots. Close ups and medium shots were also involved for example in the scene of the boys and the Man in McDonald. There was a close up of the vintage music player when the man put the song on. More medium shot were used in the studio room when the boys played Xbox and when the Elderly man played pool.

The advert is a good example of the realist narrative advert and it also uses a bit of humour in the scenes that involved the young boys.

The sound involved the music from the elderly man’s room while he sipped from his cup and from the boys when they sat on the pavement and the song that was played from the phone. Diegetic sounds of footsteps makes us know they a in a group and Non-diegetic background noises makes it sound like the everyday life.

Most of the time, the lightning were bright which added a happy theme to it. It is also a typical for young boys to be seen at that time of the day on the other hand it is not typical to find elderly people in McDonald's. They are mostly seen in cafes. This advert succeeded in breaking the stereotype usually stuck to elderly people about them being boring, miserable and not wanting to have fun.

task 2 -styles of television adverts done

Styles of Television Adverts

Humour- This is the tendency to provoke laughter and provide laughter. People of all ages respond to humour, most people are likely respond positively to humour i.e. laugh or smile at something funny which means they have a sense of humour.

An example is the Pepsi advert. this advert is targeted at all the age groups, at the beginning of the advert there was a little boy walking in, this represents the children, he later grew up into a strong young man this represents the middle aged people and elderly people. This advert was focuses on men because there were no women shown in it. Throughout the ad, the character went through series of hard-core tests and at the end the Pepsi drinking was the final test for the him. This could of all the big things of life the littlest things matter the most.

Parody- An advert which is parody uses the technique of relating it to something popular such as a film or a T.V. programme. This will attract a larger target audience because more people will understand what they are trying to sell.

The example of parody advert is spec savers, it is set on the beach and it starts off with some attractive women in bikinis and gets more and more women. They all starts running in slow motion towards to something but it is not clear what then you see a man spraying 'Lynx' on him and all the girls run past other people who are doing normal things on the beach. They then stand around the man but when he stopped spraying, they all stopped suddenly and put the horrible glasses on and the women immediately become not attracted anymore and walked away.

The whole advert makes you think it is Lynx advert because the theme is similar of what they used, therefore this will attract their larger target audience, which is teenagers and younger adults, and make them watch but eventually realising that it is spec savers. This will make it memorable and more likely for them to go to spec savers

Shock- is a type of advert made to deliberately trigger a sudden response for example a startle

An example of this is the phones 4 u advert. a woman walks through the car park into her car with shopping bags and she walks past a little girl drenched with water, she looks back and did not see her any more. She ran to her car looking absolutely terrified. When she entered her car to drive off the girl reappeared and slammed the window, when she spoke she said hello to the lady, the purpose of the hello was to calm her down so she could get every bit of the information about the phone deal. At the end of the video it says 'MISSING OUR DEALS WILL HAUNT YOU' which means if you do not get the phones with great deals when you have the chance, you will regret it later on.

Surrealism-

                This advert is an example of surrealism, the target audience of this advert are mostly of the male sex especially the ones that constantly go to the gym and have possibility of sweating a lot. Terry Crews is a very fit actor and has a good physic. The old spice company have used him because he looks like a person that works out a lot which means the other men would be able to relate to him.

Intertextuality- The shaping of texts meanings in other texts.

There are many benefits when using intertextuality as a technique in advertisement, it gets the point across and is memorable, spec saver is being advertised in a post man pat advert which is usually not done so this makes everyone remember what the advert is like. Using intertextuality in adverts add humour to the advert which makes it fun to watch for the younger audience. However it can be boring in some cases which discourages people from watching it and means it could not be memorable.

It is good that they have used postman pat in the advert, it applies to both the older and the younger audience. Most Children watch postman pat and adore him, so this already applies to them even if there are no children in the advert. Also there are a lot of elderly people in the advert and even postman pat himself is elderly so this also involves the older audience.

Repetition- This is an advert that comes like a series which has a different story lines after a while of it showed on TV.

An example of repetition is the go compare advert, in this advert you would always see a man with a funny looking moustache, every time he tries to convince people into trying out the go compare, they are never interested, this mocks the advert and the same story line is repeated every time but in a different setting. This is used to draw interest to and help to sell a particular product. A feature is the imagery used. Such as a pretty woman, sometimes might not even have a connection to the product being advertised. Repetition is a good style of advertisement because the product sticks to the audience even when the advert is over.

Sex Appeal- This is used to draw interest to and help to sell a particular product. A feature is the imagery used. Such as a pretty woman, sometimes might not even have a connection to the product being advertised.

An example of this is the L'Oreal Paris advert featuring Cheryl Cole. She happens to be one of the most gorgeous looking female celebrities in UK. The advert is about a hair shampoo, she wears a mini red dress that looks very attractive and makes you concentrate more on the dress rather than the hair. Her full image was shown few times in the advert so whenever the part comes on you concentrate more on the body and whenever it does not show her body the audience are eager to see it. Sex appeal is useful because the audience can attach the person used in the advert with the product it stick in their memory.

Famous Faces- An advert that uses famous people as their major cast in other to make people think when they purchase the product they are a step closer to living like or being like the person.

This advert is for the Adidas commercial and the famous faces in it are Nicki Minaj and Big Sean. These two people happen to be big celebrities and they have made a huge influence in the entertainment industry. Adidas using them as the face of their advert will draw the attention of the younger group of audience. Adidas is best known for their incomparable shoe collection as we see Nicki Minaj wearing a unique pair of trainers. In this advert we see that groups of people all over the world from New York, Paris, Tokyo, and other places all were Adidas, this shows Adidas connect everyone all over the world. And the target audience for this advert is likely to be from the ages 15 to 25, most the teenagers and young adults. Famous Faces is useful because it attracts the younger generation and it sticks to them and they can refer to it in everyday life.

task 1 welcome done

WELCOME!!

Welcome to "An Introduction to Advertising" this blog is specially designed for people who don't know much about advertising, as you read more information in the blog you would come across details that explain everything you would need to know about advertising and how to be successful in the world of advertising.

This blog would include different details like;

Different formats of advertising

Different purposes of advertising

Examples of effective and ineffective advertising campaigns

Examples of controversial advertising campaigns

Different styles of television advertisement

How television adverts are researched and designed

How television adverts are produced

Common codes and convention

How advertising is regulated

These following details would give you a wider knowledge about advertising. And how to go about any advertisement task you come across in the future.

t1;unit-30 This provides evidence for: Unit 30:P1,M1,D1 done

The Forms of Advertising

Realistic Narrative- the realistic advert is an advert with story and it believable and can be seen as truthful. This type of advert can be seen as a true life incidence and could be expected to happen in reality.

An example of this type of advert are soap adverts but i would be analysing the "Fairy liquid wash"

In most of the fairy adverts the main characters is a woman or a mother in a kitchen setting, this is as been used in order to be able to relate to the other women watching the adverts. The target audience are female of the age range 20 and upwards. The company have picked this type of advert because it gives a clear explanation as to what the product can do and how long it likes.

Anti-Realist Narrative - It is a story behind the advert but it is fictional unlike the realist narrative. It is not day-to-day behaviour. It can have anything in the advert such as cartoon characters and other things.

                      An example of anti-realist narrative is the 'Blue Smartie Party' advert. This is anti-realist narrative because you do not see a community of people know as 'the Smarties dressed up in morph-suits that live in a tube in real life. At the start you can see two young red and orange Smarties running around having fun then two older orange and pink Smarties are fishing and one older yellow smartie is doing work on the crop. There's a lot of Smarties playing around, working, relaxing in their garden and also you can see their house (Smarties tube box). Suddenly you can see the older blue smartie walking over the hill, waving at them but other coloured Smarties stopped. The blue smartie starts running down the hill but others start running away from them and hide in their house. They slam the door on the blue smartie then one older yellow smartie is pushed out to talk to the blue smartie. The blue smartie looks very happy when he saw the yellow smartie come out. The blue smartie gives his 'birth certificate' to the yellow smartie then you can see that he is 100% no artificial colours. The yellow smartie tells everyone. They are all happy to have the blue smartie in their community. At the end you can see that the green smartie has put the new sign on their home and said 'Blue is Back!'

