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ADVERTISING: Week 05

26th April 2016 (Week 5)
Gabriella Godeliva Adytanthio (0324170)
Advertising Principles & Practice
Roles and Responsibilities of an Advertising Art Director/Art Directing Advertisements
Lecture
Roles and Responsibilities of an Advertising Art Director
We were first given a definition of art director by Sokanu, and we broke the definition up so that it can be understood easier. Here's what I have broken it up into:

  • Responsible for visual style 
  • Magazine, newspaper, packaging, movies, TV
  • Work for advertising and PR firms, publishers, specialized design service firms, theater, motion picture, video industry
  • Create overall design
  • Direct others who develop artwork or layout 

That is the general explanation of what an art director does. After that we are provided with further understanding about what an advertising art director does:
An advertising art director comes up with innovative ideas for visual elements of an advertising campaign in all kinds of media: cinema and TV, internet (digital/viral marketing), posters, press, radio. 
However, the job of coming up with innovative ideas doesn't only apply for the advertising art director—the whole team comes up with it. An advertising art director is usually experienced and has a better skill in foresight, which is probably why they are expected to come up with innovative ideas. The art director is also expected to be able to create visually elegant solutions.

We were given a definition of art direction by Mall (2014) which goes: 
Visceral resonance of how a piece of work feels. What you feel in your gut when you look at any piece of design. Described with touchy-feely words: elegant, grungy, retro, etc. 
Next, we discussed about the roles and functions of an art director, but before we got into that, we have to understand the hierarchy in an advertising agency, which looks roughly like this:

  • (Board of Directors)
    • CEO
      • Head of Accounting
      • Head of Research and Marketing
      • Head of Creative Services (Creative Director)
        • Copywriter
        • Art Director
          • Graphic designer
          • Production

After being informed by Mr. Vinod about the higher-ups in general (Board of Directors and CEO), we began talking about the dynamic of an art director in this kind of setup. 

Art directors work closely with copywriters, forming a creative team and creating synergy between the visual and the copy. They used to have a clear differentiation, but now the defining line is blurred since both have input for visual and copy, regardless of their position. 

Graphic designers in the creative team serve as labors, honestly speaking: they execute the work as instructed/directed by their art director. Sometimes graphic designers are called junior art directors. We were told that it takes quite some time to get the art director title, because it requires a lot of things that comes with experience. To put it simply, graphic designers are skilled in their work, but not experienced in the 'thinking' department, while art directors skills go down over time (e.g. the software that they use are outdated), but they have great 'thinking' skills.   

We also discussed the relationships at the workplace between art directors and people from other positions.

An advertising art director has to stay on budget and on time; they have to have good management skills. They have to be on the message of the ad all the time and don't lose focus, while reminding his juniors about the message. 

Jobscope of an art director:

  • work closely with copywriter
  • produce sketch/storyboard/roughs/scamps
  • understand target audience (reading reports from the marketing department)
  • meet creative directors and account managers
  • pitch ideas to client
  • brief the team
  • commission photographers, filmmakers, etc.
  • visit/assess locations to shoot
  • work on location
  • attend meetings at production houses
  • work in editing suites to oversee finished product
  • review books, managing new teams

Conclusion: an art director has to convey the client's desired message and image to consumer. They are responsible for the overall visuals (details, observation, keen insight, layout). They borrow things and create something new out of it, and they use what people already know. They reposition and/or remind the creative idea. 

Advertising is not art. Creating good communication is art.

What I've learnt from this lecture:

  • Definition of art director (position) and art direction (job)
  • General hierarchy of an advertising agency
  • Relationships between each element in the hierarchy
  • Role and function of art director and (in general) other positions in the agency
  • Jobscope of art director


Instructions

Project 1 brief here
Project 2 brief here

Project 2 Submission
Deadline: Tuesday, May 3rd 2016

Create a presentation that consists of 3 sections (introduction, content, and conclusion) based on the research that you've done for Project 2. The number of slides should be 30 and not too far above if you think it is necessary—visuals don't have to be included in the slide count. Use APA-formatted citation.

