Advert Evaluation

The brief for this assignment was to re brand the Unilever product of our choosing and re branding it to a new target audience. Our group had decided to re brand from teenagers to active/athletic teenagers. We decided on our advert in our group by first watching everyone prezi presentations of their ideas on how to re-brand their product. As the majority of us had made our adverts about VO5 we decided to make it about VO5 and we all decided that the best idea was Toby's. Toby had an idea that someone was bad at skateboarding until he uses the wax. The wax would help him as it keeps the hair out of his eyes. Later on we decided if we were making this adverts target audience active teenagers, we should probably add another active teenager into the video rather than just Toby otherwise it may come across as we are re branding it specifically to skateboarders. We decided to appeal to active teenagers as they are a similar audience to what we are ourselves which makes it a lot easier to relate. It also will appeal to our audience and will seem like less of a cheap or somewhat different version of older peoples interpretation of our target audience and having it going completely wrong.

The idea of using active teenagers was our main choice as it is similar to the original target audience for VO5. The original target audience was teenagers and since ours is for active teenagers it is so similar that it makes it seem as if it is an authentic advert from VO5 whilst also re branding it to a completely different audience. We collected feedback through a page on blogger and wrote a number of questions for the people to answer. These were both qualitative and quantitative responses and were rather helpful with what we should improve on our work. We asked for the peoples age on the survey to see if they were in our target audience and they all were so these were accurate responses. I believe that this advert was very appropriate and appealed to our target audience well as the message in it came across clearly. Both active teenagers were struggling with the sport/activity which they were doing until they used VO5. This shows that the VO5 clearly helps both teenagers as they were struggling before they used it, and after they were both spontaneously better. We also used some appropriate music for people in our target audience. We used some fast paced music which also kept the mood going throughout the video instead of using slow paced and boring or using something that wasnt age appropriate E.g. a kids show theme song or a slow paced folk music. Plus it also works well with being active and having fast paced music as it gives off a motivational vibe which gets people feeling active. This is because our brain subconsciously affiliates slow paced music with relaxing and fast paced music with moving and being active.

For our mis-en-scene, we only used the gym and the skatepark. We didnt really need to move anything in the scene and only had a few props. Obviously because we are doing the VO5, we needed the VO5 wax in order to advertise it. Along with this, we used a set of weights from the gym and Toby's skateboard for props. Through this video, we used a lot of close ups as it shows their face and emotions. This makes it a more moving and effective advert as it feels like you connect on a higher personal level. In our finished product of our VO5 advert, we used a variety of shots. The majority of our shots were close ups to medium range shots as they were focusing on the characters and the VO5 wax. Although an establishing shot may have established the mood a little more, however we felt as the advert was mainly focused on the characters and their progression that it would be a pointless shot which we would have had to add in and possibly ruin the workflow. We did use a lot of close ups when it came to their progression and when trying to show the emotions from them not being good at their own activities. We also used a Point of view shot when we were looking at luke's hands after hurting himself by punching wrong and then not being able to lift the weights. We decided that instead of the establishing shot, we should have something that would create tension and draw you into the advert more. The spinning skateboard wheel at the start of the advert makes you wonder and think what happened in order for the skateboard to see and therefore draws you into it. This had a storyline which relates to most teenagers as every teenager is going through problems at this age, whether it is with schooling/education, friends, relationships, family or just stress in general. This can relate as everyone wants to overcome these problems. In the video, it is only the small problems of being athletic which they need to overcome however small this may be, it can still create a sense of motivation and confidence in buying this product and being active.

The message we were trying to send the audience was that VO5 will give you more athleticism and could improve your style and gives the people who use this product a sense of individuality as it says "Mould Your Style" when this says mould YOUR style, it is suggesting that the person buying the product will create their own style which may be desirable to other people. As everyone enjoys having the sense of being desirable to other people this product therefore seems appealing. We did not use very many persuasion techniques as we mainly used the story line and narrative to affect people. Throughout this advert, it shows that if you purchase this product it can give you a better outward looking appearance at the same time as helping you become more athletic. The original idea behind the advert was to make it clearer that the VO5 wax can help to keep the hair out of your eyes but later on we lost track of this idea and decided to just make it give off a subconscious message that a better outward appearance can have a more positive outlook on life. Also, without worrying about looking bad, it can give you the confidence to focus your attention on different aspects of your life such as athletic activities and sports. So for the persuasion techniques, we mainly focused on making the audience desire the product through people that are successful in sports showing that the products made them improve in their selected sports. Our advert was trying to communicate a various number of messages both subconscious and conscious. The first message was that the VO5 wax can also be used during sports and can make you look attractive even when you are looking at your worst. Also, though this advert we are trying to communicate that this advert will give you style and give you desirability that will seem appealing to others. This product may seem appealing to athletes that dont have too much time to look attractive whilst performing in their sports so they will rely on their hair to be their sole attractiveness. This can appeal to people who dont have much confidence in their outward appearance as it may give them more confidence to be who they are. This product can also be seen as motivation to be active, as it makes the people in the advert successful and makes them improve at their sport, people may think it will do the same to them. The VO5 re branded advert may also be very popular among athletic teens as there are very few companies that focus on athletes using hair products.

I believe that our advert has used very fluid camera movements and has had a very professional outcome. We used many of the techniques which we had been taught and they came very useful as they gave the overall outcome of the product a nice clean finish. We used a lot of close ups throughout this production to make sure that the characters are the focal point of the advert and really make them and the product seem appealing to the audience. We have made sure that there is nothing offensive in our advert or anything that may affect people under the age of 18 in any way that may harm them either mentally or physically. We have also made sure that the advert does not break and laws or have any forms of explicit material in it. Our final outcome for our advert came out well however there were some good ideas which we ended up scrapping or not implementing into the advert for the final outcome. At the start we were originally going to have Tia in the advert dancing to show that it can be used for both genders. We then later decided that it wouldn't be a good idea as Tia has very long hair and it wouldn't make much sense for her to be in it, as both Luke and Toby had used it in their hair for the advert. When we were editing the advert we later realized that the song which we were going to be using for the advert was not long enough for all of Tia's shots to be put into the edit anyways and decided to cut her out of the advert completely. Another part of our advert was that i was originally going to be throwing both Toby and Luke the product with my hair already styled and they would use the product as they desired to have hair like mine. Our storyboards were not a good reflection of our final outcome as we planned certain shots and changed them up throughout our production as we found better angles and camera shots. We changed a few things which we had received feedback on. We changed one of our shots as the shot didn't start zooming till we were about half way through the shot so we decided to re shoot it so it doesn't ruin the flow of the advert. We also made changes throughout the editing as our original advert had no sound effects and was just music and we were told by many people that we should add sound effects into it so we decided to add them into the final product. Personally, i thought that the advert came out well and the feedback improved it, however there were a few things which i would had done differently. I think i should have added some longer music so that i would have been able to add in some other people and athletes in the video. Also, it would have made the advert seem less sexist if i would have had more females in it and may even open up another target audience. I feel that i had a heavy involvement in the filming and editing side as the people in the advert were mainly acting and working on the pre production aspects of the advert. I was very heavily involved when it came to the editing side of the production as i have had previous experience in this and as the group is aware of this, they were very encouraging and insisted that i was the one to edit the advert. Once i had completed the original advert without any improvements, my group was then involved with making the improvements which had come from the feedback of our peers and people that were within the target audience. For the pre production i was somewhat involved in the story boards and group ideas. We all decided on the advert idea as a group as we all had to be happy with the idea which we had for the advert. To receive feedback for our advert, both me and Tia sent out a survey as the more feedback we obtained, the more we could use to improve our final product.