Unit 1: Introduction to Media Processes and Technical Skills & Unit 2: Introduction to Design and Research Skills - Task 2: Advertising Production
For an advert to become successful, two types of research needs to be taken out. These two types of research are market research and production research.
Market Research
Market research is a certain way of gathering data and information about audiences'/consumers' needs and preferences.
Audience data is important to a brand as this information presents how audiences' respond to your advert and if they will buy your product or will visit your shop. Audience awareness is also needed to be able to see if they understand your advert and what you are trying to sell, as well as the brand acknowledging if audiences will actually go out and but this product. John Lewis does this by presenting a story to audiences rather than putting forward or selling a specific product as, we know from the success of the adverts, that this a successful strategy as to how they market their brand as the adverts they bring out are always a success and audiences still buy from their shops. Now in 2019, John Lewis has recently partnered with Waitrose so, in their advert, Excitable Edgar, they projected it in the usual John Lewis style but also displayed Waitrose products in a way that didn't distract from the story but still sold a product. Before this advert could be broadcast, the companies will have had audiences' give the brands feedback on how well they think they have advertised themselves and possibly how they could improve what they are trying to sell, as well as how their products can benefit certain people and maybe how they could better the product for everyone.
Product reach is important for a brand to understand an estimated number of how many consumers could watch your advert. This helps determine how much the company and producer of the advert should pay for the marketing campaign, whether it's worth the new customers the advert could potentially attract. Every year, more and more audiences wait to see what adverts will be coming out around November time as that is when the big John Lewis advert arrives, annually. So, the audience attraction that John Lewis adverts attract usually increase every year as people are more aware of the cultural impact these adverts have.
Competitor analysis is another big factor when doing market research as brands are able to look at the strengths and weaknesses of other competing brands/companies and can apply this to their product and advert to their advantage. As John Lewis adverts have become a big staple of Christmas in the UK, other companies have started to follow their strategy of advertising their own products and brands through a story or a high budget advert that tries to encompass the meaning of Christmas, as well as try and beat out other companies with how well received their advert is. So, John Lewis, along with Waitrose, will look at other companies' statistics of sales and customers and will apply this to making their advert and product grander than all of the competitors.
Market Research
Market research is a certain way of gathering data and information about audiences'/consumers' needs and preferences.
Audience data is important to a brand as this information presents how audiences' respond to your advert and if they will buy your product or will visit your shop. Audience awareness is also needed to be able to see if they understand your advert and what you are trying to sell, as well as the brand acknowledging if audiences will actually go out and but this product. John Lewis does this by presenting a story to audiences rather than putting forward or selling a specific product as, we know from the success of the adverts, that this a successful strategy as to how they market their brand as the adverts they bring out are always a success and audiences still buy from their shops. Now in 2019, John Lewis has recently partnered with Waitrose so, in their advert, Excitable Edgar, they projected it in the usual John Lewis style but also displayed Waitrose products in a way that didn't distract from the story but still sold a product. Before this advert could be broadcast, the companies will have had audiences' give the brands feedback on how well they think they have advertised themselves and possibly how they could improve what they are trying to sell, as well as how their products can benefit certain people and maybe how they could better the product for everyone.Product reach is important for a brand to understand an estimated number of how many consumers could watch your advert. This helps determine how much the company and producer of the advert should pay for the marketing campaign, whether it's worth the new customers the advert could potentially attract. Every year, more and more audiences wait to see what adverts will be coming out around November time as that is when the big John Lewis advert arrives, annually. So, the audience attraction that John Lewis adverts attract usually increase every year as people are more aware of the cultural impact these adverts have.
Competitor analysis is another big factor when doing market research as brands are able to look at the strengths and weaknesses of other competing brands/companies and can apply this to their product and advert to their advantage. As John Lewis adverts have become a big staple of Christmas in the UK, other companies have started to follow their strategy of advertising their own products and brands through a story or a high budget advert that tries to encompass the meaning of Christmas, as well as try and beat out other companies with how well received their advert is. So, John Lewis, along with Waitrose, will look at other companies' statistics of sales and customers and will apply this to making their advert and product grander than all of the competitors.
Production Research
Production research is always needed when developing a new product, this research helps give information on the characteristics of the product as well as focusing on how it's made and the production of creating the advert for the product. Product research is also really important for a brand before they can put out their advert, as they need to test their new product on audiences. This is useful as it provides information about the specifics and requirements of a brands product and it helps companies understand what their customers personal needs are in a better and understanding if the product needs any improvements. This research can also help to put forward new ideas for new products.
