TV Advertisement Evaluation

In our groups we were given the brief to rebrand a Unilever product. Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch multinational consumer goods company, established in 1929 it sells food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. Looking into Unilever the product we picked would also have to be aimed to a new target audience. Within my group, Sam Kemp, Jamie Murray, Maya Perry and I had to pick a product to rebrand and Jamie suggested that  Hellmann's would be a good idea as it's not aimed towards young adults so that could be a possibility and we all agreed that this could be a good product to rebrand.

We set out to look into the company a little more, and found that Richard Hellmann created mayonnaise,  and with he wife he begun to sell her version of the Mayonnaise at his deli shop in New York, 1905. Up until 2000 when Unilever bought it. Hellmann's Mayonnaise is a family orientated and older generation Mayonnaise, also aimed more towards women, it has been around for at least a century, ranging in product and adding different ingredients, such as lime juice, but now the Hellmann's Mayonnaise is a worldwide product. As American spends $1.87 billion on Mayonnaise each year, Hellmann's captures 31.1% share of that. After collecting a little detail about the current audience, we knew that young adults were not aimed at therefore that was why we chose to rebrand Hellmann's Mayonnaise to them. This also worked well as as a group we are classed as young adults and therefore we could associate the advert to do with things that would convince us to buy the product.

Having created our advert we then had to obtain
feedback, this also needed to be gained from people of our target audience. So we set out two ways of gathering the feedback. Firstly, as a whole group the BTEC class watched the advert and then we openly discussed the good and bad things about the advert. As this happened I took down notes of everything that the group said and as you can see to the right there are all of the responses. I think that there was a range of positive and negative feedback and a lot of people were pleased with the setting, which was mentioned by the majority of the group, as the setting was real, believable and warm, this all encouraged and helped emphasis the Mayonnaise and as a selling point (even the we're not trying to sell the setting) but this was a good comment which we thought through well when wanting to shoot as we planned to go to Sam Kemp's house, and even better that it really fitted what we wanted well. On the other hand there were also negative comments and a re-occurring one was about the ending sequence and how Sam Cattee (our female actor) was just holding the Mayonnaise bottle, and there was debate to whether or not that it looked silly and it should have been a still shot, and why is he just holding it? Not only that but there were suggestions that the whole bottle could have been in shot. Other than that feedback, the rest you can see on the image.

Secondly, we collected feedback using an online questionnaire, and I used Smart Survey where I created my survey and then shared the link on various websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. You can find my survey at:

http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/101120AXUWV.

This survey consisted of ten simple questions, and the advert which was available for anyone to answer on the websites that I shared it on. Now I have collected date from twenty three people, I find that there have been a range of results, and these vary with positive and negative feedback, and although I have my feedback, not all of it is from my target audience, as the survey was open to anyone who clicked on the link- but as my first question was giving age categories I can see how many have taken it who are my specified target audience.

As you can see on the right there is the results for what age people were who took my survey. As you can see, an overall percentage of my target audience (the young adults aged 16-19) 65.22% of my survey were taken by that age. This is over half that are my target audience, and not only that but the others who took my survey specified that young people would be the target audience for this advert, as you can see in the results on question six (the bottom image on the right) and that most specified that it would be targeted towards young adults. This is a good start to getting my feedback as most people of all ages realises who my target audience is therefore the advert has been done well to portray this. Other than that, on the last question a few people suggested some improvements, the most reoccurring ones were about Jamie's skipping and how it could be more emotional and more height (e.g. swinging arms higher), it had also been suggested that we play a bigger part with the mayo, like trying it out more and making it seem like it goes with everything, alongside this, someone else said that they could tell that the actors were actors and not people genuinely enjoying the Hellmann's. All of the results can be found below.

Looking back at my advert, and its appropriateness to the audience, I think that the message about Hellmann's Mayonnaise tasting good and being a great Mayonnaise came across in the advert, I personally find that the advert could have been more enticing by having more foods (agreeing with an improvement giving from our feedback) as then you can see that the Mayonnaise can go with loads of foods and still tastes great. Looking at the image on the left, you can see that this advert looks like it had an impact on the audience as 86.96% of people said that the advert would keep their attention all the way through. So at some point(s) in the advert there must have been something to keep the audience wanting to watch the rest. This is a good sign as if it was to be shown on TV, as a campaign then it could possibly work, as 47.83% of my responses said maybe to the advert being a successful campaign. Even though this was said, there is still the possibility it could work, but you wouldn't know until it was tried.


