By Olivia Jordan

Unit 1 – Analysing Media Products and Audiences

Contents

• Advertising Agency Profile• Print Case Study• Audience Research• Legal and Ethical Issues• Distribution and Promotion

Mother: Agency Profile

Ownership

• Mother is a creative advertising agency, founded in 1996 by Mark Waites, Stef Calcraft, Libby Brockhoff, and Robert Saville.

• Their main focus being “to make great work, have fun and make a living.”

• They believe focusing on employee needs generates more awareness of customer needs.

Operating Model

• Mother are the UK’s largest independent advertising agency with offices in New York, London and Buenos Aires and with over 400 employees.

• They make a variety of cross platform media, TV adverts and prints.

Products

Mother have a range of clients they work with including;PG Tips, Boots, IKEA, Coca-Cola, Boots, Stella Artois, Fox’s, Match.com, Green & Black’s, Pimm’s, New Look, 17 Cosmetics, Powerade, Halfords and MoneySupermaket.com

• Mother has worked with each World Cup since 1996 designing models of football players.

• They also launched 'Psychic Tees', 100 t-shirts with fortunes from Hollywood Lucinda Clare on them and raised 10k for charity.

• In 2008 they produced a feature film 'Somers Town' for Eurostar which won Best British Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Market Position & Competitors

• Mother achieved the title of the UK's largest independent advertising agency. In 2009 they were labelled 'Agency of the Year’.

• They face competition with a range of UK based independent advertising agencies such as; JWT London, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, VCCP, Ogilvy Group (one of IKEA’s other ad agencies).

• Another agency, Fallon based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with offices in London, Detroit, and Tokyo produce commercials for large company's such as Skoda, Virgin Mobile, Cadbury's and McDonald's. 

MAKE SMALL SPACES BIG CAMPAIGN

Print Advert 1

Print Advert 2

The Campaign

• In 2013 IKEA launched a campaign in the form of a print ad and TV/commercial. The advert features a tower block dollhouse brought to life in the eyes of a little girl playing with it. The made up apartment displays IKEA’s adaptable products in an everyday household scene.

• IKEA have a reputation for creating cheap products, in this advert they have focused on a smaller target audience to promote their compatible storage.

Analysis of the Print Advertisement

• The two prints ads feature in IKEA’s 'Make Small Spaces Big' campaign. They work effectively alongside each other with similar features including the room setting which has a minimalistic, modern look to it. This is stereotypical for IKEA as they don't follow the 'homely' look in their adverts but a more cold, fresh style.

• The use of a pastel and block colour scheme on the 2 adverts gives a popularized appearance but also an effective contrast. The colours give a clear perception of a home ware commercial.

• It includes two main images with two ‘options’ of the product, which the viewer can click on to view more. The purpose of the product and IKEA’s multi-functional furniture allows a personalized living space.

Purpose• IKEA launched the campaign to demonstrate the effectiveness of

their products in small spaces. • The advert shows a real life scenario that someone could be dealing

with, this connects with the target audience that IKEA wanted to focus on for the campaign giving them more opportunities through their products to create a desired living space. Relating with the specific target audience allows IKEA to appeal to them that their multi-functional products are far better than any other cheap home ware brands such as Homebase and B&Q.

Genre• The genre of the advert is home ware, interior design and

lifestyle.• Comparing to similar home ware adverts such as Homebase,

which heavily promotes their do-it-yourself products in their ads. They advertise their huge variety of choices within their products such as wallpapers, carpets, floor boards and sofa. Their slogan “make your house your home” promoting how straightforward DIY products are.

• B&Q another UK home ware store also advertise their do-it-yourself products and storage, in their ads they include ranges of ages from young to old wearing overalls to demonstrate anyone can have a go at DIY with their easy to assemble products.

Form• The campaign features two print based ads and a TV/online

commercial ‘One Room Paradise’ • The TV/web commercial in set in the style of a music video with the

re-produced ‘One Room Paradise’ playing throughout the video.• The advert gives the viewer a chance to explore the house and

give an insight into each bit of furniture and its use. This promotes IKEA'S products as multifunctional and gives a professional representation of IKEA.

Style• The style of the web commercial is refreshing, original and creepy.

The use of real actors wearing real life-size doll faces is a clever technique to attract the attention of the audience because it’s different. Mother have a unique style in making abstract adverts which don’t associate to any other home ware and interior design advertisement.

Content• The TV/online ad acts as the central part to link the two

prints together. In the web commercial we see a tower block doll house, a mother and song doll are brought to life in the eyes of the little girl playing with it. It shows the family living in the single-room apartment (bring a single parenting to the norm) undertaking day to day activities in a limited space. The ad is set in the form of a music video so the pro longed shots used show off IKEA’s essential compatible storage in a small home.

• The impact of a multimedia strategy is also felt through the frequency of the campaign.

Meaning• The intentions of this advertisement is to specifically attract the

attention of a less typical audience and promote that IKEA makes easy-living products for anyone in any size of house. They want to normalize single-living/single-parenting and attract these types of people to buy their products.

• Showing the products in a made up apartment gives the audience an insight into the product and demonstrates a clear perception of the product and the effectiveness in real life living spaces.

• Showing a real life scenario in the advert connects with the people living in those situations and communicates to them that IKEA can give anyone a chance to seek more opportunities to create a desired living space with limited options.

Production Process• A graphic designer is needed to make a print ad and

according to NJ Creatives Network, on the low end designer hourly rates hover around £26, while the high end is about £50 (though many designers charge £70 or more an hour), with an average of £40 an hour.

• Creating a TV commercial can cost anything from as little as £2000 up to £1m.

• The 2 minute 30 second web commercial displays the doll characters in an unusual and memorable style.