A team of researchers get hired by the brand/company to go out and seek the research that they deem reliable and useful towards the success of selling a product. When researchers do production research, this is to help them see an overview of the advertisement's viability, which in other words is how successful the advert will be and what profit it will gain from it. John Lewis is one of the biggest department shops in the UK and this is definitely evidenced by how much production they put into their adverts but, also how that gradually happens each year. So, for them to be able to have a great advert that will make audiences want to shop at John Lewis, their company needs to be commercially viable otherwise they wouldn't be as profitable as they are now and their company probably wouldn't be open anymore if it went that downhill.
For production research to carry out their research they gather the information from demographics, this shows peoples personalities/characteristics of target audiences/population by their physical aspects (gender, age, location, etc).
Production researchers also need to be able to consider what content they will allow in their advert, as well as where the advertisement will be broadcast or what platforms it will be displayed on either posters, radio, TV, YouTube, social media, etc. This all needs to be decided before the advert is put into production, as is all of the research above. Content in John Lewis adverts is usually a story that can relate to everyone, or try to at least, from children to the elderly. For example, in 2014 John Lewis released the advert 'Monty the Penguin' which was about a little boy and his loving friendship with his pet penguin Monty so, this advert would mainly target children. As in 2018, John Lewis released the advert 'The Boy and The Piano' which was about Elton John and him reminiscing about his life and career and how it all started, this targeting older people who grew up with the critically-acclaimed singer and also appeals to fans of his music. Then the John Lewis advert 'The Man on the Moon', released in 2015, included both a young girl and an elderly man, targeting this advert towards a wider age group.
Primary Research
Primary research is information that is gathered through self-constructed research methods, for example surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, etc.
My only fault during our production was I never gathered any information/answers from anyone, whether that be people who have seen John Lewis adverts, any companies Christmas adverts, or not.
But, if I would have done primary research, I would have created a questionnaire about the John Lewis brand with questions asking what the audiences favourite advert of theirs is, if they prefer another companies Christmas adverts or if they shop at John Lewis, either after watching the advert or shopping there for their own personal needs and benefits. I would have also created a quiz that tests audiences' knowledge on all the John Lewis adverts, maybe a quiz about what the title names are or anything to do with the plot of the advert. This would have been useful to understand if these adverts create an impact on audiences or not, as well as understanding why and how the John Lewis adverts are more successful than other brands/companies' advertisements.
This could have been an advantage to my work as I would have had my own original data to work from and be able to create a similar style advert to the John Lewis company. But, this could have also been a disadvantage as it could have consumed all of my production time on the advert, as it can take a while to create quizzes/questionnaires and also the time for a person to answer and reply back could be lengthy.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is information gathered from previously conducted studies, using past research findings, and apply this information to your own situations/studies. These studies are easily accessible as they are able to be found online.
The advantages of using this type of research is you are able to find someone else's data and you then can easily apply it to your own, allowing your research to be done in a short amount of time. Although, the downside of using this research method is that the researcher themselves may have had difficulty obtaining data that is specific to what they wanted the outcome to be, making the research to either be false or biased based on what information the researcher wanted to obtain.
I mostly did secondary research as I analysed a few John Lewis adverts to understand how to use advertising techniques and how to construct/structure the advert I was going to create with my group.
When we were first told we were going to be doing this project we were also asked to look at any John Lewis advert, of our choice, and looking through its production and analysing the advert itself. So, me and Amiliyah (member of my group) paired up and researched the advert 'The Bear and The Hare' (2013), one of John Lewis' biggest successes. We were also able to find a behind the scenes video on YouTube about the production of the advert. This made us understand every element that went into making this advert, from the way it was filmed to the detail of how they present the story through both 2D and 3D animation. All of the animals in the advert are 2D cut-outs and all the set/scenery is real. This type of animation was used to make audiences feel as if they were watching a Disney film, this is understandable as animator Aaron Blaise and Dominic Carole (The Lion King, Pocahontas and Brother Bear) was able to bring the animations/characters to life. All the models were purposefully created to look like cartoons and required each frame to have characters drawn to then be created as stand-alone models which were then filmed on the real sets, it nearly has 400 frames in the entire advert and took 6 weeks to produce. The video below shows how the designers and animators were able to create this advert:
This all cost roughly around £1,000,000 to create. As this is a project for college, we had to bear in mind that we don't have this type of money and pull anything like this off would be some type of miracle. So, we all really had to think about the type of advert we would do that didn't involve cartoon woodland creatures or CGI monsters (from 'Moz the Monster', 2017). We understood that one of the reasons this advert was so successful and started this chain of high value adverts was because of the sentimental story being projected throughout. So, we needed to create a story that was heart-warming and joyful to an audience and also thinking about the company we were representing.
