ASSIGNMENT 1: ADVERTISING PRODUCTION – LANGUAGE AND

ADVERTISING

Thomas Gale

3.10.11

Visual Language Pt1What is ‘Visual Language’? It is essentially what it presents itself as through it’s name alone; a language that is portrayed through the use of some form of imagery. It is used to communicate with other people alongside other languages such as body language and sign language, and can be used to present ideas, thoughts, ideals, purposes… the list goes on.

Visual Language can cover all types of imagery, though it primarily focuses on the key types: written words, images, and shapes. Integrating all three types together in a focused, refined manner creates an impressive and unique language that sets it apart from other languages, and reaches out to people.

This is why Visual Language is important to businesses. To advertise their products, they have to use it in order to give it a unique feeling that sets their products apart from every other product of the same variety; to give the item it’s own image and identity that people could recognize easily from just the image associated with it alone.

Visual Language Pt2As said before, advertising makes heavy use of visual language in order to sell the product it is focusing on, and is one of the most important uses of the language in the world. Products need to sell and generate income for the companies that manufacture them. They require a reason that makes them worth considering over all the other products that are of the same variety and type. What they need is something that will represent them; a powerful image that can stick in the public’s mind, and make the product something special that’s worth remembering and going back to, time and time again.

Body language is also incredibly important towards advertising. Having someone present a product with enthusiastic looks to them and having them make it look realistic without having to exaggerate any details about both the product and it’s use can really help to persuade people that the product is as good as it’s being made out to be. This doesn't mean that adverts can’t be slightly over the top for their presentation, but the realistic purpose and use of the product should still be made.

Visual Language Pt3

Sign language is also important to consider for advertisement as well, since not everybody has a working sense of hearing or some hearing impendent. The sign language needs to be easy to notice and read, while not detracting from the focus on the product, but still being there to get the point of the product across.

Needless to say, visual language is still the most important language among these three, since it is the very soul of the product itself, and thus needs to have a heavy presence in the advertisement for it. Having a memorable image of the product is the biggest priority, and that is visual languages strongest effect.

Semiotics Pt1Semiotics in marketing and advertisement is defined as a type of sign, with the meaning of ‘something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity’. This means that for a product to be significant within the market, it has to be able to signify itself as something to someone, and stand out as important and memorable to them. As well as being memorable, they need to carry a meaning that will set them apart from other products. Adverts such as Cadbury’s famous one featuring a gorilla breathing in before thrashing at a set of drums has a wacky, creative meaning to it that doesn’t directly advertise the product, but instead tries to draw people in with something fresh that could leave an impact just with it’s creativity alone, acting as a sign leaving a significant impact to the signifier/consumer.

Semiotics Pt2

Semiotics Pt3

Product Branding Pt1Product branding is the process of getting the product out into the open and making it known. This can be done through normal advertising, or through special methods that can really boost the product and get it out into the open, such as having the logo of the brand as a sponsor, and printed on normal items that don’t have any sort of brand applied to them,such as golfballs and drinking cups.

One particular example of powerful product branding is Nike, who received a massive boost in popularity and it’s brand becoming a much bigger hit after a golfball with it’s logo was used by famous golfer Tiger Woods in the Master’s Golf Tournament. He delivered the famous shot with this ball that sent it soaring through the air, then rolled straight into the hole it was being aimed for. This left behind a powerful feeling and effect for the brand, and prompted other golfers to start using sponsored golfballs afterwards that further added to the product branding for Nike, who can now be recognized through the ‘tick’ symbol on it’s own.

Product Branding Pt2

Branding is highly dependent upon all factors of the brand, which stretches out to the colours they use, such as how Coca Cola is primarily known by it’s trademark red and white colour pattern used in some form and way on all of it’s variations of the drink, and of course the image, as well as the logo and/or symbol that will be representing it. All of these factors need to be taken into account, and used to create something that is unlike anything else seen so far, even if it shares some similarity with a previous brand; such as through the use of red and white, even if that colour pattern is mostly associated with Coca Cola.

Powerful branding can benefit businesses hugely, as it can draw in loyal customers that will support the product if the impression of the product’s success remains strong through buying the products under the brand name on impulse, and getting more of these customers will start a constant spreading effect that will continue to make the brand recognizable and respectable as it’s popularity increases.

Product Branding Pt3An established image of the brand should be made, giving the impression that the business has been around for a while and knows what they are doing, helping to show that they have become stronger through both success and failure in the past. This will help establish to customers that your brand will be around for a long while and continue to flourish as time passes, so creative and effective branding can help create this impression.

