BTEC Assignment Brief 45.A 


Marie Curie Cancer Care 

Commercial radio concerns itself with making money, the ways in which commercials radio look to gain profit is mainly through advertising. Additionally, another purpose of commercial radio is also to sell products.

In this assignment I will be analysing a radio advertisement. My first radio advertisement is produced by Marie Curie and the release date is June 2016. 

The message of the Marie Curie Cancer Care radio advert is to raise awareness about the disease of cancer, as well as to collect donations that will help support the charity.  

The style of the radio advert is factual. The advert features a casual, informal approach as appose to a shocking one; by choosing to make the advert more informal it allows more people to relate to the content, ultimately turning a morbid subject into an easy-flowing conversation. 

This advert is a one-off advertisement for the charity Marie Curie Cancer Care.  Upon researching additional advertisements for the charity, this advert is the only one which features and individual story from a person who the charity has helped. 

The purpose of the advert is to sell a service. The way in which Marie curie looks to sell its service, is by providing the target audience with what ??? (will add at home later today )
try to trigger empathy within the listener-which is done so through the use of music and a personal anecdote- to make the listener want to donate and support the charity. This advert made me sympathise with the narrator as well as making me understand the necessity for this charity to exist therefore making me want to donate to the charity to help raise funds.  The narrator then references a link to another media platform, to further spread knowledge of the charity to attract more people to help support it. 

In the Marie Curie Cancer Charity advert, from zero seconds to four seconds, the listeners are immediately introduced to a non-diegetic sound of soft guitar playing that is carried throughout the entirety of the advertisement. Four seconds into the advert, the listeners are then acquainted with diegetic sound of the narrator, who begins to talk about the relationship between him and his mum. Fifteen seconds into the advert, the narrator then starts explaining how the Marie Curie nurses helped his mother, the non-diegetic guitar sound playing faintly as background music. With twenty five seconds left of the advert, the narrator then begins to discuss the purpose of the advertisement, being to raise funds and gain supporters, then following with information on how someone would get in contact with the charity.

The voiceover within the advert, which was only a singular narrator sounds roughly around the age of 30, maybe late 30’s, which is to be expected as 30/40s is about the age people are having to start looking after their parents. As the narrator seems to be in his late 30s, the target audience for the advert would also be roughly 30’s/ 40’s as peoples parents will be roughly, 60 or 70 and will struggle with looking after themselves even without a terminal illness.

By opening the advert with a soothing guitar sound, it instantly relaxes the listener and allows them to be introduced to someone who's had a first hand experience of looking after someone with cancer, making the advert instantly feel more personal to the listener, causing them to feel empathy with the narrator and more open to the message of the advert. This makes the advert more popular and successful as the added use of colloquial language allows the company/charity to connect to the audience, as they are being addressed in a friendly, conversational tone. To personalise the message like this makes the listener think about someone they know who could benefit from this charity and might need the support that the nurses are said to provide. 

The narrator then begins explaining how beneficial it is to be a part of the Marie Curie community, describing the nurses as 'fantastic' and friendly with the patients. The narrator then goes on to explain how easy it was to have someone looked after at home as opposed to in the hospital due to the help of the marie curie cancer care charity. Towards the end of the advert, the narrator then invites the listener to join him in supporting the charity, giving out details to contact the charity. 


 

This advert was broadcasted nationally across the uk. With contact details provided in the end of the advertisement, the narrator mentions a website, https://www.mariecurie.org.uk - as well as a phone number, which is 0800 716 146.

To avoid causing offence to listeners and potential consumers, during the the production of this advertisement there would have a series of assessments which would have determined whether this advert had broke any regulation laws. Regulation bodies like OFCOM and ASA exist to provide a service which assists in helping broadcasters follow these regulation laws. OFCOM provides protection for under 18 years olds as well as making sure radio and tv advertisements follow the law and are not prejudice. I do not think an advertisement like the Marie Curie Cancer Charity would have broken the regulation laws as its purpose is to encourage people to support their charity and would have been made for a family friendly audience.

