Evaluation Question 1

Conventions analysis


Conventions of an advert (sports)

The conventions of a sports advert are: The product in action, the player with the endorsement (sometimes the opposition versing each other), science (legitimize the product), they usually are polysemic, some editing (including: Slow motion, Speeded up, fast paced editing etc.), but most importantly the product.
The product in action makes the viewer want to buy the product because for example with a boot, it says that it boosts accuracy (or at least inspires you to train to do that.).
The player with the endorsement is featured because it could mean that you could be exactly like them if you practice enough with the product you could be in the exact same situation as them. But sometimes they have multiple players to make the viewer more included because they could be a fan of one of the players but not another. It also creates some tension between them.
They sometimes include if it is a sport drink like lucosade energy drink, they say that it is scientifically proven to make you better at sport because it would give you lots of energy. It is not only for people who play sports such as football but people who play fifa; they might want to be more energised to continue playing for hours on end.

They are mostly polysemic (It means multiple meanings), they can usually mean that you could do what the footballers are doing if you are willing enough to train with their products. It can also be for people to read and be strung into buying a drink because it has been scientifically proven to make you more energised and therefore are better at football because you'll be better equipped than everybody else.
It contains a lot of editing to show you that the footballers move very quickly and think fast. I have seen a lot of football adverts that show slow motion to show how good they are at what they do (the control, the skill, the movement). Adverts also include fast paced editing to show that the tension of the game doesn't slow down, they've always got to be thinking sharply and very quick.
The most important thing in a sports advertisement is the product, you need to include it. No product, no advertisement.
An example of this would be the Adidas advert 'there will be haters'. In this the footballers are saying how successful they are. They use fast editing to show the many things they can buy, this ranges from sports cars to a jet. The celebrities show the boots that they wear showing the viewer that if they buy the boots then they can be that successful too. This advert shows all of the qualities that I have mentioned.  



It is not the advertisement for the specific sport that I am doing. However, this is besides the point because it includes the codes and conventions and also the ideology needed for my advertisement in football.
What it includes is a soundtrack in the background and editing to the beat you don't have to have visual representation for this. Whenever the voiceovers for football games are played the music dies down leaving more room for the game to be heard. The roles are reversed when the guy is speaking, I feel like this has been done to highlight the fact that actions are more impactful than words.
It also has a range of celebrity endorsements with different voices that can be heard, big fans of Iowa state will be hearing this and will recognise the players voices, this will make them want to watch the sport more if the are speaking to the audiences as individuals.
All of them speak at once which shows they are all heading to one goal as a team, which is to win games so the fans will be pleased.
In radio voices are the main thing and they have followed specific conventions that the audience will expect to hear and this has made it appealing to them. If this were to be selling anything it would work in the same sort of way.



Inspiration 1 and comparison

I have taken inspiration for a lot of adverts that I have created, taking different elements to challenge and conform to codes and conventions of sports adverts. One of these adverts is the Sky Sports - Football advert - 1997 – This features Sean Bean – this means that they have included a celebrity. But he is an actor so they have created synergy to bring the football fans closer to him as an actor and fans of Sean Bean will be more attracted to football, the feature of him is an endorsement in itself taking people closer to the both of them.


I did not want to conform to this though because I wanted an anonymous voice rather than a recognisable one, because in a way I have conformed to the conventions of a sports advert because I have focused more on the product rather than the celebrity, both can be equally important but I am not selling the brand; I am selling a specific product.

On the video itself I have added a booming voice with light music in the background to make it stand out. I have added the logo in the video that is the only visual element but I have stuck with the logo being black and white. I structured it as todorov's narrative theory, so that means that in the narrative, the equilibrium is there and something disrupts that (the old boots) and the solution is to buy the new boots which will make you better at football because it has been ‘scientifically proven.

