For our Med2 practical assessment we chose to advertise a bar/restaurant. The campaign consisted of 2 radio adverts and 2 poster advertisements.
Throughout the campaign we tried to incorporate the key concepts of advertising of which we learnt throughout Med2. This included genre, target audience, implicit and explicit ideology, language and form, institutions and representation. Within our group Luke and myself were responsible for the majority of the radio campaign. We are both music technology students, which meant we had the advantage of using all the recording equipment needed to record the adverts. We used the music software programme Cubase 3. 1 to record both of the advertisements.
Arjun and Stuart had the responsibility of creating the poster advertisements for which they used the photo editing software programme Adobe Photo Shop 7. 0. Although we had divided responsibilities we all had input on the design of each advertisement. Before creating our campaign we needed to look at the audience we would be targeting. This was the main area of focus before creating our campaign as once we had decided on the age, gender and social class of our audience we could go about creating our campaign to appeal to this audience.
We decided the target audience of our campaign would be single men and women, or men and women in a relationship aged between 21 and 50 years old that belong to the social class of C1 and above. This was for the reason that this is the type of audience that has the most disposable income of today’s society and may not have children or any other form of family responsibilities that may have and effect on their financial situation. Having decided on this audience we could go about creating our campaign. The research we carried out on bar/restaurants similar to they way we wanted “ Mint” to be, taught us that simplistic, classy designs tended to attract people aged from between 35 to 40 years old. Bars designed in a modern style tended to attract a younger crowd of people aged from between 18 to 25 years old. This allowed us to see that we needed to embody both of these styles in the campaign of “ Mint” as we can then attract both age groups of our target audience.
The radio advertisements reflect this greatly. We used young people in the adverts to appeal to the 18 to 25 year olds of our target audience. We tried to incorporate high register English between the characters in the adverts but put forward in an informal way as this would appeal to both target audiences. We did this by scripting it so each character used correct English but used terms such as “ I might get asked back for a coffee, if you know what I mean.
… ” Which is a term used by younger generations suggesting that there may be the hope of sex at the end of the evening.
Our adverts were intended to advertise the bar and restaurant section of “ Mint”. We needed each of the adverts to show the different sides of “ Mint”. We needed the Restaurant advert to reflect a feeling of relaxation and calm and the bar advert to show how “ Mint” becomes livelier at night. We did this through the use of music. We used a relaxed tune for the restaurant advert and a more upbeat jazzy tune for the bar.
We also altered the volume of the background noise making it quieter for the restaurant and louder for the bar. Each advertisement was 30 seconds long this is the usual length of radio advertisements. The overall product was good but we encountered technical problems in the production of the restaurant advert, which affected the volume levels. The background music was too high which made the voices difficult to hear. We needed to produce posters that reflected the generic conventions of products that are associated with our target audience.
We did this by keeping the posters simplistic as this was the style we found was used on products aimed at our target audience. The poster advertisements of the campaign portrayed a feeling of class and sophistication but still incorporating a modern style. We used a martini glass and a tall glass in the centre of each poster to make them the main focal point. The glasses structured the narrative of each poster, as they would effect the way the each poster was viewed. As the glasses was the main focal point they would be the points at which the poster was first looked at.
After this the text would be read from “ Mint” to “ Literally” the address the last thing to be read. We added a distorted effect to the glass, which gave it the modern feel we needed to create. The effect we added also gave the posters connotations of coolness, and along with the green used in the colour each glass, a feeling of freshness. This linked with the implicit ideology that we were trying to create relating to the name of the bar/restaurant “ Mint”. The glasses also helped shape each poster to appeal to our target audience. Knowing that martini glasses are associated with class e.
g. James Bond’ made us aware that it would be an ideal glass to use to attract the older generation of our target audience. Also the tall glass is known for containing mixed spirits e. g. Vodka and Coke which is a popular drink with younger generations.
This enabled us to cover both age groups of our target audience. The font used on each advertisement had to stand out. We decided to make the font italic and a different shade of green to each of the glasses as this would make the font more noticeable. The reason for having two posters in our campaign was to emphasise the fact the bar was a national chain (different addresses on each poster), but also instil the idea that although the bar is a national chain it can also be a local bar. This is why we chose to advertise though a local medium opposed to a national medium.
We were happy with the effect of each advertisement but noticed that we had not mentioned anything about “ Mint” being a bar/restaurant which myself and the others in the group were not happy about.
