Advertising Production - Code & Conventions

A.P1 - Explain the ways in which target audiences for advertisements are classified
(Mass, Niche, Audience Classification: Standards Occupations Classification (SOC), Psychographics, Demographics)

Mass: A mass audience is a diverse collection of media technologies that reach a large audience by media communications,

Niche: A niche audience is a faction of a total market or an audience, these niche audiences are a  with a certain group who does a certain thing, for example 25-35 aged people who drive Ferraris are a niche market.

Psychographics: psychographics are a methodology used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. Psychographics are applied to studies in personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle.

Geodemographics: geodemographis are a technique for discovering whether individuals of the population can fall into different groups by making comparisons of characteristics.

A.P2 - Explain the codes and conventions of advertisement production within a specific media sector.

Branding: Branding is the recognition of a company through the use of narrative, name, association, e.g. celebrity endorsement, values, e.g traditional family values and brand logo.

Narrative: Like John Lewis narrative becomes a big part in advertisement as they have created a short but powerful narrative pieces such as 'The bear and the Hare', 'Buster the boxer', and 'Monty the penguin'. (I have referenced this in my Task link above).

Name: Name is a big part of advertisements as it give the audience the identity of the brand and the product show in the video.

Celebrity endorsement: celebrity endorsement isn't a major part of advertisment but can be used as a way for the audience to remember the brand from remembering the the celebrity included in the ad.

Values: Values are what the brand stands on showing the audience a positive representation of the company through a child friendly broadcast of their adverts leaving out an vulgarity.

Brand logo: the brand logo is the major part of advertising as it shows the audience a remediable logo that they can trust.

Image: Image in an advert is what creates the scene and the narrative that the audience will pay attention to. some of the things that creates a good image in adverts are: the types of images, lighting, camera positioning, camera angle, position, mise-en-scene, colours,and the connotations/denotation of an image.

Types of images - In adverts there are different types of images that can determine what type of ad it can be, two of these are: illustrations and photographs.
photographs - Photographs are images from a DSLR that are highly detailed and makes it easier for the audience to see what the print advertisement is about.
Illustrations - illustrations are a more cartoonist look to advertisement campaigns and are used in animated adverts such as 'bear and the hare john lewis advert'.

Lighting - Lighting has a key roles in shooting an advertisement as it helps the audience see whats happening and creates a mood for the audience that can be shown through bright orange light, or a cold dark light, these colours are linked with lighting through both production and post-production as they can help associate emotional moods or can help associate connotations to what the advert is based upon.

Camera positioning/angle - Camera positioning can help the audience see whats happening around the character or helps see the expression the character is giving this links in a lot with camera angle as the angle can show the characters dominant or in-dominant position through out. Both of these camera techniques can create a great advert through the use of different shot such as long shots, extreme close ups, etc.

Mise-en-scene - Mise-en-scene is what make up the scene by using a small items to create great detail in the production, mise-en-scene can help the audience figure out the characters age, social class, gender, and personality through objects such as a small blue bedroom with ripped wallpaper and clothes allover the floor, these items show that the character is a lower class male teen who lives in a council house.

connotation/denotation - connotation is the small details about the characters or scene in the advert such as a shining star, which resembles hope. This can be used a lot for the audience to decode the encoded connotations in the advert. Denotation is what the audience clearly sees within the advert such as the boy and his pet penguin in 'john Lewis' Monty the penguin advert'. This is commonly used in all tv, film, and print media based products by default as there is always a denotation to whatever the producers show.

Slogan/Tagline - The slogan and tagline are messages given to the audience to reinforce messages or give the audience a desire for the product, the slogan or taglines are commonly something related to the theme of the advert and are remembered by the audience.

  A.P3 - Identified three examples of Gunn's 12 advertisement types and explain their use of persuasive techniques to appeal to the target audience.

Persuasive techniques to appeal to target audience - pathos, logos, ethos
Form - realist, narrative/anti-realist narrative, animation, stand-alone/series/campaigns.
Style - Humorous, surreal, dramatic, and parodic

Pathos - Pathos is a quality in advertising that invokes a emotional response from the audience, this can be used through language choice which can be both positive and negative, for example positive language could be love, excitement and negative language could be jealousy, hatred.

Narrative - narrative is a major piece is john Lewis' advert and without it they would have a advert that would make no sense which means that the audience would money from crowd funding. Narrative can help give the audience a visual idea of what is happening in the advert and can help create meaning to those who can relate to the theme.

Dramatic - dramatic adverts are used a lot in TV as they help set the characters and scene in an advert and keeps the audience intrigued in what is happening, for example john Lewis creates a lot of dramatic adverts that appeal to a certain target audience such as 'Monty the penguin', 'buster the boxer', etc.

A.M1 - Analyse the application of codes and convection's and persuasive techniques in advertisements across different media sectors. (Advert analysis)
(I referenced this in my blog: Christmas Advert Analysis)


In print media they use a range of different texts and font's to go to a certain theme that stands out to the audience, this could be a range of different Christmas related features such as candy cane fonts, Christmas related images (elves, reindeer, and (or) Santa clause). These print adverts must have a simple colour scheme and scheduling for the products brand such as release date for the product date, for discounts, etc. Many print media must follow the required size for bill boards posters, e.g. the original poster size must be 30" x 40" (which is 2 sheets) across the billboard base.