Zara Yaffe – Advertisement Evaluation

Evaluation

In my theory work, I came up with a mind-map full of ideas to do for an advertisement. This was time consuming as obviously there are hundreds of products I could have chosen to create an advertisement for. Through the process of elimination, I finally chose to pick a hair product advert. I think I relate most to hair product type adverts because many of the others were for things that I do not have control of, i.e. cat food, mental health awareness and a variety of different disabilities. I don’t have control of these things as I am not the one in my family that chooses what cat food we buy, and I do not have enough experience with people dealing with mental health issues or disabilities. I am the person who chooses which hair product I use and that is, therefore, the reason I chose to pick this one.

My questionnaire showed me a variety of things that I needed to know in order to create my advert. It told me which hair product people I asked use most, whether they use shampoo and conditioner or just one, and do they buy their hair product just due to the scent. I chose to ask these questions as these indicated to me what I should or shouldn’t include in the advertisement I would be producing afterwards. I mainly needed to ask open questions that didn’t just have a ‘yes or no’ answer so that I could get detail out of the answers I received. I didn’t want to create an advert that would not be realistic, I wanted it to be as professional as possible and therefore I had to get as much detail from my questionnaire as possible. This influenced my idea in the sense that I chose to do Head and Shoulders shampoo and conditioner as this was one of the most popular brands out of my questionnaire results. I also asked whether people do buy a product just due to the scent. The fact that more people said no than yes meant that I didn’t necessarily have to include this in my advert and so I did not.

Head and Shoulders is a hair care product that is known as an anti-dandruff shampoo. Due to this, and with my research, I decided to use a promise of benefit technique. In my advertisement, my actress told the viewers that they could be up to 100% flake free too, as my actress was. This is a way of selling a product that would encourage the viewer to buy it, as they don’t really see any reason not to. The viewer will not know whether the company is actually telling the truth or not, in relation to these statistics, and so they just believe it. A viewer would like to believe that a company would research what they’re selling and so a potential buyer would believe whatever they say.

I think I did reach out to my target audience, which were females between ages 15 and 50. I think I did this by using a female actress to star in my advertisement. This is a persuasive method as girls, stereotypically, tend to trust other girls. This is also known as peer approval. I used an actress who is in her mid-twenties. I chose this because it’s in between 15 and 50, so it would persuade younger girls to buy Head and Shoulders because they look up to older girls on television, especially when she’s pretty and has nice, clean hair. Girls at this stage in life are always looking to have a better appearance, so having someone with a smart, clean appearance to look up to would encourage young girls to want to buy this product. Elder women would want to buy this product because of the model in the advertisement because these types of women tend to want to look younger. My actress is a young, mature adult who still looks good. This is persuasive for elder women because I think they’ll want to look like her.

If I had more time to create my advertisement, I would make more changes and improvements. I think that the sound isn’t the best. When my actress was reading the script, her voice was too quiet. I then had to get help and use Adobe Audition to normalise the volume of her voice. This was time consuming and confusing. To correct this next time, I would listen back to what I’ve recorded straight away so that I knew whether I needed to re-record my actress or not. This would improve the professionalism of my advertisement. I would also mix together my music better so that you can’t hear where I’ve cut and pasted it. This makes it look and sound unprofessional. Also, my footage wasn’t totally focused. I would review my footage straight away so that I

Zara Yaffe – Advertisement Evaluation

knew if I needed to re-record then too. I would take more time in colour correcting my footage, which I didn’t have time to do on this particular occasion. I’d want to brighten it up and make the colours bolder. This would enhance the effect of the whole advert as it would be more in your face, almost shoving the advert to the viewers. It would capture their attention and engage them, make them watch the advert, and then persuade them to buy the product. I don’t think my audio and footage was up to a professional standard, but I do think it’s a good, persuasive advertisement.

I think that my advertisement is realistic and follows the order of a typical hair care product advertisement. The actress complains in the advert and then she has a resolution and is trying to sell it. This is how typical hair product adverts flow. The advert I made was a stand-alone advert. Through my research, I learnt that this means that the company will have many different adverts all out that are all different at one time. The characters in the adverts do not have a storyline.