THE PERFECT AD FORMATS

Topic: Master Formats





Type: TV Commercial/Advertisement


This week's blog post would be on formats of advertisements, so I was googling for "best insurance advertisements" and I came across this advertisement. This is a car insurance commercial by the Liberty Mutual Insurance in the United Kingdom. The advertisement is very humorous as it relates to real life problem that some of us have once faced. Example, forgetting to pull the hand break after parking the car, reversing without realising there is a car at the back and etc.

This is the first time that I have actually came across a humorous insurance advertisements. It is because the Thai always come up with teary insurance advertisements. This advertisement actually did a great job to break the ice and go for something complete opposite from what the Thai had did.

The best part was the starting. They have made a very attention grabbing opening and it can make the viewers to continue watching the advertisement rather then changing the channel. But it never stop from there, it gives you real life example which will make you think "hmm, what if something like that really happened?" it will aroused the viewer to actually buy insurance for their car.

The type of format for this advertisement have been use was symbolising the problem according to Donald Gunn's 12 master formats of advertising. The type of formats of advertising that have been listed by Donald Gunn all mostly appear on the TV advertisements. I find Donald Gunn's format very relevant and mainstream at the same time. But his format was over 130+ years ago, maybe in this new era, there would be a new type of format other then this 12.

For example in this Ignite Social Media website, they show that Snapchat that is recently one of the popular social media that have 10second long video advertisements. The commission for each user that watched the 10second video will earn 0.02sen each. Which is not consider a small amount because Snapchat is globally used all over the world. This is the newly format that was not included in Donald Gunn's master format.