Newspaper Advert - Feedback / Idea Re-Think

My tutor looked over my newspaper adverts. He gave me a few areas to work on, and he raised a few questions with them. First was the white background, I had thought that it would make the contents of the poster stand out, but he said that there is too much white space. I can see where he is coming from. Black would be a more appropriate background colour: it fits in with the genre and can still make the advert stand out without seeming too blank. He then questioned why I had a girl on the advert, accompanied by "what possessed him to do it?" which doesn't make sense. I now think that I will stick to the Zane advert and not have the two different ones. The Zane advert was the one that he preferred out of the two, the only problem he saw was the effect I used on Zane's shadow copy. He said to try and make it look less tacky and more realistic. The final point he gave was that to use up more space on the ad, I should add in quotes from reviews. This is a common convention of any media product advert.


From hearing my tutor's comments, I decided to re-think my ad. I felt that it needed more of a theme. Facebook is an element of the drama, and both Facebook and the Internet are two of the most popular cultural sites  for teenagers (my target audience). And so, I decided to use graphics that relate to the Internet and computer screen graphics. I edited the Zane portrait and using the Mosaic Pixel Filter, I made the portrait pixelated. I then placed it in a square box to resemble a 'profile picture' from a social networking site.
 Then I added a mouse arrow, as if it's clicking on the picture. I stuck to the original colour scheme of red and white because red connotes horror, blood and danger. White is the background colour for Facebook. I wanted that element to stay, because I tried out black as a background and it just didn't work. It came on a little too strong. I want the image and text to be the focus, not the background colour. I also used slightly pixelated fonts.

 Although computer graphics have moved forward a lot and aren't as pixelated as they used to be. I wanted to give the poster a more retro feel, because this is popular with teenagers in modern fashion. I made up a quote from a The Guardian review because they are one of the more highly regarded newspapers. Our target audience may not read that paper, but because of it's status, it's opinions are trusted by many.
I have tried to fill up more space like my tutor said I should, and I have improved the image and general concept of my radio drama advert. I have still kept with the minimal yet bold style that I was trying to achieve. The finished advert can be seen below:

To reach the target audience of our drama, we would need to get the advert published in modern magazines that are popular with teenagers and young people. An example would NME, which is a good music and entertainment magazine. To reach the right audience we would need to have it published in relevant magazines such as The Radio Times. As well as newspapers with a more balanced view and a more regarded reputation such as The Guardian. But the best way to reach our audience would be to use cross media convergence and use the adverts on Facebook and other social  networking sites. Through using these sites we can reach a more specific audience through methods such as behavioural advertising.

The other members of my group also made adverts, they can be seen below: