Creating a viral ad for the film is something that could present a multitude of opportunities.
Initially, we may produce something alluding to the fidget spinner as a toy itself on sale. The spinner could spin constantly and present something comedic similar to the bat symbol in the oldschool batman tv shows.
Alternatively, another viral ad may coincide with the character of Max and the amount of mishaps he has in a day. This would result in provoking a comical approach to the audiences perception of him and therefore may lead to the ultimate end of finding the fidget spinner on the floor.
Using the idea of comedy in the advert would be an integral part of the process and as a result would be an essential requirement. Some methods of introducing this may involve the idea of a montage of bloopers or a sequence of the events that take place however in time random order. This would therefore produce a degree of intrigue and convey the comedic tone effectively.
An essential part of marketing, radio spots have been utilised since the early 1900s with the first commercial broadcast being made by the KDKA station on November 2; proving to effectively project the election results of the harding cox presidential race before they were released in the newspapers.
This microcosm of a beginning sparked an entirely new wave of power to the radio advertisements from then on which now results in most major films being broadcasted commercially via radio stations today. Some examples of popular films with radio advertisements involve Gravity and The Great Gatsby. Film Radio Spots 2013 - Gravity, Pacific Rim, The Conjuring & The Great Gatsby from Angell Sound Studios on Vimeo.
It could as a result be argued that the radio spots of these films contributed to their success for example, Gravity (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2013) had amassed a successful box office total of $723.2 million.
Viral Advertisements are prevalent amongst the current era in a plethora of ways including varying amounts of the multiple uses found in technology and more importantly television. For an advert to achieve its viral status the theme of trends and sharing on a global level would be required to take place- a increasing momentum through crowds of people.
Popular Examples
The Red Bull Space Jump (October 2012)
This campaign was a huge success in allowing the trademark of red bull to become great adventure as the advert exposes a significant human feat. Using the freefall as sponsored by the company would trigger a series of events regarding the popularity to increase considerably. As the advert becomes more famous the logo and branding of red bull would be seen by more people therefore boosting the ratings exponentially which may in turn increase the sales.
The John Lewis Advert (December 2016)
John Lewis adverts are notoriously popular at christmas so much so that they are the staple of the month when they arrive. Using the theme of christmas as a way to ensure that the most are pulled into watching is a surefire way of viral marketing strategy at its prime. The ideas of events and popular continuations would determine an overall wider global reach therefore ultimately boosting its advert outreach. This particular advert of had the most video shares of all time, clocking in at 218,330.
In addition to this, the table of revenue depicts a large increase in sales as the years go on which effectively demonstrates that viral advertising works completely in a companies favour. As a result, the use of viral ads within the society of today is a benchmark feature for most.
A Viral ad is essentially just an advert that is designed to reach an audience of millions. These are often done mainly on TV and the internet in the modern day.
On the internet especially, mainly sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, it is important to get these ads trending so that the most amount of people can see them, often in a very easily accessible or front pages of the site.
An example of a viral ad from TV are the various "Wassup" Budweiser commercials from the late 90's and early 2000's. These became big via how often they were played on TV and how much people would repeat them to each other. These were basically memes at the time and spread through word of mouth rather than the internet.
TheLegend27 Game of War ad went viral in late 2016; quickly becoming a meme on the internet and spread to many places such as reddit, 4chan and other channels on YouTube where it was reworked and re edited to be comedic. This spread earned the trailer over 100,000,000 views on YouTube, making it the most viewed TV ad on the site. The trailer gained this reputation because of how comedic it is; making it really easy for people to re edit and change.
For our short comedy film there are many different ways we can take our viral ad in as our film features three major aspects: a comedy genre, a dopey character and one of the latest crazes, fidget spinners. When creating our viral ad, we could create many different medias to promote our product such as: radio spots, trailers, bloopers and interviews. By focusing our viral ad on the comedy genre we could create an advertisement focusing on bloopers from our film to attract an audience to see our film. Further more we could cut some comedy parts of our film together to make a comedic trailer.
A way we could create a viral ad focusing on our main actor, we could create an interview with the main actor to show to the audience how he portrayed this dopey character in the film and whether that reflects what he is like in real life. This would also be a comedic video linking to the genre of our film and in the interview we could show short snippets of the film to the audience to attract them to watch the film.
Finally one other way we could create a viral ad is to focus on our main prop, the fidget spinner. An idea for a viral ad for the fidget spinner is we could present an advertisement as if we was selling the toy. Then all of a sudden we could cut to our film and show a comedic trailer of our film conveying our main character using the fidget spinner. This would be great for our film as many children all around the world love the fidget spinner toy so as soon as the advert comes up we'll grab their attention.
This film poster was aimed at replicating the major blockbusters of Hollywood as the reviews in the corner and the text at the bottom would be reminiscent of the ones that were demonstrated in the previous examples.
The fidget spinner and the clock would demonstrate that time was rewinding and an effective piece of iconography; the enlarged text in the middle would also portray the stereotypical big Hollywood film.
