old spice exam question due for friday

 

viewpoints-an attitude of mind or the circumstances of an individual that conduce to such an attitude

ideology- a system of ideas, ideals and beliefs 

subversive-seeking or intending to change something

                                          question

explain how viewpoints and ideologies are communicated by the media language used in adverts. use the old spice Bahamas advert (2010) to help you

masculinity- uses masculinity with the intention that it will attract the men who believe the brand will make them appear more masculine

will also appeal to women who Want to but it for their partners.

Appeals to younger demographic by using a current big name athlete of the time to attract fans to the brand

 In the advert, the actor, portrayed by Isaiah Mustafa, directly addresses the women watching the advert saying "hello ladies" this is because Mustafa is a former professional athlete and is in incredible physical shape which are traits commonly found to be desirable in men. he then proceeds to encourage them to look at him and look at their partners before  mockingly proclaim "sadly, he isn't me" referring to the woman's boyfriend or husband. this is to target the women watching the ad to encourage them to buy the product in order to make their partners appear more desirable. The ad also challenges the men watching it by directly addressing the women and offering them everything they could want from tickets to 'that thing you love' to diamonds whilst making constant and intense eye contact, all this is done to encourage men watching this to go out and buy the product by subtly hinting at the ideology that those who wear Old Spice are more attractive and will steal your partner from you. 

The advert is also representing the brands new image. Old Spice was typically targeted at 40-60 year old men and always promoted itself on the ideologies of rugged, powerful masculinity. with this advert and ad they try to almost reimagine themselves by going for a more wacky, colorful image in an attempt to change their target demographic to a younger audience who don't hold the same values as the older generation. This is evident with the use of actor Isaiah Mustafa who would be a well known name to younger audiences in 2010, it is also visible in the little use of any common masculine traits you would find in a typical male fragrance advert aside from the drawing of the woman sunbathing on Mustafa's chest.

assessment feedback

a lack of question focus

comments on how media language helps represent brand ideologies

references to the specific ideologies and viewpoints

examples of specific media language use in the advert , and how they reflect the desired brand language

 

Old spice

the old spice advert is an unconventional Fragrance advert in that a typical male fragrance advert would dark, mysterious, powerful and focused while at this advert was more comedic with its appearance, along with filling the image with bombastic imagery to catch the attention of the viewer. However, they advert still clings to its roots of desolating a masculine image with the former nfl wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa staring intensely into the camera with a smug look in his face. The image also includes many small details which indicate masculinity, such as the man fishing out a shark in the top left of the image

TV Advert

similarities

everything seems to be sloping off of him

 direct address

explosions

water

natural world

sports (bob sledding, kayaking)

celebrations 

why did old spice change their brand

the main reason that old spice did this was to stand out and appeal to a younger audience, they had been associated with rugged manliness, the brand began in 1937 with an emphasis of selling to the older demographic 40-60 year old men. Proctor and gamble, a multi conglomerate which owns old spice, realized that they were going to have to change the product if they wished for it to stay relevant so in 2010 decided to change the companies image. they wanted to target a new audience of 18-34 year old both male and females. For their new brand launch and opening advert they acquired former NFL star turned actor Isaiah Mustafa. The advert was deliberately humours, bright and detailed which was completely unheard of in modern advertising as most fragrance ads were dark, mysterious and luring.

however the ad still clung to its roots of masculinity, challenging the male target by directly addressing the women (who by 70% of men's toiletries) and claiming "I'm the man your man could be". The ad was a massive success as in its first week it grossed 40 million views on YouTube.

how has the context of this old spice advert shaped what we see in the design?

Minecraft

 Minecraft is a sandbox indie game with a focus on creating And crafting and surviving in your own world. The game has a blocky Lego like art style and game mechanic in order to be more visually appealing and unique. The game was first developed and released in 2009 By Markus ‘Notch’ Persson by his small games company Mojang, The game Was released to on pcs and instantly gained a following. One of the major reasons the game was so successful from launch was due to how it appealed to all ages and all types of gamers with it having action, survival, adventure, creative, crafting and a well crafted story to discover.

