Compare two television advertisements, focusing particularly on how they present and target different types of family. Can you draw any conclusions about how families are represented in advertising? I am going to compare and discuss how two different adverts affect different types of families, and how they use different camera shots, music, stereotypes, lighting e. t. c to influence the awareness of a product and to encourage people of different societies to buy it.
The way in which an advert is made immediately makes us think in a certain way about the product, if the advert is presented poorly then no one is going to want to buy the product but if it is presented well and in an attractive way it will encourage potential buyers ideas on whether or not to buy the product, because the two adverts we are comparing are both made in very different ways it gives us a good base for comparing them, and gives us more to compare.
The adverts which I am going to compare are one advertising The Sunday Times news paper, which is made professionally, with good quality shots and an advert advertising a local brand of washing powder called Radion, which is poorly made by a local family, it could be portrayed as a home video rather than an advert. These two adverts are very different and provide us with several differences and details to compare. The Sunday Times Newspaper is aimed at the middle – upper class society, it is mostly read by businessmen, educated people and people interested in world affairs.
It includes several sections which are aimed at different aged people and people with different interests i. e. there is something for everyone. The advert advertising the Sunday Times, seems to incorporate a traditional Sunday theme, it shoots a traditional Sunday, inside the house of a perfect family. The family is a typical English family with two parents and two children plus the additional relatives coming round for Sunday lunch just as traditional English families usually do on a Sunday.
The advert shoots a large English style house emphasizing the fact that the Sunday time is aimed at the middle and upper class people of the society. The producers of the advert try to emphasize the good the entertainment that newspaper has the potential of bringing and tries to incorporate the fact that there is something to interest everyone, which is why a family is chosen to do the advert. Using a family emphasizes the fact that all of the family can be pleased with just one paper.
The slogan “the perfect Sunday” is chosen this is to persuade potential buyers to buy the newspaper and to persuade the audience into thinking that the Sunday times will bring the perfect, peaceful family. The other advert I am studying is almost the opposite of the Sunday times advert. It is a homemade family advert; the quality is very poor and is clearly made very unprofessionally and aimed at the lower class society. The advert is made by a family living in Yorkshire. The advert also includes a family with two adults and two children as does the Sunday times advert.
It is easy to tell, not just from the way in which the advert is made but also from the setting of that advert that the family are not a rich, well off family like the family feature in the other advert, instead they are a lower class family living in a small house in the middle of the town, we can tell this because in the background of the advert there are rows of houses. This advert is very different in comparison to the other advert in the way that the advert is aimed at different types of people in society.
The Radion advert is aimed at lower, working class citizens who can only afford this type of washing powder, the sort that might not be good but it is cheap. We can tell that this advert is aimed at the working class society because of the house that the family live in, the clothes that the members of the family wear and also the fact that they buy such cheap washing powder and buy it in bulk so that it is even cheaper. The Sunday times advert uses moving photography as it is almost like a film sketch.
It shows a day in the life of an English Sunday with all the traditional Sunday events for example Sunday lunch, relatives coming over and the Sunday times arriving. I think that the producers have chosen to advertise the newspaper in this way because it shows that the newspaper is a big part of a traditional Sunday in England and that it brings amusement and enjoyment. The advert is filmed in colour but it has almost an orangey light to it which creates a soothing atmosphere and makes the person watching it feel more at home and welcomed into buying the product.
