Research

Age

Before I start top produce my product, I will need to carry out research
into various aspects of marketing and demographics. This is to ensure that
I develop a video advertisement that is aimed to a suitable target
audience and try to interest certain people to buy the product that I am
advertising.
Trying to market my advert towards a certain age group will be important
as the product that I will be advertising is targeted towards a specific age
range as well.
As I will be basing my video advertisement around a brand of new
trainers, I could choose most if not all age ranges to target my advert
towards. However, it would be quite difficult to create an advert that
appeals to people of all ages. Taking this into consideration, I have
decided that my advert should be targeted towards people in the age
range of 15-21 year olds. I have chosen this specific
age range because I feel that I can target my advert
better to people similar to my own age as I already
have some idea of how to grab the attention and
interest of people in this age range.

Gender

As well as age, gender is also a key aspect to research and focus on when
producing a video advert of any type. Generally, a brand of trainers is
marketed towards either boys or girls, and are not normally aimed at both.
This could be because it is difficult to design a shoe/ trainer that visually
appeals to men and women. With that being said, it is just as difficult to
produce a video advertisement that interests both men and women.
Taking this into consideration, I feel that I and the video advertisement I
will produce will benefit greatly to purely aim my advertisement towards a
single gender. This is because I feel that I could focus on a single theme
for my advert that would appeal greatly and have a greater effect on a
single gendered audience. This is the reason I have chosen to aim my
video advert to males only; aged 15- 21.

Socio-economic grouping

The term socio- economic grouping refers to where in

society a person stands in relation to financial income
and type of employment or education.
In relation to making a video advertisement, I will need
to keep in mind the socio- economic grouping of my
target audience.
As the target audience for my advertisement will be males
between the age of 15 and 21, the majority of people that fall in this
category are either in education or training in employment. This means
that the financial income of these people will be fairly low as people in this
age range will be on or close to minimum wage which is currently set at
5.30 per hour for 18- 20 year olds. This means that my target audience
will not earn as much on average when compared to people over the age
of 25, for example.

Lifestyle

The lifestyle of my target audience will mostly be the same or similar in

terms of day-to-day life. The majority of my target audience will be
students at either college or university. Students at this age tend to do a
substantial amount of walking and movement to travel to different places.
This point will be particularly important for the whole design of the trainer
that I choose to advertise.
The trainer that I will advertise will obviously have to suit
the lifestyle of the customer. This being said, the trainer
will have to provide comfort to the consumer and be able
to support impact with heavy weight. As well as being
practical, the trainer must also be visually appealing to
the target audience to keep with fashion trends and
ultimately persuade the customer to purchase the product being
advertised.

Newspapers/ magazines

As a form of advertising a media product such as a brand of new trainers, I

do not think that newspapers would be the most effective method of
promoting a product, to my target audience of males aged 15- 21

especially. This is because newspapers are not a very popular media

platform with male students and apprentices. This decrease in sales of
newspapers to younger people could be down to the expanding
technology industry. Also, the widespread use of smartphones allows
users to access the internet almost anywhere.
Advertising techniques are also drastically limited when compared to a
video advertisement. This is because, there is limited space to advertise
products in newspapers and this can sometimes mean that the advert
does not have a strong impact on the audience. It can also be difficult to
grab the readers interest on an advert in newspapers.
In contrast to this, advertising a new brand of trainers in a magazine could
be effective if the advertisement is placed in a
relevant magazine that is aimed at the same target
audience as my media product. This is because
people who will buy the magazine will be people
within my target audience, therefore it will grab the
readers attention more easily than if the advert is
placed in a newspaper which generally older people
aged 30 and above read.

Internet

I think that the internet will be one of the most effective method of
advertising my media product. This is because out of people in my target
audience and age range, almost everyone are frequent internet users,
with 99% of 16-21 year olds using the internet at least 7 times a day.
As my advert is also only targeting males, over 88% of men in the UK
(over 22 million) in the year of 2015 were frequent internet users. Since
2011, this figure has increased by over 6% and is still an ever increasing
statistic.

