'The Sculptor' Analysis

Q.1 What is the MARKETING OBJECTIVE behind this TVC?

Remember, all Marketing Communication emanates from a Marketing objective/strategy/plan. Marketing communication is supposed to solve a larger business/marketing problem or exploit a market opportunity.

The commercial focuses on a car from the 1950s that gets ‘re-designed’, with the help of an elephant that is made to sit on its bonnet, and turned into a Peugeot 206 look-alike by a young man who dreams of owning one and impressing the girls.  Interestingly, the car that is smashed in the commercial is called the Hindustan Ambassador Classic, which was manufactured by Hindustan Motors, India. This gives out a message that Peugeot 206 has an overwhelming beauty which could even make an Indian guy to destroy a car from his own country’s manufacturer-clever use of cultural context is notable here. With the Indian guy’s satisfied face, the funky music changes a mood to be more exciting, and the commercial ends with the guy in Peugeot 206’s replica giving a cheesy look to the girl outside, as if he gained a confidence as well with his newly reformed car.

The marketing objective behind the commercial could therefore be showcasing Peugeot as superior to and better than that of other existing car companies in India.

Q.2 Using the Hierarchy of Effects Model, describe the COMMUNICATION OBJECTIVE behind this TVC. Please explain the reasons for your answer.

Among advertising theories, the hierarchy-of-effects model is predominant. It shows clear steps of how advertising works. 

Any ad campaign would first try to accomplish the lower level objectives such as awareness, knowledge or comprehension. Subsequently, the campaign would aim towards achieving other objectives such as associating feelings with the brand, trial, or regular use etc. Similarly, the above advertisement of Peugeot 206 first tries to aim at creating awareness and knowledge among the target audience about their new car mainly because when the commercial was released, hardly any one in India would have known that a car company named Peugeot existed in the first place. Also, since the commercial clearly shows that the car was better than the existing cars in India at that time and was something that any Indian would aspire to have, they further tried to achieve the objective of developing liking and preference towards their own product and brand.

Q.3 What is the message/proposition this advertisement is trying to send to the target audience?

The commercial is set in a busy Indian market and focuses on a car from the 1950s that gets ‘re-designed’, with the help of an elephant that is made to sit on its bonnet, and turned into a 206 look-alike by a young man who dreams of owning one and impressing the girls.

Interestingly, the car that is smashed in the commercial was the Hindustan Ambassador Classic, an automobile manufactured by Hindustan Motors, India. This gives out a message that Peugeot 206 had an overwhelming beauty which could make an Indian to even destroy a car manufactured in his or her own country-clever use of cultural context is notable here. They probably wanted to show that the Peugeot 206 was so irresistible and desirable, that one could do anything just to own that car. Another proposition could be that the Peugeot 206 was accessible. With the Indian guy’s satisfied face and a change in music, the commercial ends with the guy in Peugeot 206’s replica giving a cheesy look to the girl outside, as if he gained a confidence and has not just reformed the car but also himself to an extent. Like the car, he became desirable too!

Q.4 What is the CREATIVE IDEA in this TVC?

This classic advertisement for Peugeot that was shot in India, received a wide acclaim in the European market. The 206 ad called 'Sculptor' became extremely popular mainly because of its creative idea. The whole concept behind it was so original and an alternative approach to car advertising. Instead of showing beautiful scenery and driving shots, the commercial focuses on a car from the 1950s that gets ‘re-designed’, with a little bit of smashing here and there and with that of an elephant that is made to sit on its bonnet to change the shape of the existing car. The Ambassador is turned into a 206 look-alike by a young man who dreams of owning one and impressing the girls. The commercial is extremely appealing because it creates a certain kind of excitement in the minds and hearts of the audience in the beginning itself by making them wonder why the young guy was doing what he was doing. It was later when he held a paper-ad with a picture of the Peugeot 206, comparing it to the reformed car that he has been working on all night, implying to the fact that he did all that only in order to fulfill his desire and aspiration of owning a 206.

Q.5 In not more than 4 words describe the personality of the Peugeot brand. The personality must match the TVC.

Confident, Desirable, Daring, Best among the Rest

Q.6 In about 150 words, discuss the role of humor in Advertising.

Many of the most memorable ad campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. Advertisers have long used humor as a powerful tool for engaging potential customers. Humor is one of the most effective ways to elicit an emotional response from consumers, which in turn spurs positive purchasing decisions. 

