PROJECT 1: KIT KAT ADVERT - CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION
The advert that I have chosen and completed will be advertising Kit Kat’s savouries, their chocolate. The initial concept is showing simplicity at its best with the presence of limited media elements, mise-en-scène, such as props, the set design itself, composition, overall colour, actors, editing and acting, which are all conveyed to appear straightforward in this advert, but still capable of depicting extravagance and the key aim of the advert.
As well-known by everyone, Kit Kat has a dominant colour of red, which represents excitement, passion, danger, energy, and action based on colour psychology. In addition, it could also infer an ‘adrenaline rush’, in relation to how Kit Kat gives consumers greater ‘energy’. Implementing the code of the colour red is one of Kit Kat’s ways and methods to assist people all around to recognize the brand and product. Consistent in Kit Kat’s advertisements, approximately 96% of them used a full-red background to hook the audience's attention and keep Kit Kat’s figurative colour in mind, and a few used upbeat background music to retain the audience and keep them intense and inspirit. Along with how the product is present individually in the middle of the frame with still and extreme long shots, perhaps, with an intention to be focused on singly. Therefore, to keep Kit Kat’s originality, I have also utilised the familiar conventions mentioned: the red background, upbeat music, the position of the product in the frame, and the shots of cameras.
The typical stereotype in one of their previous adverts, a positive stereotype, would have to be the presence of a variety of people all around in all socioeconomic groups and races to convey the diversity and how it aims to make it affordable to everyone both through the media and the price itself, in other words, constructed reality. Regardless, I have challenged one of Kit Kat’s advertisements previously mentioned. Welcoming the existence of a monarchical lady, attired with red lipstick and a ‘royal-like’ haircut, which shows a stereotype of extravagance and luxury in its product by which it can be implied that it can only be afforded by those high-socioeconomic class groups, in contrast to the constructed reality concept.
The target audience for this advert was decided to be a high-socioeconomic class group, targeting them through the sight of a queenly lady actor, embodying high-class individuals. This advertisement will be distributed on TVs and billboards. TVs are one of the options since it is widespread and can easily be viewed by a lot of people at once and it might also not be inexpensive for Nestle’s company to afford a TV network relation to publish their advertisement. Billboards, too, are even more across-the-board as they will be placed in large streets. For instance, the infamous billboards in New York are known to advertise a variety of media products, where people passing by can easily see and attach their attention to the billboards. With the fact that areas with massive billboards and Kit Kat’s standards would certainly fit there, it can simply reach its target audience, a high socioeconomic group as it shows finery.
Although I felt left behind, specifically in the research of adverts stage, with the number of tasks and requirements to be done, especially with this advert project, I still managed to catch up with the designated and the desired timeline for this task. I had to speed-run a few steps at once in order to come to a place where the rest of my classmates were in. Overcoming that, there are skills that I have discovered and improved on, such as the research of a variety of adverts, along with very wide-ranged ideas coming from one target market from different brands of chocolate. I also studied the types of edits when it comes to advertisements, how some are slow-paced and some are fast-paced in relation to their key concept. Improving further thinking of creativity when coming up with ideas is highly necessary when it comes to creating a subject from zero. In addition, I made a contrary change to my ideas, that being a concept of diversity at first, showing a wide range of people of all socioeconomic groups and races, but I ended up using a queenly lady to represent Kit Kat’s target and renewed concept, a high socioeconomic class group and royalty.
The internet and technology (software, hardware, online) played a huge role in this advert project, such as Windows itself to access all the resources needed, Google provides extensive web, YouTube to retrieve information on other adverts that have been posted there, and Blogger to summarize my progress in this project. With the presence of the internet and sites, I was able to enhance an expansive range of ideas as one post would lead to another. This, too, developed my skills on the impulse on researching more to evolve my initial ideas. Without the existence of those listed above, it would take a long time to approach data on, for instance, where it is desired for a certain target audience, the kinds of adverts made by other brands of chocolate, or any extended research data on ideas and visions.