Technical and aesthetic qualities were an important role when it came to shooting this advert as we wanted to make sure that it all worked and that there were no issues, this meant that when we planned the storyboard we had to make sure that the continuity flowed and that everything would look appropriate in shots and we knew what was going on with the camera work.. We followed our storyboard the continuity worked well, but there were a couple of issues as we found out that there a few continuity errors, such as when they first sit down you can see the Hellmann's isn't on the side yet a couple of shots later when Sam goes to pick it up. it's just appeared, this is a huge mise-en-scene issue too baring in mind that this is the product that we are trying to sell, but when watching this advert, the majority of people didn't notice until it was pointed out, as the sitting down shot at 0:09 was only a couple of seconds.

After that, you can see that I am in all of the shots where we are around the couch, but in the final shot when Sam and Jamie are passing the Mayonnaise, I am not in shot, this is due to an error of me moving and being more interested in the framing so I had to on-look (being a perfectionist) that I completely forgot that I would be in shot. Other than that. the rest of the camera work was pretty good, I think, as when we shot shots, we made sure that we did one's of the same shot all in one take so the framing and position would be the same, this would be easier to edit and look better, not only that but the mise-en-scene seemed to flow. I also found that the setting of our shot really helped emphasis the fact that this was a homely place to hang and eat Mayonnaise, and thanking Sam Kemp for letting his parents use their house, it really helped build the background. On the other hand, there were also editing and sound complications, when it came to recording the voices, we used the audio that was already on the clip that we had shot, this made it a little quiet and not as perfect sounding but to resolve some of these issues, we unlinked most of the audio and sound when editing and adjusted the sound manually to make it sound clearer and louder.


Applying the content from the advert to what we wanted to actually achieve, we wanted to see the product, do I think personally we did this? Yes, I really do, this advert to me seems to flow and you can see the Mayonnaise used and what the product is with the close-up in the final shot, all linking in with Jamie's dream sequence which I think sells the product. Not only that but when looking at the results in my survey, I asked if people would buy the Hellmann's after watching this advert and 69.57% of the responses said that they would, this mean that even if they didn't like Hellmann's they would still go out and try it after watching this advert, as found out in another question where I asked if people liked Hellmann's and the eight people that said they didn't, five of them said they would like to try it after seeing this advert (answers can be found above in my survey results slideshow).


Planning this was tough, and we had to make sure that we got the audience hooked, to do this we needed persuasion techniques and we had some ideas on how we could do this. Looking at AIDA, we can focus on the areas we wanted to try and do. For instance, when you see the start of our advert, it's just answering the door to people holding up a few items, which aren't too clear as they are not the main focus in the shot. This was the first technique, keeping the product hidden, even though the audience would've seen it, as when the advert starts they aren't sure what it's about, this attracts the attention of the audience as they want to know more, not only that, but the catchy music was also a starting point, as it was loud and catchy, therefore if this was heard, people (our audience) would want to know what the noise was for or from and therefore gets them attracted to watching the advert. After grabbing there attention, we then had to keep there interest, and this was by having the product not being known until later in the advert and then finally clarified in the end when the slogan and an extreme close-up appears, and until then it's not certain that Mayonnaise is the product. This still keeps the interest, because we convince the customers that something worth waiting for is at the end of the advert. Next is desire, and of course we want our audience to desire the product, therefore there would be sales (if this was real) but we still want to sell the idea, this was done within the dream sequence, as this slow motion, one-to-one special moment between you and the Hellmann's is what is desirable, you can achieve this dreamy and enchanting state of mind when you have the rich taste of Hellmann's and all of these soothing and calm peaceful loving words come to mind, making the audience desire the product, thinking they can be in that dream-like state if they eat the Hellmann's. Finally, action, this is the pow we needed at the end for our audience to be fully taken by the advert, this is done in a couple of ways, at the end of the dream sequence, when it cuts back to reality with Tommy being shouted at, making the audience come back to the advert and finally the starting music kicks in again, until the end after the slogan where everything comes full circle and the audience should be captivated by the whole advert wanting to then go out and buy the product.