The game ordered finally targeted the niche audience of those who enjoyed modding and creating their own worlds, however the game became a global hit thanks to the number of content creators making profitable YouTube videos on their time playing the game, showing off what they could create and do in the game. This lead to global events held such as Minecon where the company would gather large audiences of all ages, increasing they’re popularity further. This allowed Mojang to release the game to mobile and console audiences such as players on the Xbox and PlayStation meaning it was virtually on every platform for all to enjoy. This level of popularity eventually lead to Mojang and subsequently minecraft being acquired by business conglomerate Microsoft in 2014 for a total of $2.5billion. After this minecraft began to collaborate with many large names with in-game skins And other texture packs from movies and other forms of media like Star Wars and Harry Potter, the games was also released on the two current consoles the PlayStation4 and Xbox1. This all lead up to the game becoming the best selling video game of all time with 174 million recorded copies sold world wide. 

Fandom theory

A way to explain the success of minecraft and it’s spikes in popularity over the through the past decade could be the fandom theory. Theorised by Henry Jenkins, it details that fans tend to build culture and identity from certain media formats which drives popularity forward. These fandoms can create communities in their own right and collaborate to solve problems and bond over their love of the created culture. This applies massively to minecraft as the creation of fandoms has helped popularise the game and promote it, this leads to more understanding of it which then leads to more sales, resulting in surges in popularity.

Production: the action of manufacturing from a component of raw materials

Distribution: the action of sharing something out among recipients

Circulation: the public availability of knowledge or a product

Consumption: something taken in by the customer or consumer

Conglomerate: a company that owns majority stake in more than one other company

Vertical integration: where a single firm preforms two or more stages of production on a product by merging two firms

Diversification:where a company or product branches into several different markets

Media convergence: when a piece of hardware takes on a 'all in one' function

Synergy: forging connections between products for marketing eg. coca cola/James bond,                    super smash.bros/minecraft. Steve from minecraft has made his first appearance outside of the minecraft game

1. Notch produces 'cavegame' which is later called minecraft

2. Mojang studious is founded

3. minecon held in Las Vegas

4.  Microsoft purchase rights for minecraft 

5. wins BAFTA and teen choice awards

6.  Minecraft earth announced

7. 30 million copies sold

8. Steve announced for Nintendo switch super smash bros 

R.A.I.L

                                          R.A.I.L

Representation

representation in the media is the way a group of society is portrayed to the public, this could be in both a positive light and a negative light, as an example a group such as teenagers may be portrayed as delinquents, leading to the public to viewing them in this way. Often the way certain groups are portrayed may led to a prejudice being built up against them in the media. Theorists like Stuart Hall theorized that the media relies on and creates its own  stereotypes in order to push its own agendas.

Audience 

audience is likely the most important part of media as a whole. The audience is the group of people you wish to reach with your content and can vary by what your content is. when producing media you will always have a target audience in mind, this is the demographic which you are attempting to reach as they will be the most affected by it. 

Media can also have a direct affect on its audience, it can influence human behavior, morals, judgment and perception of specific events. this was theorized by Albert Bandura.  Stuart Hall theorized that there are three types of people when it come to intaking text, the dominant, who accepts the ideology of the media they've seen, the negotiate, who will somewhat agree but will think more rationally about it and the oppositional who will outright disagree with the ideologies all together.

Industry

The media industry is largely dominated by conglomerates, the film and television industry has 5 large competitors: Disney, comcast, CBS, WarnerMedia and Sony. these % companies control 76% of the film industry combined.

The UK press is a also largely dominated by conglomerates, with 59 national newspaper companies in the UK a whole 71% of the national newspaper circulation, leaving the other 56 in control with the remaining 19% worse yet a total of 5 companies control 81% of local newspapers in the UK.

Rupert Murdoch, an Australian business mogul who controls some of the largest newspapers in the US and UK (times, sun, Wall street journal). is a able to enforce his own views through his post.

Language

Media language looks at the ways that the media communicates to its viewers through images, mannerisms, symbols and even stereotypes.

Semiology is the study of symbols and they have, this focuses on connotations as in words and images having different meanings to there literal ones, the media will often use these in tv and posters or articles in order to draw in attention. an example of this would be an image of a man in a dark room staring intensely towards the viewer, straight away the view will notice a sense of mystery and mystique without ever being told to, but through the pre-conceited notion that darkness means mystery they will immediately associate the two. Stereotypes have also been a way of conveying messages in media, although they have been viewed as rather controversial in recent memory, the way they are used is by injecting a type of person who has a pre-conceited notion about them. this can be seen in the controversial Philadelphia cheese advert which used the notion of men being bad parents in order to push there product.