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Adidas Originals advertising campaign

Aims and Objectives

 When it comes to the aims and the objective of the Adidas advertisement campaign, I have come to a clear understanding that the company uses spectacle in terms of advertisement in the sense of promoting their products towards their target audience, through using exciting and visually attracting visuals. This is because the main objective the company is trying to get out is to promote the clothing product they are selling to the customers and gain a good amount of profit back from the sales of the product. The main objective of the Adidas Originals campaign is to promote new clothing and accessories to their target audience.

Target Audience

The target audience for Adidas Originals clothing are mainly people within the ABC1 category within the demographic scale, this means they have quite a bit of disposable income, in terms of age, both genders are the target audience preferably young people between the ages of 15 and up. I know this due to the way in which they advertise their campaign on TV. Adidas Original advertise clothing for a young audience. For example, by looking at these different types of advertisement it can be seen that the colours that are denoted on these posters are bright colours, this is a connotation for young people due to the fact that young people are usually referred to be wearing these colours. Also when it comes to appealing to the target audience Adidas Original do it quite well by using celebrities to advertise/promote their product such as Kanye West and Iman Shumpert, the reason why they do this is to attract their target audiences' ideal self, meaning the target audience would be able to envision themselves as the celebrity wearing the clothing and are more likely to purchase the product.

Representation

The representations of colour are a main thing that you can denote from the Adidas Original advertisement campaign. They main colours in which you can denote on the adverts are the corporate white and blue colour which is frequent within the Adidas advertisement campaign. The reason why they have chosen these colours could be due to the connotation in which Adidas' logo makes the audience feel, blue is seen as quite a calm and relaxing colour which would put the audience in a state of relaxation when viewing the logo, and the white is a connotation of purity. I believe that due to Adidas using both these colours for their connotations of their corporate logo people are more likely to trust them more also based on how familiar their products are to the general public. In terms of the representations within the Adidas advertisement campaign you can denote a lot of dystopian areas within the video advertisement. I believe this is used to connote the fact that their clothing is an everyday piece of clothing that can be worn, this is a stereotypical move on the behalf of Adidas Original. The reason why this is a stereotypical move on their behalf is because stereotypically the people who purchase their clothing live in the more urban areas therefore it is likely that they would wear them within their everyday lives.

A lot of the representations of the clothing can be used to help represent their customer’s way of living and personality. I know this because lately the Adidas street wear has become quite abstract in their designs and how certain products are made. The reason why I think this helps represent the target audiences personalities is due to the fact that the people that will be buying these abstract and artistic clothes are preferably people that are not wanting to be in the crowd and are looking for their own unique look.

Campaign message

The message that Adidas are trying to get out during their campaign is that Adidas Original is a reliable and family friendly company that will offer their customers the best possible and best quality clothing available. The way in which they have done this has been based of advertisement and word of mouth for a really long time.

I also recognised that the use of connotations the Adidas Originals' advertisement uses varies to its target audience, the tendency is to use bright colours for a younger audience, however when looking at the older audience the tendency is to use more mature colours. What this tells me is that Adidas have differentiated them self between the customers’ needs and wants by catering to different preferences.

The way in which Adidas use the mode of address towards their audience is done in quite a formal peer to peer style. This is because they want to attract more to their target audience by almost befriending them by using a peer to peer mode of address. The only thing is they do not tend to use any slang words within their text so it is pretty formal, although the way it is written is seen as informal.

Print-based advertisement used in the campaign

The print based means of advertisement that Adidas have produced are the images shown below. You can see that these are poster basted means of print based advertisement used to promote the brand and the products they're trying to get out to their customers. Adidas tend to use words that connote individuality amount their customers by using words such as original. This helps build into their advertisement campaign.

As you can see the first print based advertisement poster I have found is the Adidas original 'Born original' him and her perfume. The first thing which can be denote when looking at this poster is the male and female right in the centre of the printed advert. Another thing I can denote is a yellow and a pink bottle and a dark blue background with the text in big bold letters saying 'born original'. When looking at this poster due to the use of the male and female model I can connote that this advertisement poster is designed to attract both genders, males and females. Another thing I have gathered is that the use of the pink perfume bottle is used to connote females, which indicates that the pink perfume is aimed at a female target audience whereas the gold perfume bottle is aimed at a male target audience. Adidas have used white space within this print based advertisement in order to help the digital graphics stand out more to the target audience, they have used dark colours to make the pink and gold really capture the target audiences attention.