When devising the Hellmann's idea, we had to think of what we actually wanted to sell, or at least the reason behind choosing Hellmann's. The message we wanted to sell was making Hellmann's Mayonnaise seem like it is a young food and that it goes well with all foods, which is why we had young adults playing the roles in our advert and this helped to add to the fact that younger adults would enjoy and love the Mayonnaise. I think that this was a good message to try and send and as our group were adults we knew what we could do and what we could try and do to sell the Mayonnaise. The main techniques that we used were having close-ups of the Mayonnaise and also making it seem important in Jamie's dream sequence. Having the close-up when Sam picked up the Mayonnaise was also interest as the shot was different and this is where we knew it would capture audiences first (hopefully) and in the final shot where there was a longer shot of the Hellmann's which all the audience could see as the slogan also appeared, which was another technique to also hopefully try and get the audience captured by the selling of the Mayonnaise, I think that the slogan was a good idea as it could be seen as something that could be said by all Mayonnaise lovers and as younger adults could be seen as cool.


Other television adverts look powerful and usually captivate their audiences and comparing our advert to other television adverts I think that the advert is fit for it's purpose, in such reasoning, I think that this could pass as an advert on the TV, even though there may be a few minor errors. Looking at the ASA and BCAP, I feel that the regulations we had to comply with had to be done well, looking at some, I found that when looking at the BCAP code, we did our best to comply with all rules, and we did follow them all as we made no mistakes.



Certainly, looking at code 06. Privacy. We made sure that no personal home life, or anything was affected or intruded upon, which is why having Sam's parent sign the form gave us the permission to film in her home without having any issues. Not only that but when we filmed on the Recreational Ground, we made sure there were no passer-by's in the background as they hadn't signed and this would've also broken one of the rules. Other than that, everything else seemed to be fine without any issues.


Personally, I think that the advert has turned out well, from our first planning week when we had no idea to then collectively piecing the storyboard together, I think we really did have our idea set in stone. Filming was then quite simple, as we just followed the production schedule guidelines and the storyboards which really did help and that all seemed to go to plan. Things begun to change when it came to editing as we had a few issues with how the scenes looked with the passing of time, which we didn't really notice until we started to piece the shots together, but still mainly sticking to the original pre-production the shots were all the same, just a few shots where shuffled, like the DVD screen shot was pieced in between the shots either side so it looked like time had passed.


Overall, I am really satisfied with my final advert as I think that it turned out better than I thought, even though I also thought the planning went well. I wasn't expecting it to turn out the way it did but I must say I think that the whole group did a really good job as the advert has proved to be a good one (in my opinion) and I think that we did sell the Mayonnaise using close-ups and having it involved.I also really enjoyed the whole process up to the final advert as the filming days were quite fun in the way we tried our hardest to make things work and push ourselves to not laugh in some scenes and I think we all pulled through to make a good advert. I think that if I had the chance to do it again, I would make sure that all the continuity errors were fixed and that there were no continuity errors at all anyway. I also think that I would change the food, even though it may seem like the food young adults would eat, it would be nicer to have more of a variety and then we could have more shots of more Mayonnaise on the different foods and this would emphasis the goodness of the Hellmann's more; That whole point links in with some feedback that was given on what to improve from the smart survey,as you can see on the last slide on the survey results slideshow I made above. With myself, I think I did a good job at trying to involve myself with most areas over the course of the whole project. As I did partake in the idea when it came to what the shots would be and I also helped Maya when it came to the camera work, this was because I knew more what the shots would be like, just as much as Jamie did as he drew the framing for most shots, so I followed his images. I made sure I helped as much as possible in all areas and made sure we got everything done on time as I wanted to produce a good piece and keep within the time limit we had to make it. I found myself being a little bossy at some times and taking charge but I did step back and make sure that everyone else had a chance to have there say and be involved. I am happy with my commitment to this project and working with the group and as a whole, I think it all paid off.