PLAYSAFE: FINAL

Week 4: Playsafe Final

Instructions: Project 1

Your first task upon understanding Bernbach’s principles in advertising, is to conceive of a single quarter page press advertisement in black and white. Your execution will reflect the knowledge gained from your understanding.

The marketing objective is to promote Playsafe condom, through a mass medium (press advertisement). The challenge is, to create an ad that would not contravene strict publishing laws and moral codes of the countries multicultural and multi-religious populations. How you skirt these obstacles to produce an ad that is targeted (young adults) and effective whilst using the knowledge gained from the Bernback Principles to achieve the marketing objective will test your creativity to work within the narrow confines of the brief.

Newspaper: TheSun
Size: 128 (w) x 178 (h)

Client: Playsafe Condoms.

Marking Criteria

Communication (5%)
The message needs to be creative, clear and concise. The message has to be truthful and not gimmicky. The message must be unique in order to stand out from the rest of the competitors. The message must have a sense of personality that relates to, or reflects the target audience.

Visual Impact (5%)
Visual impact here refers to the overall effect of the layout and or the artwork (visual or copy) in the layout. The visual/copy must integrate well with the message for there to be impact. The visual/copy must enhance the message to create a smile in the mind. The visual/copy must relate or connect with the reader and should illicit an emotional reaction. The visual/copy must be memorable. The visual/copy must have a sense of personality that relates to, or reflects the target audience.

Process (5%)
There must be exploration in the form of sketches, mind maps, thoughts and epiphanies. The journey from start to finish must be methodically documented and dated. oral or written Feedback must be documented. The written reflections must be clear, concise, revealing and insightful.

Learning goal:

1. The student will understand and apply Bernbach’s principles in advertising in order to assist in a marketing objective.

Major Learning Outcomes:

1) Writing & Presenting Competencies – Demonstrate knowledge and apply understanding of design principles, technical processes, tools and software

2) Critical Thinking Competencies — Use critical thinking to explore, analyze and test a diversity of conceptual ideas.

3) Creating & Documenting Competencies — Plan and execute unique creative works

4) Appraising & Valuing Competencies — Constructively assess work by yourself and others.

Deadline: Week 3

Ideas & Strategies

I'm looking to target young women in the hopes of raising awareness of sexual protection. In the battle against patriarchy, its important for women to know that the taboo of sex and buying contraception is merely a social construct, one that only hurts them. 


I'm looking to target young women in the hopes of raising awareness of sexual protection. In the battle against patriarchy, its important for women to know that the taboo of sex and buying contraception is merely a social construct, one that only hurts them. 

 
Visual: A party handbag and its spilt contents, with a condom in the forefront.
Copy: 

• You never know when you'd need something
• Apparently, girls prepare for everything
• We don't expect someone else to bring our lip gloss, do we?
• Don't wait until you need it
• Ready is sexy
• Normalize it
• So what?
• Are you really prepared?

I have decided to go with this idea as to not perpetuate the physical sexualization of women in the advertisement. Below is a picture I have taken of the handbag and its contents. I chose to place them on a bed, to add a sexual suggestion. I took a while deciding if I should add the condom in the forefront or not.

It was a challenge to get natural light as it has been cloudy and raining a lot this week. 
Below are some of the pictures I took:

Submission

I initially planned on using copy as well, but after playing around with the image, I came to the conclusion that the implied message was strong enough. I worried that adding more text would crowd the advertisement, and reduce its psychological strength.

Feedback

Mr. Vinod:

I have viewed you final submission (http://tarrashaliny.blogspot.my/2016/02/playsafe-final.html?m=1) for project 1 and from the standpoint of the strategy, advertising message and visual idea, you have done a good job trying to align and synthesise them. However, from an design standpoint the white spaces above and below are dead spaces, meaning your image could have covered the space rather than leave it blank. The headline did not feature, I assume you felt the visual was sufficiently clear to convey the ad message. It is my view that the headlines you generated would have added more potency to the message. It would also offer closure to the reader and not leave the reader guessing your intention. 

The Playsafe logo was also featured a little to big. However, the hand holding the product was a good touch. 

I suggest, you revise the layout and add a headline to complete the submission. Overall considering this is your first attempt in the course, I would say it has relatively gone well. The subsequent project, project 2, (https://yourbrief.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/advertising/) is a little more challenging but I think you will be up to the task. 

As always please review some of the examples sites I've give to you earlier to ensure your process work is up to standard. I will be sending you the PowerPoint presentation in the next email, which corresponds with project 2.

Reflections

Experience

Finding and waiting for natural light was a challenge due to the weather. My only solution was to wait until afternoon and use a room facing the sun at that point, despite the cloudy sky.

Although I had planned the advertisement in advance, it was interesting to see its evolution, especially when I began creating it. The most memorable was when I suddenly realized that I don't need copy to complete the advertisement.

Observations

After creating the last image, I felt that if the hand and condom was left in color, it would have a much larger impact on the audience. It also adds a three dimensional aspect to the advertisement.

The quality of the picture is mediocre, and as it a black and white image, I feel that it's fuzziness is accentuated. I hope to be able to secure a camera with better clarity for future projects.

Findings

Similar to the above, it was insightful to understand the developement of an advertisement. Initially, I was under the impression that 90% of the work was strategizing, coming up with ideas and visualizing. However, that wasn't the case at all.