Magnum Advert Analysis

The brief for this piece of work was that Unilever were inviting advertising companies to take one of their products and rebrand it, aiming it towards a different target audience. Being a sizeable company, with over 400 products, we decided to narrow our options down within our group to the products that we had chosen to prepare individual rebranding presentations on. Out of the four options, we chose to rebrand the Magnum ice-cream and aim it towards men, as the pitch for this idea was unanimously decided to be the best. This was because it would be the easiest to achieve, given the limited filming locations and the pitch made the advert seem smooth and easy to follow.
As Magnum adverts are usually aimed towards middle class women, we decided to change the target audience to young, working class men. This was a simple switch, but it allowed us to imagine different ways we could make our advert subtly appeal to a male audience.

Create your own user feedback survey

In order to gather our feedback, we created an online survey and uploaded our advert to YouTube. We then posted both on various social media and sent it to a range of people. The results of our survey showed that the majority of people thought the target audience to be male, or young people. This means that our advert did alter the target audience, but the evidence shows that it wasn't completely clear who it was now aimed at. We did also get good responses on how to improve the advert and whether or not it convinced the viewer to want a Magnum. 

Due to these results, we could tell that our advert wasn't as clear as we'd hoped it would be during the pre-production process. We had thought that by having a male as the main focus of the advert, it would be obvious that it was directed to a male audience, but because Luca was clearly a young man, there was a different outcome in the responses. This made it clear that there was an issue in communicating with our audience. We also got feedback saying that our advert isn't clear because the Magnum isn't seen properly until the end, so it's not clear what the advert is for. 

Originally, we wanted to show that time was passing and that the main character was going through a lot for the Magnum. This is why we had several different backgrounds, such as the snow and the woodland, because it was supposed to show that Magnums were "worth searching for" (this being our first slogan). However, the other locations we wanted to use were unavailable and we had to change the plot slightly. We eventually settled on the idea that a man is out for lunch with his friends at a pub, realises he is going to be late for work and runs back, stopping for a Magnum on the way. We chose the pub, having several people gathered around a table, to connote that Luca was actually an adult, not a teenager. We furthered this idea by having him run back to an office setting in the college, not a classroom, suggesting he was working not a student. For our mis-en-scene, each of the people at the pub had half drunk drinks in front of them, showing that they'd been there for a while.

We wanted our advert to have an action esque genre to it, so decided to use a range of different shot types and lengths, including a shaky point of view shot and a low angle close up. Using quite short clips gave our advert the fast pace we wanted. We then chose to have the pace interrupted midway by Luca entering the shop for his Magnum, to give the advert some comedy. By having Luca run into the shot whilst another customer is getting served, the audience could tell that he was in a rush and annoyed by the other customers slow pace, which most audiences could relate to. To add to this comedy, we chose a stereotypical elevator music soundtrack for the shop scene, which contrasted to the tenser running music that's in the background in the other shots. We also edited in the sounds of a beeping scanner to show the clerk was taking a long time, and to further the justification behind Luca's annoyance.

Our advert didn't reach the standards that I had originally hoped. According to our feedback, there were several missing shots, such as an explanation for why Luca suddenly got up and left, and a shot of him leaving the pub. We should have included a close up of his phone, and edited the match on action of him checking it during the first sequence. We also should have filmed the medium close up of Luca eating the Magnum whilst the Magnum was still cold as that shot makes it look unappetising, which doesn't convince viewers to buy it. This means that, while our advert sticks to the BCAP code, (e.g. 4.9 Advertisements must not condone or encourage violence, crime, disorder or anti-social behaviour) it is not up to a professional standard and is definitely not memorable. However, the saving grace of this advert was the final shot of Luca biting the Magnum, as it's in focus and looks much more appealing. This shot was the most effective in persuading our audience to want to buy Magnums, according to the feedback.

In hindsight, I think we should have been quicker with finding alternative locations to film in for our original idea, or taken into consideration the lack of availability sooner so we would have had more time to work on our narrative. Our original storyboards would have worked better than the advert we did produce, and if we had been able to stick to our production schedule, we could have created a better standard of advert the time we had been given. Our advert did get some positive feedback, along with some responses we were hoping for, but these were overshadowed by the confusion from the lack of explained plot. Personally, I would have attempted some more interesting shot types and experimented with how to make the pace faster and more action packed to appeal to a stereotypical male audience. I did involve myself in our advert, acting as both editor and camera operator for several of the shots and suggested using some shots such as the low angle close up and the running point of view shot.