Research Project- Awareness Campaigns and their Effectiveness

My Idea for the research project- 'Awareness campaigns and their effectiveness'.

A serious yet creative advertising campaign, presenting social issues in a unique, powerful way. For example I have researched powerful advertising campaigns that instantly grabs your attention. An interesting article called '40 of the most powerful social issue ads that'll make you stop and think' had a variety of examples that I can use within my secondary research and to motivate me in the production element of the process, to make a powerful advertisement myself.

This project will be quite challenging, as I am going to create a whole advertising campaign rather than a stand alone publication. Also this research brief for me involves a lot of analysing and writing, which can be difficult in this topic to explain what the advert is trying to get across to their audiences. However because of this, it will be a step out of my comfort zone and I will have an opportunity to showcase my analytical and writing skills.

The image below is a photograph of my research idea mind map, which helped me to determine what topic I want to do this project on:

I have included website addresses as well as a few book titles that can help me with this research brief. I have also put examples of both primary and secondary research ideas which I can use when it comes to creating my own material, for example questionnaires and conducting my own focus groups.

My final design will be professional and not insensitive to the specific topic. I say this because I already know of a few advertising campaigns that have actually been banned by the ASA, from either using too graphic or disturbing imagery, or for using false facts and incorrect statistics.

From my GCSE media studies class in secondary school, we often looked at advertising campaigns and how they are effective. I already know how to analyse and write in detail about them, relating to all aspects of design, celebrity endorsement, product promotion, font use, imagery and much more. I have previously made presentations in the past about certain ads that have been banned for various reasons and have a brief understanding of the rules and regulations of doing so.

This will help me in my research project, as I will be able to determine the line between powerful and 'too far'.