Product placemen

The advertising campaign conforms to the usual codes and conventions of advertising and typical beer advertisements. From the use of humour to the product placement and product usage. Product usage is important in any advertisement particularly when the product is physically consumed as it shows the satisfaction and fulfilment it can or will bring, in an attempt to further persuade and encourage the audience.

As with these advertisements the additional pleasures that consuming the product will bring are clearly visible. This is an effective way of advertising because placing the product centrally helps to make it seem a complete necessity and positively shows the advantages that it can bring. The main genre, being the codes and conventions of beer advertising, often link with the values and ideologies contained within the text. The main codes and conventions are the use of humour, sexual connotations, live action, social inclusion and a happy, aspiration lifestyle, these all feature heavily in the Boddingtons Beer advertising campaign.

The values that the adverts are promoting are the moral acceptance of sex, partying and drinking as everyday activities. Boddingtons is shown to give you an advantage of money and ‘the celebrity’ lifestyle and it encourages the audience to live in this way, showing that success is measured by wealth, fame and sexual conquest. It also, quite importantly, shows the role for independent, powerful, dominant women in society, placing women on an equal par with men, which reflects the changing attitudes, our society has gone through, even though this equality is sown by the fact that it is acceptable for women to drink alcohol. On the other hand it shows the drinking of alcohol on a regular, daily basis as morally acceptable for our youth, naturalises heterosexuality, shows casual sex as acceptable and places alcohol at the forefront, as an acceptable social device. Showing alcohol in a light that it will improve all the areas of a person’s lifestyle that the target audience are particularly interested in.

The advertising campaign does make assumptions about its audience. Particularly that they aspire to celebrity status, wealth, sexual activity, drinking and clubbing, and overall success. This can be seen by the settings and lifestyles in the adverts, the fact that the product is alcoholic, the specific intertextual references and the themes and ideologies that the adverts contain.

Throughout the entire advertising campaign everything that has been deliberately set up has been done so for a reason, the audience is placed in the position so as to build their assumptions and expectations and reassure, assure and encourage views that directly affect them The key concepts and codes and conventions directly affect the campaign using both overt and covert techniques, and in a way advertising in such a way is a form of exploitation on the part of the company and the advertisers. But ultimately the effect created by such advertising campaigns as Boddingtons is the encouragement of the audience to purchase the product.