The roles of humor in a marketing campaign are many: -

·      1. Humor triggers the memory.

·     2.Humor in advertising produces experiences that leave a lasting impression and go far deeper than     facts figures or features.

·      3.The audiences remember you and your brand.

·      4.Humor in advertising tends to improve brand recognition.

·      5.Everyone, regardless of age, sex, caste, creed, like to be entertained and using humor in advertising    is the best way to do that.

·      6.In the age of social media, using humor is a highly effective tactic. With the use of clever wordplay    and a well structured story that’s funny at the same time, a brand can definitely build their customer  base because humorous ad campaigns are liked by one and all and tends to get shared more and more  on social platforms.

·      

     Though the benefits of successful comedic marketing campaign are many, there are risks as well. It is rightly said, “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” Humor in advertisement sure does good to the brand but it does not improve product recall, message credibility, or buying intentions.

Levi's 501 'Drugstore' Tv Commercial Analysis

Q.1 Describe the objective behind the TVC 'Using the Hierarchy of Effects Model'. Please explain the reasons for your answer.

Among advertising theories, the hierarchy-of-effects model is predominant. It shows clear steps of how advertising works. Hierarchy of effects can be explained with the help of a pyramid.

Any ad campaign would first try to accomplish the lower level objectives such as awareness, knowledge or comprehension. Subsequently, the campaign would aim towards achieving other objectives such as associating feelings with the brand, trial, or regular use etc.

However, the Levi’s 501 ‘Drugstore’ Ad Campaign (1995) focuses mainly on developing a liking and preference towards the brand and its product, which would convince the target audience and further lead to purchase. The campaign does not aim towards achieving the objective of creating awareness and knowledge because by the time the ad for Levi’s 501 was released, the target audience was already aware of the brand and had knowledge of the product that the brand dealt in.

If the consumer already knows the product, it becomes important for the brand to make them feel good about it so that they not just like the product but also prefer it to others. And promoting quality, performance and other features in brand advertisements definitely does this.

The ‘Drugstore’ TV commercial brilliantly showcased that the Levi’s 501 Jeans was for the young and rebellious men out there and conveyed a very strong message that anyone who would wear those jeans would become more desirable and look sexually attractive implying to the fact that the product would make the consumers feel more confident about themselves which probably no other brand offered.

I’m sure, after seeing the TVC, every young boy at that time would’ve loved to be the guy shown in the commercial and this proposition helped Levi’s to create linking and preference among the youth during that time and also convinced them that this is why their jeans is better than that of any other brand. 

Q.2 What is the message/proposition this advertisement is trying to send to the target audience?

Levi’s 501 jeans were advertised as rebellious, confident, dangerous and desirable in Michel Gondry’s “Drugstore” TV commercial. With absolutely no dialogues, black and white shots, really interesting music and great visuals, the advertisement spoke to the consumers in ways no other commercial at that time did.

The ‘Drugstore’ TV commercial brilliantly showcased that the Levi’s 501 Jeans was for the young, reckless, carefree, upbeat and rebellious men out there and conveyed a very strong message that anyone who would wear those jeans would become more desirable and hard to resist implying to the fact that wearing those jeans would make the consumers feel carefree and more confident about themselves which probably no other brand offered.

Q.3 This ad delivers a message through story telling. Why is story-telling an important aspect of successful advertising?

The ‘Drugstore’, Michel Gondry’s stylish 1995 TV commercial, is a pretty amazing piece of film, which over the years gained a lot of acclaim and recognition mainly because of its well-crafted and crisp storyline that the audiences could definitely connect to. The commercial has a young man who surprises the owner of a drug store, when he arrives to pick up the man’s teenage daughter, having bought a pack of latex condoms from him earlier in the day. With absolutely no dialogues, black and white shots, really interesting music and great visuals, the advertisement spoke to the consumers in ways no other commercial at that time did only because it delivered a message through its story.

One of the most important aspects of advertising is that the audiences expect a brand to do much more than simply tell them why they should buy their product. Its more important for a brand that they do everything they can to forge an emotional connection with potential customers, and the best way to do this is through effective storytelling in their advertisements. Hence, good advertising is good storytelling.

