Paradise Advertisement

Your goal is to become as natural, relaxed and believable as possible. While good looks can certainly help, it takes a lot more than just a fair share of talent to get a call back from an ad agency these days.

Your initial audition tape has to get the ad agency know and believe that you can adapt to a variety of potential acting roles. A big misconception in this business is that it’s “easy money”. The truth is that Commercial Acting is a real business like any other.

This means you’ll have to deal with rejection and invest time and money before you see any returns or bookings. And you might even invest months of your time and money just to find out this game isn’t for you.

If you don’t treat this business seriously Agencies will be able to spot this a mile away. Just one client will give an agency anywhere from 100k to 1 million or more just for one 30 second TV Commercial. This entire industry is sales driven, so these agencies are under tremendous pressure to succeed with no room for error.

One important thing to remember is when auditioning for a TV Commercial, is that the impression you make here will be more important than the actual commercial you’ll be a part of if you can make it through this process. A lot of your competition will be eliminated quickly. 80 Percent of people trying out for a commercial don’t know how to handle themselves in front of a casting director.

These 20 percent who do understand that commercials always tie into a sales process. The key is to immerse yourself into the program without coming off like you’re trying to sell someone something. When you walk into a Commercial Audition you need to convince the Casting Director that you’re ready to get to work. You also need to possess a feeling of confidence and carry some bearing.

Being the best looking person at the audition isn’t going to necessarily land you any more bookings. Remember commercials are created that require middle aged and elderly people as well. It’s your poise and bearing that will win you a booking before your good looks will.

So don’t think you need to look like Pamela Anderson or Tom Cruise before you go to a casting audition. You might represent the exact persona they are trying to portray in their next commercial, even if you look strung out on drugs. Seriously, what if they are shooting a commercial for a psychiatric hospital and need a couple recovering drug addicts.

You want your initial audition tape to have a USP or Unique Selling Proposition. Why should they choose you over someone else? You should also practice looking at yourself in the mirror and think of any physical attribute you may have that would turn an ad agency off. Read the rest of this entry »

     Needless to say, the television exposed us to media like never before, bringing foreign worlds, fantastic ideas and advertisements to our living room. Television advertising is generally a thirty second audio visual clipping telling us the features and advantages of a particular product. Since the time span of an advertisement is so less, the advertisement should always be exciting, interesting and get the point through immediately. If we marry the concept that advertisements are always time bound and that human psychology is always attracted to controversy, we get the perfect advertisement, not good advertising, not bad advertising, but perfect advertising – controversial advertising.

     Controversy and media has gone hand in hand since time incarnate. A controversy depends on various factors. One of them being the target market of the advertisement. What may be passe in one country may be blasphemy in another, that is one main reason why even multinationals seldom keep the same advertising company across countries, leave alone continents.

     Controversy in television advertising can be related to anything, the religion, culture, general opinion. Most often, the controversy will center around the more baser inclinations, like sex. One such (banned) advertisement making the rounds on the popular film clips website was about women using a female sexual object, with the Christmas tune ‘O Come All Ye Faithful…’ without the ‘…To Bethlehem’ in the end. in the background. Another recent example of controversial advertisements was when Go Daddy girl Candice Michelle acted out a particularly risque advertisement during the Superbowl XXXIX.

     A major percentage of advertisements for condoms, sexual objects and to an extent personal effects like deodorants, perfumes tip toe on the thin line between intelligent advertising and controversial advertising. Sex isn’t the only concept that has been used in controversial advertising. Sometimes, advertising speaking about current events have come under flak from various support group. Theoretically speaking, how would one like a raincoat ad based on the concept of the not-so-recent-now Tsunami?

     Some advertisements gain controversy just by being, for example the Crazy Frog advertisement. When the advertisement was broadcast in on Belgian Television, some parents complained that the frog in the advertisement appeared to have genitalia, while some others complained about the frequency of the advertisement. Showing genitalia in advertisements and other product collateral is not something new. A international cigarette brand had a man showing his genitalia through line art for many years. Legend has it that the cartoonist thought he wasn’t paid his correct worth.

     Another case of controversial advertising is using famous or infamous figures. For example, Benetton became the center of controversy when it decided to use Victor Taylor the main accused in the Trinity murders as models for their advertisements in 2000 titled ‘We, On Death Row’.

     Though controversial advertising is said to disturb people at the most, there are other types of controversial advertising that has raised the heckles of consumers. False advertising stands high on this list. False advertising is when the company makes false statements in a deliberate manner to generate consumer interest and therefore, gain revenue.

     Controversial advertising does have it returns as well as pitfalls. Where many companies may be told to pay a fine if their advertisements are deemed to be controversial, there have been cases where the person responsible for the advertisements has been jailed. For example, a few years ago, an in-house advertising idea caused employees of a bank to be put into prison. Their ad copy said that they wished to search for terrorists who could give them the most number of victims for their insurance policies.

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     Commercials are meant to make you think you are in great need of the product they present and try to make successful. As a means of communication, advertising does more than just giving information. It attempts to persuade people to buy all sorts of things and services belonging to a certain brand. The idea is to convince all potential customers to choose certain products. How do companies do that? Certainly by creating the so-called “brand image” which gives way to “brand loyalty”. It most probably has something to do with giving people a somewhat feeling of identity, a sense of belonging. In order to achieve their purpose, commercials use a lot of psychological elements. Advertisements appear on all kinds of medium: magazines, cinema, newspapers, billboards, video games, Internet, so mostly everywhere. And advertising most often is done by an advertising agency for a certain company or any other organization.

     The power of commercials has been discovered ever since ancient times. For instance, Egyptians made use of papyrus to make up sales messages and posters on the wall. Also, in the ruins of Pompei and ancient Arabia, there have been discovered some advertising messages and political propaganda texts. At any rate, this tradition of painting the walls goes back to the year of 4000 BC.

     Commercials were on also back in medieval times, when cities and towns were slowly beginning to develop all over Europe. Still, very few people could read, so there were no words on the street signs, but rather shapes for instance of a boot, of a suit, a miller, a tailor, a smithy, a shoe, candle, or a bag of flour.

     Like in nowadays markets, fruits and vegetables used to be sold in the square of the city from the backs of wagons and people would advertise their products by simply calling out loud for customers to find them and buy their goods. Read the rest of this entry »