• Mother have successfully created a very contemporary and symbolic advert for IKEA, they have included IKEA's focus on the needs of everyone to make living easier.

• Mother have helped IKEA communicate their inner message specifically in this advert stating that not all customers are two parent families living in semi-detached houses, making single parenthood the norm.

• When producing this advert Mother wanted to open a door for a less typical audience, with smaller opportunities for making a house a home. They wanted the advert to not be 'regarded as just another ad'.

TV/Online Advert

Key frames

Target Audience

• Identifying the target audience of consumers is the most crucial elements for a large retailer company.

• Target marketing helps the company work out which segments of their audiences are most likely to buy their products and prioritize resources accordingly.

• When the target audience has been identified companies work with media agencies to develop a media communications plan that connects with the client’s target audience.

Audience Research for IKEA’s Ad’s

Audience Research

• For my audience research for IKEA’s Adverts I showed the campaign prints and ‘One Room Paradise’ web commercial to a range of family and friends of mixed ages.

• Everyone I showed knew exactly what IKEA sold and understood what the advert was promoting, they are said how IKEA’s products are compatible and multi-functional which is clear in the advertisements.

• The four adult’s likelihood of buying IKEA products ranged from very likely – unlikely. Which suggests to the lifestyle of the audience.

IKEA Target Audience

• IKEA's demographic target audience is 20-35 year olds living in urban areas (apartments, bungalows and tower blocks), they could be anything from young families to college students or single living in their first flat. Using the National Readership Survey demographic category IKEA are targeting grades C (lower middle class), D (working class) and E (lowest level of subsistence).

• These people are looking for inexpensive, well-built, compatible furniture.

• People of the upper middle class would less likely to be looking at compatible, multi-functional storage which is also relatively cheap.

IKEA Target Audience

•Living in small conditions limits a creative imagination to build a desired living space which is where IKEA’s multi-functional products offer choices to change a room’s setting from a dinner table, to a room spacious enough for a party for example. The cheap furniture appeals to families or single living people looking for a chance to make a less attractive place feel homely. Practical storage is key in any busy household whether it’s a large family or a single person as modern living generates large amounts of clutter.

IKEA Target Audience

•Prices in IKEA stores range from 50p for basic items to hard-wearing large items for a few hundred pounds. •Showing the two choices of the product in the print advert gives the viewer an understanding of the product and if it’s for them.•Displaying the products in a ‘pretend’ apartment gives an insight into the appeal of the product and demonstrates its purposes in a real life situation which gives a clear perception of what it offers.•In this specific web commercial IKEA could have influenced their target audience even more could be through showing how easily the goods can be transported and put together in the home for their products are flat-packed.

Role of relevant regulatory bodies

• The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media, they are responsible for acting against complaints and to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements.

• The advert has to be legal, truthful, honest, backs up claims with scientific evidence and decent. 

Legal & Ethical Issues

• Exploring any ethical issues with this commercial the representation of race and gender, they have included a stereotypical image of a White European woman. IKEA have shown this commercial is  clearly targeting woman and encouraging more woman into DIY and to create home improvements themselves. “Women are more often presented in commercials, because they are seen as responsible for making everyday purchases. They are also more likely portrayed in the home environment, unlike men, who are shown outdoors.”

Representational Issues

• One of IKEA’s ad agencies Ogilvy & Mather New York explains how IKEA’s advertisements and catalogue do not demonstrate the decoration of larger homes which they say is a misrepresentation. Even though IKEA says they offer choices for a wide range of people. For their products work in everything from small apartments to mansions. The agency are seeking to expand IKEA into the minds of everyone as a choice.

• Over 70 percent of IKEA’s customers are female and IKEA have changed stores to be more female-centric.

• In the web commercial ‘One Room Paradise’ the way in which Mother have portrayed the mother-son relationship brought uproar. “He dabs her tears when she cries at a movie, and cooks her breakfast in bed after she comes home drunk from a late night of partying—starts to look a tad unhealthy.” Is this not giving the wrong impression of single mothers? (Source: www.adweek.com Ad of the Day: IKEA)

Music & Licensing

• If you want to use a song in a TV or radio commercial, there are two licenses needed, a Master Use license from the label (unless you are re-recording the performance) and a Synchronization license (TV) and/or a Transcription lice.

• There is also the Public Performance License (PPL) , this covers the artist or the orchastera who made the recording.

• The current cost of this licence is 146.09 for the first 15 lines and then 37.88 for every additional15 lines. (Source: www.callcentrehelper.com)

• A mechanical license is a license held by the holder of the musical work for someone else to cover, reproduce or sample parts of the original composition.

• "One Room Paradise" features a re-recording of the same-titled Aretha Franklin song by singer Elayna Boynton.

• To license music

Distribution Channels

• IKEA'S 'Make Small Spaces Big' Campaign was first released on 6th July 2013 onto their website. 

• The campaign also launched the TV ad ‘One Room Paradise’ in the UK and Ireland on 6th July 2013 along with an online tour of the dollhouse.

• The campaign was only distributed in the UK and Ireland and based on the fact British homes are 15 per cent smaller than those in other European countries. It therefore targets smaller families with less space.

• The advert was published on IKEA's YouTube page and racked up 1,091,497 views. It was shared across social media sights such as Twitter and Facebook which lured people in to looking up IKEA's products.

Distribution Channels

• Pricing for online video advertisement can range from around £10 - £100 depending on where it’s placed. (Source: www.streamingmedia.com)

• In 2013 writing, shooting and producing a TV commercial ad could cost anywhere from £50,000 to £750,000 according to WebpageFX.

• YouTube advertisers pay with an average cost-per-view ranging between £10 to £30.

End of presentation