Task 1 Radio Report

Radio Advert Report

In this radio advert i will analysing two radio adverts from my perspective, but i will also be include some facts which i read on the internet.

Snickers Advert with MR T

Commercial radios are radios that aren’t public. An example of a public radio station is The BBC. Commercial radios make their profit mostly from playing commercials on their airwaves. Of all the output of a commercial radio, 20% of it is dedicated to commercials. A typical commercial hour is 48 minutes, as the remaining 12 minutes are dedicated to adverts, with each advert generally being 30 or 60 seconds long. Commercials generally serve two purposes: to earn money for the radio station and to promote the sales of the product.   This advert uses a mixture of different tactics regularly used in advertising. The most noticeable tactic used in this advert is called “Celebrity Endorsement”. Celebrity Endorsement is where celebrity, in this case Mr. T, endorses or promotes a product. This is a very clever and easy to use tactic as even if your advert is terrible, it will still be successful to a certain extent because of the celebrity. The other tactic used in this advert is the very obvious tactic of humour. Humour is effective because when the consumer is in the shop looking at a snickers bar, they will think of the humour used in the advert instead. The downside to this is that there is little information given about the product. This however is not a problem because the snickers brand is a well-known brand.

The advert starts out with some SFX re-enacting a phone call between two people. This beginning captures the attention of the audience because it’s not something you would expect to hear on the radio. Instead of music, or talking you hear a ringing tone. The two people are then engaged in a fairly monotone conversation. The reason the conversation is fairly boring is so the next bit jumps out at the audience even more. In the following section it is then revealed that one of the men is Mr. T. This is a clever way of introducing the “celebrity”, regardless of whether you love or hate Mr. T, the audience will be surprised to hear this boring conversation turn into this strange rant from him. The reason Mr. T is used is because of the brand that he carries. The roles that Mr. T is most commonly known as are; his role in The A-Team and Rocky. In these roles, Mr. T plays the same type of character, the same type of character that is also voiced in this advert.  Mr. T only then talks about the product once and is only one of two instances that the actual word “Snickers” is spoken. The Snickers tag line is then spoken “Get Some Nuts”. This slogan has been around since 2006 and as such is associated with the Snickers brand. At the end of the advertisement a man then tells the audience to go to the Snickers website for more “man” stuff. This is a regular occurrence of radio adverts to try and cram a large amount of information into the end of the advert.

The Snickers advert tries to appeal to the audience of men. This is shown through their constant reiteration of being “manly” through the advert. An instance of this occurring is when Mr. T tells the caller that he needs to “use the fact he’s a man” to sort out how to assemble his kitchen. Whilst this is a good idea, it alienates an entire market, women.

The next advert I’m reviewing is a 2010 advert for Subway.

The advert consists of no sound effects, low background music and just one VO.

The advert starts with an interesting voice asking the audience “Are you hungry?” If Subway were to play this commercial at the peak of rush hour around dinner time or around noon the advert would affect a larger amount of people as this is around the time that people look to find food. The advert then proceeds to use the humour tactic, continuing with a rhetorical question, this time a little more ridiculous. This displays Subways as a fun brand and also grabs the audience’s attention again. The VO on the commercial then becomes a little more energetic and adds some more weight to the voice. This will make the audience pay even closer attention, as they will want to see what the male voice-over is sounding so passionate about. The advert then brings in some music and the VO then talks about some of the products that Subway offer as well as using some loaded language. Loaded language is language that, when used, has connotations that we then automatically associate with the product. For example in this advert the VO mentions “scrumptious toasties”. The connotations of the word “scrumptious” generally mean that the food is beyond appetising, that it is truly delicious. Subway is trying to get us to believe that its food is really worth buying. After the VO reels off a list of products that Subway is offering, it then states that they are “from 89 pence”. This is clever marketing from Subway as the average listener will only pick up on, or remember 89 pence, so when they think where to eat, they think that the items listed on the advert are all 89 pence. At the time of releasing this commercial, only the toasties were 89 pence, the rest of the items were 10 pence or more higher. In reality, the rest of the snacks could have been £20 and Subway would still have been telling the truth. This tactic from Subway is called “bait and switch”. The VO then tries to inject some more humour into the advert before finally stating the name of the company and their slogan “Eat Fresh”.

Although the humour tactic doesn’t offer much space for information, I feel as though the advert did what it was supposed to do, promote Subway’s snack range. It also told me the price range that the snacks start from and where to get them. The “bait and switch” tactic was used effectively as the audience will presume that all the snacks are around 89 pence. Another side effect of saying “89 pence” and taking off the extra penny is that the audience don’t realise it is closer to 80 pence than 90. The advert also doesn’t tell me what sort of establishment Subway is, however it doesn’t need to, as Subway is an established brand.