Advertising Tricks and Techniques

I've been looking into how visual communication works in advertising a little more since last analysing the Cadbury's advert. It is an area of the media that is of significant interest to me. I'm baffled by how easy it is to sell an item to the public so simply. They need not even leave the comfort of their own homes - it is all done over the radiowaves or through television boxes.

The fact that people are so susceptable to influence is astonishing. Though, of course, when producing adverts, the creators have a few tricks and techniques which will serve ultimately to improve chances of selling their product; even if these tools mean altering how the audience will receive the advert.

These include :-

Hidden Messages – where producers include a hidden message inside the advertisement, making the advert a little less obvious than most, meaning viewers have to actually think about the ad to fully understand the message. This helps viewers to remember the ad at a later date, giving the potential for the company (and the advert) to spread via word of mouth, as people will talk about how unusual the ad is with regards to getting the message across.

Emotional Response – where producers work with the audience’s emotions to produce a reaction. This can either be through shock, humour, surprise, horror, or another form of emotion. Producers use this to work on the ‘Want / Need’ factors which plague the average human being. Viewers see the ads and immediately feel like they ‘need’ to go out an buy the products. This happens a lot with beauty products, where producers depict the main actresses or actors as being beautiful because of the product, even though it is simply because the producers have picked generally attractive actors / actresses to advertise them. This is self-perception, but ads also use the emotional response technique to advertise health services and life insurance by playing on audience fears of death and illness.

Celebrity Endorsement – where producers have celebrities who appeal to the specific target audience to promote the product. This is clever, because the audience would like to be like the celebrities in the advert, and would therefore be more inclined to buy a product if they believe it appeals to their favourite celebrity. Having a Celebrity as the face of a product also gives that product its own personality (matching the one of the celebrity).


Cultural Iconography

Cultural Iconography refers to creating a character that suits a specific culture and placing them as main characters in an advertisement. These characters become recognisable (icons of adverts). The more adverts they star in, the more they become associated with the product which they are advertising.

As an example, the ‘Honey Monster’ is the iconic character for ‘Sugar Puffs’, and has been present in most (if not all) adverts surrounding this product. Therefore, if anyone were to see the character’s face, they would immediately be able to recognise where the character is from and will associate him with ‘Sugar Puffs’.

Similarly, Tony the Tiger is an iconic figure recognised for his inclusion in the ‘Frosties’ cereal advertising campaign. Nowadays, most children in Britain could probably identify a picture of him if they saw one, and would be able to associate his character with the cereal he advertises. When using icons to promote a brand, producers also like to have a memorable slogan which that character says at some point during the advert. Sticking with ‘Frosties’, Tony the Tiger’s slogan for the cereal is; ‘They’re Grrreat!’. Therefore, if anyone were to hear this, they could most likely trace it back to the advert for ‘Frosties’, because this is where it originated from.

However, it cannot be forgotten that these are culturally affected. A person in Britain could easily identify these characters because they are British characters for British products. Should an image of Tony be shown to an Egyptian or an American, for example, they would not be able to recognise the character as an iconic figure, because their culture doesn’t have access to the product he is advertising. Therefore, he would not affect them the same way he affects British people.

Many times, the characters in adverts are actually stereotyped. This is probably because producers only have a matter of 15-30 seconds to get their message across, and using stereotyped characters would make it easier for viewers to understand the meaning of the ad within the time limit it has to broadcast.


Structure and Form

When it comes to designing an Advert that is to be displayed on Television, there are a number of different structures and forms that the producer can use to get the advert across to its target audience. These include :-

• Narrative – where a producer has created an advert with the intent of it telling a story whilst advertising.

• Series – where a producer has created a series of adverts for the same company with the intent of creating an ongoing saga – examples of this would be the BT Adverts, the Nescafe Coffee adverts and the Daz ‘soap’ series.

• Stand Alone – where a producer has created an advert not with the intent of creating a series, but which tells its own story within the ad itself – almost like a mini-film. An example of this would be the Guinness Advert.

• Animation – where a producer has created an animated advert, rather than using filmed footage. As an example, the new N-Power advert includes a mini clip created by ‘Wallace and Gromit’ creator, Nick Park.