Analysis:
This is an advertisement for an energy drink with a simple story, and we decided to do this using a fast and up beat style.
We used many angles and views such as over the shoulder or just simply side on or direct. We framed some shots in a way so we only get what’s important. E.g. Only the ball and the hoop. The location provides a feel of everyday life as this is targeting teenagers with normal lives, but later in the ad we try and pull away from reality. The models represent a street style theme which the location backs up. The codes of dress and gesture also do the same. The actors are wearing simple/plain but street style clothes like teenagers may do. Some pictures show a serious facial expression for tension. This is found when Alex misses the shot before he has the drink. But some show a happy facial expression that shows they are having some fun in the game.
We chose two fast and up beat hip-hop soundtracks that we thought would work well with the whole brand identity and theme we were looking for. We have a range of ways in which the pictures follow the music. In the beginning the pictures go to the first two beats of the music, and the first soundtrack we used was slow compared to the second one because at first we are showing that Alex isn’t playing very well. So our transitions were quite slow ones that gave it energy less feel. We used a ‘cross dissolve’ transition a number of times as it jus flows well and you can chose its speed. The second soundtrack is a very fast one, therefore we changed images quicker to give an energetic feel, and we used less transition than the start. And here we didn’t make the photos go with the music as much as we decided to have the pictures thrown at the audience to show the energy drinks affect. At the end when we had the voice over to anchor the product we used a transition that broke the last shot into pieces and this was intended to bring the advert to an end.
There is no text or any real anchorage until the end of the advert when the voice over comes in, and the voice over says what the text on the last shot says. “Rush; a burst of adrenaline” this is our slogan and this is said and shown in text in the last few seconds. But during the middle of the advert when Alex has the drink, the audience is shown a number of close-up shots of the drink, and this will probably tell you that it’s an advert of a drink. The text we used has a scruffy font that goes with the street look. Our label also makes our bottle stand out from regular as the colour of the label and the colour of the drink are very different. The colours vary during the advert to suggest a range of moods. The sound affects also add to the feel of the audience in the action. E.g. The sound of the ball hitting the backboard when a shot is missed, gives a feel of being there. The language is just a slogan, but our slogan uses connected words that link the product’s name to the slogan; rush and adrenaline have a chain link to each other. We have chosen a house style of young street basketball, youngsters with lots of energy just having fun in a local park.
We haven’t really used main stream music that could be related to popular culture, simply because main stream music would not go with our advert. The branding basically says that it gives you a burst of energy (adrenaline used in our slogan), and it helps you physically, when it comes to sports, e.g. Basketball. So our advert creates a desire of thirst and needing this drink when you play a sport. The image identity is a very teen and energetic one, where everything is fast and slightly unreal.
The overall style of this advert is a fast youngsters appealing look. But this ad unfortunately fails to target girls, so this jus targets teenage boys. So we didn’t totally match our brief as we had to target boys and girls in a non-sexist manner.
Evaluation:
We had an audience viewing our advert and the majority of the responses said that the advert works well, with the brand identity/style/music. It does do its job when it comes to attracting people to this drink but the main criticism was that it doesn’t target mixed genders. So the teenage girls felt that this didn’t target them as much it targeted the boys. Another trend in comment was that they liked the theme of smashing, as the bottle is smashed after its drunk and then the final transition we use is the screen breaking away.
I think our ad does relate to other TV adverts that promote a number of products as well as energy drinks. For example the ‘Sporties’ advert shows Michael Owen eat the cereal and do lots of energetic things, and out advert shows the product in use (being drunk) and then the person who drinks it becomes energetic and plays well. So it has similarities as it shows our product in use and its positive affects. It does compare positively; it would probably sell as well because it an attractive advert but teenage girls probably wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t target them as much. But in my opinion I think this advert does work effectively for teenage boys as this was proved in our survey. This would probably be best placed on comedy and music channels as many teenagers watch these types of channels, and it may also work on ITV and channel for between programmes such as ‘Friends’ that many teenagers would watch. So this would be around evening time. This is because pupils watch TV after they arrive home from school. This could be on TV around anytime of the week, but especially weekdays and Sundays.
I think this is a well working advert that suites it’s music and brand identity as a whole. However this advert doesn’t really target girls, except for the voice over at the end, but even that doesn’t really involve girls using the drink and playing in the advert. If we had the chance to improve this I would probably get some girls to act in our advert, with mixed teams, this would make the ad non-sexist and it would target mixed genders.
We worked well as a group overall, but at first it took us time to all agree upon an idea, but we all contributed good ideas and came 2 final agreements. I did enjoy this project, shooting the pictures was fun; and I learnt how to use Adobe Premiere and put together stills using transitions. I’ve also learned to split the work in a team effort and make sure everything is fair. As a group and individually I would approach the project differently from the start, as we started off too ambitiously and we thought of things that wouldn’t be practical, and this slowed us down at the start of the project.
