Critical Self-Reflection (AIRPOD MAX ADVERTISEMENT STORYBOARD)

 

The product that I am advertising is Apple airpod max. The main idea of the advertisement video is ‘instant escapism’. By connecting head phone and play your favorite song can already create comfortable personal space yet still being productive and how apple can help to achieve it with their Airpod max.

 

Apple has a lot of consumers coming from different background, but in this advertisement I am targeting a specific segments within the market. This ad is targeted toward to audiences with the age of 19 – 28 years old, Stylish, with Afro-America ethnicity and have a passion or working in the creative industry.

What are the typical conventions associated with your product’s existing ads? Have you followed these or challenged them? How?

 

To advertise their product, Apple still make the normal looking tech advertisement for most of their advertisement. It just shows the details of the product’s design consist of multiple close-up shot, extreme close up shot or even extreme zoom shots to show the inner component of their ad. Not just apple, this typical advertisement is used by every tech company to attract the tech enthusiast where product specs matter the most to them or just to give a brief description of the new feature to the audience. But lately, Apple have use more creative way to advertise their products in video format. Take the Start Up I A song made from 45 years of Apple sounds I Apple as an example. In this advertisement apple trying to show how relevant and supportive their products are to people that work in the music industry by hiring an artist producer as a star to make a tune from their iconic “jingles” sounds and other sound effects that their products make (including some of their discontinued ones) with their Digital Audio Workstation application, Logic Pro X. 

 

In my product advertisement I made, I followed apple to make a more creative ways of making advertisement video that is not as direct as typical tech product ads. By creating a short storyline that indirectly introduce the feature of the product. In this advertisement I am trying to shows apple’s noiseless feature that make a person can just play music with it and they will have a personal space by just using it by showing the main character is dancing crazy listening a song with the product.

 

 

What are typical representations of your audience? Have you reinforced this or challenged this? Do you use stereotypes to convey meaning?

 

This advertisement targeted toward the African-American people. I reinforced some of the stereotypes that has been made about this community such as, Younger black people are usually use the streetwear clothing to show their pride of living a street live which are connected to gangster, guns, and other crime activities This people also act thought because they are trying to look manly even though not all of them are. I present this stereotypes in the ad where the main character which is a black young men act tough in the beginning of the ad.

 

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

 

My target audience is younger black people with higher economic background. I targeted them by having a black main character, using stylish streetwear fashion which is a type of fashion that highly appreciated in this demographics, and I use playboy carti’s music which is one of the most famous rapper in the generation.

 

The ad will be shown in youtube Advertisement and will also uploaded in Apple’s youtube channel. I published it on youtube because they have the algorithm system, and this ad will be appeared on people that watch or interested in the same thing that possibily will be interested with the product.

 

I use Todorov’s narrative theory to help me to create the short storyline for the advert. The theory consisted of equilibrium, disruption, recognition of disruption, attempt to repair, and the new equilibrium. The equilibrium of this ad is a normal subway scene where the main character just came from work. The disruption is when he start seeing unusual activities people do in the train where one of the is exercising (lifting weight), sleeping, and shaving. The recognition of disruption is when the main character is walking to find a seats and disgusted with the people around them it is shown in the 4^th shot. The attempt of repair, is when he put his headphone on that is shown in shot 5. Last but not least the attempt of repair is started from shot 7 until the 12th where the Main character is dancing and singing around the train that makes the people that were make him uncomfortable shock and disgusted. The reaction of the people are shown in shot 10, 10.1, and 10,2 with medium close up shot, with a dolly zoom (vertigo effect) movement that gives the effect of shock and confused. And in shots 11 and 12 shows the security reaction of it who doesn’t have any idea of what’s happening. The spray paint of apple is just to show the strong stereotype of subway that they have a lot of space getting spray paints by artists.

 

 

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

 

In the beginning of this project I felt excited about this project, it sound fun and challenging at the same time because to make an ad, it needs a lot of research plus after my teachers introduced narrative, representation, and other media theories I just realize that it is not as simple as I thought it would be. Skills I’ve learned  throughout the project is that when making an advertisement, we should make sure that we know what and to whom we advertise, I also learned how to apply media theories such as the representation, narrative, and audience theories in making the ad. 

 

There are some changes I did to my advertisement because my pre-production research is kind of fail, I failed to match the product target audience with my advertisement target audience. I tried to advertised a $900 headphone to middle working class people which is not making any sense. So, I changed the main character costume, make it more neat, and smart while still keeping the streetwear aspect of it.

 

I failed to make the product look outstanding from the competitor. If I have more time, I would research more features of the air pod max because from all of the feature it has that makes it different, I only shows the noiseless feature which is already a common thing to have with headphone in this price range. 

 

With this project I now understand how a media product is being made. There are a lot of things that need to be research and considered before making the product which can be so simple or so complicated. For example when targeting an audience, using narrative theory on making storyline, using representation theory, connotation, and other extra details in order to make the message delivered correctly to the audience.

 

 

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

 

When I am doing my research, I use youtube to find ideas such as other advertisement from different type of product and brand or other references such as the review of the products. I used pinterest for the inspiration on the look of my storyboard. I use blogger.com to documented my research, analysis, and to track the progress of the project.

 

For my storyboard I did it in the conventional way, I only use pen and paper because I still have no proper equipment to do it digitally, although it would be fun and more efficient if I can do it in digital format.

 

To conclude, I learn a ton of new things during this project. In my point of view, I found it easier to understand media theory by applying it in real life (making media product).