Introduction

Advertising is all around us and is integral to everyday life. It is one of the largest sectors of the media industry, adverts being presented in a wide range of media such as television, film, radio, magazines, posters, billboards, the press, and the internet. Of all of these, television advertising probably has the highest profile, some television advertisements being so effective and memorable that they become classics and part of the cultural background for a whole generation of viewers. Television is used to market almost every product one can imagine from everyday consumables, like washing powder, to extravagant sports cars, whilst some advertisements promote a service such as insurance, banking or vehicle breakdown cover.

Television advertising has become more and more sophisticated, utilising the very latest digital production techniques. Content and style can be simple or complex, using traditional narrative structures or less obvious surrealist imagery, and messages can be overt or understated.

In this blog I will show my understanding of the structures and techniques used in television advertisements.

I will cover the following structures relating to form, style and the codes and conventions used in adverts.

I will also discuss with examples the different techniques that advertisers use to promote a product.

Structures of Advertisements

The structures of television advertisements relate to its form, style and the codes and conventions used by media producers. Over the next series of blog posts I will discuss each of these in detail with examples.

Form - Documentary

By using a documentary in an advert, it makes out to the viewers that what they are saying is true. To make it believable they will most likely use an expert from the area of expertise that is being advertised. Some people may not take these sort of advertisements on but some do and this when they do it shows this form of persuasion works. An example of a documentary advertisement would be the EA Sports FIFA 10 tv AD. It shows iconic Manchester Un ited players such as Wayne Rooney warming up, excerising, getting ready for a football games. It shwos the reality of what football is and how resalistic the FIFA 10 game is to real life football. To empahahises this they jump from fifa to real life footbsll several times to show how similar it is. It promotes FIFA 10 well as it uses young people of the public to represent how good this game is. By using the icnoic people and the public aswell, it mkaes you think 'wow this really must be a good game'. It influences your decision  on whether you buy it or not.

Form - Animation

Throughout the years, animation in advertisement has become massively popular and is being used a lot more. Its a form of story telling that catches people attention in a different way by not using actors it opens a more wider knowledge of how adverts try to reach our attention. Animation can be easily changed as the times go on, so if new technology is found then it can follow and keep up to date with how the times change. An example of an advertisement that uses animation is the Zebra Red Bull Cartoon Ad. This advert uses animal characters in the form of a cartoon, and it catches your attention because its different from one that uses human actors. We see a zebra at the side of pond drinking some red bull, it then jumps into the water with a crocodile and it is the zebra that comes out of the water in the end like nothing has happened. The meaning it is trying to get acr9oss is that red bull 'gives you wings' which is their motto, but also that it gives you energy and can probably make you feel like you can do anything.

Form - Narrative Structures

Advertisers tell stories to sell a product. All stories have characters, where it is going to be set, what happens in the story and how it ends. To help along with the story, they use narrative structures which is how a story is told. The four types of narrative structures are linear, non-linear, open-ended and closed. Linear narrative structures are where there is a beginning, a middle and an end in that order. Non-linear is the opposite of this and is where there is a time line of events but uses flashbacks and goes back to certain things, so it's not in order.Open-ended narrative structures are those of TV soaps for example, Eastenders, Coronation Street. It's open-ended because the story is continued or there is a cliffhanger that makes the show continue on to another episode. Finally closed structures are like episodes of Family Guy. It is where at the beggininf of the program there is a balance thats always the same at the start of it, then something will happen in the middle, and then at the end the balance will have been restored to normal, like it was at the beginning. 

An exmaple of an  open-ended advert that i have found is a Daz advert. This washing powder is familiar with most people so the audience know instantyl what it is about. It uses well known actors and actrsses that have appeared in soaps on TV and they try to imitate this in the advert by making it look liek it from a TV soap. The reason why i chose this is because the DAZ adverts always have a cliffhanger ta the ned of them so it continues onto another advert. They want as many people as possible to see the advert and buy the product and they use iconic people to promote this.

Form - Stand Alone/Series

Advertisers choose to use different forms of persausion which relates to whether they create one advertisement or a series of advetisments. They could put all their money and effort into makin on brilliant advert that runs for the length of a campaign or they could create a few all based on the same theme that would run in over a corresponding time. Some companies with large budgets may invest all of their into creating a spectacular advert such as guiness. They generally create on surreal advert that takes months to create such as the example below.

A series of adverts is where a company invests a vast amount of money into making more than one advert (or a series of adverts) which are run over a period of time on the same subject/campaign. This is to make the viewer want to see more of the story and whats going on, so they make more to continue it. An example of a series of adverts is PG Tips. They use the same iconic people throughout their seriies of adverts, and this entices the viewer becasue they are familiar with whos in it and it makes it more enjoyable to watch.

Form - Talking Heads

Using talking heads in advertisements shows the general public that they are using real epople to feed back on the product they are trying to sell. This helps the audience relate to the people in the adverts because they are normal everyday people and are in the same situation. If the results at the end of the advert turn out to be good, then the suidence are more likely to beleive it, so it must be true, becasue they are saying that it is.

An example of a talking heads advertisement is an Envirofone advert from 2009. It shows many different people talking about how easy it is to get money for your old mobile phones. They all look enthusiastic and excited about the service and as they are normal everyday people, it is made more beliveable.