If you look at successful advertisements, almost all of them have one thing in common: they contain well-crafted stories that make people feel something. The tone could be humorous, sad, uplifting or eye opening, but it almost certainly contains a clear story structure. The main reasons why storytelling is an important part of successful advertising are as follows:-

1.     Stories produce experiences that leave a lasting impression and go far deeper than facts figures or features. And by creating a story-based experience, you cause your audience to walk away with an impression of your brand that not only rests in their minds but also in their hearts.

2.     Stories help a brand to create a specific identity by revealing what message the brand actually wants to convey and how is it unique.

3.     Stories are the emotional glue that connects a brand to its consumers. Sure, the point of a commercial is to sell something, but people don’t like being given sales pitches. Commercials crafted in the style of a story allow people to read between the lines and pick up the message themselves without having it hammered into them by repeated sales pitches. This is much more effective, as it feels like the viewer is sharing an experience with your brand, rather than being pushed into buying something by a sales person.

4.     Stories shape information into meaning. ‘’Show, don’t just tell.” This is one of the biggest rules of advertising. You can tell people how great your brand and products are as much as you want, but it’s always going to be more effective to show the benefits of your brand and what it does for people. This ties in with the greater subtlety that comes with storytelling in advertisements. For instance, in the above commercial, there are no dialogues, the commercial still speaks to its consumers in a number of ways and conveys a strong message only through effective storytelling and great visuals.

Q.4 Describe the personality of the Levi’s brand based on this TVC in not more than 4 words.

A change of Levi’s brand image was seen during the 1950s and 1960s when the brand added contemporary elements like the watch pocket to the designs of its jeans. With this, Levi’s introduced its first ever shrink-to-fit 501 jeans that had a modern look and feel but did not compromise on its signature classic brand personality. This change in Levi’s brand image has established a strong emotional connection within the younger consumers during that time, thus allowing the brand to enjoy strong brand popularity among young and hip subcultures which include the greasers, mods, rockers, hippies and more.

Therefore, based on the ‘Drugstore’ TVC Levis’ Brand Personality could be: -

Classy and quality-driven yet modern and carefree.

Young, confident and rebellious.

Deadpool - Editing Assignment

Ryan Reynolds starring newest edition of the Marvel’s X-Men universe, Deadpool boomed the box office last week stunning the viewers with incredible sound and cinematic editing along with powerful visual effects. It didn’t fail to impress the superhero sublime in the classic blockbuster portrayal.

So what does make the anti-hero movie so likable? Other than of course the sarcastic wit of the character that captures the mass attention, the editing of the film helped it stand out amongst typical super hero blockbusters.

The role of movie editing plays a ginormous role especially in superhero flicks or in this case ‘antihero’. The stunts and visual effects are needed to stun the audiences all over. Same for ‘Deadpool’, Julian Clarke did master editing to visually aid the blockbuster hit especially with the flashback and rewind techniques fine-tuning the footage.

The editing in Deadpool was more than important because of the gratuitous and vulgar scenes, making it ‘watchable’ for the mass. Julian Clarke used Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects to edit Deadpool. The paradox of editing this particular film was taking the decision of what to flush out and what to keep for the audience ease of viewing.

The movie didn’t work with a linear narrative and was more fragmented than whole so it matched the cynical, witty tone of the movie. The editing captured the various moods and emotions of the film, especially the dramatic torture scenes and the doomed cancer scene. The movie mostly had comical themes with visually tensed fight scenes. There were various break shots, rewind and slow-motion shots to tell Wade Wilson’s tragic story into Deadpool which had an underlying sadness to it. The camera shots mainly used were wide angle and long shots capturing the destruction scenes. The emotional scenes with Wade Wilson were shot by close up shots. The color scheme of the movie was mainly muted so as Deadpool’s bright red costume stands out. 

The pace of the movie is pretty fast with the soundtrack being upbeat such as ‘Salt-n-Pepa’ and ‘Wham!’ which is adding to the goofiness of the movie theme. The movie used a lot of Fade and Dissolve shots and especially Low Angle and Mid shots for the fight scenes.

The layering and the effects such as the building destruction, the firefight scene, the mutant energy scenes were created on Adobe After Effects. There were pretty advanced techniques used catering handheld camera shakes and rendering on After Effects.

There editing techniques used such as cutting frames for collisions and fight scenes to create the exaggerated effects and to amp the speed up along with the pace of the film, Digital snap zoom was used to draw the audience attention and especially 22FPS shots were filmed.