Submission:

  1. Softcopy — upload to Google Drive and embed in e-Portfolio
  2. Hardcopy — print out, 6 thumbnails per A4 page, double-sided if possible

Powerpoint/Google Slides file: here



 (in-class activity)
Art Directing Advertisements
Now that we had that lecture on Tuesday about art direction, it is time for us to now apply art direction into our advertisements. We were asked to make a half-page (260mm x 180mm) advertisement using the DiGi exercise we had last week. The art direction involves choosing the appropriate typeface for the headline, layout, positioning of the logo, etc. With the help of Mr. Vinod, this is what I came up with:

Figure  1 — DiGi half-page ad


Research
Primary research
We compiled several questions to ask the manufacturer of the product, which is Playsafe Air Ultra Thin. We called them and got a quick answer before they asked to contact them through email instead. Here's the list of questions we asked along with their answer:
  1. Why is the product hard to find (e.g. 7-Eleven, Watsons, 99 Speedmart)?
    A: The product might just be out of stock.
  2. Is there any advertisement on that product?
    A: Since Malaysia is a country that's sensitive about this kind of topic, no.
(Emailed questions)
Are you focused more on selling the product online? Do they have a marketing strategy to differentiate their products from their competitors?

 Secondary research
I decided to look up the things that Generation Y commonly know or enjoy. The pop culture that is most known are movies and music, but there are also games and internet macros/memes.

Figure 2 — Article 1
Figure 3 — Article 2

Figure 4 — Article 3


Progress
Based on the research I did, I made several sketches with twisted headlines.

Figure 5 — Mindmap/brainstorming

Figure 6 — Week 5 sketches
Figure 7 — Week 5 sketches
Feedback
Specific Feedback:
(Written feedback given by Mr. Vinod)
As always the e-portfolio was comprehensive and your reflection was insightful. Your idea sketches were good and there were some potential ones amongst them.

General Feedback:
For in-class challenges, copy and paste instructions directly from TIMeS. E-portfolio headings must be clear.

Reflection
Experience
The Tuesday class was not out of the ordinary, but once again the workload increases, making it hard for me to focus and prioritize my work. The Friday class was insane, but putting the fact that I was so hungry I could die aside, I feel that the class is not the most adequate for activities that require laptops. The table top wasn't wide enough to support my laptop and there's no space to use a mouse, plus there are only three plugs available, so it was quite hectic. 

Observation
I notice that the headlines that I've come up with is going downhill—in my opinion, at least. I find it harder to fit in the SMP into the 'theme', and I see the headlines I generate as forced and raunchy. I realize I still shoot down ideas sometimes. I realize music can either be inspiring or highly distracting. Also, having written very long paragraphs for my e-Portfolio, I now find myself lost in how to do the PowerPoint presentation of Project 2...

The workload is overwhelming, yes, but this time around I feel more pressure since it's already close to submission. I realize that I've spent several days working without a period of rest (by period of rest I mean watch a TV show, go on YouTube, sketch, etc.) and because of that I feel sick a lot. 

Findings
Perhaps I should find someone to bounce ideas off to rejuvenate my idea sketches, but sadly all of my friends are also busy with their assignments, which are also piling up. As for myself subconsciously rejecting my own ideas, I figure I'm still full of self-doubt in my abilities and quick to judge and criticize myself, and therefore, my work. The post-it on my computer is helping me a lot to prioritize which work I should complete first, but looking at it can also be quite depressing most of the time, so I don't read it if I really don't need to.  