Research into competitors

Before I begin to design my product and the video advertisement It is

important to research about current competitors in the market when
launching a new product. This is so that I can look at what companies
have already produced and what isnt available on the market yet. This
will give me the best chance to develop a product and advert that is the
most original and unique.

Researching competitors and other media products also helps me to

recognise what I cannot include in my own advertisement, so that I do not
infringe any copyright protection laws by creating a product that looks
similar or identical to a product that is already available to the public.
From looking at different companies that offer similar products to what I
will be advertising, I saw that most big sport affiliated
companies such as Adidas and Nike will launch a new
brand of trainer/ product with a super-imposed image of
the product alongside what is usually a slogan or a short
sentence to motivate customers to purchase their
product.
As seen in this image, sports-wear distributor Adidas began their
advertising campaign for a new brand of trainers aimed at
women with a close-up image of the trainers in action and the slogan
underneath that reads Control The Ground.
Similarly, Adidass rival competitor and global sports manufacturer Nike
recently released their advert for a new and improved pair of Jordans.
With Jordan being a Nike owned company,
the campaign sees a similar layout to the
previous advertisement mentioned by
Adidas.
The Nike advert includes a close- up image
of the new trainers, with the words Elite
Speed next to the graphic.
Research into market

As I am creating a video advertisement for a new brand of trainers, the

market I will need to conduct research into will be the sports footwear
industry. I will also aim to look at what consumers want most from a new
brand of trainers by carrying out primary research, whether it will be
comfort or fashion, this will help me have an upper-hand on competitors
by finding out what attracts the most customers to buy a new pair of
trainers.
Audience figures

BARB
BARB, or the British Audience Research Board, is owned by the BBC,
ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. BARB conducts and publishes research into
television viewing figures. Developers of television programmes can then
look at how many people are viewing their show and see how well it is

doing. BARB can even communicate to programme developers what

audiences thought was good about the show and what exactly they
thought wasnt of interest to them. This can help
programme makers to edit their shows to what the audience
want to see and cut out what they dont like. BARB uses a
range of different categories to define different peoples
viewing habits. Categories range from C2DE Men which
refers to the 3 lower social and economic groups in society (skilled
working class, working class and those at lowest level of subsistence) that
are male and their television viewing behaviour, to ABC1 Women which
is the terminology used to label the women at the top 3 segments of the
social pyramid (upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class).

RAJAR
Similar to BARB, RAJAR is responsible for handling radio facts and
statistics involving audiences and listeners for radio stations. RAJAR, which
stands for Radio Joint Audience Research, releases its
radio figures in quarters annually. It can also help radio
producers to develop their station further by altering it to
what the public want to hear the most.

ELSPA

The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),

was founded in 1989 to establish a specific and collective identity for the
British computer and video game industry.
Between 1994 and Spring 2003, ELSPA voluntarily rated computer games
released in Britain.

CAA

The CAA (also known as The Cinema Advertising Association) is

responsible for promoting, monitoring and maintaining standards of
advertising in cinemas across the United Kingdom. The organisation also
provides general market statistics of cinema information. This includes
admission figures, screen numbers and even an annual survey that is
conducted to provide an insight into cinema viewing and films as well as
public viewing of cinema advertising.

The association are also responsible for providing clearance to

commercials that are exhibited in cinemas. Advertisements cannot be
shown unless they have full clearance from the CAA.

Legal & Ethical/ Copyright laws

On the Ethical side of the law, there are very strict rules and regulations
that must be complied with when producing any form of work. Whether it
be inside of the media industry, or not. Any person that issues material
that is found to be offensive or aggravates others can be prosecuted in
the eyes of the law. The ethical codes of conduct are more often than not
broke over online, as it can be easy to offend someone over the internet
as anyone can be anonymous.
Some people need to be more aware of the laws involving ethics than
others. For example, the news is broadcasted on television and radio
nationally, and even globally. It is for this reason that news reporters need
to be even more careful and fully aware of ethical rules and regulations,
so that they do not offend any members of the public. Below is a list of
some of the ethical laws:

It is forbidden to make a verbal statement about an individual which

could be seen as abusive or offensive.

