Task One

McDonalds 2018 Advert

This advert focuses on an 17 year old student named Rebecca, aspiring to go to university. They own the latest smart phones and recreational apps. They would describe themselves as sociable and have a large friendship group. Their typical hobbies would include football and anything to do with social networking. They grew up in a sub-urban environment and enjoy both the countryside and cities.

Gala Bingo 2018 Advert

This advert is tailored to a middle aged mother named Karen with two children. She is of lower middle class and watches a lot of daytime television, particularly soap operas. She lives in a semi-detached house in an urban environment, she is religious, and works during the weekday.

Barclays Lifeskills 2018 Advert

This advert is targeted towards working class everyday young people who have finished college and are looking for a future career. They are committed on one career that they aspire to be a part of, typically the military or emergency services. At school they were extremely academic, and focused strongly on education.

Fairy 2018 Advert

Claire, 52 from Selsey is being addressed by the company for middle aged mothers who are family oriented. They are domestic, and have potentially either an office or a work-from-home job. They live in a modernised family household in a sub-urban town and are married with children. They are perfectionists and shop for quality products.

Alton Towers 2018 Advert

These people are mostly teenagers or recently graduated students. They enjoy creative subjects in their free time and spend almost all of their time with their friends. They grew up in an urban city and has a small part-time job to enables them to meet with friends often. They are thrill seekers who like to try new things and enjoy adrenaline rushes, their favourite film genre would typically be horror films as a result of this.

Nike London 2018 Advert

Nike aimed this advert at late teens/early 20’s males who live around and are familiar with the London area. They are of working class, and are actively involved with social media. They enjoy trendy items and aren’t very materialistic although they would like to be. They have a large group of friends who all share the same interests as them. They like participating and watching various different sports and are part of pop culture.

Aviva 2011 Advert

The advert looks at a middle class male named Boris in their late 40’s/early 50’s with relatively young children. They all live together and are family oriented. Both parents have relatively well-paid jobs with the weekends off. They go on family holidays each year abroad and the children have a chance at university.

Emirates 2018 Advert

Alexander, 32 from Kent is academic, focused and achieved high at school. The advert is aimed at a mid-30’s middle class man who is very work-oriented and dedicated. He is well travelled and has a well-paid job which takes up a lot of his time. He is a businessman and as a result dresses smart.

Task Two

On one side, audience profiling can be used in order to establish clearly the intended target audience to a viewer. However, being too precise with this type of marketing can lead to many complaints and concerns among the public. Advertisers have to take control of the products they are selling and make careful decisions around the choices they decide to make. In some cases, stereotyping of typical consumers of that product are made due to its advertising, for example: the fairy dishwasher brand shows white mothers promoting their products, when in reality the product is inclusive for everyone.

Stereotyping of a consumer can become discriminatory, and this controversy can extremely damage the company profit-wise for a long period. Many people may feel like they cannot associate with a product due to its main ‘target audience’ or previous controversy that surround it. Over the years there have been many different campaigns to end racism/misogyny in the media industry. Companies’ reputations have been damaged greatly by this, with H&M being an example of this. In January 2018, H&M released an advertisement for a hoodie, with a black child modelling- the hoodie had the words “coolest monkey in the jungle”. H&M later suffered enormously for this use of clear prejudice, H&M reported financial struggles after the incident, with profits dropping as low as 60% for the first quarter of 2018. As a consequence, many celebrities who promoted the brand before, such as (The Weeknd & G-Eazy) have now cut ties over the massive backlash.