One image from this campaign was when a priest was kissing a nun. This caused offence because the priest and nun had broken their vow of celibacy. Nuns and priest would never kiss anyone. Another image is of the queen of Britain. Toscani had taken a picture of her and colored her black. This caused offence to British people who take things about the queen seriously and to black people.
My opinion of the campaign is that some of the pictures were too controversial for just selling jumpers. I think that all the controversial pictures were too much.
This campaign improved Benetton’s profits because the campaign had memorable adverts. The adverts were so outrageous that people noticed them more than usual and people spread it around.
In the reality campaign Toscani used other photographer’s photographs of graves and he got photos of a bloodstained war uniform. This caused offence because people did not want him to use pictures of war heroes’ uniforms to sell jumpers.
The Sears deal was important to Benetton because it was a multi-million dollar deal. Benetton got to sell his clothes in over eight hundred branches. Everyone went to Sears so everyone would see his clothes.
In the death row campaign one of the images used was one of a murderer reading the bible, which put across that he has learnt his lesson and shouldn’t be put to death.
This campaign backfired because relatives of people killed by the death row inmates put on their own campaign to stop this one as they did not want to see their sons, daughters and relatives killers face everywhere they went. Benetton went on to lose the multi-million deal with Sears and therefore lost millions. Toscani had gone too far.
Advertising Agencies
An advertising agency is a company that exists to make a profit from adverting. They have an expert knowledge of how the advertising industry works. Agencies not only make the adverts, they find the best advertising space in which to promote their clients products. They use market research to find out about the audience.
How does the advertising industry work?
First of all the manufacturer of the product for example Andrex goes to an advertising agency. The manufacturer is called a client. The client is given an account manager who will be put in charge of the clients account and keeps the client informed of what is going on.
Research is done to find out is people need or want the product. They also do research to find out about the products image. For example the researchers will go out into a supermarket and ask customers about the product.
A creative team then uses the research to come up with a way of advertising the product. They come up with storylines, slogans and jingles, characters and jokes for the advert. For example the creative team can decide the advert will be in black and white or it has no speech.
Then the media planner decides which media to use and when and where it will be shown if on a television advert, what papers to put it in, what radio stations and what websites. They negotiate the advertising space, negotiating with the media companies/institution.
The idea is then turned into a product which involves some artwork, printing and filming of the advert. Sometimes the agency will hire a director or artist to produce the ad.
The media owner/institution prints the adverts in their newspaper/magazines or broadcast them on their television channel or radio station. Examples of media institutions are Granada television, cannel 4 or 5. Sky TV, the sun and the Dagenham post. The agency pays these to put them on their TV channel or in their Paper/ magazine or radio station.
What makes an effective television advert?
In order to persuade people to buy a product, an advert has to be effective. To be ‘effective’ means that it has to work well and achieve its aim. It has to have a lasting impression on the viewers to make it memorable and to sell the product.
Things that make a television advert successful or memorable are humor, animals, music, memorable slogans (for example “act your age, not your shoe size”), a celebrity, cute characters and seduction. All these things have an effect on the viewer or the audience, and make them laugh or play with their emotions.
One example of an effective advert is the ‘Fiat Punto’ advert. The purpose of the advert is to sell the car and give it a sexy image.
In this advert there is a couple in the Fiat Punto nipping around the streets of Rome, the man is looking at loads of good looking women as they walk past the car. The woman in the car then gets annoyed and pulls over and gets a young and attractive man to come to the window and then kisses him. It is supposed to be romantic but the man ogling at all the women so the lady teaches him a lesson by kissing a complete stranger.
The advert captures the viewer’s attention by including catchy music and good looking men for the women and good looking men for the women. This advert has the slogan “Sprito di Punto”. The appealing setting can capture the audience’s attention. Most people would like to go to this romantic location so they could watch the advert to see how good the location is. If men watched this advert and saw all of the good looking women they would probably like to go to Rome to see for them selves, and is the same for the women but to see all the good looking men.
The advert persuades the viewer to buy the car showing it in all its glory nipping about the streets. The advert also gives the Punto a sexy image by putting it in an exotic location, surrounded buy good looking people to make the car good looking itself.
I think this advert is aimed at the A – C1 classes of people and mainly at women aged twenty-one to thirty because in the advert the woman is in control of the car, she is in the driving seat.
In this advert technology is used to make it much more interesting by using 27 different camera shots with wide shots, close ups, and medium shots. The advert also has a fast pace, which shows that the car is fast. The advert is bright and colourful which adds to the feel good atmosphere. In the advert they used the car itself to get camera shots such as when the camera looks in the side mirror to get a different angle of the women walking past.
A second example of a successful advert is the “NHS Nurse Recruitment” advert. The purpose of this advert is to recruit nurses into the NHS.
In the advert there is a girl lying in a hospital bed facing the camera. There is a nurse off-screen and says ‘Ill be looking after you tonight’. The girl is unable to speak or respond to the nurse. It is set in a hospital and we know this because of the colour of the walls, and the beeps that we hear in the background, which could be a heart monitor.
The advert captures the viewer’s attention by adding suspense by making you think will the girl do or say anything. They also add a rhetorical question: ‘would you have the patience?’ This is needed if you’re going to be a nurse. Also in the adverts the makers ad repetitive sound which is a beep that you hear over and over again possibly from a heart monitor or similar piece of equipment.
The advert tries to persuade the viewer to get into nursing by creating sympathy and pity in the viewers. The advert plays with your mind and is psychological. The advert shows the reality of nursing and says that nursing has now improved pay.
I think that this advert is aimed at people in the B – C2 classes of people that are qualified for nursing and that are patient in particular. I think it’s also aimed at caring women at the age of twenty-eight upwards and people who think income isn’t very important.
In this advert technology is used to make it much more interesting by using only the one camera shot at an unusual angle, this is interesting because we are used to seeing more than one camera shot and at normal angles and positions. They add hospital sounds to make it more interesting. They use lighting on the girl’s face to make it paler. The advert makers use diegetic sound which is sound you expect to hear from the surrounding for example the beeps from the hospital machines and clanks of metal stuff.
After looking at these two successful adverts my favourite was the Fiat Punto advert mainly because it has good memorable music and has more than one camera angle as I think one camera angle is a bit boring.
