Know about the structures and techniques of television advertising.

In advertising, there are two main types of adverts, commercial and campaigning. In this document I will talk about both.

Commercial:

Commercial adverts are the more popular of the two types of advertisements, as they are (on almost all television channels) played every 15-20 minutes of a television programmes schedule.

They are the adverts which advertise products they are selling (for example, Lynx deodorant, Cadbury's confectionary and Samsung mobile phones).

They are used to try and persuade the viewer into buying the products, and for some products, are shown at specific times of the day, or on specific channels (for example, children's toy adverts dominate children's television channels before 6pm during commercial breaks, but are also shown on most channels, especially close to the Christmas period).

This embedded youtube.com video is a commercial advert for the Xbox 360 games console, it persuades the viewer into buying an Xbox console.

Summary for the video example:

Humorous - because it is seen as a silly video, the fact that there are hundreds of people running around a building pretending to shot each other can be seen as childish and silly, thus making it funny and comical.
Realist - It is not made-up, nor does it have any special effects in the video, thus making real, also anyone can pretend to shoot a gun with their fingers.
Splash Shot - It has a splash shot (which is the inclusion of the brand name in the video) of the Xbox logo at the end of the video.
Music - There is music (which i can only describe as 50s classical) playing in  the background.


Campaign:

A campaign advert is the second type of adverts, it deals with giving out information to the public in return for a donation or a public vote etc...

Many campaign adverts are from charities like WWF, NSPCC, RSPCA, BUPA, Oxfam etc...

The campaign adverts are used to deliver information on what they are advertising to the public, for example, NSPCC may show an advert about child cruelty and give you statistics and facts to back up their cause like, for a pretend example, 3% of children in England are beaten.

The trick campaign advertisers use is to achieve an emotional approach to the advert as well as giving a fear technique to the advert, this is give the audience a realistic impression on how bad the campaign adverts point is.

The campaign adverts will also have a solution to a problem technique in the advert, some will tell you how to contribute by giving a telephone or text number or a website URL.

Other campaign adverts are adverts from political parties (UK's Labour, Conservative and Liberal - Democratic party) or government (HMRC (Her Majesties Revenue and Custom)).

Above is an embedded example of a campaign advert by The Salvation Army (UK) during Christmas 2011.

Summary for the video example:
Solution to the Problem - The video's problem is how to deal with troubled people during Christmas, it gives a solution to the problem by including a phone number and text number.
Facts and Figures - The video starts with introductions, explaining who the people are and why they are being filmed, these are quite possible to be facts, this can be increase emotion factor and make people understand more.
Realist - The video is as real as it gets, there are people outside who are like those in the film, no special effects are placed in the video and the video does not have any fantastical props or costumes thus making this video realist, realism makes the video more powerful in it's message, if you had sci-fi version of this advert, it wouldn't make sense, the realism increases the emotional side of the video.
Statistics - The video talks about how the money you donate will be spent.
VOG (Voice of God) - The video's only speech is made by a narrator, seeing as though we can't see the person who is talking, then he is a VOG. The video has a narrator so it can show more scenes of problems and what The Salvation Army does, so you can watch the problems and solutions whilst listening to the narrator at the same time.
Music - If you listen you can hear a brass band playing in the background of the video, quite possibly played by The Salvation Army themselves, because the musics by The Salvation Army, it makes the realism more real and the emotions more emotional.
Compassion - Compassion means the virtue of empathy for the suffering of others, in this video it shows the suffering of others, giving the viewer an impression of compassion.
Splash Shot - The video (just like the Xbox commercial) ends with a splash shot of the The Salvation Army logo, the logo is introduced in the splash shot to signify the end of the video and the realism of video (because it's their own logo, no one else's).

Both of these adverts both have certain features that are shared, for example they are both realist, the commercial advert has the actors/actresses pretending while the Salvation Army video is real all together.
Both of the video have music in the background, the Xbox commercial has a classical sounding music background where as the campaign advert has a brass band playing in the background.
Both videos also finish with the brand name (Xbox and The Salvation Army), this is known as a splash shot.
However, the campaign video has more features, including a VOG (Voice of God - narrator), statistics are shown throughout the video as well as being mentioned along with facts and figures and the campaign video also has an emotional feature, the video gives off a compassionate emotion to the audience.