Lecture Six: Remake, Remodel, Reduce

This lecture focused on storytelling, which is such an important aspect of our lives. We are all constantly telling and listening to stories, even if we don’t realise it. Advertising is all about storytelling- getting a message across in an exciting and innovative way. This doesn’t have to be as TV advert, but could be a print advert or a radio advert. Even an advert that we don’t think is enticing, still tells a story, although it may be a dull story.

To create a great story, brands have to dig into what makes their brand special.  Some stories use emotion, and others use humour, to engage the listener. In the lecture, we heard about Nicks trip to Chernobyl. To keep us interested, he used emotion, such as the 32 deaths, and the shock factor, such as in the town of Pripyat, the 45,000 people who lived there weren’t told about the explosion until 2 days after. I don’t think that anyone in the lecture will forget what he said.

I think it’s interesting that you can interpret stories differently both in advertising and in culture. For example, people can interpret religious text differently, e.g. whether or not to take it literally, e.g. creationism. Likewise, people may interpret adverts differently. For example, adverts are interpreted differently depending on their context. For example, in the 1940s, this Schlitz advert may have been viewed in a more positive light, due to the social norms of that time. However, in the 21^st Century, where we are more aware of the gender inequality that woman faced/ still do face, there is more of an outrage over this sexist advert. However, we can still argue that whether you view this advert in a positive or a negative light, it still succeeded in storytelling as it did have an impact and it is memorising.

The phrase ‘more is less’, otherwise known as reductionism, is commonly used in storytelling and advertising. For example, one of the first copywriting seminars we had, in Level 4, was to write a story and then condense it into 100 words, then 50 words and finally 6 words. Billboard adverts have to be short and condensed as people won’t take in long copy with just one glance.

Nick also showed us how he used sculpture to tell a story. He told the story of alcoholism and addiction through a sculpture consisting of alcohol bottles, which represent the first drink, broken bottles which represent addiction and coasters that represent recovery.  I found this sculpture interesting as it showed how we don’t just need to make TV/print ads to get a brands message across. We don’t need to play it safe, or be conventional, as long as we tell the story in a memorable and effective way.

 

References:

http://neatdesigns.net/35-extremely-sexist-ads-that-you-should-see/ 

Nick Young Lecture