All in all Deadpool gave a visually appealing experience with master editing techniques and skills.

Because Design Matters...

           

   

Visual Culture is what you call the holistic representation of our world in terms of visual displays.  Visual Culture is synonymous to how humans represent themselves visually.  Visual culture is as different as we are different. 

Visual culture is subconscious stimulation and how we unknowingly practice it in our daily lives.  It is a way of life; it is the about how we tie our shoelaces, what we eat, what we drink, what we do, what we wear, it is our lifestyle. This causes us to look, feel and act in a peculiar manner. 

Through experience and experimentation, we have increased our understanding of the visual world and how we are influenced by it. The concept of design is a specific relation between vision and understanding. A single picture is worth a thousand words. Our everyday experiences have become way more visual than ever. Our brain processes visuals faster. Design consists of objects of the everyday experience such as television, billboards, magazines, music videos and fashion that present ideas and stories that shape people’s lives.

Also, movies overtime have been a constant influence to men and women alike since the black and white era. For instance, if I talk about movies such as Umrao Jaan and Mughal-e-azam and the grandeur of those movies, everything from the sets, makeup, costumes etc. is designed in a certain way in order to create a huge impact on the minds of the audiences. Everything that is visual has a design to it, whether done deliberately or unconsciously. It is about more than just appearance. It can change people’s lives. It’s rooted in our everyday lives to help people live safely, efficiently and comfortably. Design has slipped into our subconscious in such a level, that we instantly interpret and recognize the signs and symbols on the roads. So unknowingly or knowingly design has become a daily part of their lives and is inevitable now. If someone looks at a product as a good design or enters a beautifully designed space, they simultaneously develop a feeling toward it and soon make a deeper connection with it subconsciously. 

A good design is able to make a close connection with the users and exerts an influence on their lives.  People get used to one design for example if one thinks of Mc’Donalds, the colors - red, yellow and white, instantly come to their mind, in not more than a fraction of a second. If suddenly Mc’Donalds thinks of changing their logo or their color scheme, it would really affect the brand in a negative way as people would feel cheated on. Design, thus, greatly influences our lives in more ways than most of us realize. 

FAM BAM! - 5 Family Friendly Summer Destinations

Summer is supposed to be the most engaging time of the year, considering the fact that it consists of more holidays.Where does one plan to go at a time like this especially when it comes to traveling with your family? Traveling with kids isn’t all Disney trips and gated beach resorts. After experiencing the place, its surroundings, engaging hot spots and varying feedbacks I came across the following countries to consider when planning a decent trip with your loved ones. These five summer destinations offer plenty of things to see and do for both parents and kids, including hikes and safaris.

Singapore

Long dismissed as a mere stopover, Singapore has reinvented itself as one of the world's hotlist destinations and is one of the safest and cleanest place to park yourselves into. From manmade beaches to bird parks, night safaris, laser shows, street markets, warner bros studios and the bustling night life, it is the ideal place to be. The people are extremely routined, disciplined, friendly and are very protective of their land. If you're looking for a particular genre in food, worry no more because Singapore has a good amount of pan asian cuisine and more. 

Thailand

Tackling an Asian supercity with jet-lagged kids doesn’t sound like a vacation—but Thailand is an exception. The beautiful kingdom of Thailand has one of the most scenic destinations to visit, my personal favorite being Phuket and Samuii. Not very ideal for toddlers but a great place to detox, to shop until you drop and to try out their glorious massages by the beach, after a very stressful life back home. Thai people are sweet and helpful and will reach out to your needs and make you feel as welcomed as possible. If you have a grown up family, taking a trip to Phuket will be the most satisfying time of your life.

Orlando, Florida 

Known for a thrilling itinerary of roller coasters, beaches, resorts, sea world, disneyland, Universal’s Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios, Orlando is one of the most frequented place by families because of its almost never ending beauties.

San Diego, California

Beaches, fierce beasts and some serious splashes are just some of the sizzling hot family attractions in San Diego - it is the home of the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld and Legoland. Holiday in this magnificent place is always a hot commodity. 

Saint kitts, Caribbean 

This pristine island of heaven is one of the most sought after family escape. Sunbathe and swim on long stretches of stunning beaches, tour lava formations and tropical forests, massive Brimstone Hill Fortress or ride the Sugar Express. This will grow on you and you will definitely want a re visit soon.