So what are the gratifications offered by their latest offering, Buster the Boxer?
Watch the advert again and consider the questions below:
1) What audience gratifications / pleasures are offered by the John Lewis brand? Consider all three adverts from 2014-2016. How are they similar in the pleasures they offer? How are they different?
The john lewis brand offers several main gratifications/ pleasures, including identity and diversion. Since 2014 all of their adverts have had a certain element of relatablity that there customers and target audience can relate to. Allow for the identity gratification to be offered to the audience as the find themselves reflected in this media text. Furthermore, the adverts in general all have the diversion gratification as it seems that for an advert there is a large amount of detail put into the story etc. which allows for the audience to escape into the advert. However, the diversion gratification has been lost throughout the years on the john lewis adverts as the most recent ad campaign doesn't have such a strong story line compared to its predecessors, this may because people are no longer interested or because john lewis are trying for a new approach.
Now read the criticism about the new advert:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/sssgreater-manchester-news/john-lewis-2016-christmas-ad-12154739
The Manchester Evening News
https://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2016/nov/14/wildlife-charities-react-john-lewis-christmas-ad
The Guardian
2) What are the objections of some members of the audience? Do you agree or disagree with these viewpoints? Why?
The Battle of the Christmas Ads 2016
Many brands have jumped on the 'Christmas Ad' bandwagon in the past but 2016 seems to be the year where the advertising industry has really outdone itself, with many large industrial names fighting for recognition on social media through hash tags and the development of narrative arcs that involve the audience. Huge amounts of revenue have been spent on developing and making these adverts, including getting celebrity voice-overs; recording cover versions of new songs that can then be sold in connection with iTunes and downloaded on Spotify; producing merchandise connected to the ads and entering running times comparable with some short films.
Watch the most popular 2016 offerings and then answer the questions below in a new blog post:
1) Which do you think is the most appealing and why? Try to use some of our audience theory in your answer.
Personally, i believe that the most appealing advert is the Marks And Spencer's campaign. Due to the fact that, what is portrayed is a feel good story line which utilises non-fictional characters - humans, which allows for the audience to become emotionally attached to the idea of giving during the Christmas season and therefore become attached to the message that marks and spencers is sending. This links to Gillian Dyer's theory on lines of appeal. As the advert is a form of communication and makes people that are connected to Christmas or cherish the feeling of love and family to feel apart of the advert more. The lines of appeal that this advert conveys are happy families, as the advert shows that the love that families have between each other will never fade away, the second line of appeal would be childhood as this advert shows the innocence of a child.
2) Are there any audience pleasures that two or more of the adverts have in common? Choose two examples to illustrate your point.
The audience pleasures that most of the adverts presents is the idea of giving. The Very advert is a lady giving gifts to everyone and receiving one back and also the Marks and Spencers advert is the young boy giving a gift back to his family members. The adverts also include audience pleasures such as family. For example, the Salisbury's advert is the father spending time with his family on Christmas and the Heathrow advert is the grandparents coming home for Christmas and being with the family.
3) Choose a different advert and identify the target audience for the advert. Answer in terms of demography and psychography. What tells you this?
The littlewoods christmas 2016 advert is a very family orientated advert with a trace of humour. In terms of demographics, the age group class would be seen as the consumers of the products shown in the video and the age bracket of 11-40. The advert has a middle class, typical family (mother, father children, and grandparents) which is the image that comes into ones mind when family and Christmas is mentioned. In terms of psychograpgics, the two families in the advert look as if they both live similar lifestyles with each of the family members mirroring the other family. Therefore they had similar attitudes and values. This tells us that Christmas is for everyone, every family no matter the shape or size.
4) Why do you think Christmas adverts, in particular, often use emotive language and narratives to appeal to a wide audience?5) Choose an advert with a narrative and, just for fun, apply one of our narrative theories to it. Why does a narrative have a place in an advert?
Waitroses 2016 Christmas advert campaign tells the story of a robin's journey during Christmas time. The narrative theory that i am going to apply a this media text would be Todorov's theory of equilibrium. The beginning of the advert where the robin starts its journey and the girl is placing a mince pie out is the equilibrium of this story - as we assume that the mince pie is for the robin that it will arrive eat the mince pie and leave. However it s journey is diverted by many things including predators, bad weather, getting stepped on by a sailor etc this then becomes the adverts disequilibrium. After all the struggle, we see that it has been protected and it is finally able to continue its journey and it eventually finds its way to the girl's house and gets its mince pie - which is the new equilibrium. In my opinion, i think that narrative has a strong place in adverts as it grabs the audience's attention in a way that just showing them the products can't do and causes the audience to pay more attention which makes it more likely for them to purchase a product due to the memorable storyline
No comments:
Post a Comment