Advertisement Evaluation

Brief:
Our brief was to find a Unilever product and re-market it to a new audience. Our chosen product was Marmite; we came to this conclusion by looking at all of the products on the Unilever website and looking at what products would be best/need to be re-marketed. We saw that Marmite has a broad target audience so we will be able to re-market the product easily. We had to find out who/what type of person actually eats Marmite and aim the product at them. The target audience for Marmite is very broad however the primary audience is vegetarians and people over the age of about 15. We decided to appeal to a male audience as we saw Marmite as quite a manly product so we decided to re-market it at the male audience by creating a very short but memorable advert, containing short cuts as men are stereotypically known to have short attention spans so we made a 'manly' advert to appeal to our target audience.

The Finished Product and Feedback:

I was able to collect feedback/comments from others by handing out questionnaires we specifically asked our primary target audience who were males however we did also ask our tutors and peers. I handed out 10 questionnares and also put a questionnaire up on the website called SurveyMonkey. I got 10 responses from my paper questionnaires however the responses I got from Surveymonkey were not valid and so I wasn't able to use them. We also watched our finished products and people gave points on what they liked and what they disliked about my advert. The general comments that I got back was that they liked the advert and they thought that it was a very good idea, also it appealed to my target audience very well and everyone was able to know who the advert was aimed at. Another popular like about the advert was the comical aspect of the advert and the storyline people said that it fitted well e.g the first few shots I was told were very good even though they were only around 1 second per shot they set the scene and showed you what the character was doing all within those scenes and it obviously had an effect on the audience as they liked this. Other points that people liked were there were a lot of close ups which is what you want in an advert and a lot of quick cuts which again you want in an advert as you don't want to bore your audience. There were also a few dislikes about the advert, at a certain point there was a colour gradient change as we shot different scenes on different days, also people thought that Mikey (Marmite Man) needed a costume and I agree with this point. He is just in his normal clothes which doesn't suggest the Marmite Man theme that we was going for. Also there is a small amount of background noise in one of the scenes and in the same scene Anthony has a slight smile on his face which is a continuity error. We do not know if we manage to get people to buy the product however many of the people we asked said that they would go and buy the product just from watching the advert. Overall people liked the advert and I would do things slightly different if I was able to re shot our advert but I think that it was a success.







Our target audience was just men in general no certain age group, I think the appropriateness to the audience we managed very well. From what I can tell everyone thought it was a very manly advert which if perfect as this is exactly who we wanted to and aim it at. I think the advert would have a big impact on our target audience as we made is a fairly comical advert it will be a very memorable advert and will stick in peoples head like the Go Compare man everyone knows who and what he does. Like the Go Compare adverts there are some very memorable moments in our advert e.g the slapping of the toast out of his hand, the very deep voice and of course the scene at the end (I LOVE IT!). When filming we had to think about the technical and aesthetic qualities of our advert, when filming and editing we wanted to make sure that our advert was fluid however it was commented on that our continuity could have been smoother. For example in the pushing over scene you could see that it was different shots edited together it wasn't one continuous shot, also the continuity error of the toast being different sizes also effected our advert slightly. First of all the mise-en-scene. We had to find a place that we could film which looked like a genuine home, so we luckily had Anthony's flat to film in, we also had to make sure there was no camera cases or tripods in shot as we had to make it look as professional as possible. We had to think about the lighting as well we had to make sure it was bright enough however not too bright that you couldn't see anything. Our props however we could have thought about slightly better, as we filmed on two different days we used 2 different pieces of toast and this turned into a continuity error as the piece of toast changed in size in different scenes so that is something we could have thought about better. We used a lot of quick cut shots in our advert as we didn't want to bore the audience. We used a few close ups at the start which showed you what was happening right at the start so you could understand where it was and what the advert was going to be about.