Unit 2 Assignment 2.2

This report is a summary of all the research and data I have collected to create a base layout for a successful magazine. By investigating all the areas of a magazine that I would need and could improve on, it helps me understand what a successful magazine necessities are.

The purpose of my magazine is to encourage those who don't usually buy magazines but are interested in reading movie reviews and upcoming news stories to buy my magazine. By interviewing the people who don’t read movie magazines often, it enables me to understand what other magazines are lacking and helps me gain knowledge on what i must include to attract that target audience which is not being satisfied by other magazines. Most people i interviewed said that they don't read magazines because they haven’t found one interesting enough. I think it would be interesting to see if I can create a magazine that people will gravitate towards and want to pick up.

My magazine will have a more visual aesthetic when displaying movie related news, paired with bold lettering and a minimalistic page layout it will have a classic theme of red, black and white. These colours have been specifically chosen because i feel that red, black and white are the boldest colours on the spectrum. My magazine needs to have bold lettering so that it is able to capture peoples attention. The homepage will have a picture of the headlining article, actor or movie, with the article written over the image; for example an action shot mid movie as well as the title of the featuring article. I think this style of layout for a magazine is the most effective at grabbing the audiences attention as the front picture will help relate to the audience as well as gaining support from each actors/movies fan base.





My magazine would also include an anticipation, enjoyment and must watch rating as this gives the reader more information about the movie, so that they can decided whether they will watch it or not. The anticipation rating helps determine how much hype a movie has and whether it is expected to do well. The enjoyment rating will help the reader understand if the movie met up to its anticipation, and the must watch rating tells the people whether its worth to watch the movie or not. If I were to create a online version of my magazine I would include links to popular podcasts and some radio links as well as a page for trailers and exclusive clips from current movies.

After researching and investigating I have decided that my target audience would probably young adults and teenagers as they are more likely to buy a magazine to choose a movie and then go out to the cinema to watch it. I feel I would be unable to cater successfully to older or extremely young audiences as I would not know as much about them. Choosing the genre horror allows me to widen my target audience as it doesn't just have one target audience in mind. The genre horror doesn't produce as many limitations as other genres may produce, for example a disney themed magazine will most likely be targeted at children and won't necessarily be bought as much by adults. My questionnaire will help me understand how I could potentially cater to an older audience, so I can maybe include a few more features for that particular age range. 

Upon researching production costs and values I've discovered that to create a magazine it is roughly around £!5,00 a month, individual issues costing around £7,500. The writers of the magazine would usually receive around £3000 from the magazine, the rest of the money being spent on the copy editors, illustrators, photographers and editors. To include ads would include additional profits and people usually pay between £200 to a thousand to have their ad feature in a magazine. If I were aiming to get £10,00 profit, I would have to sell 10,000 individual magazines for £2.50 each.

Initially, I would prefer my magazine be sold in shops and kiosks on the street. I feel as though that is the more traditional way of selling a magazine as people are able to walk past and see it and then want to pick it up. In my opinion, for someone just starting to create a magazine it would be difficult to spread the word of my magazine on the internet as no one would know the name of it to search it and find it. Once people are introduced and impressed by it on the street I would then start looking at expanding my media options, most likely turning to the internet to set up a website for my magazine. By making my magazine more accessible in most media formats there will be a gradual increase in buying potential.

In my opinion, I feel that the magazine should be released quarterly. This is because a quarterly schedule allows the magazine time to collect all the contents and features of the magazine and bring them together to be double/triple checked. More frequent release of the magazine may not work as well as the magazine will have more pressure to be finished by a shorter deadline, which could lead to editing errors or copying errors. Another factor to be taken into account would be that if we were to release more throughout the year, our magazine would not be as rare and interesting as those you can only by quarterly.

To conclude, my horror themed magazine will at first be sold in shops and kiosks and will be released quarterly, retailing for £2.50. My target audience will be teenagers and young adults as these are the ages in which people are more interested in going to the cinema, which is the ideal target audience for a movie magazine. Leaning towards the more visual side of presenting, i will have short brief summaries of each article that my magazine features, then will provide a link or page number to the actual article.