Analysing Sport/Energy Drinks

Analysing other advertisements that are promoting similar products to ours is a great way to get new ideas and also get a taste of what to expect when filming. I will be analysing three television commercials from three big brand companies; Powerade, Gatorade and Lucozade. 


Advert 1 - Powerade

This advert features three professional athletes; Jessica Ennis - Heptathlon, David Davies - Swimming and Richard Whitehead - Paralympian 200m and marathon. Having professional athletes promote a sporting product is a great way to sell the product to the consumer. If someone see's a professional athlete is drinking powerade, they will want to try it themselves. It also shows that the athletes must think it improves their overall performance and essentially they are recommending the product to everyone else. 


Throughout the video four words appear on screen; "Preparation", "Determination", Perspiration" and "Hydration", which all end with 'ION4'. This continuously reminds the viewer about the product, as 'ION4' is associated with the powerade drink.


Towards the end of the advert we see that powerade is the official sponsor of the GB team in the Olympic games. Again this shows the involvement powerade has with professional athletes and sporting events, having people believe they achieve their sporting goals with the help of drinking powerade.   




Advert 2 - Gatorade

Compared to the other 2 adverts this is the shortest and the most subtle. Non diegetic sound is played throughout the video simply filming a man's face jogging in a black and white setting. 


It's clear that gatorade wanted to be simplistic as possible when it came to creating the advert. The advert clearly shows the product at the end of the clip and states exactly what it does. To end the video a clever slogan is used - "When you give everything, Gatorade gives it back", again this is a simple, yet effective slogan for the product.


Advert 3 - Lucozade

Out of the three adverts, this one is extremely different in the style choice and the way the product is shown. Rather than showing an athlete taking part in exercise or a competitive sport, a group of young people are shown having fun roller-skating and skateboarding. Studies do show that people from the ages of 15 and above are the biggest consumer of energy drinks, so this may be way Lucozade opted for this design choice. 

Throughout the video, the song 'Louder, by DJ Fresh' is played, this song was then later released soon after the advert was aired. The song made it to number 1 in the UK top 40 music chart, which suggests that this advert boosted sales dramatically. Increasingly adverts are using newly released songs to promote their products, which results in great success for the artist or band. Recent examples are 'Twinings Tea' using 'Charlene Soraia's' cover of 'Wherever You Will Go', and the Christmas 'John Lewis' advert using 'Slow Moving Millie's' cover of 'Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want'. 

   

Advert Ideas

Beer - Names:    La Pantera
                        El Toro


We originally had the idea to advertise a beer product and to use the name 'El Toro', as we actually had a beer product from a year 10 science class. However, when researching we found that there was already a beer product with the same name, 'El Toro Brewery Company'. But we also had to consider the limitations of what we could actually show and not to 'glamorise' the form of drinking. 


Energy/sports drink - Names:     Reloaded
                                              Revived
                                              Regenerate


We decided to choose an energy drink for our final advertisement product.  Our main reason for choosing an energy drink is that we could easily think of multiple advertisement ideas. As energy drinks are associated with sport and fitness, we had a clear indication of what we can do, compared to advertising a beer product.

Using Social Media To Advertise Our Product

With the importance of using social media to advertise products, we thought it was vital to promote our product on Facebook and Twitter. Anyone who joins either of the two websites will be able to see the latest updates and products before anyone else. Users will also be able to recommend the page to their friends and family by simply clicking the 'share' button. Our television advert will also display the Facebook and Twitter addresses to encourage the viewer to log online and support our product. The links below will direct you to the social media webpage:


Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Regenerate/326761610709631?sk=info 


Twitter Page -    https://twitter.com/#!/UK_Regenerate

Modern Advertising Techniques

With the huge take off in social media websites within recent years, advertisers have gradually shifted towards promoting their products using this form of media. Increasingly, we are seeing television adverts that are encouraging viewers to 'follow' or become a 'fan' on websites such as Twitter and Facebook. 

By accessing the social media websites, fans and followers will be able to get the latest news and information, such as any promotions, or the latest product. Social media sites have the ability for users to be friends with thousands of people, so if one person accesses the page, every single person on that friends list will be able to see that you're interested in that particular product. This style of advertising essentially mimics 'the word of mouth' method', as the product will gradually be spread to other people. As this method of advertising is relatively inexpensive and also reaches a mass audience, it's no wonder that advertisers are favouring this form of marketing opposed to other social media outlets.


People may not realise, but Internet search engine brands such as Google, pass on your Internet search history to a variation of different companies. This way advertisements can be tailored to your browsing history, which will result in more advertisements related to what you searched for. For example if you searched in Google for 'cheap summer holidays', the next day you may see advertisements for 'Thomas Cook ', or 'First Choice'. Another similar technique is when a user enters product information on E-commerce websites, such as 'Amazon' and 'Play.com'. If the user searches for 'Xbox shooting games' and as long as they a registered member, they may receive emails listing new games in that category. 


