Silver Line Productions

New Media Application

By Ainsley Brooks

Advertising is one of the most important things present in society today. Advertising helps keep the consumers informed about upcoming shows. It helps to spread awareness about the documentary, film being shown, which should help gain viewers and attract potential buyers. Advertising is everywhere, on the radio, billboards, magazines, through other shows… the list is endless. TV companies advertise the program or film to attract viewers and make them want to watch it, which in return will make money for them.

Channel 4:

Companies such as Channel 4 are well known for their variety of Documentaries. Channel 4 also own More 4, a television known for showing Documentaries. Channel 4’s documentaries always do well attracting thousands to millions of viewers every week. The reason behind this is because they cater for all age groups and they target age groups and genders; from ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ to ‘Japan’s Tsunami: How It Happened’.

“Channel 4 also seems to attract audiences. Viewing figures have been growing week on week: 6.4 million watched the first episode. The consolidated figures for the series' second episode (8.7 million) make it Channel 4's eighth highest-rating programme ever”. Channel 4 also have a website dedicated to the documentaries they air, which would be a great company to pitch our documentary too, if it is a success.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/20/ratings-big-fat-gypsy-weddings)

BBC:

The BBC is also well known for producing Documentaries. The BBC also has websites dedicated to the documentaries they show and independent documentaries such as ‘Podcasts’ and ‘Film Network’.

The BBC is known for creating debate and more focusing on politics and real life stories, where as Channel 4 show documentaries aimed at the younger generation. The BBC has proved to be successful attracting millions of viewers.

The Independent said that "it is very possible that viewing figures for these programmes will improve, because viewers tend to respond better to current affairs programming at times of uncertainty."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/is-this-a-golden-age-for-documentaries-1066699.html

Documentary - The Interrupters: How to stop a riot by the BBC

Image: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017z25v

I stumbled across “The Interrupters: How to stop a riot” by mistake. This proves that the BBC knows how to advertise and make the programmes they are showing known. I was YouTube when an advert on the side of the screen popped up. Above shows an ambulance racing through the streets, making the audience want to see more.

Channel 4 - The Secret Millionaire

Image: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/24/tvratings.television

Channel 4 heavily advertise “The Secret Millionaire”, this advertising has proven to worked, if you ask anyone in the UK if they have watched or heard of “The Secret Millionaire” majority of them will say they have. The series, in which millionaires go under cover in deprived areas to give away cash, has proven to be a hitting usually winning the 9pm slot when it is aired, attracting on average 3.5 million viewers.

Channel 4 have a section on their website for Documentaries which features the most popular documentaries on the front page. There is also an option to sign up to their mail list to receive more information on Documentaries they are showing. The poster above shows a lady in a working class area, leaving the audience to wonder if she is the millionaire or if she is the person who is deserving of money.

Channel 4 website on "The Secret Millionaire"

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results, banner ads, blogs, social networking advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam. Channel 4 has created a page on “The Secret Millionaire” on their website with photos and a synopsis. They also allow viewers to watch up on episodes using 4oD, which is a video on demand service allowing viewers to catch up on programmes they may have missed on TV.

BBC website on "The Interrupters - How to Stop a Riot"

Much like Channel 4, the BBC has taken a similar approach. It is important for all production companies to publish as much information they can to try and attract viewers. The website should be easy to navigate to ensure they keep the viewers online. They do this in many forms by publishing information, photos, catch-ups and links to social networking websites, which most people have in today’s society.

Social Networking

Production Companies use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter because they know that they have millions of active users every day. Facebook is one of the biggest social networking sites with over 800 million active users. By creating a page on Facebook this enables them to interact and promote the Documentary by posting daily/ weekly updates, which will appear in the their news-feeds.

News Articles:

News articles are also a form of advertising, which isn't always step up by the production company. Newspapers tend to review the documentary being shown, sometimes recommending the reader to watch it. Forums and Blogs are another way of promoting the Documentary.

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/24/tvratings.television

• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/is-this-a-golden-age-for-documentaries-1066699.html

• http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/articles

Trailers and YouTube channel

Youtube is the largest video streaming site online. It is important for production companies to create a YouTube page, this allows the videos to be available worldwide and not just UK audiences, attracting a bigger fan-base. As you can see from my screenshot, Channel 4 have a YouTube page with listed trailers and full length programmes, allowing the viewer to catch up whenever they want. If you have a budget, you can also have your video featured on the homepage to gain more views.

DVD Covers

Image: Taken from Amazon; rights to Channel 4

DVD covers are hugely important, they help make the most money for production companies so it is important that they create a cover that catches the consumer’s attention in the shop. Sometimes it's the DVD cover appearance that plays an important factor in sales, for someone who hasn’t heard of the film or documentary before if is it 'eye catching' they are likely to pick it up and want to read the back.

Some promotion I have done

Advertising and promotion is the key ingredient in making something work. We created t-shirts, business cards, posters, flyers and so on. By doing this, this makes us look more like a professional company and will hopefully impress certain clients we want to work with.

Company T-Shirts

Business Cards

We decided to create t-shirts for our company. This makes us look more professional for when it comes to filming and for presenting our ideas for the presentation. We decided that black looked more professional when presenting.

We already created business cards on Photoshop for our Production company so I decided to create one for myself. I added the logo at the top and my details at the bottom. The card lists our website link, my personal e-mail and contact details; this allows the audience or the people I hand the cards out to look at my company in their own time.

Blog

I already have an account on Tumblr, so I thought I would use this to my advantage to help promote the Documentary by posting regular posts and updates on how the documentary is going.

Facebook

By creating a Facebook page this allows us to interact and promote our company and the Documentary we are making by posting weekly posts and updates.
Within the first 3 days of creating the page we attracted 122 likes and over 9,000 views which is great promotion and is free of charge to use.

And finally...

Here is the original business card I created before we came up with the skyline logo. I took the image in the background on a Canon 450D which is a firework. I took the photo on “sports mode” so the firework wasn’t so clear and looked more like bubbles, I then cropped the picture in the corner to allow the text to fit on top where the background is black.