The same applies in a written form.

A person must be careful not to stereotype when representing and

describing characters and individuals.
Created in 1988, the copyright laws were introduced to protect peoples
original work, and to stop others from claiming it as their own. Before this
law was introduced, people could do very little (legally) if others stole
work from them. The copyright law is particularly focused on IT and media
related issues, as people could very easily steal material from publicly
available formats, such as the internet. This applies to all sorts of different
assets, such as:

Text

Sound

Images

Videos

The taking of any online material without the permission of the original
creator, or copyright holder, is a breach of the copyright laws.

Currently, In the United Kingdom, copyright laws take effect immediately.

The copyright laws last for the creators life time, and an extra number of
years after. Depending on what the copyright is, it can last up to an
additional 70 years after the death of the original creator. For example, in
the music industry, copyrighted music lasts for a life time and then 30
years after. The copyright can be passed down from the creator to other
people after the copyright has expired.
Apart from paying the copyright holder to utilise material, there are
alternatives. Stock photos are images which can be found on the internet
that are purposely made publicly available for others to use. However,
even though these are available to use and free of charge, there can be
strict rules and regulations placed upon these images which can prevent it
from being used in a specific way.
Constraints
Time

I will need to work fast throughout this assignment in order to not miss
any deadlines and hand in work. This then means that I dont have any
room to make major errors in my work as I might not have much time to
correct anything that does go wrong.
I will also need to organise certain times when I need other people to help
shooting the video advertisement. This means that I will have to make
sure that actors who are starring in the advert are free at the same time
as me and other personnel.
Costs

The financial cost to produce my video advertisement will be relatively

low, as the advert is limited to a length of 30 seconds and various props
that I will need to shoot the video I will mostly have already or can be
bought for a fairly low price.
However, I will need to purchase or rent a good quality camera that shoots
at high resolution. This is important because in order to make my
advertisement look professional, I will need to have a near-professional
standard video camera.

Personnel

I will not need many personnel to shoot my advertisement as I only

require a single actor to suit my idea. I dont feel that I need many actors
because having too many could lead to the video not looking of
professional quality.
However, I could need people with more technical skills to help with the
more advanced post- shooting video editing part of the project as my own
knowledge of video editing is fairly basic.
Surveys
I will need to carry out some form of survey/ questionnaire in order to
market my video advertisement correctly. As mentioned previously, I could
create and develop my own survey to ask my target audience what they
want most out of a new pair of trainers. The results of this survey will help
me understand what to include in my advert.
Clearances

In the production of my video advertisement I might have to get

clearance to film and record various places and people. The term
clearance refers to a person that is required to get formal consent from
an organisation or person to film certain places. This is usually the case
when filming in privately owned locations. In relation to my
advertisement, I do not think that I will need to get clearance as I will be
filming mostly in and around college and public spaces.
Questionnaires

Questionnaires provide a relatively cheap and efficient way of obtaining

large amounts of information from a large group of people. Data can be
collected relatively quickly because the researcher would not need to be
present when the questionnaires were completed. This is useful for large
populations when interviews would be impractical and less time effective.
Often a questionnaire uses both open and closed questions to collect data.
This is beneficial as it means both quantitative and qualitative data can be
collected.

Interviews

Interviewing people provide more detailed information that can be used to

help market my media product. However, the main issue with this is that
only very small groups or individuals can be interviewed at a given time

and can be impractical when trying to collect as much information as

possible for launching an advertisement campaign.
If I conducted interviews to help me with my research, I would only
interview a couple of people as it can be quite time consuming and is not
as time effective than providing a questionnaire for a group of people to
do.
Resources

To begin videoing my advertisement I will need various pieces of

equipment and resources. I have a total budget of 4000 to help me
purchase any equipment and props that is required to film my advert. The
main resources I need are

High quality video capture camera

Pair of trainers
Lighting equipment
Storyboards
Actors (max. 2)