Figure 8 — Advertising Basics! by 
J. V. Vilanilam and A. K. Varghese
A hectic week leads to me forgetting to borrow a new book, so here I am, skimming the pages of Advertising Basics! one more time. I stumbled upon the glossary of terms in advertising at the end of the book, so I thought maybe it would be beneficial for me to read and look up the meaning of stuff. As one of my lecturers said, if you're going to work with them, you've got to speak their language.
  • Art director: an advertising agency official/employee responsible for designing and producing the artwork and layout for advertisements, and supervising their development from beginning to end.
  • Bait advertising: advertising exceptional prices or terms for a product to draw prospects to a store, where they find it difficult or impossible to buy the product advertised.
  • Bastard size (this one just caught my eye): a non-standard size of any material used in the graphic arts.
  • Cannibalize: diminishing the sales of a product as a result of introducing a new product or repositioning an exisiting product.
That's interesting—true, it is not impossible for a company to deliberately diminish the sale of a certain product by releasing a new one, but I've never thought of it being done. But under what circumstances would you want to do that?
A product should cannibalize another product when it can increase profits even more for the entire product line or company. (Ng, 2013)
Also, the very helpful Ng provided an example. Simple math ahead:
Let say you have product A. Product A sells 5000 units at a profit of $100, that’s $500,000 profit.
Product B gets introduced, the marketing and finance department project that the product will sell 1000 units, but the profit is $150 in it’s first year. That’s $150,000 in profit.
However, by introducing Product B, sales for Product A have dropped by 1000 units.
Here’s what happens to the profits that year:
The following profit is then calculated at 4000 X $100 = $400,000 for product A, and 1000 X $150 = $150,000 for product B. The new profits for that company are now $550,000. This means you’ve increased your profits by 10% by cannibalizing into your other products.
However, there are undoubtedly risks in applying this kind of strategy, one of which is foreseeing how much profit the product will generate when it is still not released in the market. This reminds me of a conversation I had with my high school teacher about how the stock market needs someone to predict whether a specific company's stock will rise or fall—apparently this person is called an appraiser, which I think is similar to business valuation appraiser.
Business valuation is a process and a set of procedures used to estimate the economic value of an owner's interest in a business. (Wikipedia, 2016)
You might want to know what appraiser means in business:
A practitioner who has the knowledge and expertise necessary to estimate the value of an asset, or the likelihood of an event occurring, and the cost of such an occurrence. (Investopedia, 2006)
Basically the world needs legit oracles.



References

Heritage, S. (2014). An A-Z of the 90s films that Generation Y grew up with. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/20/a-z-of-90s-films-generation-y-grew-up-with [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Ypulse.com. (2014). Millennials Sound Off: The Movies That Best Represent Their Generation | Ypulse. [online] Available at: https://www.ypulse.com/post/view/millennials-sound-off-the-movie-that-best-represents-their-generation [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Vulture. (2013). 100 Pop-Culture Things That Make You a Millennial. [online] Available at: http://www.vulture.com/2013/09/100-pop-culture-things-that-make-you-millennial.html [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Vilanilam, J. and Varghese, A. (2004). Advertising basics!. New Delhi: Response Books.

Ng, V. (2013). When to Cannibalize Your Existing Products |. [online] MCNG Marketing. Available at: http://www.mcngmarketing.com/when-to-cannibalize-your-existing-products/#.VyTKwfl97IU [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Wikipedia. (2016). Business valuation. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_valuation [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Investopedia. (2006). Appraiser Definition | Investopedia. [online] Available at: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/appraiser.asp [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].


Picture credits

Figure 1 — DiGi half-page ad
Personal documentation

Figure 2 — Article 1
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/20/a-z-of-90s-films-generation-y-grew-up-with

 Figure 3 — Article 2
https://www.ypulse.com/post/view/millennials-sound-off-the-movie-that-best-represents-their-generation

Figure 4  — Article 3
http://www.vulture.com/2013/09/100-pop-culture-things-that-make-you-millennial.html

 Figure 5 ~ Figure 7
Personal documentation
Figure 8 — Advertising basics! A Resource Guide for Beginners
http://www.globaltraining.edu.vn/resource/images/2015/06/nlarge.advertising-basics!-a-resource-guide-for-beginners.png
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