Analysising Television Advertisements: Music Products
I have found six advertisements for music, such as compilations and greatest hits albums; they were all obtained between the times of 6pm and 8pm on Channel Four. The majority of this time was taken up by the broadcasting of a live concert of a ‘chart topping’ solo artist. The first advertisement is for the band True Steppers’ album True Stepping. Their record company is Virgin, so the advertisement began with a large Virgin symbol surrounded with a white border: this border remained unchanged throughout the advertisement and is the same with all Virgin music advertisements.
This means one can identify and associate all advertisements like it with the Virgin record label. The music then began to play: it was the band’s number one hit and instantly grabbed the attention of anyone who knew the song. The band itself is not widely known, but they have made a number of songs featuring more famous artists than themselves. A list of these artists was then read out to associate these big names with this smaller product. This was to make people buy the record not only for the main band but also, for the featured artists.
The music continues to play and the tracks on the album are listed. The narrator then states ‘It’s so good you might just want to share it with everyone else’. An attractive young lady is then shown, wearing very revealing clothes, standing outside a building with the album playing, extremely loud. There are also many respectable onlookers, (men in suits, pensioners and mothers with young children) are watching with looks of horror on their faces. This essentially uses sex to sell the product however it also uses the image of being ‘cool’.
Loud music and the appearance of standing up against the respectable majority bring about this image and encourage the target audience want to buy the product just to be cool and be in the ‘in crowd’: where a lot of teenagers would like to be. Finally the narrator says the Virgin slogan ‘Whatever turns you on’ and a picture of the box comes up with a large price beneath it. The price is stated and is made to stand out because it is a reasonably low price and is an important factor along with the high quality of the product, tending to make people more likely to part with their money.
The second advertisement is for a compilation of various artists, of the dance and trace genres. The advertisement starts on a typical, boring, dull coloured, city bus. The camera the zooms in on the back row, where a girl is reading the Holy Bible. However the camera only just gives the viewer time to take all this information in, before it continues it’s zoom into her golden eyes. In the pupil of here eye is a nun standing in front of a stained glass window, the music then begins and the nun’s vestments fall to the ground to reveal a stereotypical ‘clubber’.
It is then that the viewer realises that it is not in fact a stained glass window but a set of disco lights and is a club not a church or nunnery. A number of tracks are played and the appropriate artists are listed, the music stops and the camera zooms back to show the girl looking shocked as though she has just found something out, or been converted The camera then zooms out to the front of the bus. The screen blurs and a picture of the box appears. No price is mentioned nor is there any other information on the product.
Then for the first time is the name of the product mentioned, The Clubbers’ Bible, and a slogan appears ‘The Clubbers’ Bible: worship your weekends’. The advertisement starts off dull so that the contrast between the bright club and the grey bus is as large as possible. The bus is meant to show how boring your life is and how colourful your life could be if you brought this product: it is appealing to our aspirational desires. The girl is reading the Bible for the simple reason of the products name.
The nun in front of the stained glass window draws the viewer further into the religious implications the product makes but then it is all change to the music side of the product. The advertisement again uses an attractive young woman as a suggestive lever to bend the viewer towards buying the product. The club featured in the advertisement reveals more information on the true nature of the product and makes people associate the perfection and holiness of the Bible with the product, clubs and the people within.
This perfection is attempting to sell the product in the real and very imperfect world. The design on the front of the box is the same as that on the Bible again connecting the Bible and this product. A price is not mentioned at the end, probably because the product is rather more expensive than it should be so less people would be willing to part with their hard earned cash. The whole advert carries a mainly religious theme to imply perfection and superiority so it appears above any rivals in the mind of the viewer. The third advertisement is for another compilation called R&B2.
The music began at once with a recent hit by one of the featured bands. This action was to entice the viewer into concentrating on the advert to see if any other major artists are mentioned, which they are. The compilation is a double CD and in the advertisement there are only six artists mentioned: these are the most widely known in the compilation. The most renowned artists are the only ones mentioned because this would make people want to buy the whole record for individual or a view of the featured artists, not for the fact that there are many artists.
The advertisement has no slogan but a price is mentioned and is also made very prominent. In this case the price is mentioned because it is very low and is therefore a good selling angle of the product and would help it to sell. The advertisers would have paid for this prime time (mentioned above) in order to catch their target audience, whom I believe to be mainly teenagers, because they have the largest effect on record sales. If they are not buying the record themselves then they are having it bought for them as a gift.
It is my belief that teenagers are the target audience because the majority of the crowd at the concert were teenagers: therefore I come to the conclusion that this percentage will also be the equivalent for home viewers, the majority would be in their teens. Here are the reasons that I believe that the adverts are aimed at people in their teens: firstly all of the people featured in the above advertisement, who were not artists, appear to be in their early twenties or teens, so teenagers can imagine themselves in the place of those in the advertisement.
Secondly, a lot of bright and appealing colours are used throughout, which I find attractive, and I therefore conclude that other teenagers would like this and it would help the adverts to lodge themselves in the mind of the viewer. Finally, sex appeal is used in two of the above advertisements, but only very mildly, and as a teenager one becomes aware, for the first time, of the use of sex in advertising in the real world.?