Tividar Puskas producer of the first ever radio advert
Radio spots also known as radio advertisements have broadcasted ever since 1893 where the first radio advertisement was a campaign on telephones. Since then radio spots became more frequent as companies realised it was a great way to advertise their product due to thousands of people tuning in every day to listen to the radio. As this trend began to progress, film companies saw this as a chance to promote their films and advertise even further. With these radio trailers used for advertisements more people go to see the films leading to more money the films gross at box office.
Many major films in modern times use radio spots as part of their viral ad campaign as they want to publish their advert on many medias possible to gain the most attention they can. Some major films who use radio spots are: Star Wars, Alien, Superman and Gravity.
A viral advert (also known as a viral ad) is an advertisement spread throughout all medias, especially social media, to achieve wide recognition of their companies product or campaign. For a campaign or product to go viral there is certain criteria an advertisement must achieve in order to be successful at this. This criteria consists of your advertisement featuring: information or entertainment. By containing information and/or entertainment in an advert, this creates a common talking point for viewers which encourages people to spread word about their product as the entertainment and/or information caught their eye which leads me on to my next point.
Despite information and entertainment being key to an advertisement becoming viral, this doesn't automatically make the advert become successful. To ensure an advert becomes viral, the company must find a way to target their specific audience and use the information and entertainment according to this factor. By combining these techniques together the information, entertainment and common interests of the product combine creating a successful viral marketing campaign where the public spread word across all medias about your product.
Furthermore companies tend to use comedic aspects quite a lot to make their advert light hearted and fun for the audience to view as fun and light hearted experiences are easier to recall and remember.
Examples of successful viral adverts
Old Spice was an extremely successful viral marketing campaign evident from the 54.9 million views on YouTube. In this advert the campaign contains a lot of fast paced editing which adds to the entertainment to the advert as this encourages the audience to keep watching as they don't want to miss anything. Furthermore by having the main actor break the 4th wall and engage the audience with a direct address, this encourages the audience to feel a connection with the actor on the screen, persuading them to buy the product as they have this connection with the actor.
This TNT advert also went viral due to it's action packed entertainment. Unlike other adverts, this captures the audience based on what you would see in an action packed TV series which is very clever as when there is a lot of events happening on screen the audience is usually gripped and can't look away. This advert was extremely successful as this video has received 55.4 million views on YouTube.
Re-shoots are a key part of film making as this helps you improve the quality of the work you are producing. By looking back at our film and analysing weaker parts to our film we can work on achieving a better grade and making the film look better for our audience.
At first glance, we couldn't find any improvements to our work however after close analysis we noticed that in one scene where our main character Max spins his fidget spinner, the yellow fidget spinner is washed out by the yellow wall in the background. Therefore because this scene didn't look effective we decided to film this scene in a different room to get the best quality footage. In addition to this, the room we have re-located the scene to is much smaller so the sound will be more susceptible to the camera making the diegetic sound more crisp and clear.
After analysing several film posters I decided it was time to create a poster based on our own film. However, before creating my poster I needed to think of what I could include in my poster that would link to the film and it's genre. To start off this process I thought that our poster should definitely include the main characters and the main props in our film so I decided to include a fidget spinner and a clock to represent how the fidget spinner represents time. In addition to this, I decided to place the main characters head on the three outer circles off the fidget spinner to show he is the one who is being affected by the fidget spinner and the manipulation of time.
To get across to the audience the comedy intent of our film, I decided to find a funny image of our main character to ensure our poster is light hearted and a bit of fun. As well as this comedy aspect, we also decided to give the title a comedic perspective by naming our film "Winner Winner Fidget Spinner" which is a comedic wordplay of the amusing saying "winner winner chicken dinner" to emphasise to the audience that the film isn't entirely serious and that it is a comedy genre.
Due to the fact that we are reflecting genre through this media, we decided to reflect the sci-fi element of our film through the clock on the fidget spinner as it may encourage the audience to guess our films main theme: time travel.
The original Star Wars spots aired in 1977, coinciding with the release of the film. Radio spots aren't as common anymore as they were in 1977, 40 years later, as radio it's self is not as popular as it once was, meaning that these spots don't really reach that wide of an audience and depending on who the target audience is, may not reach that demographic at all as a lot of younger people don't listen to radio anymore; preferring streaming services such as Spotify or iTunes.
Dialogue: Most of the radio spot features narration over the score of the movie. This narration provides information about the film that otherwise wouldn't be available, as it is not part of the dialogue of the film. "Don't be alarmed, it's only a movie, from director George Lucas". Information like this just gives more background about the film. "Luke Skywalker is on a daring mission to rescue a beautiful princess". Brief plot information like this, mixed with the background sound effects and score create mystery and intrigue about the film due to the different merge of genres, Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
Sound Effects: Many sound effects from the film play in the trailer; mainly iconic noises such as Darth Vader breathing, R2D2's beeping sounds, and the light sabre. These present what genre the film is, Sci-Fi, as you wouldn't hear these kind of sound effects in any other film.
These are all the thing that we will need to include in our own radio spot which shouldn't be too hard to do.