Of course, the quality of the products also has a large say in the impression of the brand. The quality needs to be assured in the customers and potential buyers minds that it is of the best quality, and that it has a reason to be used over other brands. This is especially important in the case of multiple products under the same brand name; if one product is of great quality, but the other product is of low quality, that isn’t going to create a good impression of the brand. The quality needs to be consistently good across all products, and it needs to be kept like that for all new products that will be released under the brand in the future.

Product Advertising Pt1Now that we’ve gone into detail about the composing elements of advertising language, it’s time to talk about the subject of Product Advertising itself. When you have an idea for what kind of image your product has to represent it, you need to start getting it out there into the world and into people’s minds, make it known to everyone! There’s a variety of ways to advertise, involving Printed, TV, Radio, and Internet media.

-Printed Advertisement-This McDonalds billboard is notable for it’s message that takes a stab at Starbucks and their price of espresso, and advertises that McDonalds is offering the same product but at a cheaper and much more casual price. The McDonalds brand and it’s catchphrase of “I’m lovin’ it!”, are already widely known, and they still produce new advertisements such as this billboard to further promote itself and keep it’s relevance among the other competitors on the market.

Newspapers are usually full of adverts, with at least one in a corner every few pages, with some newspapers offering a whole few pages specially for both small and large adverts to be placed. These adverts are normally for smaller companies that can’t afford bigger advertisement methods such as large billboards and TV adverts, and rarely is there any advertisement from bigger companies featured, such as big gaming company Nintendo not advertising their new Nintendo 3DS handheld console in magazine advert spaces.

Magazines are mostly in the same vein as newspaper in terms of advertisement they contain. However, they do not feature small spaces for adverts unlike newspapers do; magazines instead opt to only do more full page adverts, though are still full of more of their own unique content than adverts much like newspapers are.

Product Advertising Pt2Flyposting involves putting up small posters/flyers in public places, such as bulletin boards like the sort usually seen in parks, though is also known to be both legally and illegally placed on private property such as people’s houses and on company buildings. Some businesses openly take the risk of the illegal side of this advertisement method by putting up advertisements on private property when there is no space on bulletin boards, and so this method is rather looked down upon due to incidents in the past.

Vehicles such as buses and trucks are used for advertisement, as well. Trucks and lorries in particular are actually used quite often for this, due to the work they are used letting the adverts be taken from place to place at a slow speed, and generally left in one area during work and breaks. Buses are also very good advertisement spaces to consider, due to how often they get around, how far they travel, how often they stop, and so forth. However, buses are usually reserved for big releases such as Portal 2 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which were two highly anticipated titles within the media industry.

-TV Advertisement-Television is a very large part of advertisement, and is the general home for animated advertisements to appear. Apart from BBC1 while programs are showing on it, advertisements are featured after ten minutes of a program, whether it happens during the program as a break or after it has finished ,for between two to five minutes; this is plenty of time to feature at least ten different adverts due to how short and to-the-point most animated adverts. These make use of sound and animation to go beyond printed adverts and add a whole new lease of life to them that makes them even more appealing and eye-catching.

-Radio Advertisement-Unlike TV and printed adverts, radio’s can only have audio for advertisement purposes, in keeping with it being purely audio-driven technology. Due to this, advertisement on radio’s rely upon audio that can easily generate an image in a person’s head of what’s being advertised, and thus heavily rely on the use of musical numbers and conversing between fictional characters that shows why they started using the product and why people should actually consider it.

Product Advertising Pt3-Internet Advertisement-The internet is easily one of the biggest means of advertisement in this day and age, due to the use of banner ads. These adverts generally appear on and litter websites that are running off commonly used hosts/paid services such as GoDaddy and Freewebs, appearing in almost any available space of each page of the website. They also appear on messengers such as MSN, as both a general banner ad at the bottom of the messenger, and a randomly generated selection of links to products that are put at the bottom of each conversation window. Websites that aredirectly hosted by the company it’s for tend to not have anyadvertisements automatically placed in, but some like to offer achance for businesses to advertise by purchasing a space for abanner ad that lasts from anywhere between a week, to a month,to a whole year.

Viral marketing is the process of using established social networkservices such as Facebook and Myspace to advertise products and services. This has become a major part of online advertisement, and has been noted that it is successful due to the increase in use of social networks over the years, since these websites can be visited frequently by many people through both the use of a computer and the application for the site on mobile phones, meaning they could barely ever leave it. Some companies such as SEGA exploit this excessive use of the social networks through offering special information for their new products on them before announcing it on their own website; the first Sonic Generations teaser trailer was there before anywhere else and racked up a large amount of new followers on their Facebook account through the hype for the next big game and it’s initial exclusivity on the network.