TV Advertisement Evaluation

1. The Brief.

For this assignment our brief was to identify, re-brand and re-market a Unilever product. We all chose products individually then came together in our groups to chose one to film. I chose Lynx body-spray. I was going to re-brand and market it for Women, however after some feedback from Ellie I changed it into a perfume(because a female body-spray was already on the market) When we got into our groups we decided to do Lynx as it would work best as an advert. Also, we could already visualize the advert in our head, so we decided to run with it.

 2. The Finished Product & Feedback.

A) To gather feedback on our finished product we all did a survey on survey monkey. I personally asked friends and family what they thought of it, so of those people did the survey some didn't. Word of mouth was the main way I collected feedback, it began in class with other students watching it & commenting and I then asked friends and family what they thought of it. The general feeling was that the advert was well made but could have been a bit smoother & it wasn't immediately clear what was being advertised.

B) As for getting the message across to the target audience I think we successfully achieved that with our advert. I think if we were able to get a larger portion of our target audience to watch our advert I think it would have an impact on them as it's relateable and works well within it's setting.
C) We didn't put too much thought into Mise-en-scene, but luckily due to our filming locations it didn't come back to haunt us. For the most part we filmed in Ellie's office, which looks very office-like as it is, we put a few folders on the desk and put the box we were going to use on there too. Luckily, the desk already had papers and such like on it already. One thing we could have done was check that there was no reflections on the box. There was only a small reflection in the finished advert, but I'd rather we would have checked it first and even re-filmed the scene if we had to, it doesn't make too much of an impact on the final production, it's just a bit annoying.
Camera work was done for the most part by Ehren, we all had an input to the filming and shared the filming, but he was most often behind the camera. Of course we all decided on the shot types, camera angles and so on as a group, but as Ehren had the most experience with a camera and the most technical knowledge AND he volunteered to do the filming, so it just sort of fell into place really. In the future I'd like to do more camera work to get better at it, so I can make better productions later on in the course.
 I did the bulk of the editing(with help from Josh & Ellie) however, Ehren did help in the final few stages and with some of the more detailed edits(such as colour effects and so on) Between us we also had planned to strip away most of the background noise as it was filled with voices and other unwanted sounds, but in the end we only pulled out most of it and left some in, but just over-layed various sounds to highlight parts of the advert. All members of the group did have a go at some editing, Which was good as we didn't leave it all to one person. However myself and Ehren did the bulk of the editing. I enjoyed doing some of the green screening edits on After Effects and Premier Pro, hopefully that's something I can do more of and get better at in the future.
As for sound, Charlie & Yasmin did look for royalty free music for our advert a few times but weren't able to find anything. Both took a bit of a back seat in the editing part, they helped with looking for sound, but in all fairness, they did most of the pre-production paper work so it all balanced itself out.

D)I think that the content in our advert is effective and fit for purpose. It does sell the product well, however it isn't 100% what it's selling until a little way into the advert. Due to it's simple narrative structure and easy to relate to premise I think that it does a fine job of selling the product to it's intended target audience.

E) For persuasion techniques we only really used one main one, which was relaxation/happiness. As the Women uses the perfume she drifts off into a day dream and comes back from said
daydream relaxed and happy. We thought this would appeal to office workers the most as it can get very stressful working in an office, perhaps more so than working in other places as you are cramped and confined into one small space.

F) The message we were trying to get across to the audience is that using Lynx Escape would relax them and make their day better. To do this, we set our advert in an office environment. We used Ellie's office as it's small and represent the stress and confinement of office work. But we had the box a light colour and as the perfume is used and introduced the colour gradually comes back into the screen to show that the Women is now a lot happier and is able to continue with her job stress-free.

G) Overall I do think that our advert is fit for purpose, everything works well. However I think we could make it look a little bit more profession, had we had better knowledge of green screen editing and so on, hopefully in the later projects they will look much better. I also think everything could be a bit smoother, but once again, that will come with practice and so on. After reading through ASA/ BCAP's Non-Broadcast codes(http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast.aspx)  "Marketing communications must not contain anything that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence"  That is a quote from BCAP's Non-broadcast codes about offence or harm, our advert causes neither. We have made sure that the advert isn't offensive to anyone (although I'm not sure how you could get offended by an advert about perfume that doesn't over sexualise it's characters)

3) Personal Reflection

A) Our finished advert is different to the our original intentions, due to complications and other issues. However originally we planned to have a slightly longer Hawaiian sequence and it looked differently in my head when we were planning it, however I think it turned out alright after all, besides, sometimes less is more.

B) Overall I am happy with the finished advert. Given the chance I would change a few things about it, such as; The box wouldn't have a reflection on it, the editing would smoother(no jump cuts) and I would try and make the green screening a bit better(now I know what I'm doing now)