We tried to used a variety of different camera shots, movements and angles to give our advert an edge over the others but to also make the advert more exciting. My personal favourite shot is right at the end where it is a close up of the marmite jar and the toast drops in, its at a slightly low angle and I think it just looks very good and professional it also makes the Marmite look very appealing. POV shots were also used to make the audience feel like that's them looking at whatever the camera is looking at, POV shot always give you a connection with the audience as it gives them a look into what the characters are seeing/feeling. We had to plan all of these shots as if we didn't we wouldn't know what we would be doing, I think it is very important to plan and to plan carefully as without a plan you wouldn't know what you are doing and you can always refer back to it if you do not know what shot or scene is going to be next.  We used a tilt in one of the shots and also we used a pan and tilt at the same time in another, the camera movements again give the advert some energy so not every shot is very fixed and just staring at the characters or what ever is going on, there is actually some movement in the advert. Some of the shots we had shot were very long ad boring and we didn't want to make this a boring advert we wanted a quick to the point, funny advert. Once we had our footage we started to edit it. In our final piece most of the transitions are cuts as like said before it was a quick advert. I think this gave a good effect on our target audience as they don't want to be sitting watching a long boring advert. We decided to add special effects into our advert as we wanted to give it an effect on the audience, we used after effects and action essentials 2 to create a explosion/debris sound to a to not only the comical aspect of the advert but we also thought it looked really good. We also had to put a voice over as we wanted to give our character Marmite Man a very deep voice so we was able to edit it in. We also had a little effect at the end which said Man-Might we done this to show that well men are mighty. We also used the appropriate sound effects to fit in with our effects. We used the microphone on the camera to record our audio.

I think the effectiveness of our content is good, we sold our product to our chosen target audience and there isn't any confusion with who the advert is targeting. You are able to tell straight away from the storyline/narrative that our advert is aimed at men. I think the advert also sells the product very well you can understand what product the advert is selling or trying to do. I also think the effectiveness of the persuasion techniques we used were also very good. We made the advert comical so the audience would remember it and the product is was selling. We also used direct address for one of our persuasion techniques we done this so it tells you to go and eat Marmite saying its manly and that the character loves it, giving the audience a reason to go and buy the product if they don't buy the product they are not manly. Clarity of communication is about getting the message across to your audience, I feel that I done this well. Our actual message of the advert is that Marmite is nor a horrible product and doesn't taste bad we are trying to make it a cool product alo another message we were trying to send to our audience was Marmite was a manly product and its not a horrible tasteing product. I wanted to aim the product at a certain audience as the orginal target audience is very big, we wanted to appeal to a male audience so we used only men in our advert, toast is also stereotypically a manly food as men can't cook so we also used toast in our advert to reinforce the manly vibe. I do feel my advert is fit for purpose however there are some parts which may not comply with the advertising regultions like the slapping of the toast might make small children think that it is ok to slap food from someones mouth and also the last scene where Anthony takes a bite of the toast and shouts "I LOVE IT" this could also make small children talk with their mouthful and from this article about KFC this would have a bad effect on our product the KFC advert is the most complained about advert ever.( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/may/12/advertising.uknews).The this is relevent to our advert as there is a part where Anthony gets pushed on the floor this could condone bullying which is not aloud. I personally don't think ASA would allow our adver to show on television as it shows violence/bullying to be funny, although it is a comical advert and is not meant to show this in any way it would probably still get banned like the Durex bunnies advert which was funny however still got banned.

Personal Reflection: 

The advert came out very similar to our pre production work/documentation. Apart from a few scenes taken out and a few scenes added in the storyline is very much the same as what we wanted it to be. We used the props that we were going to use and we pretty much kept to the script. To Self-Evaluate I am very happy with the advert we have made however I would definatly do thing differently if I was to do this task again. I would make sure there are no continuity errors and colour changes I would make sure the toast is the same size in every shot so there was no continuity errors also there was a slight colour change as we shot different scenes on different days. I would learn from this experience and make sure everything would be perfect. I think I had a big involvement in my project, I did a lot of the pre production paperwork due to students absenses, also I had a lot of involvement with the filming and editing and I am happy with the amount of effort I put into this project.