Task 4: Comparing Adverts

Henry Buckham

Car Adverts:Price Vs Quality

Tata Nano AdvertPrice-Orientated

• Image: The Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest production car, has an advert that promotes the car as cheap but still hip and trendy, particularly with their tagline ‘Celebrate Awesomeness’ which markets the car towards a younger audience. The structure of the advert is a simple red background with white text which focuses more on the legibility of the advert rather than boasting of the car’s features, which is relegated to the bottom right instead of being primarily in focus. It is designed with a younger audience in mind with the bold, bright colours and playful text, so that the car’s name and pricing is most prominent. It is designed to be a modern and trendy vehicle which will appeal more to young people who may be skeptical of buying a vehicle designed for an older audience. The image of the car itself has been taken from the side to emphasize the vehicle’s tiny profile, as opposed to using a 3 quarter view to highlight its curves and edges.

• Unlike BMW’s advert which advertises the features of the vehicle, and most other automobile adverts which tend to place the advertised vehicle on a dramatic backdrop, the Nano’s advert is very basic and only advertises the starting price, highlighting how cheap the vehicle is compared to other entry-level automobiles. There is no mention of the car’s performance specifications, which combined wit the simplicity of the advertisement paints the car as the bare minimum in vehicular equipment, making it ideal for those who are unable to afford a car with more features but require their own transport.

BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe

Quality Orientated

• BMW uses a very high quality layout and typeface to promote the new 6 Series. Having the backing of their prestigious reputation the car is placed on a backdrop that has been digitally edited to appear dramatic and bold than what could be achieved in an ambient image, using a solar eclipse to make it much more eye-catching and ethereal in appearance. The lighting of the image has been doctored to emphasize the car’s lines and curves, giving it a very dominating and sleek appearance and emphasizing the traits of speed and power. The advert’s layout is very modern and sleek in appearance, using simple boxes to great efficiency and promoting a house style which is seen across many BMW adverts promoting different cars, helping to create a sense of unity and recognition within the brand. The typeface BMW uses to advertise the car, particularly the taglines ‘Refined elegance. Raw Power.’ is in bold to emphasize domination and performance, two traits that the brand is famous for. The advert is also promoting the brand’s approach to greener driving with their EfficientDynamics technology, which is displayed in the bottom right in its own section. The advert lists the carbon emission savings that can be made with the car’s efficient engine, which is used to present the vehicle as a clean and low running cost alternative to one of the other established luxury car manufacturers. This is turn gives the car more value to those who are concerned with carbon emissions and fuel costs.

• Unlike the Nano’s advert there is no clear mention of price, and this advert goes into much more detail about the car’s new features which helps to sell the car to the public as being advanced and innovative. The logo of the company, while still small, is displayed with much more prominence than Tata’s thanks to being a more recognizable marque and having an ability to be able to be sold on its logo alone. BMW competes directly with Audi and Mercedes-Benz and uses boasts of superior technology and power to gain an advantage of the two other manufacturers.

Mobile Phone Adverts:Price Vs Quality

Windows Phone AdvertPrice-Orientated

• This Windows Phone advert is tailored towards price rather than quality, highlighting two plans available from the service provider rather than having the phone itself in center view. Artificial lighting is used to illuminate both phones and make them appear sleek, modern and high-tech without and blemishes or marks that are commonly found in real life. They have not been posed on a table or stand but rather appear to be presented in an infinite space, which means all attention is drawn to them and not elsewhere. Pricing is very prominent in this advertisement, as two of their phones have their price advertised in the centre, using bold and coloured text to distinguish it from the other text. They use the tagline ‘as low as’ above the price to make customers think that the price they would pay for this phone is lower than that of a more premium phone, such as an iPhone. Instead of describing the phone with lots of glossy, descriptive words, this advertisements simply lists the phones features to the audience, such as the data cap and the amount of apps that can be downloaded from the dedicated app store. This is in stark contrast to a typical advert from Apple, who despite using less text will usually boast of their phone’s technological capabilities instead of listing the phone’s entire specs in their adverts.

iPhone 5 AdvertQuality-Orientated

• Apple’s advert, keeping in their tradition and house style, has a very simplistic yet modern and high-tech structure that sets it apart from the previous Windows Phone advert. In particular, the advert is composed of only two major elements, the phone itself and the tagline. There are little to no clashing colours in this advert, which uses several shades of white and grey for the background and tagline. The phone itself helps to distinguish itself from the background with the black casing and multiple colours of the home screen. The phone is presented in a glossy white vacuum which helps it garner attention as the black casing contrasts well against the background. Similar to the previous advert it is portrayed in an immaculate condition and in an infinite space, something it would not be used in in real life. This careful use of lighting and post-processing helps the phone appear sleek and modern, highlighting it’s simplistic yet trendy design. Because Apple has the advantage of being a very recognizable company with strong branding, there is no mention of the company’s name itself on the advert. Instead, Apple has placed their logo underneath the phone’s tagline, which in contrast to the Windows Phone’s list of features, is a marketing boast that hypes the new model to be the best one yet in the iPhone line ever since its conception, which is a subtle way of advertising entirely new features and technology not present in older models.