Existing Products

Ruby Hooper

Mother London is a creative agency that is one of the UK’s largest independent advertising agencies with a reputation of being one of the cooler, relaxed agencies in the world. They have created a few pieces for Frank and one out of a set of three I have selected to look at is “how long is a line of coke?” because I am very fond of the layout on the poster. The aim of this campaign is to encourage younger people to seek accurate information about drugs. The work was displayed in print form, radio advertisement and online, it aims to build an awareness amongst an audience of people aged between 11 and 18 years old. The radio advertisement included young people asking for advice from a selection of unlikely characters such as a parrot or their gran, this was done to communicate that Frank knows the answer they are looking for regarding drugs. The digital form features 10 second long clips that show the effects of drugs in unusual scenarios with a comedic effect with a voice over saying “Nobody knows how drugs will affect them. Talk to Frank.” What I like about this particular poster is how much it has to say but how little is presented. The poster is not telling people to change their attitudes or behavior like other campaigns, this one is raising awareness of a service that is available to them. The Skunk and Coke posters are both speaking about drugs that have been around for a long period oftime while the meow meow poster is referring to a more recent drug with the street name of meow meow. All three posters have a comical essence because the image is referring to something different to the text. I really like the similarity between posters, they are easily recognized as the same campaign.

Frank have campaigned on the use of cocaine in the UK, there particular campaign for this subject caused uproar because of the sensitivity of the subject. The campaign was released on December 4th in 2008 and cost the up to £1m in television and online advertising. The main character in the television advert is a dog named Pablo, the name was inspired by Pablo Escobar who was the leader of the Medellin Cartel, this was a well organised network of drug smugglers and suppliers throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. Pablo the Drug Mule Dog has a wry sense of humour yet manages to explain the not so glamorous adventure of cocaine smuggling into the UK. Due to their young target audience it speaks to them on a level they can understand while demonstrating the ugly truth behind how they got their cocaine. The way the campaign is worded is modern and calmly speaks about the situation with graphic images, this makes the audience feel like they can trust the advert because of the warming voice. The advert doesn’t focus all its energy on drug smuggling but other factors such as: the addiction, heart attacks, violence, fear and personality changes that all comes with the package of using cocaine. Following this campaign, Frank offers an ’experience’ page to website viewers, one of which is named ‘cocaine basement’ which links closely to the Pablo campaign and is even referred to at the beginning. The experience includes mini-games that the viewer can play and learn about addiction, heart problems, impurities, nose bleeds, personality, law and finally about using dogs to smuggle cocaine into the country. Frank offers other games such as ‘spliff pinball’ which is based around cannabis and mental issues. These methods are effective due to their younger audience. Frank also offers resources to visual learners, auditory leaners and kinesthetic so everyone has the opportunity to learn. -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LnA-xCz5U8

In this section I am discussing the website ran by Legal Highs, Lethal Lows. Their target audience is students who are in college and university, this means that their website is modern, quirky and slick. The background is dotted but the image is easily recognized as a photograph taken in a nightclub with vibrant pink lights and white bold text that is eye catching and complementing to one and other, I believe that the colour scheme has a pink glow because females are more likely to take notice in the subject than males are and pink is a colour that is closely related to femininity. The website is easy to navigate around as it has a continuous scroller and the options located at the top of the page direct you straight to that article on the same page as everything else. There is a smooth transaction between background changes depending on the seriousness of the article, the laptop/desktop webpage works efficiently but it stubborn to tampering the page shape and size, the mobile website on the other hand looks less appealing, the layout appears dull and there is very little engaging imagery, this is not ideal when your target audience has the highest rate in mobile device uses in the UK. The image to the right is one that occurs regularly on the website, it gives the page a sense of colour while making viewers aware of what legal highs actually look like and their different substances formations.

The image below is a screenshot taken from the website of them promoting their game that is available on various mobile devices. The logo is clearly presented and a very similar colour scheme is followed, this keeps a close connection to other assets of the company which makes their campaign recognizable. The game is presented fairly far down the website and is mentioned frequently on a range of different posters.

I downloaded the game myself and I am impressed with the quality, speed and I appreciate the idea but the game is not interesting or brain stimulating, especially for a mentally developed target audience. There is no story line to the game and there is no exhilarating ambition which disheartens the audience. http://www.legalhighslethallows.co.uk

This campaign was created by the police and it is designed to raise awareness and change behavior. I came across this poster at college so it shows we have a very similar target audience because my campaign is appropriate for this age group and is my desired audience. The poster contains little imagery and bombards the viewer with information. The separation between the contrasting black and white is rough and can be similarly related to a line of cocaine. The other form of imagery that can be seen is the skull which is commonly associated with something deadly or death, this speaks for itself. The different coloured text draws attention to each individual word while the “After a high” and “legal highs” are a larger font size which also draws attention to what the poster is speaking about. The audience can glance at the poster and quickly understand what the objective is and the extra text provides facts.The police have included their statement badge which I believe scares the audience if glancing because it automatically makes them believe it is illegal even though the aim of the poster is to change behavior. When reading further into the poster you realise that the police are actually warning the audience of the consequences which makes them slightly more likeable amongst their target audience. There is nothing else to this campaign, no other posters, flyers or even a website.