I wanted to represent the radio advertisement as something that is used for a kick about in your friends garden, I tried to relate to the audience using the second person with words like ‘you’ and ‘your’, this would relate to them because I related to how I used to be as a child I know that in the working class to lower middle class I wanted new football boots, I feel like the kids that I am targeting would feel like the advert is talking to them rather than anyone else

Inspiration 2 and comparison

■My second inspiration was for the advert with Joe in it. This was the long advert, I have taken the inspiration from the Gatorade advert ‘The secret to victory’ which involves a lot of celebrity endorsement and close ups to signify who is in the advert. The signifier are everywhere from people training to the things they own (showing that they are very rich and successful). The other thing in this is colour connotation which shows that the things that they wear match the teams logo and all around branding which means that this is another type of synergy, meaning that they have brought two separate things into one to advertise each other. That is what a sponsor does. A sponsor doesn’t have to be necessarily a short video it can be a very long winded advertisement which this one is to prove a point. You have to lose in order to learn from your mistakes, it is conventional to bring this meaning to an advert because where would people be if they won everything?

■So onto the advert I wanted to take inspiration by saying that the denotation is that you have to be a winner to be successful which doesn’t conform to the conventions. I have conformed to the cinematography (codes) of the Gatorade advert, because I have used close ups and made sure that the main goal is scoring goals. The message of this is he doesn’t waste time he trains and betters himself so he will be the best player and he will make money which will be the mode of every sports stars. I structured it unconventionally because he is just there to play football there is no real narrative usually to football adverts apart from the fact that they are there to win and nobody is going to change that. The audience expect to see someone playing football which is the conventions that football adverts often always conform to because of the sports genre, every likes action in short.

■The representation of the advert was simple, I wanted people to know that thanks to football boots, the player became better than anyone could anticipate, which relates to the aspirers, the psychographics type of people that the media owners would want to target in their advertisement.

Inspiration 3 and comparison

■In my third advert I wanted to have my actress to just play football like she normally would. There is a narrative of her just being good at what she does therefore you should buy the products that she uses, this was simple because the audience that I have targeted would think this way (Being kids and all). This is a conventional way to go about a football advert with fast paced editing and shots that move quickly suck as whip pans and close ups of her doing what she does with the football. I did try to add a proper narrative (like a backstory), but we will get into that later. In terms of structure it is the same with all of my adverts, someone is there to play football but every time they do I focus on a different product that they use to better themselves at the game and sort of adapt to their environment and make the playing field their’s.

■The inspiration I got from this was the Adidas advert ‘There will be haters’ in which the most skilful footballers are showing off all that they own and say that you should be jealous about this. I wanted a lighter tone than thing because of all the props used in the advert. The colour schemes were quite vibrant showing that they buy bright shiny things. But they say the most important thing they own is a football boot, which I was going for trying to give off a message of ‘it is the product that is the real star of the show not the person.

■Once again I wanted to target the people who want to become someone and using old products will not get them to that stage.

Narrative conventions
Now that I have explained what I have taken some inspiration from I will now talk about the conventions of narrative.

       Narrative can most of the time be unconventional for a football advert because what people want to see is the mise-en-scene and the cinematography, fast paced editing, they want to see action shots not a narrative that won't make sense.

      However I have taken into consideration the niche part of football adverts that have a narrative such as the radio advertisement because in the digesis there was a person that was asked out to play football, that was a problem because the boy was embarrassed about his old boots, the solution being the new boots. People may not know this theory, but this is Trey Parker's theory that he used for South Park, the rule is "if there's a 'but then' the story is already ruined.

         Audience conventions

I will now talk about my audience's age and if it is conventional or not.

I want to target the younger ages for the boots because I want to include or pretend to have a celebrity endorsement, younger kids adore celebrities usually footballers because they want to be just like them getting their boots and all their fashion. I have seen this with the Nike advert 'risk everything' because the people playing football say that they certain players that they like and are pretending to be them. That's how I feel my football clothing would influence the younger generation. I didn't pick any older than 20 because they probably have jobs and wouldn't be interested in buying football boots because they wouldn't take part in that sort of activity. I also didn't choose pensioners because I can't imagine pensioners running around a football field playing football. However, I could include teenagers because they do have a reason to play football on a Sunday or something so I won't be including any sort of cartoon stuff because it will be too childish. 

Location conventions

I think it is fairly obvious, I chose a pitch as my location this mise-en-scene is necessary to the advert and all adverts use them it is definitely a convention. I used a concrete pitch and a field for my adverts.

Costume conventions

        Obviously the costumes has to be a football get up. However, I believe in the freedom of media so I decided one of my adverts should have someone in casual clothing to convey a more this can be done casually vibe.