The target audience is for anyone who likes Smarties e.g. children, teenagers, adults, anyone really. It will attract them to buy it because it is funny, you don't see the Smarties in 'real life' as in morph-suits people. This advert is to let you know that the blue Smarties are back as in 100% no artificial colours. This will make people more excited about the blue Smarties. It also tries to convince the audience that they are somehow healthier because there is no artificial colouring.

Animation- animated adverts could be realistic and could be fictional as well, it depends on the way the advert is constructed. Some adverts could be fictional with animated characters and some could be realistic with animated characters. Animated adverts tends to attract the younger generation more than the older ones.

The Kellogg Honey Pops advert is an animated advert. There are tiny little bee characters that appear as the workers singing and working as busy bees. This advert is targeted to little kid both the ones that love cereal and the ones that don't. They created a song with it to make the advert remember able to the children that watch it. The song is used as an illusion, for the kids, most of them would think if they ate the cereal they would have the ability to sing like the bees or could end up in the world of the bees.

However the parents could be a target audience, this is because they would hear their kids sing the song and would purchase it for them to make their dreams come true.

Documentary- documentary advert often mimics documentary movie, there is usually a narrator speaking on top of the video or image that is shown,

An example of the documentary advert is the "Save the Children".

This advert is about children that are deprived of so many things like good education, good food and others due to the poverty in countries. It is a moving advert because it is uses language to stir up peoples emotion for example they use language like "show you care", "help", "needs you". These are used to make the audience feel guilty and want to donate money. Also, the advert is personalised because it mentions the child's name, this is an effective way of connecting to the audience. there are many close ups of the child's face looking and sad and crying, the child had no clothes on and had wounds on her faces and untidy hair, this shows how much suffering they are going through, she holds on to the adult in the video for help but clearly she cannot be helped by her mother because they are both in it together therefore the target audience are adults and it is left to use to help them. sometimes the target audience could also be teenagers because adverts like this minister to everyone who watches and the adverts comes on at random times e.g., during dinner or lunch time so everyone would get a chance to see it.

Talking Heads- this type of advert is where a very common presenter or television personality talks directly to the camera in way of connecting to the audience, with only the upper bod or head is visible. Talking heads are usually a mid-shot or medium close-up. The most common talking heads are used in news, charity adverts, documentary programme and sports.

 An example of talking heads is Joanna Lumley advertising Sky. This advert shows an older female 'pensioner' being able to access technology very easily just by pressing a couple of buttons. She is very pleased with herself because she can watch programmes when and where she likes. She talks directly to the camera, looking very relaxed and explains how easy it is to use Sky.

The target audience is likely to be middle aged people who have enough money to afford to buy a Sky. It will appeal to this group of people because if someone older can do it then they will be able to do it too. It could also appeal to younger people who would try to convince their parents to buy Sky so that they can watch what they like.

Series- series adverts are almost like film series but they are very short, this is when similar adverts are released periodically for a product with a continuing storyline.an example of this is

               

this advert is continuous story about a man who provides comparison details for vehicles, pet and house insurance, utilities, financial product etc. the story behind this advert is that he gets people to listen to what he has to advertise but at the end they either do not get the point or they are not interested. The storyline is similar in every series of the advert. The target audience are people from the ages of 25 and upwards, they are the ones with the cares and they are the working that can afford to pay for insurances.

Stand Alone - A stand-alone advertisement is a single advertisement with no related advertisements to follow. An example of this would be the Dance Pony Dance advert for 3, as opposed to a series of linked advertisements, such as the recent BT Infinity adverts.

An example of stand-alone is Dance Pony Dance. These types of adverts tend to be unique or strange as can be seen in the 'Dance Pony Dance' advert, where a small horse moonwalks through the fields to a background of 'Everywhere by Fleet wood Mac'. The use of humour in this particular advert by 3 is clever as people may go online to YouTube for example to purposefully watch an advert for their services.

The target audience for this advert is probably very wide as people of all ages now have mobile contracts, however, the random humour style would suggest that it is aimed at a younger group.