Evaluation By Lorian Kurzweil

Planning Our assignment was to create an advertising campaign for a new product with a brand name, two full page magazine adverts and a billboard poster, using our own photography. My group created a perfume campaign called ‘Allumé’, which means ‘alight’ or ‘illuminate’ in French, by LDC. Chris McEwen and I produced magazine advertisements and David Steptowe made a billboard poster. We chose to base our campaign around a perfume as it meant that we had a vast choice of themes to base the adverts on. Our target audience for the perfume is teenaged to middle-aged women and will be priced at £30, so that it is profitable but still affordable to most of the public. Showing the adverts in magazines such as Glamour, ELLE and Vogue means that this audience can easily be targeted.

Planning – Market Research As part of our market research, we looked at several existing perfume adverts. These two examples influenced us especially, as they both feature the model holding a very large version of their perfume bottle. This is what we chose to do with ours.

As part of the research stage, we also gave out 30 questionnaires to our friends and relatives to help us decide on the price, target audience and name of our product. After evaluating the results of the survey, we realised that the favourite name ideas were ‘Belle’ and ‘Eau de Lorían’, but we chose ‘Allumé’ as it had the most potential for the advert. The questionnaire also showed us that most people would pay up to £45 for their perfume, so we chose to price it at £30, which is a more affordable option. Planning - Questionnaire

Rather than using a peer as the model, we wanted to opt for a somebody that would produce the most professional-looking photos, so we chose a girl from the Sixth Form in our school. This also alters the audience that the advert would attract to a slightly older generation, which is the idea we aimed for. We organised with her to come into school during one of our Media lessons and to wear her prom dress for the photos. During the photo shoot, we used either a green screen or black curtain as the background so that editing the images on Macromedia Fireworks would be quicker and easier. Planning – Model and Props

Production – My Group My role: Create the mid-shot magazine advert; take all of the photographs required. Chris’ role: Create the long-shot magazine advert; help with the photo shoot layout. David’s role: Design the billboard poster; help with the photo shoot layout. I think that we worked really well as a group as we were all responsible for one advert each. This meant that the project was not all loaded onto one member.

Production – Photos To take the images, I used my Fujifilm SLR camera. Here are our 3 favourite shots, which are the ones we adapted to create the final adverts. We used Macromedia Fireworks to edit our photographs. During the image manipulation process, we all found it particularly difficult to replace the green screen and background with the colour black. This was because it was tricky to fill in the small gaps.

Evaluation – Finished Advert This is my finished advert. The appearance of the model, dress and font used add to the elegance we aimed to associate with our perfume. The slogan, ‘for when you need to shine’ directly addresses the audience and links to the name of the product, Allumé. It implies that, if you want to feel radiant on a night out, all you need is this perfume. We portrayed the model holding a large version of the perfume, which is glowing to represent the meaning of the name. The ‘rule of thirds’ technique means that the first things you will see are the model’s face, the perfume and the title.

Evaluation Summary Compared to actual media texts, I think that our advert would fit in well. The research stage of our project showed us that every aspect of a piece of media should be well thought out to put across a message. The feedback we received was mainly very positive. Our teacher commented, “fantastic super-imposing on background; great direction of model and costume, but the product needs to be clearer.” If I was to create the advert again, I would improve it by making more space to allow for a larger, better picture of the perfume bottle.