Another reason the advert was successful was because John Lewis bought the entire advertising break on 16th November 2013 when during the broadcasting of The X-Factor final, with many viewers tuning in and having to watch this advert to then see the next part of the final. The cost for the whole advertising break was an estimate of £400,000.
We also understood another huge factor into the success of the advert was that it used the song 'Somewhere Only We Know', originally by English band Keane, cover by the English singer Lily Allen. The song instantly went to the top of the UK singles charts and staying there for 3 weeks. Having a gentle song covered by an up and coming artist was a really great and successful strategy for John Lewis to use, as the song perfectly backs up the advert and for audiences to then hear this song from now on, it will remind them of this advert as well as the John Lewis company. When creating ideas for the advert, we really had to think about what song would suit the theme of the advert, as well as the way it would sound. So, when we would be looking over music to potentially have in the advert, we needed to play a song that used a slow and gentle piano melody behind the singing, as this evokes a strong emotional response from audiences, whether that be positive or negative.
This advert is one of John Lewis' most emotional as it follows the journey of the friendship between a bear and a hare on the build up to Christmas, this is already heart-warming to an audience as these two animals would likely not get along in reality. But, in the bear's true nature it goes off to find shelter to hibernate in during the long and cold winter months but, and the hare is left on its own to celebrate Christmas without its best friend. As Christmas is almost arriving, the hare hatches a plan to get their friend to be included in the festivities and leaves a present outside of the bear's cave on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, all the woodland creatures surround the large Christmas tree in the centre and to all of their surprise, the bear has arrived and starts to celebrate its first Christmas with everyone. It is then that the audience finds out that the bear had woken up due to the present from the hare, which was an alarm clock, showing that the hare does really care about its friend and making sure that they felt included on the joyous holiday. This story is very emotional to an audience as it shares the message that everyone should be included when celebrating the Christmas holidays. The advert also leaves audiences with the message "Give someone a Christmas they'll never forget", and seeing the bear celebrating their first Christmas and the extent of the celebration is definitely one that won't be forgotten. So, audiences can then understand that every Christmas should be memorable and, particularly that Christmas in 2013, it should be memorable through the gift if giving and being able to go to a John Lewis shop to have a look at what memorable present you can give your loved ones.
Production research is always needed when developing a new product, this research helps give information on the characteristics of the product as well as focusing on how it's made and the production of creating the advert for the product. Product research is also really important for a brand before they can put out their advert, as they need to test their new product on audiences. This is useful as it provides information about the specifics and requirements of a brands product and it helps companies understand what their customers personal needs are in a better and understanding if the product needs any improvements. This research can also help to put forward new ideas for new products.
A team of researchers get hired by the brand/company to go out and seek the research that they deem reliable and useful towards the success of selling a product. When researchers do production research, this is to help them see an overview of the advertisement's viability, which in other words is how successful the advert will be and what profit it will gain from it. John Lewis is one of the biggest department shops in the UK and this is definitely evidenced by how much production they put into their adverts but, also how that gradually happens each year. So, for them to be able to have a great advert that will make audiences want to shop at John Lewis, their company needs to be commercially viable otherwise they wouldn't be as profitable as they are now and their company probably wouldn't be open anymore if it went that downhill.
For production research to carry out their research they gather the information from demographics, this shows peoples personalities/characteristics of target audiences/population by their physical aspects (gender, age, location, etc).
Production researchers also need to be able to consider what content they will allow in their advert, as well as where the advertisement will be broadcast or what platforms it will be displayed on either posters, radio, TV, YouTube, social media, etc. This all needs to be decided before the advert is put into production, as is all of the research above. Content in John Lewis adverts is usually a story that can relate to everyone, or try to at least, from children to the elderly. For example, in 2014 John Lewis released the advert 'Monty the Penguin' which was about a little boy and his loving friendship with his pet penguin Monty so, this advert would mainly target children. As in 2018, John Lewis released the advert 'The Boy and The Piano' which was about Elton John and him reminiscing about his life and career and how it all started, this targeting older people who grew up with the critically-acclaimed singer and also appeals to fans of his music. Then the John Lewis advert 'The Man on the Moon', released in 2015, included both a young girl and an elderly man, targeting this advert towards a wider age group.Primary Research
Primary research is information that is gathered through self-constructed research methods, for example surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, etc.
