Advertising, whether on radio or TV, involves the same kinds of production techniques you would use for other types of film-making. However, advertising does involve a different kind of preparation. This chapter deals with how to approach your project if you have been tasked with making an advertisement.
Advertising is similar to a film trail in that the film-maker is trying to persuade you to buy something and has only a short space of time in which to do it. Advertising is often studied in terms of semiotics (signs or symbols). Students often study things like target audience, and how lighting, sound, music and even typeface affect the viewer.
These are all very important aspects of advertising; however, this chapter will look at some advertisements in a slightly different way, not because the others are wrong but because this breakdown may help you think about how to structure your own work. To get the best out of this chapter you will need to use it in conjunction with the website.
In 1978 advertising guru Donald Gunn created a list of different styles of advertisements. Some of these are instantly recognisable; others take a little more thinking about. However, they do cover virtually all the types of advertisement you are likely to see.
If you log onto the website you will be able to follow the links to see the different types of advertisement.
So, what is the point of telling you all this? Looking at advertisements in this way is a little like looking at story structure in Chapter 6. Just as with a story structure you can weave an almost infinite number of plots, characters and settings around a basic structure, with an advertisement you can choose one of these structures to advertise any number of products.
Advertisers spend a lot of time and money on market research. This is to help them discover what the consumers already think about the product, what they think about other similar products, what they want from a product and a whole range of other information the agencies need to create the advertisement.
You are unlikely to have time to do this kind of research for real; however, you should give some thought as to the message you want to get across to your consumers. What are you trying to tell the consumers about your product? If you keep in mind the different types of advertisements it will help you decide. What are the benefits of the product; what is its unique selling point (USP)? Are you trying to associate the product with something aspirational; for example, being rich, being intelligent, being popular?
Unless you know the central message you are trying to get across you won’t be able to create an effective advertisement.
Think about the purpose of an advertisement:
Whatever type of advertisement, radio or TV, the most important thing to know is who your consumer is. Advertisements are targeted much more specifically to particular groups of people than many TV or radio programmes. At peak times in the evening, for example, a broadcaster is trying to get as many people as possible watching the channel. It therefore makes sense to go for the widest audience possible. Advertisers spend a lot of time and money finding out about their consumers and target their advertisements much more specifically.
For your project you could start by writing out a consumer profile. Who do you think is most likely to buy this product? It may be more than one type of person. However, if you have a profile like this you will start to build a mental picture of who you are aiming your product at. Some people even draw pictures of likely consumers and have them in view. It keeps everyone focused on who they are addressing. It will be useful to add this to your production folder and it will be an important part of the evaluation process.
So imagine an advertisement for a new deodorant aimed at young teenage boys. Your consumer profile might be something like this:
Joe is 13 years old. He enjoys sport at school but isn’t a fanatic. He’s into action computer games but plays mainly with his friends. He likes music and is keen to know what it’s cool to like, as he tends to follow trends. Joe doesn’t watch much TV but the programmes he likes he’s loyal to; he’s keen on teen dramas. He doesn’t have a girlfriend and nor do any of his friends, but he is self-conscious about how he appears to girls and in particular about the way they think he looks. He takes quite a lot of care over his personal hygiene, but doesn’t like products which would make him look feminine. His parents make most of the buying decisions but he has some influence and will use his own money to buy something he really wants.
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself when you create your profile for your own advertisement. You can download a blank sheet from the website. There are probably lots of other questions you could ask but these will get you started.
Template 7.1 Consumer profile
Remember: You need to distinguish here between the consumers and the characters in the advertisements; they will not necessarily be the same person. You might use aspirational characters, people who you think the consumer would like to emulate.
Once you’ve decided what you want to say and who you want to say it to, then you need to decide how you are going to say it. If you look at the different types of advertising it should start to give you some ideas. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that the simple ads are less effective. A strong, simple, powerful message is what you are after.
If you are advertising on radio you will only have words, music and sound. You won’t have any images to convey information quickly. You may find that if you start to go for something too complicated the audience will lose the plot and your advertising will be ineffective.
You will have to start to think about who or what you are going to use to tell the story. Remember: whether in vision or just the voice-over, the character you choose to tell the story must be appealing to your target audience. It doesn’t have to be the target audience but it has to be a character they understand and have an empathy with.
Your copy is the words you are going to use with the pictures. You need to be thinking about these at the same time as you are making up the story. Your copy may be a voice-over or it may be spoken by the characters in the advertisement. But whichever way, you need to be thinking about what you are going to say as well as about what you’re going to see or hear.
Writing advertising copy is a very skilled task; however, one structure is the familiar persuasive writing structure:
Slogan: You will need to think in particular about the last lines. Adverts often end with a slogan or memorable line that everyone associates with the product.
Good slogans are very hard to write but, just like the ads themselves. there are a number of different types. The following is a list of some of the types of slogans that are often used.
Call to action: Sometimes advertisements end with a call to action. This is where the advertisers tells the consumers what they want them to do:
Other calls to action are slightly less obvious:
USP: Sometimes they end with the unique selling point (USP):
Benefit: Sometimes it ends by reminding viewers of the benefit:
Rhyme alliteration: You can use rhyme or alliteration to add punch to the ad:
Aspirational: Sometimes the slogan can be more aspirational and not specifically relate to the product. Nike had a slogan Just do it. . . . This slogan was a call to action but not directly to buy the product. It was more aspirational, associating the slogan with the power and determination of the athletes the advertisement featured.
Not all advertising copy follows this structure and it will only work for some types of advertisement; however, it offers a basic way of thinking about your copy.
Radio advertising is likely to involve the same production techniques as radio drama and you will find a lot of information in the chapter about microphones, FX and recording technique. Radio advertising, like TV, is generally very short. Thirty seconds is a common length for a radio advertisement and generally they won’t be longer than 90 seconds. You therefore have to compress everything to get your message across in the time available.
A radio ad will follow the same initial processes as a TV ad. You need to know your target audience. You also need to know which radio station is the right place to advertise. Radio stations tend to have a quite specific audience, much more so than terrestrial TV and even the digital channels. So you need to be sure that the type of product you are trying to advertise will appeal to the people who are likely to be listening to that radio station.
If you log onto the website you will find some links to a large selection of radio advertisements. You should listen to a number of them so that you can get a sense of the types of production techniques employed.
Clearly, the wording of the ad is critical for a radio commercial; here are some tips to think about.
Simple concepts: You can convey a lot very quickly with pictures; on radio you are using sound only. If your idea is too complex it may well get lost in the short time you have to get the message across. Some of the complicated ideas you get in TV and film advertising aren’t going to work so well on radio.
Talk to one person: You are talking to one person, not a big group of people. When you write the script have an image of your listener in mind.
Keep the language simple:
Name the product: Again you have no pack shot so you need to make sure that the name of the product is clear and repeated several times during the ad.
Call to action: Since you don’t have a pack shot in radio a clear call to action at the end of the ad or a clear slogan is essential. You need to end your ad by telling the listeners where they can buy the product, websites, any dates – offer ends Monday type of thing.
Pacing: You have only a short amount of time, so the temptation is to pace the ad very quickly; however, too much information and you will lose your listeners. If they lose track of what you are saying then they have no way of catching up and will just tune out.
Preparing your treatment for your radio or TV advertisement involves being clear about what you are selling and who you are selling it to. Advertisements tend to be targeted at a very specific group of people. Unlike film/TV/radio, advertisers tend to be as much concerned about who they are talking to as the sheer number of people they are talking to. To structure a successful ad you need to know what you are selling, who you are selling it to and how you want to make the pitch.
