Blog Assignment 8 (Sathiz)

1. What is the message conveyed by the ad?

The one and a half minute video ad conveys a message to end gun violence, a part of a campaign by Mayors in United States. This particular video ad begins with a number of celebrities listing mass shootings from Columbine to Virginia Tech. The main objective of the ad is to push for more effective gun control legislation in the wake of the December 14^th shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown which took the lives of 20 innocent children and six adults. This ad encourages the public to support the Demand a Plan campaign whose goals are to make sure that every gun buyer faces a background check and push for stricter penalties against people who purchase guns on behalf of others.   

2. What persuasive technique is being employed?

There were several persuasive techniques being used in the video ad including Celebrity Spokesperson, Emotional Appeals and Repetition. Among the entertainers making appearances in the ad are Beyoncé, Jessica Alba, Rashida Jones, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston and many more. The appearances of many artists attracts the attention of the target audiences the campaign more visible and easily persuaded. As for emotional appeal technique, the ad induced fear of losing someone they loves to the audiences. This ad, thus make a viewer to have a strong feeling about the Demand a Plan campaign. In the ad, several words such as ‘how many more’, ‘enough’ and ‘demand a plan’ are being repeated several times. The repetition technique is used in this ad to overcome the audiences’ reluctance in believing the importance of the campaign. 

3. Who is the target audience?

The audiences the ad aim to reach out are the adults as well as elderly people in America. The stars in the ad plead the Americans to support the Demand a Plan campaign which disapproves the legal gun violence. People who obtain the guns could be a bigger threat to the country and it is proven by the massacre in Sandy Hook Elementary School proves. The ad indirectly requires the of age citizens of America to be aware of illegal gun purchases and usages. As it turns out,  the usage of the words such as “as a mom, as a dad, as a friend, as a wife, as a husband, as an America” in the ad clearly shows the target audience the ad was trying to reach out.

4. Is this an effective ad? Why or why not?

In my opinion, the ad is very effective. The appearances of many artists in this ad make the citizens to become aware of the campaign, Demand a Plan. There are chances where the target audiences are easily convinced the presence of many entertainers in one single ad.  It encourages many people out there to support their motive which is to end gun violence to prevent to loss of many innocent lives. The emotional appeal technique which is used it this ad proved to be very effective. It causes the public to have a strong sense of disapproval against gun violence. 

5. What would you change to make the ad better? Why?

The ad is lack of background music. Therefore I would suggest adding suitable background music to the ad as it would attract the audiences’ attention. Besides I would also suggest adding more pictures related to the shooting incident in Sandy Hook Elementary School. This would indirectly initiates the Americans to protect the innocent lives from becoming victims of illegal gun shooting activities. Before ending the video ad, I would add a few urls and website addresses which would link them to the pages containing information about the campaign activities. This enables them to learn more information and facts about the campaign.

(Video ad url : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64G5FfG2Xpg)

Blog Assignment 7 (Sathiz - Zahrin - Max - Arisz)

Campaign Title : Driving Safe with BMW

Organised by : Hustlers PR Marketing Sdn Bhd.

1.  Information Gathering

• The audience who we aim to reach out to are people who can’t seem to get their hands off their mobile devices, even when driving which are young students who just received their driving licenses and young adults who are tech savvy and seem to incorporate their devices in their daily lives even when not necessary especially when driving. These ages range between 18-25. Within the same age group are also youngsters who are very confident of driving under the influence of alcohol in which results in very unfortunate circumstances for the drunk driver and the safety of the drivers around him.

• Many people which include Malaysians have a strong habit of being late and to further communicate to someone that they are, in fact, late, many people tend to text on the go which is now a glowing habit amongst people to adopt. Another is social media. People are so addicted to social media to the extent that they have a constant need to let everyone know where they are, whether it is twitter, Facebook, Instagram, 4square etc., people tend to update their locations for friends to acknowledge. Traffic is also a main factor to why people bring their phones out while driving; trying to update other people about traffic in the area they are in.

• Many people seem to think that texting or utilising their phones while driving has become such a social norm that some are unaware it is even a crime! It doesn’t seem to alert people that texting while driving is not safe because it has become part of their lifestyle and that it has been something they have been doing since they started driving. People also seem to think that driving drunk has reached a certain appeal to them. Driving drunk and surviving is somewhat a way of gaining respect from their peers into thinking that “This lad is a legend for driving drunk home after that much of a binge!” People take it as a challenge to gain absurd respect from their friends into thinking that they are safe with a drunk behind the wheel.

• The problems needing to be solved is to not completely change the lifestyle of people by telling them not to text and drive and not to drink and drive but to merely alter their reality of the situation to create better understanding toward the public at the issues at hand. Hence, the campaign: Drive safe with BMW! It is to help people understand that the current lifestyle they lead is very unsafe and that certain measures need to be taken to ensure the safety of the public. Main problems are obviously the vehicular accidents that are caused by the issues. Texting and driving and drunk driving are the two biggest factors that lead to car accidents today. With more people adopting this lifestyle, the number of accidents on the road will seem likely to increase. Lives are also lost in the process of a mere sending of a text or one glass a bit too much. 

2.  Planning

• Make a campaign and hire famous actor and actress to attract certain age of people, tell them their feeling of driving recklessly and it doesn’t make you looks cooler.

• Get the people from the campaign to wear certain colour of shirts to show that they are supporting this idea of not driving recklessly and alcohol before driving.

• Create a Facebook page, instagram or twitter to promote the idea to all people around the world. 

3.   Communication

The 3 key messages for this campaign is

• THINK! Don’t drink and drive or text while driving.
• Get caught drink driving and you’ll be processed like any other criminal.
•  Put it down! Do not text and drive.

The social platforms

• Twitter

We will give up to date tweets to tell our followers about the importance of their safety on the road.

• Facebook

We will make a page or group about road safety and we will also make a competition inside the page and group.

• Instagram

We will post pictures of people that used our advice and they also can post their pictures to our instagram by using #Derive

• Myspace

We still believe that they are still leftovers people in Myspace and by that also will use that social platform too.

• Tumblr

By using tumblr , we can make it as our official blog about road safety and stuff. It will be our main social platform when we will write and post everything there first.

Our “grand plan” is to make sure that we educate youth drivers out there about road safety since the death toll of youth drivers nowadays are increasing so we will launch events, promotions, advertisements and small carnival by us soon.

4.  Evaluation

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• It is undeniable that youngsters nowadays spend way too much time on Facebook. Therefore, the Pages or Groups created in Facebook would be an ideal platform to convey messages on the cons of drunk driving as well as texting while driving. People across the globe are free to express and share their experiences on drunk driving and texting while driving on these pages and groups. This indirectly will raise awareness about this issue among the youngsters.

• Instagram is always a fun way to deliver a message as it displays photos. With the given editing options, we can be as much creative as can. We can add our own style to the photos. This will evidently increase attention of users to the photos in Instagram. These kinds of posts usually get comments and interactions from the other users.

• In a recent survey, it is concluded that one of the best way reach the youngsters, apart from Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is Tumblr. Tumblr has the power to attract a ton of traffic to the blog as it is indexed and contains a lot of social sharing. The microblog option in Tumblr allows sharing the posts quickly and easily with the social communities. Furthermore, Tumblr also allows bloggers to post images, videos, links and more. These can certainly provide the adolescents to obtain information on the issue that has been raised, that is, texting while driving and drunk driving. 

Radio Station Hustle.Fm