P2- Unit 20: Advertising Campaign

P2: Create a plan for a cross media advertising campaign in response to a client brief.

Assessment Criteria: You are required to create a plan for a cross media advertising campaign to a client brief. The information gained from P1 could inform the advertising campaign 

Working Title: Disciples

The Product I wish to create is promotional material for a horror/thriller film. I will use promotional material in formats of AV and Print, designing posters, logos and billboard alongside a short trailer with the purpose to entertain audiences and promote the film effectively.

Some of my examples for inspiration are the promotional material for the films 28 Days Later (2002) and It (2017),as they both have similar colour themes and horror imagery which isn't too overt but rather subtle and unsettling to audiences. 

My design, inspired by these will have a dark colour scheme, making use of reds and blacks, while also appearing minimalist and simple, inciting as much fear and mystery as I can with as little as possible, giving an ominous atmosphere to all the print material. I plan to use imagery of weapons or puppet-like masks, these paired with dark lighting and minimal text or images will give the exact eerie, unsettling atmosphere I intend.

The layouts between the two posters are quite different, It places most emphasis on the image of the clown and the child, placing the title and slogan around it. Whereas 28 days later places the title in the very centre in bold, large text, with a similar sizes slogan above it. The graphic is secondary to the title, making it seem more emphasized and drawing the audiences attention. I will likely use a poster layout more similar to It, placing the audiences focus on the graphics rather than the title.

Text in the design would vary, using small, serif fonts for taglines in order to keep the design minimalist, but the title itself would be large in either a sans serif font or one that appears very graphic and detailed similar to the font in the It poster shown above.

The Target Audience is 17-25 years old, making it suitable for young adults/older teenagers, with a gender demographic of 70% Male and 30% Female. This means when creating the promotional material, I have to draw in people of these demographics as effectively as I can. In this case, for a horror/thriller film, I need to make the advertising as ominous and unsettling as possible without being too overtly explicit or vulgar. The audience being adults means I can trust their intelligence to pick up on subtle details which help make a poster unsettling and creepy. This prepares the audience for the content of the film and what to expect, without seeming cheesy or too overt.

The resources and personnel I have for this project consist of Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, aswell as Sony Vegas Movie Studio software available to me from the school computers. I also have multiple personnel of people who are willing to portray characters on camera in photoshoots, people who can do make-up and costume and also assisting with photography, while I will primarily be editing and overseeing the creative aspects in making the promotional material.

Furthermore, the distribution and marketing can be used to produce posters and billboards posted around public areas, aswell as online promotion via social media accounts and pop up ads that promote the film and make more people aware of it and intrigued in the film. I could also cross-promote and feature the film in magazines to draw in more audiences and in return, send audiences towards a specific magazine to learn more about our film.