(M3) Codes and Conventions

In this post I will highlight how my advertisement campaign has applied to the codes and conventions of cross media campaigns both legally and ethically. I will also show how I have stuck to, or challenged the most common conventions in advertising, and how I think it links back to the brief.

Cross Media Campaign Codes and Conventions - 

Advertisement Codes - 

There are a legal set of advertising codes that have been produced by ASA. These have been put in place to ensure that all advertisements are completely free of all negative connotations. This includes ethical issues such as offence, gender and race, and also contains legal factors such as copyright and misinterpretation. These codes are put in place by the largest regulatory bodies for advertising and TV, or any choice of media that the advertisement focuses on.

However, most of the obvious codes in advertising are audience-recognised codes. This can be as simple as music or colours, and as complex as certain tagline and objects or maybe even narrative. My advertisement is based around drinks/beverages, which means that it will follow the specific codes that are widely recognised in advertisements of the same genre.

Layout - 

The layout of my cross media advertisements are a very important set of advertising codes. These make sure that the advertisement is set out successfully, and meets the common layouts that advertisements hold. The layouts that I need to use differs dependent on the types of advertising media that I have chosen. For example, I have chosen Billboard, Social Media and TV advertisements.

Billboard - 

The layout of a billboard is very important as it is a completely static image, it does not move. This means that the layout is the most important asset that must be focused on within the planning of this. The most common layouts of billboard are very simple, and just involve images with a short line of text. This can be a company slogan or tagline, or a line of text that has been created specifically for the advertisement

The text must all be the same size when in a sentence, otherwise it will look much less attractive. However this changes depending on the design, if the design is more of a fun design than serious, then the font size may change to fit into the desired theme of the product.

The images must be good quality, and must have relevance to the advertisement. For example, an image of a car on a drinks advertisement by itself will not make any sense, however, a photo of a can would make perfect sense. The use of relevant and interesting photos for the advertisement is one of the vital assets to the theme and genre of the advertisement, as well as how it is received by an audience

Advertisement Conventions - 

Conventions are something that is widely used and popular among a certain subject, and are seen as the 'normal' that most people use. These conventions are usually used so much as they are the most effective ways that certain tasks are done. For example, in advertising, there are many conventions such as bold colours, catchy slogans, direct address and call to actions such as logos and hyperlinks.

The conventions I may use in my advertising campaign are things such as direct address, as it is used a lot in drinks advertisements. However, I think I will use something more catchy compared to direct address, an example of this style of advertisement in the McDonalds advertisement presented to the side.

This is my completed billboard for the brief that we were given for Bubble and Fizz. This billboard advertisement links to the codes and conventions of advertising very closely. In order to stick to these conventions I used a few common industry standard techniques. 

The first technique I used was a bold font which took a large place on the screen. This means that the viewers of the billboard can easily see the text, and it draws their view into the advertisement as it is basic human intervention to read something that they can see. This also makes it very easy to read, which is useful when promoting a product in an advertisement. This links to the Coke advertisement directly as they have used bold white text to promote their product, which is exactly the same as mine.

The second technique I used was saturated and contrasting colours. This means that the advertisement is very bright and easy to see, and will also engage the brain in interest from a public viewer. The colours used are directly from the client brief, and I have used them in a clashing setting to also stand out against other distractions that may be around the billboard. 

The final technique I used was a call to action. My call to action is to the bottom right, which will seem small on this photo however on a billboard it will be very visible to the viewer. This means that the audience have somewhere to look for the drink after they see the advertisement (via my weblink) and they also have a memory of the logo to recall whenever they are thirsty or see the drink in stores. This will raise the sales margin.