Advertising CSP 3: Represent NHS Blood campaign

 This product provides an excellent opportunity to explore a range of different representations: ethnicity, masculinity, femininity, class, age, disability and ability and place. It's also a different type of advert as it's not promoting a product but instead is a campaign designed to influence the audience's behaviour.

Sample questions for Advertising and Marketing

In your Media exams, you are likely to get questions similar to these:

1) Why do advertisers use stereotypes? [6 marks]

2) Explain how advertisements reflect the social and cultural contexts in which they were created. [12 marks]

Think about how you might answer those questions based on the CSPs we have studied.

Advertising campaigns

Some adverts are produced in a series as a campaign. An advertising campaign is a series of advertisements that share a singular theme, message or idea. These are used to raise awareness of an issue or of the brand itself. The best campaigns have an emotional impact on audiences.

An advertising campaign will usually appear across multiple media platforms - print, broadcast and online.

Represent: background information

Lady Leshurr is an English rapper, singer and producer. She is famous for her freestyling rap style and has her own clothing line. 

This is the advert CSP:

This is a 'making of' video about how the Represent video was made:

The two articles we read in the lesson provide details on the campaign and how it was developed. This also gives information on why blood from people with a BAME background is so vital. 

GLOW words to use in connection to this campaign

• Literal – the actual, obvious meaning 
• Semiotics - the message behind what you see (hidden messages)
• Reinforce stereotype – when a representation is what we expect
• Challenge/subvert stereotype - When a representation goes against what we normally see in the media
• Mass - A mass audience is made up of a large group of people (men, women, children, elderly)
• Niche - A niche audience is a small subset with very unique interests or characteristics 

Codes and conventions of urban music videos

• There are many low-angled, close up shots in hip hop videos, to imply the artists’ power over their audience. The low angle gives them the power, because they look down on the audience and the close up gives status because it implies they’re important enough to have a frame to themselves.
• Sections of direct contact with the camera (the artist usually spends a lot of time looking straight into the camera as if to talk or have a conversation with the audience and relate to them)
• Props regarding costume tend to be used, for e.g. gold jewellery (male rap artists are commonly known to wear heavy chains or prominent rings)
• Show a clear display of emotions – if the tone of the song is angry, the artist is likely to present this through their gestures and facial expressions.
• Strong editing cuts between concept / performance and narrative.

Represent NHS Blood & Transplant campaign: blog tasks

Work through the tasks in this blogpost to make sure you're an expert on this CSP.

1) What is an advertising campaign?

An advertising campaign is a series of advertisements that all have the same message / theme, pandering to a niche in order to raise awareness.

2) What is the objective of the NHS Represent campaign? 

To gain more Black/Asian blood donors in order to battle diseases that these ethnicities are respectively more prone to.

3) What does this advert want people to do once they've seen it (the 'call to action')? 

To represent their communities by standing up to donate blood, almost as if its a duty, drawing parallels to soldiers who are drafted to war, its a 'call to action' to fight against diseases.

4) Why is the advert called 'Represent'? 

Ethnic minorities are urged to represent their communities by donating their blood to the cause.

5) Why have the producers chosen celebrities to feature in the advert? Give an example of three well-known people who appear in the advert and why they are famous - make sure you write their names and spell them accurately. Lady Leshurr, Nicola Adams and Ade Adepitan are a few celebrities who were chosen for the advert to represent some of the ethnic minorities within the field in order to bring attention to the communities' achievements and to inspire them to become blood donors.

6) What are the connotations of the slow-paced long shot of empty chairs at the end of the advert?

To demonstrate the lack of participation and as if to say 'these seats are waiting for you to fill them' , urging you to donate blood.

7) How does the advert match the key conventions of a typical urban music video? There is a lot of direct contact with the camera between the rapper and the camera which is a key convention in many urban music videos.

8) How does the advert subvert stereotypes? Give three examples (e.g. ethnicity, masculinity, femininity, age, class, disability/ability etc.) A female ceo, when that position is typically held by men, a female scientist in a laboratory and a man in a wheelchair who plays basketball.

9) How does the advert reinforce certain stereotypes? Could there be an oppositional reading where some audiences would find this advert offensive or reinforcing negative stereotypes? The lack of women in sport related fields pushes the stereotype that men typically inhabit these types of job which is a negative stereotype as it excludes women.

10) Choose one key moment from the advert and write an analysis of the connotations of camera shots and mise-en-scene (CLAMPS). The shot near the end of the advert displays a medium shot taken of some empty seats presumably in a blood donor clinic. The empty seats connotate the disparity of Black/Asian blood donors which are needed in order to battle diseases that these blood types are prone to and pushes the idea that more should come to donate.