Advertising the ASA

Introduction

In this blog post, I will expand on our group work ideas on how to advertise for the ASA. I am going to lightly analyse and reflect on two existing ASA advertisements by answering three questions. The questions are;

• What do they tell us about the work of the ASA?
• How effective are they?
• Could they be more effective in reaching young people?

Looking at existing adverts

"Their purpose is to inform us about the role of the ASA, the audience is the general public and the language and style are simple, clear and direct"

What do they tell us about the work of the ASA?

Reflecting on the analysis of the ASA advert, the message that the advert is portraying is that they are the "behind the scenes" police or authority of advertisements. So by creating a basic advert which does not get misjudged for a advert promoting a product or service, this advert informs the public that they are here to help sort out any issues simply and easily.

The advert does not have great graphics and colours as it is made to just help reassure the public that somebody is hear to help with issues, it does not need to grab the attention of consumers as its main remit is not to make a profit, but to help get justice.

How effective are they?

I personally feel that the advert is very effective in the simple message that it is trying to portray, but it needs more information on the company as people may not be familiar with the company and pay blind attention to it. Also if it had more use of colours, it may entice people to read the advert.

Could they be more effective in reaching young people?

Our idea for creating a alternative advert for the ASA contains the purpose on informing the public of the ASA, but our main intended audience is young people, so we need to consider styles, language, place, position, design, etc.

Our TV advert idea for the ASA is mainly having a celebrity to endorse the company. This celebrity needs to be well-known and recognised by the target audience, but must have a good reputation to help uphold the values of the company.

An example of a celebrity would be a good character from Hollyoaks (as it is a teenage soap) or a reputable presenter e.g. Dermot from X-factor or Barney from Blue Peter. Another good celebrity to use may be Adam Deacon, as he is known as the "voice of the youth", but he may cause criticisms due to his entertainment history.

The celebrity would provide the information by directly talking to the audience in a "slang/informal" method to help relate to the audience as well as create a comedic theme to the audience for engagement.

The colours that are to be used are street/urban colours like browns, red, blue, greens but the logo and information scattered in the advert are to be of the corporate red colour to help represent the company. The font that this information will be shown will be in graffiti writing, but it will be basic/clear graffiti as it may create struggle to read it.

The advert will also include contact details of the company as well as the use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to help use the same medium of communication for the youth generation.

Bibliography

http://ec2-50-19-110-145.compute-1.amazonaws.com/read/thelady/29-june-2012-31774/81/3/ (04/12/2012)