The second print based advertisement campaign that Adidas Originals have used is a bit different than the previous advert I analysed. This is due to the fact that when looking at the poster you can denote two people standing in the centre of the poster doing a pose, while wearing brightly coloured clothes amongst a very dark background within an urban environment. When I look at this poster I can connote that the use of iconic celebrities on the front cover such as Nicki Minaj attracts the target audience more, this is intended for the target audience to imagine their selves as the celebrities in a sense of seeing them as their ideal self and will be more likely to purchase these products from Adidas. I personally believe that this is a smart why in which Adidas Originals have managed to capture the attention of their target audience. Another thing I can see when I look at this poster is that Adidas have managed take the photo for this poster in an urban community in order to better relate the style of clothing and the general feel they were trying to give their target audience who would be viewing this poster. I have also come to understand that they have used a very dark environment for the shoot in order to make their vibrant clothes stand out twice as much in order to literally pop out and attract their target audience, by doing this they create a sense of spectacle and excitement for their target audience.

For the third print based advertisement campaign used it can be noticed straight away that this poster is completely different from the other two in every type of way possible. When I look at this poster I can denote shapes such as circles and colours such as black, white and orange. When I look at the connotations I get from this advert I come to and understanding that potentially the use of the colour orange and black was used to give the poster a fiercer look, almost to represent either flames or fire.

The reason I believe Adidas Originals may want to portray this type of connotation is due to the fact that within the urban community the word fire is defined as amazing, cool and good, therefore potentially they were trying to meet that connotation. Also I connote the symbol of the band which automatically indicates to me that the brand that is advertising is Adidas. When looking at this poster I believe it has been used as more of an advertisement method for the Adidas Originals subsidiary itself in order to gain more of a fan base for them rather than just Adidas.

Relevant legal and ethical issues

The ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) are an organisation that works within the UK's advertisement industry. The ASA enforce legislation that prevents advertisement companies from advertising any material that is deemed as offensive to others.

In order to follow the guidelines the ASA have set out in terms of their advertisement campaign Adidas had to make sure that none of their content include nudity, explicit language or anything deemed as offensive to the audience or a specific type of audience.

Method

Print-based

The most common print based advertisement method that Adidas use are mainly for posters and billboards, the reason for this is because a wide range of people will see their campaigns, therefore they will gain more customers and attract a larger range of people into purchasing their products. Besides posters and billboards there aren't many other means of print-based advertisement. You can see that print based adverts have used kerning within their text to look really tight and narrow even though the text itself is quite large the spacing within the letters is very small. I can also denote the use of serif fonts, this is done to make the text more understandable for people viewing their advertisement posters. The common feature I can see within the Adidas print based advertisement is anchorage, this is done to try and make the text stand out more on the digital graphic, and this is because it helps the text stand out more on the poster. Adidas use a close up as their most common camera shot type when taking photographs, this is done to advertise the product they're selling by showing the viewers a close up textural view of the product they're selling.

Audio-Visual

In terms of the Adidas audio-visual advert I can denote that they have tried to maintain the same corporate colours within their commercial to distinguish their brand.  I have also noticed that they have managed to dark theme which is most commonly seen with the more mature Adidas original campaign. These adverts attract their target audience due to the celebrities used within them having and influence on their decision on buying the products, and also the amount of spectacle that the commercials both create for the viewers.

When it comes to the way in which these adverts are presented out to the general public, I recognised that YouTube and social media play a really big part in the advertisement side of everything. Audio-visuals are created to be presented on YouTube as either and advert or its own individual advert for the companies’ channel. Social media plays a part with promoting this adverts because sometimes social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter will have an advertisement section designed to capture the attention of the target audience, this is done by looking into what the target audience tend to like on social media and through that the target audience will gain suggestions from their social media accounts.

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Looking at the first video you can see that there are quite a few similarities between the video and the posters. The first noticeable similarity is the use of bright neon colours which are used commonly with Adidas campaigns, you can see that in the posters above they also use vibrant neon colours to advertise and gain spectacle amount their target audience. Looking at the mine-en-scene I can denote a lot of people wearing Adidas branded products walking through the streets within a dystopian setting. The use of non-diegetic music is done to build into the suspense of the product they are trying to promote. Also the use of lighting is a good build into the campaign because it helps also create spectacle.

In terms of camerawork you can see that the types of camera angles that Adidas tend to use within the advertisement/commercials are establishing shots and a lot of close ups. The reason why I believe they use establishing shots is to create a sense of spectacle for younger target audience by choosing locations that will excite their viewers. On the other hand, the reason I believe that Adidas tend to use close ups within their videos are to build into the idea of an ideal self, this way the target audience will see the person wearing the clothes and picture themselves as that person, therefore they are potentially making more customers that way through spectacle.