Lynx ad

Lynx Attract - Unleash Your Animal Magnetism (BTEC Advert) from Lucas Warren on Vimeo.

Advert Ideas Brainstorm!

Audience Information (Task 6)

Analysing Adverts (Task 3)

Sources of Information in Advertising (Task 7)

Sources of information in advertising final from Lucasjwarren

Methods of Research (Task 5)

Methods of Research

There are three different types of research that is usually conducted before making an advert: audience research, market research and production research

Audience research

Launching any product requires a full understanding of the target audience before launch to ensure it is placed on the right platform and reflects the attitudes, the demographics, geodemographics and behavior of the target audience. Once a product is launched audience research continues to be vital to determine the success and or failure of the product and the behavior of the audience so the producer can adapt the product to be as successful as possible.

Market research

Advertisers/Companies/Brands selling to the market or public have always undertaken a lot of market research to ensure their products were targeted correctly and reaching their intended user. But also to see what other products their target audiences are using, and to try and understand why they are buying the other products. Ipsos MORI is a market research organization in the UK, which conducts surveys for a wide range of major organizations as well as other market research agencies. The company specializes in mass media, brand loyalty, marketing and advertising research. The organization maintains a freely available archive of opinion polls and public attitude research from 1970 onwards.

Production research

Production research in the advertising is untaken to work out the cost, logistics and practicalities of an overall campaign and the specifically of an advert. If a very complex idea has been conceived it is vital to cost how it would be implemented, how an idea could be realised – live action/animation/location filming etc. For example the producer the Bravia Bunny advert would have undertaken a period of research and development to assess how to create the composited image of the city with the animated bunnies – this was very ambitious and creative and they would have undertaken trails and testing of the techniques to ensure they could deliver advert creatively and on budget.

Four Main Categories:

There are four main categories of research secondary, primary, quantitative and qualitative.

Secondary research involves collecting data which already exists such as from books, journals, reference-based books, newspaper, film archives, photo libraries and the worldwide web. In a market research context, secondary research is taken to include the re-use by a second party of any data collected by a first party or parties, or sometimes secondary research is required in the preliminary stages of research to determine what is known already and what new data is required, or to inform research design. The benefit of using this kind of research is that it is easy to find and requires very little work collate and gather, however it is not always as reliable as other types of research, as the research has been done by another and therefore might not be as relevant.

For example, if an advertiser was looking to create a new advert and campaign for a new make up product, they may look at articles published in female skewing fashion magazines that have reviewed make up products. This may give a useful sight into the market and is relatively cheap to undertake but is not necessarily an accurate reflection of broader opinion or trends.

Primary research mainly involves the collection of data first hand for example, materials such as interviews, observations, questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, audience panels and participation in internet forums. Usually you would use primary research in academic research, market research and competitive intelligence. For example, an advertiser might create an advert for a product aimed at the over 50’s and before this is broadcast/completed they may undertake a focus growth – gathering a sample of people of this age range and they monitor and record their responses to the pilot advert in detail – this can then be fed back and any changes made to ensure the message of the advert is delivered as effectively as possible. The benefit of primary research is that it is very accurate and trustworthy, as it is usually conducted by the company its self, however it can be very time consuming in the long run and requires more participants e.g. volunteers for a focus group or participants for a survey.

For example if an advertiser wanted to know what people think of their product or what people think the company should do next with a product, they will give people a survey with questions about their company and the products that they use, to gain a better understanding of their target audience and the general public’s opinions on the product or company.

Qualitative research/data is a non-numerical data, which is often in the form of diary accounts, open ended questionnaires or interviews, qualitative data is typically descriptive data. Examples of research include: film reviews, fanzine websites, attitudes to media products, responses to news coverage etc. The positive aspects of using this type of data is that it allows you to understand a persons opinions/views on an advert in this case, however this kind of research can also be time consuming and not all of the responses are helpful for improving or adjusting the an advert.

For example if an advertiser wanted to know what people think of their product, they can read a review online, or an article, this allows them to gain a detailed understanding their audience.

Quantitative research/data is numerical data, which means it can be counted, collected and presented as a statistic. This data is often collected in experiments, questionnaires or graphs to give a clear representation of the data.

Examples of Quantitative research include: program ratings, readership, circulation figures, hits on websites, box office figures and sales of CD/DVDs’. The benefit of this type of research is that it can be easily collated and counted to create clear figures and statistics, however this kind of data does not always provide specific details on a topic like qualitative research.

For example if an advertiser needs to do research on the amount of people who watched an advert, they will use quantitative data from a survey or statistics from barb, to gain the necessary information.

Analysing The Styles of Adverts (Task 2)