Introduction

Advertising is all around us and is integral to everyday life. It is one of the largest sectors of the media industry, adverts being presented in a wide range of media such as television, film, radio, magazines, posters, billboards, the press, and the internet. Of all of these, television advertising probably has the highest profile, some television advertisements being so effective and memorable that they become classics and part of the cultural background for a whole generation of viewers. Television is used to market almost every product one can imagine from everyday consumables, like washing powder, to extravagant sports cars, whilst some advertisements promote a service such as insurance, banking or vehicle breakdown cover.


Television advertising has become more and more sophisticated, utilising the very latest digital production techniques. Content and style can be simple or complex, using traditional narrative structures or less obvious surrealist imagery, and messages can be overt or understated.

In this blog I will show my understanding of the structures and techniques used in television advertisements.

I will cover the following structures relating to form, style and the codes and conventions used in adverts.

I will also discuss with examples the different techniques that advertisers use to promote a product.

Structures of Advertisements

The structures of television advertisements relate to its form, style and the codes and conventions used by media producers. Over the next series of blog posts I will discuss each of these in detail with examples.

Form - Documentary

A documentary based advert will have lots of facts shown during the advert, all that will be shown will be hard facts that can be proven. A 'documentary' advert will be very informative. The advert can be quite a relaxed theme or quite grown up. Obviously this would also depend on what time it would be shown. An advert that would be shown anytime would be sensodyne toothpaste advert.

This advert has people who have had trouble with their teeth being sore after eating/drinking and how sensodyne changed that for them. This is promoting the product and is using facts.


This type of advert will always attract a big audience as it's well known audiences believe things that as an advert like this is broadcast on TV then it must be true. Not many think to actually check whether it is true, the viewers will automatically think it's true due to the way the advert is set out and because the advert has people speaking backing up the advertised product. 
         

Form - Narrative Structures

Narratives are used in advertisements so the advert can tell the audience a story and keep the audiences attention. Also by telling a narrative during the advert, if the narrative is one of a good quality, then people will want to buy the product being advertised. How a story is told can be in many different ways, this is called it's narrative structure. One structure is a Linear narrative. The linear structure means a story being told from the beginning, middle and end in sequential order. The story will be straight forward with the beginning describing something, the middle showing some sort of problem and then the end will be when the problem has been resolved. The two other main narrative structures for advertisements are a non linear narrative structure which uses flashbacks etc and an open ended narrative means nothing is wrapped up at the end, it is ongoing.Todorovs theory relates to the linear narrative structure as Todorovs theory is where a story starts in some sort of equilibrium which is disrupted ansd then this causes events to occur and then the end of the story is when everything is settled and has reached a different equilibrium.


Below is a Persil advert and is an example of a linear advertisement.


This advert starts off with children playing outside with messy things and then we see that their clothes are dirty and stained, a bottle of Persil then comes on screen and is the solution to get all of the stains out of the childrens clothes. This advert uses the linear narrative structure and Todorovs theory. I like how this relates to mums, who usually do the cleaning in houses so mums are clearly their target audience and it's quite realistic so mums can relate to this.


Narrative adverts to an audience are like a little story, like the product is the main feature and the story obviously revolves around it. It just adds an interesting twist to the advertisement as if you were to just have an image of the product on screen then nobody would pay attention to the advert at all. It uses the audiences imagination.

Form - Animation

Animation has become increasingly popular on advertisements lately, we see animation in many adverts. Animation can be used in many differents ways and is sometimes more beneficial than using actual actors and actresses as you can be a lot more creative when using computer generated animation. You can add really noticable features that aren't real. For certain advertisements, it's a lot better to use animation as the audience for the certain product might be of a younger age and the cartoon look is what they watch and what appeals to them. Animation based advertisements also have many pros due to you being able to do a lot more with animation adverts rather than actual actors and actresses, you can do more things with animation therefore it can be more creative and interesting to watch.


Below I have found an advertisement that uses animation.


This is the Coco Pops cerial advert that is created using computer generated animation. This advert is obviously mainly for children and this type of advert would instantly catch their attention. However this even catches the attention of adults as it's different and eye catching because of how much there is going on and obviously adults like cereal too so this type of advert is also adult based but the main target audience is children. This advert also needs to catch the adults attention as they will be the one's buying the product. E.g mostly for their children.


This advert uses Propps theory as it has a villain and a hero. The hero in the end makes the cerial and stops the villain from ruining it.

Form - Stand alone/series

The form of persuastion advertisers choose to use can relate to whether or not they create one advertisement or a series of advertisements. They could put all their money into making one fantastic advert that runs for the length of their campaign or they could create a few of the same theme that would run in a corresponding period. An example could be the Cadburys Dairy Milk advert currently running about bubbles. This is an example of an advert that has been playing again and again that has become quite memorable.

A series advert structure is where an advert is showing part of the story and the product but then there is a new advert that leads on from the advert before. An example of an advert with an open ended narrative is the BT advert series. The BT advert tells you a story, showing what they are advertising, but over a period of time. I think it also keeps the audience interested and now the adverts stick in our minds and we know exactly what they are for.


Below is one of the BT adverts with an open ended narrative

Form - Talking heads

The talking head narrative structure is where a person or a group of people are talking about something that relates to the audience watching immediately. The people on TV will be giving their opinions and will be everyday normal people talking about things, if what they are saying on the advert is good and everybody who features on the advert agrees then the audience at home will instantly find it believeable and agree. This narrative is mainly used and it looks so real like normal people just having a casual conversation about something, they're not always speaking directly to the camera, sometimes just to each other, so it looks like a clip of a conversation what we are just viewing. Talking heads adverts are really like asking questions yourself and then answering them.


An advert I have found featuring talking heads is from 2009 called Frosty Jack's.



This advert is advertising a drink by a man stood asking random people in a shopping center questions and them trying to answer them. They answer wrong everytime and then the advert tells us they are answering the questions wrong because they haven't tried Frosty Jack's, the drink. Basically saying everybody should drink this drink so they know things.