Radio Advert Evaluation - Cancer Research UK 'Shine'

Cancer Research UK 'Shine' Radio Advert Evaluation

For this particular task/assignment, I had to create a radio advert that lasted for either 30, 40, 50 or 60 seconds.  Firstly, I had to write two treatments for two potential ideas for radio adverts for either a new product, charity or event. I did my treatments on Cancer Research UK and Cadbury's Dairy Milk. My first treatment (Cancer Research UK) involves an age range which people would listen to. For this, I chose 16 to 25 year olden as it would appeal more to teenagers and young adults. I talked about the different adverts having a USP (Unique Selling Point) as the different adverts are explaining an event created by Cancer Research UK to help young adults get involved with promoting events for this particular charity. I explained some styles of different radio adverts created by Cancer Research UK, for example "This is a very simple advert" and "This is also a serious advert as it talks about a very serious and personal issue". My second treatment (Cadbury's Dairy Milk) involves an age range for which people would listen to. For this, I chose 11 to 16 year olds as various adverts created by Cadbury's Dairy Milk would definitely appeal more to children of an older age to teenage hood. I explained in some detail that they don't have a unique selling point as they are always raising brand awareness.

Secondly, I had to write two scripts for each of my treatments so that means that I had to make 4 scripts in total. My first two radio advert scripts were for Cancer Research UK. The first radio advert uses persuasive techniques to help young people come to this particular event created by Cancer Research UK. It is also very formal and it would be a very simple advert to make. I called this radio advert 'SHINE'. The second radio advert would have lasted for 15 seconds so would have been hard to make as the minimum timing to make is 30 seconds so would be very difficult to make. It would have been a simple advert to make because it only had one soundtrack in the advert which was Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive". I called this radio advert, 'I Will Survive'. My other two radio adverts were for Cadbury's Dairy Milk. The first radio advert is very humorous in the way the voice artist speaks in various ways. It would have also been a simple advert is promoting an product that has already been made, but however complex in the way of adding sound effects and using different voices. I called this radio advert, Free The Joy (well almost). The second radio advert uses humour in the way he interrupts the radio advert to ask the producer if the new chocolate bar contains chilli. It is also a very simple advert to make as this does not have any music in the background and only has one sound effect, which would appeal more to a younger audience.

Thirdly, I met with the producer (David Allan) to choose which one of my radio adverts to do out of the four scripts I created, (two for Cancer Research UK and two for Cadbury's Dairy Milk). He and I both decided for myself to produce my first radio advert of Cancer Research UK which is based on the event created by them called 'SHINE'. We both also decided that this event would last for 40 seconds because there is many sound effects and music to add on which would make the advert longer.

After meeting with the producer (David), I had to create my radio advert. First of all, I used my script to record my audio on Reaper on a laptop supplied by the Media apartment. I enjoyed speaking for my advert because it allowed me to test out many different voices to put into the advert. Secondly, with my recorded audio, I started to add in sound effects and music for a background and then edited out some mistakes and I made sure it had to be either 30 or 40 seconds long exactly. For the beginning of my advert, I used sad and emotional music at the beginning to make sure that this was a very serious subject to talk about so I used this music to capture the audience's attention. When the dialogue started to talk about Cancer Research UK's event, SHINE, I used happy music as a background to show that there is something that you can do about giving money to help research. As sound effects, I used the firework display, applause and the big ben chimes as my sound effects for this radio advert because I heard these effects as my research of other adverts made by Cancer Research UK and I thought it would have been a good idea to use these sound effects as a part of my radio advert of Cancer Research UK.

In my advert, I spoke very clearly so that the audience could hear every word I spoke which means that audiences could know what is happening in the advert. This advert uses many sound effects so it showed that this was not a simple advert to make as I included sound effects at appropriate times in my radio advert and my radio advert lasted to the time the producer wanted it to be (40 seconds).