Conclusion of Advertisement Analyses

Unfortunately, the analysis of the ice cream adverts was not completely finished as we had soon figured out a second idea when we realised our advert would not have been possible.

However, what I did find from the little research I had done was that it appears the main convention used in the advertisement of ice cream is humour as both adverts have quite witty comments or scenes. I thought that this worked well as our advert ideas were both quite humorous ideas.

Our first idea for our ice cream advert, with the man crying on the sofa, in a way you could see the idea of happiness being used as a convention. This is from the fact that he's crying and is eating ice cream as a comfort food, it's almost saying that it cheers you up.

Magnum Classic Ice Cream Advert Analysis

I then looked at the most recent advert for the Magnum Classic. The conventions used in this advertisement weren't as simply to figure out. I found some parts of the advert quite witty, such as the cat driving and the girl fainting at the fireman. Humour is definitely a convention used in this advertisement as that is the reason why I personally enjoyed the advert.

When watching the advert you can see that the girl is peaceful and happy as she's eating this ice cream and doesn't care about what is going on around her. Due to this, I am tempted to say that using the idea of happiness was used as a way to sell this product, and so perhaps happiness is also a convention. Later the voice over states that "when you're having a magnum... nothing else matters", which also indicates happiness.

Ben & Jerry's "Coconutterly Fair" Advert Analysis

I started to look into the conventions that were used within advertising and decided to look at the conventions that are being used in current and popular ice cream adverts.

I looked at Ben & Jerry's knowing it was a huge successful company, and what I found from the advert was that it was very different to adverts I had seen before. It was animated and had real images over animations with a voice over. I found it was quite witty to begin with when giving examples of things in life that are unfair, such as talking about Jerry while a picture of Ben and Jerry were on the screen and saying: "Having your name put second, that's not fair." I think humour is quite the main convention used in this advert if not the only.

As well, this advert promotes the charity Fair Trade which is showing people that their product is not only good, but they are helping others in need whilst selling their product. This without a doubt promotes their product instantly because a majority of consumers want to help others who need it. And so seeing that Ben & Jerry's have taken interest in giving a portion of their profits to charity, people want to purchase the product more in order to help.

Advertising - Idea No.2

Although we were still working on our first idea, we soon planned a second idea for an advertisement for our brand of ice cream in case we found problems with our first.

Our second idea showed a man walking through a graveyard from behind, there would be a cut to inside the church where you saw him opening the doors in slow motion. A close up showing his legs, feet and a plastic bag that he was holding so that the audience could see him walking through the church. He would sit in either a confession box or sit on a seat.

A) If he was in the confession box: there would be a close up of him crying. A voice from the other side of the confession box would ask him what was troubling him, and the man would reach into the bag and start to pull something out, without actually showing the audience what was in the bag. He would then reply "Please forgive me. This is my fourth tub", and hold up the tub of ice cream.

B) If he was sat on the seat: the priest would come over and ask him what was bothering him. The man would reply "This is my fourth tub", you would see a close up of the priest staring at the tub. The priest would then offer to take the tub away, he would do so and he would then be shown sitting in another room eating the ice cream.

However, with this idea we could not think of a suitable slogan for the product that would be themed around the advert. We also found difficulty trying to find a way of extending the advert.

Unfortunately for this idea we could not get the location for our video, having looked into trying to arrange a visit to a local church, we could not get it. We decided that due to the difficulties we were having with our advertising ideas, that we would change to try to create a successful music video.

Our Initial Advert Idea - "We're here for you"

Our first initial idea for our ice cream advert showed a range of people in different situations eating ice cream. For example, one man would be sitting alone on a sofa crying, there would then be a cut to a girl watching a film eating ice cream, another cut would be made to show children sharing a tub of ice cream and so on.

The short version of our advert was based around the man sitting on a sofa crying. It started showing a close up of the man crying, and slowly zoomed out to show him eating from a small tub of ice cream, music would be playing throughout this, which would be very slow sad music, but very minimal as far as instruments are concerned. The camera would zoom out a little more to someone standing next to the sofa playing an instrument, perhaps a violin. Slowly, more people would start to walk in playing intruments until an orchestra was shown playing music. While the people began to appear around the man, he would not seem to notice their presence. Our brand of ice cream would then appear on the screen with our slogan "We're here for you, always."

Our idea for the longer version of our advert included the short clip as well as other scenarios. The music would continue, from the first clip of the man on the sofa crying, throughout the rest of the advert. One of the extra scenarios we had in mind would show some parents sharing a larger tub of ice cream between their children.The camera would pan around the table to show the parents smiling and laughing as they split the ice cream into bowls, the camera would continue to pan until you saw the children standing by the table waiting and watching. There would then be a mid shot of the children eating and enjoying the ice cream, they would be talking or playing while eating it and would be shown looking happy.

There would then be a clip of a girl, we had the idea that it would possibly work better with a couple, watching a film and laughing whilst eating from as tub of ice cream. It would begin with showing behind the sofa so you can see her/their silhouette(s), the camera would then pan around the sofa to show them eating the ice cream and begin to zoom in to a mid shot to see them smiling and laughing at the film.

Within each clip that I have explained above there would be one, if not a couple more, from the orchestra playing their instruments in the background. The slogan again would show up and appear how it did with the short version of our advert with our brand and the slogan "We're here for you, always." across the screen.

The idea of the orchestra being present without people noticing would give a message across in a humorous manner. This message being what our slogan says, that we're there for them, meaning that our ice cream is there for comforting people when they need it at all times.

Our idea was working so well we had often mentioned trying to create our own realistic packaging for the product, which would have given the advert a much better and more professional look. We would have been able to do this if we had taken the idea further and had researched into getting tubs printed or perhaps purchasing a range of plain tubs (some good examples of these plain tubs are shown in the image to the left) and printing them ourselves.

We found that this idea would have worked perfectly if we could find a suitable location that would work with the idea and if we could get in contact with an orchestra. We decided that different people's houses would be perfect locations as long as there was a door behind the sofa and some space for the orchestra in one of the locations. The other locations would need to have a sofa with room to get behind it to pan around to show the girl or couple watching the film and a TV placed in front. And another location would need to show a table, preferably in a kitchen diner. Unfortunately we came to a halt with this idea when we found that we could not find an orchestra small enough or one willing to help with our advert, which was disappointing as we really had some ideas we believed would be successful.

Advertising - Idea No.1 - Advertising

To begin with, we decided to look into advertising as our A2 Media Studies project. After working well as a group in our previous year with our thriller piece, we found that together we could create some new ideas and add contributions as we did last year.

We came up with a couple of advertising ideas and looked into it thoroughly with research and planning. The group had come up with a main product to advertise: Ice cream. We decided we were going to create our own brand of ice cream and make advertisements for them. Our ideas worked exctremly well and we were all looking forward to beginning filming our ideas and seeing them on a screen, however not everything turned out how we had hoped.

Despite our idea falling apart eventually, we had continued to do research and planning into our two initial ideas and tried to solve our issues. Unfortunately it got to a point where we became unable to actually film the advert and we could not find suitable locations or find people appropriate for the parts we needed in our adverts. The following few posts shows the work we had done towards these ideas.