M3 – Explain how the created media components comply with
the codes and conventions of the media sectors
For my radio advert,
I had to consider the conventions of radio advertising to ensure I make a professional
advert. The advert needed to include relevant information which would help GCSE
students decide on their future. Therefore, in the advert script I included 2
students to share their thoughts of the college and to share what College @
Deyes helped them achieve. This is so that the target audience can hear what
other students have achieved at Deyes, helping them understand more as they are
around the same age. An important convention I had to consider was the length
of the advert. During my pre-production planning phase, I analysed how long
radio adverts typically last for, so I was able to choose a suitable length for
my advert. As I am planning to distribute the advert on music streaming sites such
as Spotify, I found that their adverts often last between 30 seconds and one
minute. Even though my advert is around 1 minute and 15 seconds, I believe this
is a suitable length to fit all my content in and it hasn’t exceeded the
convention too much. During this time, I was able to include the schools a-level
successes, student voices of their experience at Deyes, the subjects available and
details of Deyes’ social media platforms if the audience wish to find out more.
Another convention I included was the use of a background track to make it livelier.
I chose a motivating and energetic tune so that the audience doesn’t feel bored
of listening to it, which makes it more memorable and professional.
A code I needed to create in the pre-production planning was
to create a script. This was to make sure everyone in the cast knew what they had
to say and when to say it. It also helped to figure out how long the advert
would approximately last for to ensure it didn’t last too long. Within this
script I included appropriate facts and figures that positively represented the
college. A fact that did this was that 57% of students achieve grades A*-B
across all subjects. I included this fact to attract higher achieving students
as this was stated in the client brief. To provide the audience with these
statistics and information, I made the advert have a specific and unique style by
having 3 different voices which continually switched throughout. This was to
make it a little more interesting instead of having the same narrator talking for
the whole advert which would be very boring to listen to. The tone of voice in
the advert is positive throughout almost like the narrator is trying to help
the target audience with their future and suggests they care about their future.
Also, in the advert I included some direct address and a rhetorical question to
apply the advert to the listener. I included the rhetorical question at the beginning
of the advert to instantly grab the target audiences’ attention if they related
to the question. I have also added a mixture of persuasive language and tone to
involve the audience and make them think about joining College@Deyes. The
advert uses direct address from the slogan I created which is “Shape your future”
as “Your” is directly addressing the audience about their future making them involved
in the advert.
Additionally, I included common conventions to my print
advertisement. One of the most important was the Deyes logo. This gives the
college a branded image and is essential for the audience to recognise it. It
also gives the poster a sense of professionalism. I inserted the College@Deyes
logo into middle of the poster, next to an image of the College@Deyes building.
The text I included on the poster was contact details of the college and
references to their social media pages and the official website. This is to
create synergy between all the college’s advertising platforms and it enables the
audience to find out further information. Another convention is the house style
of the college. As the school’s traditional colours are red, white and blue, I have
made all of the text red and some backgrounds are blue to make it look professional
and neat and to also help the audience to recognise the college by its colour
scheme. At the bottom I have included a hashtag of the slogan “Shape your
future” which could lead to conversation online on sites like twitter and it
also gives the college the chance to see tweets containing this hashtag which
can help with their feedback. I have only included one picture as I didn’t want
to overload the poster with images to keep it clean and simple. This image is
just a simple image of the college building which I have added to give the audience
an idea of how the college looks and how modern it looks as it is newly built. It
was important for me to show the building as the brief outlined that I had to
include an image of the new buildings on site. As mentioned earlier I have used
a slogan on both my print and audio adverts to maintain consistency throughout the
campaign. Having the consistency of the slogan will make the campaign a lot
more recognisable and help the audience to associate the advert with
College@Deyes. The slogan “Shape your future” suggests to the listeners that
College@Deyes is a place that can help you get more of an idea of your future
and you can use College@Deyes as a stepping stone to progress onto successful
and bigger things. I believe that this is an important message to deliver as
not many GCSE students tend to know what they want to do as they are
considerably young to decide for themselves. Therefore, this slogan suggests
that Deyes will help these students who aren’t sure about their future by guiding
them to move on to their next step after college whether that be a university
or apprenticeship.
