Style - Surreal

A surreal advert is an advert that is dream-like and something you wouldn't see in real life. These adverts are usually quite successful because they are very memorable which makes people buy a product. One famous advert is the wrigleys advert where lots of little food are getting blown away by the chewing gum - pointing out Wrigleys gets rid of bad breath.

Structures of Advertisments

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.

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

Form - Narrative Structures

Advertisers uses stories to get the viewers involved and hooked to the advert. This is called a narrative structure when a story gets revealed. There are two types of narrative.

Linear Narrative - A linear narrative is the easiest way of telling the story, a linear has a beginning, middle and an end in the correct order. The following advert is non - linear, where the main charcter goes to a series of events but not in the right order.

The following advert is a non-linear advert as it has a series of events that shouldn't happen in that order.

Form - Animation

Animation is quite a popular form of advertisement because it generally grabs the audiences attention more than other adverts. Animated adverts are usually aimed towards children because if they see something cartoon they will instantly pay attention. The coco pops adverts have been pretty successful because the monkey from the adverts has now become an iconic character so as soon as you see the monkey you instantly know what the product is.

Form - Documentary

Documentary adverts are successful because when people see documentaries they general think they are true. This makes people buy a product as the public will think everything that is being said abiut it is true. Documentary adverts are usually contained with facts and information from experts.

Form - Talking Heads

A talking heads advert is a way of realting to group of people on an advert to give information that sounds belivable which will persuade people to buy a product. It helps if the advert has famous people in it as this will grab peoples attention straight away. In this advert it has some of the most well known people in football talking about a similar subject.