Conventions of a TV advertisement

Having looked at many of British advert on the TV currently I have looked at the conventions of a TV advertisement.


A Mascot - Most of the advert I looked at tend to have continuity with the mascots or symbols they want to have associated with their product or brand. ie Compare the Market use a Meerkat. Dairymilk use the Monkey. Argos have their blue aliens.

Length of time - typically all the adverts last for the same amount of time, about 20-30 seconds. However there are a few feature adverts which last just shy of 1 minute.


References - Despite there being references to the product throughout the advert it's usually not until the end of the advert where the product is revealed.


Music - This is a hugely important part of an advert as the song makes for more of an easier, engaging watch, but also the song sticks in peoples mind and therefore so does the product.

Number of clips/shots - The shorter 20-30 second adverts tend to have about 5 to 7 different scenes, whereas the longer adverts have more clips.

Slogan - One of the most important ways to keep your product in the consumers mind is to have a slogan that's memorable. 


Product Placement - At the end of the advert there is always a shot of the product itself

Whiteboard animation

Having conducted some research into stop frame animation I came across whiteboard animation. In particular this animation created by Johnny Lawrence. This interested me to try out using a white board to create animations as well.

Here is a quick animation I did to try out this technique, despite the problems I had trying to create it. 

The first problem was light in the background reflecting on the white board. When trying to block it out, it made it much darker and still had reflections. So instead, I am going to have to lean the whiteboard up right and take the pictures from the side rather than from above.


The selected pictures are the ones I had taken as I erased the drawn heart. This meant that the images order had to be reversed so that the animation can work how I wanted it too.

More Stop Motion

Here I was attempting to make the car appear to be moving along, without moving from the centre of the screen. I did this by moving the trees around the car and adjusting the car slightly, however I think I have moved the car to much and it wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped. The lighting on this example worked a lot better than the first though.

Stop Motion Practise

Here is my first attempt at the use of Stop Motion. I took 82 pictures to create this almost 8 seconds of footage, which worked smoothly and I am very pleased with. My main concern with the way this plays is the changing of light constantly. I will have to fix this problem by having a better light piece of paper.

Target Market

I have narrowed down my product choice to two products I would like to advertise. These are both within the Beauty and Cosmetic section of the market. I will conduct analysis on Perfume and on Hand Soap.

I have created two Target Market research tables for each product

Time Management

Monday 12th November                 
Tuesday 13th November                Target Market Research
Wednesday 14th November          Product and Consumer Analysis

Monday 19th November                 
Tuesday 20th November                 Spend week experimenting with stop-motion
Wednesday 21st November         

Monday 26th November                
Tuesday 27th November               Continue work with stop-motion
Wednesday 28th November          

Monday 3rd December                 Create mood boards for adverts
Tuesday 4th December                 Draft ideas
Wednesday 5th December           Make a storyboard

Monday 10th December                
Tuesday 11th December               Draft Filming
Wednesday 12th December         Draft Filming

Monday 17th December 
Tuesday 18th December               
Wednesday 19th December         Audience feedback

Over Christmas Holidays               Finalise ideas and using feedback ready to film final version
                                                          in January

Stop motion Xbox advert

Despite the fact that using this advert as a style model would be inappropriate considering it took three and half years to create and I do not have that time to create my advert, having watched the Making Of for the advert, some of the techniques will come in very useful when it comes to making my stop motion advert.

• For example, for the web was held up with rigs that where positioned  just out of the shot, giving the illusion that he was holding it up just by his hands.
• The other technique that will I hope to make use of, is shooting in reverse. This means the final product can be exactly how I want it to be, and then deconstructed, which then played in reverse, then looks as if it is being built.

TV Advertisement Research

After watching various adverts for all different services and products this is the advert I chose to start my research because I was interested in looking at stop motion. What I liked most about this advert is the interaction between the paper and the people and the objects. For example, the way the tennis ball emerges out of the paper and is the picked up by the girls hands on the screen.

 Even throughout the advert it does not state that the advert is for eBay, but looking at the colours on her fingernails, most people will know that it is to advertise eBay. Similarly when they are doing the thumb war and the bangels are also matching colours.