Advert 2 reflection

Ben Arnold – Persil Advertisement 2 Reflection

For the advertisement we used multiple techniques in order to make it as similar to a genuine Persil advert as I could, for example, we used promise of benefit and peer approval. I think they could be rather effective, if we only used them properly. We could’ve used both of them, and more techniques, to a greater effect if only we left ourselves more time.

During the editing process we made a few decisions as a group, mostly regarding the quality of the shots and the skill of our actors. We had to cut the shots together in order to make the acting look as fluent and professional as we could. Given what we had to work with, this proved a harder task than we anticipated. All three of us made an individual edit so we could compare and see who’s was the best to use, but because we all had similar issues with the editing we decided to all contribute our favourite parts into one collective edit to try and eliminate as many of the problems as we possibly could within the remaining time we had left before the deadline.

Personally, I do not think our advertisement would persuade many people to buy Persil, and honestly, I think it would spark some kind of outrage within the target demographic because of the possible element of bullying involved in the advertisement. Two of the characters (Conor + Ben) could possibly be seen bullying the other (Matt) into the formula for perfectly white shorts. Although this is not necessarily the desired meaning, it is a very high possibility that it can be misconstrued.

I think the advert was very ineffective at conveying the sheer quality if Persil, because it involved nothing to do with washing clothes, for all the viewer knows, Character 3 could’ve just gone out to buy more white shorts for his friends. We definitely should’ve included a scene in which the character throws the shorts into a washing machine, or at least something along those lines.

There are many ways in which this advert could be improved, and every single one of them could be achieved by giving ourselves more time. The issues we had included: poor acting, bad camera work, bad props/costumes and just general poor planning.  Next time, we would take the task a bit more seriously, and find better actors/costumes/location etc. We only started this advertisement with two weeks left of term time, all three of us thought this would be enough, but we soon discovered that we should have left ourselves a lot longer to complete the task. 

Next time I would definitely take note of everything that went wrong this time, and we would certainly try to address those issues as well as we possibly can. For example, as mentioned, a strong bad point of the advertisement is certainly the acting, so next time, we would gather better actors and definitely make sure the advertisement itself is fool-proof in the planning stages. Purely because it was the bad planning, and awful acting that made the advert poorer than it could’ve been.