Today we began our next unit, advertising. We had to find some information about
BARB; Broadcaster's Audience Research Board
They provide weekly UK audience figures and offer a minute by minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels.
They carefully select a panel of private homes and an average is taken. This consists of 5100 households, which each represent 5000 other households across the UK.
We then looked at where we encounter advertising such as; YouTube, any channel except the BBC, websites, newspapers.
We were asked about what adverts are memorable. When I think of adverts the first thing that pops into my mind is the John Lewis Christmas adverts (it doesn't help that it's nearly Christmas) this is because they make me feel a certain emotion when watching. This is called immersive advertising; when you are emotionally invested/involved. Another advertisement I find memorable is for Go Compare (not for the right reasons) they have the most irritating man in the world singing the most annoying-ily catchy song! As soon as the company realised how memorable this character was they used it repeatedly in every advert, making sure a link was made and when thinking of a comparison website people would start singing the song/jingle stuck in their head.
The persuasive strategies used by advertisers who want you to buy their product can be divided into three categories:
Pathos - An appeal to emotion
An advertisement using pathos will attempt to evoke an emotional response from the audience. This can either be a positive emotion (happiness from a family enjoying themselves together) or a negative emotion (pain from a stressful situation).
Logos - An appeal to logic or reason
An advertisement using logos will give you the evidence and statistics you need to fully understand what the product does. The logos of an advertisement will be the 'straight facts' such as, a innocent smoothie contains two of your five a day.
Ethos - An appeal to credibility or character
An advertisement using ethos will try to convince you that the company is more reliable, honest and credible. Resulting in you buying the product. Ethos often involves statistics from reliable experts such as, nine out of ten dentists agree that Colgate whitening is better than any other brand. Often, celebrities will endorse a product to lend it credibility.
Audience Responses
Denotation: is the common sense or everyday meaning of a sign; for example, a red rose is a garden plant. This is it's denotational meaning.
Connotation: In using a name or label which our audience has used before, we suggest not only the meaning we intend but also a varying range of personal memories of other occasions when this word or label has been encountered. These memories/thoughts which we inspire by using these labels is connotation.
An image of the Queen's crown (the denotational meaning) makes me think of a weekend trip to London with my Grandparent's years ago (the connotational meaning).
If you make the connotations that the producer of the media text meant you to make, then this is called a preferred reading.
If you make different connotations from those which the producer intended you to make, then this is called an oppositional reading.
If you make the connotations that the producer of the media text meant you to make, then this is called a preferred reading.
If you make different connotations from those which the producer intended you to make, then this is called an oppositional reading.