These two advertising methods are extremely effective compared to television marketing as they completely narrow down their target audience. Someone is more likely to purchase an item if they are already looking for it on the internet, rather than stumbling across it on television. 

Market Research

Energy drinks are generally popular with the younger audience, where approximately 65% of all drinks sold are from the ages of 13-35 years old, with the majority being male. Energy drinks have raised awareness in schools and colleges, as parents and teachers are worried that students are consuming too much at a time. Many students admit to drinking energy drinks simply to stay awake, or to write an assignment.


US
By 2001, the US energy drink market had grown to nearly 8 million per year in retail sales. Over the next 5 years, it grew an average of over 50% per year, totalling over $3 Billion in 2005.
The energy drink market became a $5.4 billion dollar market in 2007, and it was predicted that it would hit $10 billion by 2010.
Within the United States, Gatorade accounts for approximately 75 percent market share in the sports drink category.


UK
The UK sports and energy drinks category grew 15.6% in the 12 months to October 2010 to £827.6m, according to Nielsen Scantrack.
Lucozade Sport is worth £103m and has a 62% market share of the Sports drinks segment. Lucozade remains the No.1 brand in the UK Sports and Energy market, with nine times the annual sales of Powerade or Monster and 31 times the annual sales of Mountain Dew. Lucozade sports popularity is largely due to its partnership with the premier league. Coca-Cola's Powerade also witnessed a decrease of 4.6% in 2009, with sales of £34.4m. The next biggest brand is Powerade, launched by Coke in 2001. Seven years on, and with the might of the Coke distribution model and the share is 19%. Gatorade has just 1.2% of the sales in the UK.


Worldwide
Gatorade is now the World’s No. 1 Sports Drink, worth over $1billion and has a 48% share of global Sports Drink market.
The demographic can be broken down as both committed exercisers and social players who tend to be 25 – 44yrs old with a male bias. They spend most of their free time out of home; as such they consume a lot of out of home media and are light TV viewers.
As sports enthusiasts they also consume a lot of media either about sport (magazines) or whilst in a sporting environment (gyms or ‘on the field’). However additionally the aim was to increase frequency and penetration with existing buyers and bring new users into the Sports Drinks sub-category.
Powerade grew 25% overall to obtain a 27% market share.

The graph below shows the market shares of 5 of the most popular energy drink brands in the UK: 'Red Bull, Lucozade, Powerade, Gatorade and Monster'. It's clear from the graph that Lucozade holds the majority of the market share, this is due to their different range of products and their celebrity endorsed advertisements. 

Understanding Our Target Audience

Before any product is released, extensive research is undergone to ensure the audience is in mind, to make sure they can relate to it. Some basic category examples for a target audience my be:

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Religious Beliefs
• Income/Status
• Geographical Location

All of these attributes will have to be considered when distributing any form of advertisement, nothing should intentionality offend someone. When distributing a product in various different countries, the brand name may have to be changed. For example the UK chocolate bar 'marathon' had to be changed to 'snickers' in the US, as there was already a food product called 'marathon'. Other reasons for changing a brand name over seas may be because it doesn't make sense in that language, or it means something completely different. 

‘Audience’ is a key concept in media, because all media texts are produced with an audience in mind – that is to say a group of people who will receive the text and make some sort of sense out of it. A media text is planned with a particular audience in mind. A media producer has to know who is the potential audience, and as much about them as possible.

Audience Research
Audience research is a major element for any media producer. It is important that a media producer understands its target audience in order to tailor the media text to fit the needs of the specific audience.

Using psychographics is also a great way to understand your target audience. Psychographic marketing involves dividing potential customers into groups, according to their psychological characteristics. The image below is the same picture, however one is a demographic overview and one is a psychographic overview. The psychographic overview shows how much more in depth the review is compared to a basic demographic overview. This is why this information is vital for any advertsiser wanting to distribute their product. 

1) Demographics:

A common and traditional method of audeince research is known as demographics. This defines the adult population largely by the work that they do. It breaks the population down into 6 groups and labels them by using a letter code to describe the income and status of the members in each group.

Producers need to know the demographics of their potential audience so that they can shape their text or product to appeal to a group with known vieing habits. In the case of our product it is difficult to say one demographic is the target for our advert. Energy drinks are consumed by a wide range of people. It is likely that category E aren't our main customers as an energy drink is not an essential product and this category is unlikely to have vast amounts of disposable income, however we cannot disclude them as we have no evidence to support this.




2) Psycographics:
This is a way of describing an audience by looking at the behaviour and personality traits of its members. Psycographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits.




                                  

An energy drink is a mass market. We therefore want to aim our advert mainly at mainstreamers because they are the largest group with the most potential customers. We considered aspirers when designing our product label in order to attract such a group. We also wanted to emphasize quality in our advertisement campaign to appeal to succeeders and reformers. With an energy drink not a likely product of choice for strugglers we decided that targeting this group would not be neccessary.