TV ads & narrative selections

I really loved the section covering TV advertising narratives (p.334-9), and it brought back memories for me. I actually had the chance to design a fake ad campaign as a group project for a marketing class back in my Evergreen days (and honestly, I'd forgotten all about it until I read this section). I remember that we were given the British Airways campaign, but I don't recall what the original tag line was. (All of our projects were based on real marketing strategies, which we were instructed to one-up.) We altered our tag line to be "No Boundaries." (This was WAY before the Jeep "No Boundaries" ads, FYI.) Then we had to do a webpage and a TV spot. I forget if we had print media, too. It was a long time ago.

Anyway, for the TV ad our group went with a soft-sell approach with an emotional strategy. We started with very nice photos (mostly from National Geographic), then the camera would pull away and there would be various people  & couples holding these as if they were postcards or travel pics of places they had actually been. It was all very "Look where British Air let us go!" One of the guys in our group set it to uplifting, nostalgic music. The final product came together nicely considering we all had no clue what we were doing.

I was surprised how much effort it took to the get the shots just right, even though they were all very short segments. The class was very positive when we showed the spot in our class demo. Clearly, rhetorical choices are very important for a video ad (like a TV spot) to be successful, and while choosing humor is almost always a hit, a good spot can work well with the other strategies, too. Now when I watch TV, I'm going to be trying to decide which strategy they're using.

I think that could've been a fun project, maybe for a short in-class session. We could be shown a fake product and then talk in groups about what narratives we would use to "sell" it and maybe draw up a basic script. As a full project, it's a bit overwhelming, though. (Eric would've had a leg up to be sure, though!)