My only fault during our production was I never gathered any information/answers from anyone, whether that be people who have seen John Lewis adverts, any companies Christmas adverts, or not.
But, if I would have done primary research, I would have created a questionnaire about the John Lewis brand with questions asking what the audiences favourite advert of theirs is, if they prefer another companies Christmas adverts or if they shop at John Lewis, either after watching the advert or shopping there for their own personal needs and benefits. I would have also created a quiz that tests audiences' knowledge on all the John Lewis adverts, maybe a quiz about what the title names are or anything to do with the plot of the advert. This would have been useful to understand if these adverts create an impact on audiences or not, as well as understanding why and how the John Lewis adverts are more successful than other brands/companies' advertisements.
This could have been an advantage to my work as I would have had my own original data to work from and be able to create a similar style advert to the John Lewis company. But, this could have also been a disadvantage as it could have consumed all of my production time on the advert, as it can take a while to create quizzes/questionnaires and also the time for a person to answer and reply back could be lengthy.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is information gathered from previously conducted studies, using past research findings, and apply this information to your own situations/studies. These studies are easily accessible as they are able to be found online.
The advantages of using this type of research is you are able to find someone else's data and you then can easily apply it to your own, allowing your research to be done in a short amount of time. Although, the downside of using this research method is that the researcher themselves may have had difficulty obtaining data that is specific to what they wanted the outcome to be, making the research to either be false or biased based on what information the researcher wanted to obtain.
I mostly did secondary research as I analysed a few John Lewis adverts to understand how to use advertising techniques and how to construct/structure the advert I was going to create with my group.
When we were first told we were going to be doing this project we were also asked to look at any John Lewis advert, of our choice, and looking through its production and analysing the advert itself. So, me and Amiliyah (member of my group) paired up and researched the advert 'The Bear and The Hare' (2013), one of John Lewis' biggest successes. We were also able to find a behind the scenes video on YouTube about the production of the advert. This made us understand every element that went into making this advert, from the way it was filmed to the detail of how they present the story through both 2D and 3D animation. All of the animals in the advert are 2D cut-outs and all the set/scenery is real. This type of animation was used to make audiences feel as if they were watching a Disney film, this is understandable as animator Aaron Blaise and Dominic Carole (The Lion King, Pocahontas and Brother Bear) was able to bring the animations/characters to life. All the models were purposefully created to look like cartoons and required each frame to have characters drawn to then be created as stand-alone models which were then filmed on the real sets, it nearly has 400 frames in the entire advert and took 6 weeks to produce. The video below shows how the designers and animators were able to create this advert:
This all cost roughly around £1,000,000 to create. As this is a project for college, we had to bear in mind that we don't have this type of money and pull anything like this off would be some type of miracle. So, we all really had to think about the type of advert we would do that didn't involve cartoon woodland creatures or CGI monsters (from 'Moz the Monster', 2017). We understood that one of the reasons this advert was so successful and started this chain of high value adverts was because of the sentimental story being projected throughout. So, we needed to create a story that was heart-warming and joyful to an audience and also thinking about the company we were representing. 
This advert is one of John Lewis' most emotional as it follows the journey of the friendship between a bear and a hare on the build up to Christmas, this is already heart-warming to an audience as these two animals would likely not get along in reality. But, in the bear's true nature it goes off to find shelter to hibernate in during the long and cold winter months but, and the hare is left on its own to celebrate Christmas without its best friend. As Christmas is almost arriving, the hare hatches a plan to get their friend to be included in the festivities and leaves a present outside of the bear's cave on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, all the woodland creatures surround the large Christmas tree in the centre and to all of their surprise, the bear has arrived and starts to celebrate its first Christmas with everyone. It is then that the audience finds out that the bear had woken up due to the present from the hare, which was an alarm clock, showing that the hare does really care about its friend and making sure that they felt included on the joyous holiday. This story is very emotional to an audience as it shares the message that everyone should be included when celebrating the Christmas holidays. The advert also leaves audiences with the message "Give someone a Christmas they'll never forget", and seeing the bear celebrating their first Christmas and the extent of the celebration is definitely one that won't be forgotten. So, audiences can then understand that every Christmas should be memorable and, particularly that Christmas in 2013, it should be memorable through the gift if giving and being able to go to a John Lewis shop to have a look at what memorable present you can give your loved ones. 
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