Targeting Gender in Advertsing 7-11-08

When looking at adverts men are more attracted to simple and dark coloured adverts. This contrasted to women who like more bright and detailed adverts that they can look at and try to work out.
To look at the different adverts and see how many the group would remember certain images where shown, not gender specific, and we had to see how many we could remember. The first set of adverts included Perfumes, Beers, Cars, Holidays and Mortgages.
When looking at who remembered the adverts nearly 90% of the men within the class remembered this advert due to its humour value. This is because men find it easy to remember when they can relate it to something funny.

When looking at True Star By Tommy Hilfiger the majority of the group remembered it because of the Celebrity endorsement. Beyonce is used on this advert as she is a fairly face and by using her the company will receive not only her fans but others will remember her face on the advert.

Male adverts often use iconic faces for their adverts. Samsung used Jose Monrenio for one of there phones. Making men interested due to his status and familiar face. If they had used him on a woman's advert, many would not know who he was as he is well known in the men dominated Football industry.


This week the boys in my flat found this advert so funny. I like this as it showed me the male humour and the way in which they remember adverts.

7-11-08 - Where Beakers Been?

Over the past two weeks, Beaker and I have been on travels over the ocean to explore the interests of America and the way they celebrate Halloween. It enabled us to look at the way America uses advertising to promote a brand.
The reason for our visit looked at Universal studios Orlando Fright Nights and how scared they could make us. Below is the trailer for 2008 and what we were letting ourselves in for.

Within the park there were 8 houses that had actors jumping out to scare guests. Around the park were 6 paths that had to be walked through with actors dressed up to match the theme of the path. One of the paths had the theme of Oz where the witch, monkeys and the tin man were evil.

I found this experience very scary with people popping out of nowhere and making me scream. It was extremely funny now I look back on it but at the time I was scared. In the USA they glamorise Halloween. Many houses have decorations, like at Christmas, from graves outside the house to skeletons moving at the front of the garden.

While in Orlando, We visited Epcot on of Disney’s Parks which stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. There Beaker travelled around the world, visiting many different countries.





Beaker and the Epcot Ball













Beaker In Canada










Beaker in London











Beaker In Paris













Beaker in Morroco








Beaker in Japan













Beaker in Mexico












Beaker in China




Beaker in Norway










Beaker in Germany






Beaker in America






Beaker in Africa














Beaker stealing Luke's Drink!!!





Beaker enjoyed many of the rides, in Magic Kingdom he rode on Splash Mountain and got very wet.








Here, Beaker is being silly not wanting to go one of the rides.







Adverts in the USA

Around Orlando it was clear to see that advertising was an easy way to get the product out into the commercial world. Along the highways are huge advertisements that enable drives and passengers to clearly see and recognise the brand. By having these huge advertisements the regular users of that highway will constantly see it on their travels.

While beaker and I were travelling on these highways we saw many boards being built to introduce more advertisements. On main roads like the 192 that runs through Orlando many of the shops and restaurants have tall signs that enable oncoming customers to see them and prepare to drive in. By having these signs it enables the company to been seen and the signs need to be huge to compete with the other restaurants and shops.

On American TV commercials appear approximately 3 times during an half an hour show. During Friends a commercial is played after the opening song, in the middle of the program and before the end credits. Some of the commercials can last up to 5 minutes. One commercial, Appliance Direct was timed to see how ling it actually was it ended up being 8 minutes 55 seconds. As an audience viewer I lost interest about a minute into it as it was saying the same thing over and over again. The Chinese man’s voice was extremely annoying but it did its job as when my brother saw the shop he remembered the advert.




Around the Disney parks and Universal Studios parks advertisements can be seen to show off different parts of the company and partnerships. If guests have good experiences at one of the parks they will think that the product being advertised is also going to be good. In Disney’s Hollywood studios there used to be huge posters advertising different ‘abc’ programs. Disney advertises anywhere possible, around their parks, on their TV channels and on their websites. In Walt Disney World’s park EPCOT, there is a future world were different pieces of new technology can be tested by guests. Emails can be sent to friends back home using the Disney websites. In selected Disney shops computer can be used to search products if they cannot be found on the shop floor. These interactions enable guests to see how easy Disney’s website and communication service is.

American advertising is completely different compared to the way in which products are advertised in England.

• Adverts are on every channel were as in England the BBC does not.


• Adverts can be shown many times during a program.


• They can last as long as wanted.


• Anything can be advertised. When watching commercial an advert for Viagra was being shown.

By being able to see the different ways in which different countries advertise, it has shown me that different economic and social views contribute to they way in which companies advertise.

Gesult & Experiments 17-10-08

Experiments
In a group of three, we decided to create a taste test using Coke as our starting point. Coke has many different brands but we wanted to know if consumers could actually tell the difference between each of them. Using Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke, we asked three different people to try and see what they thought was what. In Cup 1 was Coke, Cup 2 Zero and Cup 3 Diet. Two of the three people got them all correct and the other only got the Zero and Diet mixed up. These are the two which I thought would be mixed up due to them both being the healthier option of Coke. Once completing this experiment I could see what we should have done better to make the experiment more complicated and have different stages. If I was to continue with this idea I would develop it by using visual aids to see if they would make a difference to what Coke they preferred. Using Pepsi compared to Coke, could have been much more of a difficult challenge to determine the difference as most people say they prefer Coke but in blind tests they actually choose Pepsi.




Another group looked at sense of smell as a test using perfumes to determine if they could tell the difference between brands and different sex perfumes. Using two expensive brands of perfume both men and women, Dior and Channel are two well known brands which also have huge advert campaign running alongside. These brands are well known so would have their loyal customers rather than choosing their favourite. When undertaking the test we found that no-one could tell the difference between the male and females perfumes. To develop this test, the group could get the participants to choose there favourite by looking at the brand campaigns and choose what smell went with what brand. This way the group see how influenced they would be by the advert campaigns and the brands status.

Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt psychology looks at the way in which humans think. Relating to advertisements Gestalt looks at the suggestion that there is a rule book in the way an audience will structure their perceptions.
Gestalt has four primary approaches;

• Figure and ground
  The figure is the element that captures attention, background is largely undifferentiated.
  Below in an image of an old lady and a lady with her back to the audience. Can you see them both? Once they have been noticed it becomes easily recognisable but first they can be tricky to find.
  



• Grouping (Proximity and Similarity)
  Genially objects with similar physical characteristics are places together.
  Beauty products and health brands stick to certain colours and shaped bottles.
  


• Closure
  When the brain sees an incomplete picture it will automatically fill in the gaps.
  When a few notes are played, the audience can remember the whole jingle. Theme tunes for well known Television programs and songs are often remembered.

• Stimulus Ambiguity
  When a stimulus does not correspond to an immediately recognisable shape or form.
  In the 1970s, Saatchi and Saatchi created an advert using Stimulus ambiguity. This was able to be affective as it would make audience members look twice at the pregnant man.

Perception is important for advertisers as it makes a deeper understanding of how the audience may react to an image/campaign and what limits can be pushed to get the brand known. Marketers look at perception and it is important for them to know how audience members would react and where it would get the most out of the audience members.

At the end of each blog I will be posting an advert, as this is the area I want to go into. The advert will range from over the past decade and may have been banned. They are just a few that I have found and wanted to share as I think they have used different advertising techniques extremely well. To start is an advert created by Pepsi. I found this advert funny due to the way in which Pepsi down graded Coke making them look like an awful brand. This advert was banned.

Perception 10-10-08

‘Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world.’ (Wilkie, 1994)
Using all of the 5 human senses we, as humans, automatically perceive something when it is first noticed or identified. Sight is the most commonly used sense as by looking at an object many different aspects can be seen. When consumers use more than one sense more of an interaction can be made developing a relationship. An example of this involves customers at a department store. Clothes are now regularly place on a shelf where the customer now, not only sees the object, but touches it, interacting with the product and developing a relationship. Now they have touched it they may not like the colour but they could enjoy the texture of the product allowing them to look at it in a different colour.
Adverts need to have a specific target audience as different types of people want different things. The main difference is between the two sexes. Men prefer simpler and easy to understand adverts, these adverts will not have much detail within them but use mainly dark colours and images to get the point across. Guinness is a perfect example as the product is easily visible with dark colours to make it look more manly.
Women are the complete opposite; their adverts consist of detailed images and copy. This makes them read what the advert is about as they benefit from the complicity.
Sound can play a huge part within an advert, either making or breaking it. Different pieces of music can make an advert more appealing to a target audience but then a different piece of music can persuade a different target audience. The music/sound needs to make the audience want to buy the product and different pieces of music will make the audience think a certain way. An example of this is Sam Sparrow's 'Black and Gold,' the introduction of this makes me feel energetic and want to move. I found that this could be used on an energy drink advert to show energy, making audience member think of memories that they had to this song, often in a club or with friends. Herbal essences uses sound within advert campaigns so that people can remember their adverts. The following advert uses 3 different senses. Visual as the audience can see her using the shampoo, Sound as the audience can hear her enjoying the experience and touch as it is visible she is touching her hair.

Advertisers can use the sense touch for their clients campaign. When men look at roughness they value it as positive where as women have a posivite reactions to smoothness. This Dove advert demonstrates this enabling the audience to see the soft bubbles and the models hands touching her face.

To incorporate smell into still images, photos of objects that have a strong scents are photographed. To the left, is an example of a perfume which has a lily holding it giving the impression that the perfume has a strong scent like a Lily. By using smell it enables the audience to relate and this enables viewers to relate to the smell.

The final sense is taste, this can be shown by actress/actors eating the actually chocolate. Galaxy have been using this technique when adverting. The following video shows the way Galaxy makes the actress eat the chocolate giving the impression that she is getting a sensation from it and it wont make you fat.

During today’s lecture I have seen how different aspects of our own lives can decide how we think and how these adverts can use our senses to involve the audience with the product.

Impressions - 3.10.08

Impressions are an important part of our everyday assumptions. By a way of acting and fashion, an individual gives off a different vibe to each passer-by. These first initial moments can be crucial depending on who you are trying to impress. Employers will judge an interviewee within the first 7 seconds of them walking into the room. We judge people on the way they look by not even realising it. When walking down the road of a dark night and young group of teenagers walk by, the instant reaction is worry. This is due to stereotypical views given through the media.

Impressions are made on a face to face basis but ideas of people personalities can be investigated by different possessions that they own. Belk’s theory believed that our possessions give detail into our personalities. 'We are what we have.' This can be experimented by a group bringing in a personal possession, not seeing each others object, choosing and discussing what they think the person is like. After doing this in the Lecture, this enabled me to see the way in which stereotypes and personal experiences come into place. If a teddy is brought in, it is automatically thought to be a female owner and a toy car a male. These typical stereotypes then develop either into the correct personality or the wrong one. An example of personal experience, a belt was brought in and due to having a younger brother who would have worn this belt and is quite into fashion I assumed the person would also be, this not being the case.

I am expecting the course to give me greater detail of why customers think a certain way when a certain image is shown to them. This would then allow me to develop in my advertising skills to show them what I want them to think.

Right, so this was my first blog ever and I’m sure to be updating it every week about the fun lectures I will be attending over the next year.