Marmite Advert Evaluation

The Advert

Tv Advert Evaluation

The brief

What was the brief ? 

The brief for our task was to pick a Unilever product and to design and make an advert to re-brand or to aim at a larger or wider audience.

For this advert we decided to use Marmite as our product of choice. My original idea was based on Brut but as a group we discussed our ideas and voted  to base our advert on Marmite. This was because the idea for the Marmite advert was more achievable, better and would be easier to aim at our target audience.

Marmites current target audience is based around adults and parents with younger children. We established this by looking at Marmites past adverts and we could see what the target audience was. Marmites previous adverts were not only targeted at adults but also at parents, I could see this because they did a series of adverts that had Paddington Bear in them eating Marmite sandwiches. After doing some research into the target audience we decided that we should re-brand and aim it at teenagers and young adults. But why ? We did this because we didn't see any advertising that was aimed at our age group,  so we decided on this because we saw a gap in this demographic. 

Product and feedback.

After our advert was finished we had to collect some responses based on peoples views about the advert. How? Originally we had to show our advert to the rest of our class and each person in the audience would fill out a short questionnaire that would identify in both a technical way and for the mise-on-scene what they enjoyed and areas for improvement.  As collecting responses from just class friends was not a wide or broad enough audience we decided to create a survey that we could hand out and distribute to get a broader prospective which would hopefully give us a more reliable and less biased response.

What did we find out?
From these results we could discover what are target audience was, as I created questions that would help identify the people involved such as gender and age. After looking at the results I found out that the majority of the people that viewed my advert were male and that they were aged between 16 and 20 which was the age group for the target audience. These demographics allowed me to see what type of person was viewing the advert, although I got the odd anomaly here or there, the main focus was based around  these age groups.


Was this production appropriate? During pre-production we decided on certain demographics such as age, for example we wanted to target it at teenagers and young adults. After looking at the results and getting responses from peers that are within this age group our overall response showed that it was indeed appropriate and that people liked and enjoyed it. I think that we did get the message across as we kept with the 'love/hate' theme with the Marmite but I think that we could have emphasized some of the points to make the message stronger. All in all I think that the advert made an impact to our target audience but I think that the message could have been made stronger by making some of the technical elements within the advert better, which would lead on to the advert getting a greater/better response.

Analysis
Overall I think that the advert went well but some of the technical elements and the aesthetics of it could have been improved. For example the lighting, dialogue and the editing could have been improved upon. The mise-on-scene within the advert was relatively good, there were only a couple of faults with it, but nothing major. The camera work throughout the production I personally think is very good as we used a large variety of angles distances and movements as we tried to make it characteristic and to flow well. The only thing that could have been improved upon when filming was that we could have used some better equipment, for example a jib could have been used for some of the higher shots and that we should have used the stabilizer for panning shots for example when I tracked from a high to a low shot focusing on the Marmite, this would have made it less shaky and cleaner and so it would have looked better aesthetically.

The editing in the advert could have been improved on but this wasn't possible due to our time frame, the only problems we had during the editing was the lighting and the audio, other than these 2 points the editing segment went well. The reason that the lighting wasn't very good was because it was difficult to keep it the same as we were  filming outside at different times of the day and so the ambient light varied, if we had a larger time frame then we could have filmed at the same time on different days but this wasn't possible to do. The only other thing that was faulty within the advert was that the audio for the dialogue was unclear, this is because we had to record it outside with the camera and so it was low quality and distorted due to it being windy. The only way around this was to film it in the studio but this would have made it sound fake and out of place.

Do I think that the advert was effective? Overall I think that the advert worked well but the effectiveness wasn't as we hoped, even though the advert got a good response I think that the small faults within it put people off.   Although in the results the majority of the people said that it would make them buy Marmite and that it did grab their attention throughout. There was still a minority that said that it didn't persuade them, and also in the survey they said that there were some faults, so I think that these errors changed the effectiveness of the production even though it got a good overall response.  The story line itself worked very well and I am very happy with it, the chase scene all the way to the end contained a good narrative.
The effectiveness of the story line was the reason that people enjoyed it, although the idea was very good it still could have been better. Persuasion techniques are vital in order to get a good response to something like advertisement, this is because they are there to help convince someone that they need or desire the product. Within our advert we used a question 'Which path will you take?' this in itself is a persuasion technique because you are interacting with the audience. Another thing is emotional appeal, although it wasn't very strong, it was still there, this is because we stuck to the 'love and hate' idea between the characters.

The message that we wanted to send across to our target audience is that Marmite is not just for older people and adults but it can also be aimed at teenagers. This is the message that we wanted to send to our audience and so we thought about what us, as teenagers liked in terms of genre. We discovered that horror was a very popular genre within our age group, from this idea we decided that we should make our advert with this theme and so this lead to our idea of us making it fast paced and darkened the opacity of the clips in the editing. Another thing we did with this theme is that we made it so that the Marmite was not revealed till late in the advert and so it was made mysterious for the viewer, we used POV shots in the chase scene of the advert to also add to the horror feel. By using this horror theme we hoped that our age group would engage and relate to it.

