Final Radio Advert

Our task was to create a final radio advertising campaign like we have done before. To start with I had to create two treatments for product that didn't exist for a brand that did exist. I decide that my first brand was going to be Reading & Leeds Festival that advertised Reading Festival 2015, also my second treatment was going to be for the band The Neighbourhood and it would advertise their second full album (that isn't real at the moment) I Love You Too. Within my treatments there had to be the client, the purpose of the campaign, the unique selling point (USP), the placement, the production roles, the elements of budget, and lastly the target audience of the advert. I had decided on going with my first treatment for an advert for Reading & Leeds Festival 2015; the client was Reading & Leeds Festival, the purpose was to raise awareness of the event and promote it, my unique selling point was that the festival has been running since 1985 and has featured some of the biggest names in music history (The Rolling Stones, Nirvana etc.), the placement was going to be Capital FM, XFM and Kiss FM all broadcasting the advert at early evening, the production roles were the director, writer and editor (all myself), the elements of budget were music royalties, voice over artist fees, production facilities (and how none of these would cost me anything as I am using college facilities) and lastly the treatment entailed me talking about my target audience being teens to adults (16-40), any gender and having an interest in music (specifically rock, indie and alternative).

Once I had decided on everything, I next had to create two scripts for each treatment, that were each different styles. For my first treatment (Reading Festival 2015) I decided to make a factual styled advert as well as a nostalgic/fiction styled one. I made it factual by adding many facts about the history of the event and random information about the upcoming event. This meant that it was in a somewhat formal style as well as being persuasive by using a lot of interesting compelling facts about the event, as well as being extremely biased about the festival and making it sound extremely appealing and something the audience wouldn't want to miss out on. As for my nostalgic/fiction styled script I achieved this style by creating a conversation between two people whom previously attended the festival. This meant that they fantasised back on when they attended the festival and how much of an amazing time they had. This would be a persuasive technique because as it's informal and conversational it allows the listener to 'trust' the voice overs, so rather than a formal voice telling you how amazing the festival is, these two people simply speak and think back about their personal experiences.

As for my second treatment (I Love You Too Album) I decided to create a repetitious as well as a simple radio advert. Firstly, for my repetitious styled script it was persuasive as it kept on mentioning the name of the product it was promoting and information about it. Although the advert was planned to be 30 seconds, the name of the product (I Love You Too album) was said four times. This would be persuasive because the listener would keep hearing the name therefore it would be stuck in their head, meaning that they'd remember what the product is allowing them to feel compelled to buy it. However, if the product name was only mentioned once, the listener may forget what the advert is about and therefore forget about the advert as a whole meaning that the ad's purpose of promoting and raising awareness was never met. For my fourth and last script it was styled to be simple but have a sense of immediacy, I tried to achieve this by using urgent words/phrases such as "now, too late, miss out, all gone". This is persuasive because it makes the listener feel an immediate sense of urgency and somewhat panic as they believe they need to buy the product as soon as possible. I decided to also keep it short and simple because otherwise, if it dragged on then that sense of urgency would not be there, it would become more like the voice over is pestering and demanding them to buy it.

Each script had to have the brand, product name, name of the advert, style and timing written above it; each script had to also use radio script terminology such as SFX for when a sound effect would be added and what it is. For the timing they had to be specific to each time, for example it had to be 40 seconds not 41 seconds (on the dot), this was so that it followed a professional radio advert's rules and regulations.

After all four scripts were wrote I had to consult with David on which one was most suited for the task depending on how it challenged my skills as well as fitting the brief. We agreed that I would actually use the first script that  I made as there was room for a lot of sound effects to be used as well as fitting the selected style most. After this I fortunately asked a classmate (Lily) to do the voice over for my advert before then recording it in a programme called Reaper as well as editing it in Reaper. Once I was finished and happy with the edit I rendered it and uploaded it to SoundCloud.

What went well with this task was that the planning was set out in a deep, descriptive manner allowing me to follow it simply and not feel like I didn't ever know what I was doing. This meant that I could achieve what I wanted in the time I was given to a relatively good standard. However, although overall I think the advert does follow what I planned, what I believe brought it down was the voice over due to the fact of it feeling rather flat and not as exciting and upbeat it needed to be. There were a lot of hesitation during recording the voiceover, and although I tried my best during the production stage in Reaper to edit said hesitations out and make it sound as smooth as I could, David and I both agree it was still quite blatantly hesitant and somewhat boring sounding. I could have fixed this problem though by re-recording my voice over, or adding more upbeat music at certain parts (for example, when other band names are mentioned I could've inserted a clip of their songs - however I did do this once but maybe more times would have helped). Overall, I do feel like my advert achieved what I wanted it to - promoting Reading and Leeds Festival 2015, but it could have been a bit more fluent sounding and exciting to match what the product is.