Researching Similar Products - Billboard Advertising

As part of my ancillary task I must also create a billboard advertising design and also the first two webpages for a regional magazine website. In regards to the billboard advertising I decided to look into trying to find existing examples of regional magazines which use this type of advertising.

After extensive research into magazine billboard advertising I could not find any relevant billboard advertisements which advertised regional magazines. I believe that this was due to the cost of billboard of advertisements, regional magazines are not a very profitable media product in most circumstances and often rely on adverts within the magazines to cover the publishing costs. Because of this most regional magazines use cheap/free advertising methods such as social media, websites and even word of mouth. These reasons are probably why I found it difficult to find any existing examples, because it is not a very cost efficient advertising method for regional magazines.

However as research is very important I decided to look at billboard advertisements for other products to see how they are structured and such. Billboard adverts are adverts placed around popular places such as city centres or near roads where people may notice them. Due to this they are often very large and in vibrant colours or contain a particular image/text to help promote the product/service. Below is an example of a Coca-Cola billboard advertisement.

This particular billboard advert has a very minimalistic look to it due to the popularity of Coca-Cola. A less well known brand will most likely feature more information regarding the product but because Coca-Cola is so well known it doesn't really require a description. This advert is also Christmas themed with the iconic Coca-Cola Father Christmas.

Billboard adverts are also very popular with media with adverts common for TV, Films and Games. Here is an example for the movie: Anchorman 2.

This advert differs from the Coca-Cola one as it takes a screenshot from the film but more importantly includes more information. Below the title of the film is the Paramount logo and the directors/producers/actors within the film. There is also a release window for the film stated as: This Christmas.

Finally another example billboard I found was for Apple's iPad Mini. 

This follows a similar idea to the Coca-Cola advert where it uses a minimalist style. The billboard is plain white and only includes an image of the iPad and the title of the iPad. This style is used because of the popularity that Apple has, they are that popular that they don't need to address what their product is. In terms of my product I will most likely have to go into more detail to describe what my product is due to the fact that my product will be much more unknown in comparison.

Regional Magazine Questionnaire

In order for me to gain detailed primary research regarding the coursework brief I have chosen I decided to create an online questionnaire. The questionnaire will help me gain answers to specific questions which I need to ask in order to gain a greater understanding about my target audience to create a better end product.

My online survey can be found here

Researching Similar Products - Active8 Magazine

As a third and final piece of research into similar regional magazine products I decided to research the magazine Active8. Active8 can be seen as a more similar magazine to that of Gossip where it is basic and doesn't really focus on things such as entertainment which Exposed does.

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Active8 Magazine - Conclusion

The main aspect which stood out at me through my analysis of Active8 was it's use of house-style, while other magazines all have house-stlyes the simple idea of placing the magazines title in the corner of each page stood out to me. It helped keep the magazine more continuos and made it feel like it was the same magazine even though the content may have been drastically different, a problem which I faced when creating my practise magazine. In terms of content it was very parallel to that seen within Gossip where it was aimed at around 30+ onwards. When evaluating through this magazine and Gossip I found the content to be rather boring and felt more comfortable reading the content which was seen in Exposed, which had a target audience of 16-30, with me being 17 I fit into this category and therefore found the content interesting.

Researching Similar Products - Gossip Magazine

Following my previous post on researching Exposed magazine I decided to look into a different magazine in order to get ideas and information from multiple media sources. The next magazine I looked at was Gossip, another free magazine but instead of being over the whole of Sheffield it just focuses on Dinnington and the surrounding areas.

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Gossip Magazine – Conclusion

To conclude my analysis of Gossip magazine I am going to mention a few ideas/features which I noticed during my time researching the magazine. During my time analysing I noticed that personally I felt that Exposed was the more superior magazine in regards to quality of images, layout and writing. It is understandable however that Exposed is better due to exposed printing much more copies and having many bigger adverts which are more reputable than that seen in Exposed. This is predictable however as Gossip seems to be more of a village magazine as it covers Dinnington and surrounding areas where as Exposed covers the whole of Sheffield, therefore having a much larger amount of dedicated readers. Gossip's targets audience seemed to be people of around the age 20-50 as many of the adverts focused on house upgrades, cafes and van hire which would be unconventional for people below their twenties. The magazine seemed to be very relaxed in comparison to Exposed where most pages were filled with vibrant colours and images on different entertainment events. Even though Gossip does not have more readers than Exposed it still has a fair amount of readers which is shown on the front of the magazine as a way to bring more readers in. The research I have done on Gossip has shown the other ways that I can approach the creation of my Magazine, instead of having it entertainment based I could choose to have it more relaxed and laid back as seen in Gossip. It is however likely that I would go down the more Exposed style magazine as I can relate to the content within it and therefore would feel more comfortable and find it easier producing a product like it.