Rules and regulations
All in all I think that our advert was fit for purpose and with further post-production it could be close to professional standard. Other than the few faults during production I think that it was very good. Parts of the advert look professional but others bring the quality down. This advert applies to all the advertising regulations and does not break any of the rules within the BCAP code. After looking at the regulations our advert stays clearly within all the rules and does not mislead audiences about anything within the content of the advertisement. After looking at the rulings on both the BCAP and ASA websites our advert is safe and does not compromise any of the regulations. For example after looking at these regulations I searched for viable categories that it may have breached like 'Harm and offence' and 'Misleading advertising'. An example would be '4.1 Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18.' The advert that I created does not breach this rule or any of the others.
On the ASA website I looked at the complaints that have been made about adverts that have 'offended' people. From this I found examples of adverts which never got aired or were removed after complaints from the public.
Lastly I looked at the OFCOM website to look at their overall rulings, once again I did not breach any of the current categories for their rules and regulations.

Personal reflection

Did my advert turn out as expected/how I imagined? Personally I think that our advert mostly went to our pre-production plans and came out more or less as I imagined it to be. I think this is because we planned  efficiently and this effected the quality of our pre-production paper work which I think came out very well and the idea came together as planned. I think the other reason that it came out as I hoped and expected is because we worked very well as a team even though Sam Cattee was not here for two of the days that we were shooting.

Pre production paperwork presentation! from SamCattee

Our story boards were our main consideration as we knew that these were very important in order to make the advert as good as possible and as close to our original idea as we could. During the production of the story boards we went carefully through the idea and created a shot list to make sure that there were no mistakes when making the story boards. Due to our careful planning the storyboards came out very well and I think that this heavily reflected in the final production itself.

Other paperwork that we had to create in order to make our production was a script, recce, talent releases, budget sheet, prop list, risk assessments and a production schedule. All of these pieces were vital in order to make our production happen. For example our recce needed to be carried out in order for us to find a suitable location to film upon, in this instance we decided that we wanted to film in the woods opposite our college. What we had to do was go out on location and take photos to see if it would be suitable for us to film in.

 After we went out on location and took our photos, we realized that it would be a very good place to film in and would match what we imagined it to look like. Even though the location we were going to film at wasn't on college premises we didn't have to contact the police or complete a location release even though it was open to the public. We didn't do this  because we didn't feel that it was necessary to do so as we were out of the way and the area isn't very busy, but also we were not using any fake weaponry or using anything dangerous and so we didn't feel the need to contact them.

After going out on location we decided to fill out our risk assessment, this was vital for our production as we didn't want anyone to get injured and we needed all of our production team to be safe. By doing a risk assessment we were able to take some precautions to prevent anything from happening.
Other things such as talent releases needed to be filled out as both myself and Sam would be in the advert. As I am under 18 I had to get written permission from my parents in order to be a part of the production. On the other hand Sam didn't because she was 18.

Overall I think that the pre-production planning and paperwork reflected strongly on the final outcome, due to this the advert did come out as we hoped and this resulted in positive feedback from our peers and teachers.

Self Evaluation
Personally I think that the advert went well and as I hoped and expected it to be. I think that there is a lot of room for improvement but overall I am happy with both the result and my own involvement within the project. I think that the bits that need to be improved on are some minor continuity errors, but I think that the majority of the faults are in the editing, for example some of the audio is unclear and faulty but also we should have used the ambient light more effectively and consistently within the filming stage of it, this was difficult to keep it consistent as we were filming outdoors and over a period of a week and so the weather changed and because we were filming at different times during the day.  This led on to difficulties when editing as we needed to change the opacity and the brightness of the clips as they were not all the same, furthermore we needed to make them darker anyway to make it suit the slight horror feel to the advert as the darkness connotes the horror. The sound was always going to be a problem as we were filming outside and if we had recorded the audio in the studio it would have sounded fake and would not have worked but due to wind the audio is then made unclear during the sequence, this could have been avoided if we knew how to change the audio settings in detail when editing.

What would I do differently? If we were given the opportunity to remake this advert I would do a couple of things differently. I think up until we started filming everything was perfect, including planning, ideas and paperwork. When we started filming I think that our timescale and planning was good, for example Sam was not going to be here for the last 2 days of shooting and so we did all the shots with her in first. This had an impact on the planning from then onwards as Sam and I had to film the rest of the shots with me in afterwards and this meant jumping around in shots instead of doing them one after another. Furthermore if we were to do it again I would have made sure that we were filming at the same time of day everyday to make sure we didn't have any lighting problems. If we had a large enough time frame to film in I think that we would have done this but as we had only 1 week to film all the shots it made it very difficult to do so as our lesson time that we were filming in was at a different time each day. Another thing is the audio, in this piece the dialogue is very unclear and so this was a problem in the final production. In order to make this work we would have had to wait for a day that wasn't windy and there weren't any outside noises. This is what the problem was with the dialogue in this piece as the wind had distorted the quality of the audio. Lastly something that most people didn't notice in the advert were the props as Sam was running with a piece of toast but this was not made significant within the film. If we were to re-film this then I think that we would include it more as it was meant to have a significance within the advert.

My involvement
I think that throughout the project I had a large input into all of the steps in making the production, all the way through from pre-production to acting, filming, directing and editing I have had an input into the production. I think that if we were to do the project again I don't think that I would change anything as we all put in 100% effort into the production and we all worked very well as a team. Due to there only being 3 people in the entire production team it meant that each person had more than one role in it, for example everyone took part in filming, editing and the pre-production paperwork. This meant that we all worked very well together, the only thing that I would change is to maybe have someone as a leader so that the organisation was slightly better and then we could have someone as director that can control everything instead of it being a little bit of a free-for-all. If we had more members in our film crew then we could assign someone to take lead but due to there being 3 of us this wasn't possible although I think that we all did our best and worked  well as a team to make this production.