Unit 45 Radio Advertising Analysis : Style , Structure , Purpose and Regulation
Mcdonald's Filet-O-Fish Radio Advert
The first radio advert I will be analysing will be McDonald's radio ad for Filet-O-Fish. The style of this advert is humorous due to the two male's dialogue and the funny voices they put on to give it its comedic effect. It is also Simple because after that comedic sketch it switches to a serious tone , containing music with a smoother voice talking about the product and the price of this product, making it also informational as well as funny. Overall the advert was to promote its limited time offer for the Filet-o-fish.
It is clear to see the purpose of this advert, which was to sell a product - the Filet-O-Fish and to raise awareness of the special offer which was "2 Filet-O-Fish for $3.33".
Moving on , in radio adverts voices need an interesting tone to attract attention and with this advert , the first two voices were comedic due to its unrealistic tone, giving the burger a voice. The conversation was also captivating due to the unnatural topic of conversation. As I said before , the second section of the ad becomes more formal when addressing the product and its price.
In the beginning of the ad, there is no background music , for the first section of the ad. However there was an echo effect used on the voices of the two male voices, in order to not make it dull and also due to the circumstances they were in , "inside a mind". In the second half of the advert there was the famous McDonald's jingle played through the strings of the guitar. The strings accompanied the narrators voice to create a happy mood and positive atmosphere for the audience.
The persuasive techniques used in this advert is in the second of the ad when the narrator says "Every day is a great day for Filet-o-fish " placing the sandwich on a pedestal for the audience to see. the name of the sandwich is said at least more than twice in this ad which was only 30 seconds long. Another technique used was the price benefit for the customer , saying that buying two of the sandwiches would be cheaper than buying one on its own, but only for a limited time.
Mr T Snickers Radio Advert
This advert used a different approach to try and persuade the audience to buy the chocolate bar. First of all it was humours due to the fact that the confused man was asking for help to assemble a kitchen unit and he was told to buy a snicker bar in the end. The aggressive tone of Mr T's voice really persuades any audience "Buy snickers!" due to reputation he has. He also said "Be a man" which narrows down the supposed audience in which he feels snickers is for , men. throughout all the snickers advert "Get Some Nuts" has always been the tagline or slogan for the product. however in this context Mr T used this line for both the slogan and for the man to "grow a pair" which was also humorous.
This ad was of course to raise brand awareness as that is what an advert is about, to send messages out to their competitors , for snickers this would be , cadbury and galaxy that they are still in the race to the top.
To emphasise what I pointed out in the previous paragraph , the use of voice. The confused customer had a pessimistic, weak voice in comparison to Mr T's alpha male voice. this gives the audience the thought that they will become more "manly" when consuming the snickers bar.
There was not any background music used in the snickers advert in comparison to the Mcdonald's advert. However there was en effect on Mr T's voice after the phone call sound making it look like he is speaking to him on the phone , which gives us an impression that he is in a office and the male is at home confused and in need of help, adding more depth into the topic of manliness.
The persuasive techniques used in this advert was of course the USP , which was of course topic of manliness throughout the advert , even the contact information which said to audience to go to snickers website for more "man coaching". the tagline "Get some nuts" was also used more than once in this 30 second advert , which is more than enough to trigger memory. The use of celebrity endorsement is one of the reasons that snickers has been so successful, the type of celebrity they chose to use Mr T from the famous manly action octane series A-Team allows them to use the "Man" topic to their advantage, and the aggressive type of persuasion also. The repeated use of "Get some nuts" instantly makes the audience picture one of the snickers adverts they have certainly seen on the TV scene.
Now to evaluate the regulation guidelines. For both these adverts they had to critically think about misleading advertising, for example if the Filet-o-fish was never $3.33 at all at one point and if snickers did not have any nuts. Harm and offence is another regulation which both had to think about. Lastly was Children, both complied well with the suitability for this even though snickers like to touch the borderline with the manly jokes. Food and associated health is associated to both the adverts because they are both consumable goods. Snickers does well with this guideline because they make it clear that there are nuts in the chocolate which not only works well for their unique selling point but helps prevent people especially children who are allergic to nuts to consume the chocolate bar, which Mcdonald's it is fine because in their restaurants they give the option to take out specific ingredients.
