2. Campaign proposal:
The aim of our campaign is to get both parents and year 11 students to visit the Ringwood School website, where they will
find the relevant information regarding the 2019 Ringwood School and Ringwood Sixth Form open days. As part of this
campaign, we will be making two audio adverts to be played on the radio, one advertising Ringwood School, and one
advertising Ringwood Sixth Form. For both adverts, the objective (other than directing the target audience to the Ringwood
School website) is to show off the strongest elements of Ringwood School/ Sixth Form. To achieve this goal, the majority of
both adverts will be a soundscape, made up of ever-increasing noises that reflect the best and most varied aspects of the
school/sixth form, before they fade out and a voiceover tells the audience to search for the Ringwood School/ Sixth form
website “so you can do it all”. An example of how the soundscape would sound is this; advert starts with a BTEC performing
arts student singing “Bring him home” from the musical Les Miserables, then, one by one, other generic school sounds are
added, such as sports (whistle, shouting “pass it here, I'm open!” etc.) English (Mr Stone talking passionately about Hamlet),
science (teacher saying something science related and perhaps sound of equipment/experiments) and general chatter and
café noise, leading to a multi- layered crescendo as the Les Mis song reaches its climax. Then, a school bell will ring, and all
the noises will fade away, leaving silence, which is then filled by a voiceover who will say “search Ringwood Sixth Form so you
can do it all”.
3. Target Audience:
• The target audience for the adverts differs depending on the advert; the Ringwood School advert would be aimed
primarily at parents of children in year 6, as realistically it is mostly their decision which secondary school their child
attends, whereas the Ringwood Sixth Form advert would be aimed primarily at year 11 students, as they are older and as a
result the decision of what college/sixth form they attend post-sixteen (if they want to attend any) is mostly up to them.
This is the typical target audience avatar for the Ringwood School audio advert; she is a middle-aged (35-40) mother who has
a child who is in year 6. She is between a C1 and a B on the NRS social demographic Scale, while she is “the mainstream” on
Young and Rubican’s 4c’s scale. She would have a spending power of around £10,000 per year . At the time of her hearing the
advert, she is considering which secondary school to send her child to, and so its very likely that after hearing the advert she
would visit the Ringwood School website, briefly discuss the possibility of Ringwood School with her child, then maybe attend
the open evening with her child.
This is the typical target audience avatar for the Ringwood Sixth Form audio advert; he is a 16 year old year 11 student at
highcliffe secondary school near Bransgore, and is thinking about where he is going to study post-16. He is between an E and
a D on the NRS social demographic scale, and could be classed as “the explorer” on Young and Rubican’s 4c’s scale. He has a
part time job, and so has a spending power of around £2000 per year. At the time of hearing the advert, he will be trying to
decide which sixth form/college he wants to attend, and so the advert could potentially direct him to the website and, as a
result, the open evening, which might convince him to apply to Ringwood Sixth Form.
5. • For the sixth form advert the client wanted the same sort of
time period. That means that the adverts
should run for about a month, from monday the 7th of
October to Wednesday the 6th of November.
This should be done on a more youth-friendly radio station,
and as long as the times are outside of
school hours the windows can be far more open, as young
people are more likely to listen to music
while doing homework.
• For example the advert could run once between 8:00 and
8:30 for parents on the school run with
younger children, and three times between 3:45pm and
6:00pm for the students; plus another 5 times
over a weekend. This means that over the 3.5 weeks 90
adverts should be run. There are more
adverts run for this, but it will be harder to win over
potential students, because they have been given
a free choice (mostly) but may prefer to stay on at their
school’s sixth form or the closest college.
• As far as I am aware there are no local events that might
significantly impact my campaign. There is
the Ringwood Carnival, but I’m not aware that it could have
any significant effect more than the day to
day variation of listeners.
• For the sixth form advert the client wanted the same sort of
time period. That means that the adverts
should run for about a month, from monday the 7th of
October to Wednesday the 6th of November.
This should be done on a more youth-friendly radio station,
and as long as the times are outside of
school hours the windows can be far more open, as young
people are more likely to listen to music
while doing homework.
• For example the advert could run once between 8:00 and
8:30 for parents on the school run with
younger children, and three times between 3:45pm and
6:00pm for the students; plus another 5 times
over a weekend. This means that over the 3.5 weeks 90
adverts should be run. There are more
adverts run for this, but it will be harder to win over
potential students, because they have been given
a free choice (mostly) but may prefer to stay on at their
school’s sixth form or the closest college.
• As far as I am aware there are no local events that might
significantly impact my campaign. There is
the Ringwood Carnival, but I’m not aware that it could have
any significant effect more than the day to
day variation of listeners.
6. Other Campaigns
• Posters should be put up around about the same time as the
radio adverts are put up to ensure that
as many people as possible see them. Two weeks later, any
damaged or removed posters should be
replaced. Extra posters should be put up in and around the
carnival site, as there is a huge influx of
people from out of catchment that are possible students, or
parents of students.
• TV adverts are going to be hard to pull off, due to the lack of
local TV stations in the UK. Any advert is
going to have to be national and cost an awful lot more
money than is necessary.
Types of Channels
• For the lower school radio adverts, I think the best station to
go with would be Heart FM (102.3,
Bournemouth). From listening and analysing the adverts, as
well as personal experience, the station is
aimed at women aged 30 and up. These are the people
most likely to be doing the school run, and
have the radio on.
• For the sixth form advert, the morning run should go on
Heart, aimed at mothers who are looking for a
sixth form for their children. The evening advert should go
on Capital (103.2 FM Southampton), as their
target audience is generally the youth.
Cost
• According to workspace.co.uk, radio advertising costs £2 per
1000 listeners for a 30 second advert.
The listenership figure for Capital is 214,000 at the moment.
That means that the maximum cost is
£428 per 30 second advert, but I expect it to be much
smaller than that, as that figure is the count of
people that tune in for at least 5 minutes across a whole
week.
• Heart Solent has 377,000 weekly listeners, but again that is
likely an overestimate. The absolute
maximum cost of an advert is therefore is £675.
• Given that I do not have accurate numbers, there is no way
of estimating the cost without contacting
the station itself. If the price is too much we can reduce the
count of the adverts to twice a weekday.
Other Events
• On carnival day, the l might also run a few adverts on the
local station, who usually run part of their
show from the edge of the carnival grounds. The carnival
atmosphere may convince people to come
to Ringwood School for the community in the town that is
displayed in the carnival. As it is on the 21st
of September, a different, general advert for the school and
sixth form could be shown, or maybe 2
runs of each advert.
8. Legal and Ethical issues
• We will have to consider the rights behind the ‘Les Mis’ song that members of the performing arts
section will be singing, however due to the coursework being of educational purposes we have
fair rights, yet if the project was being produced properly we would have to contact this list of
people:
• Claude-Michel Schönberg’s rights/estate that licensed the composition
• A licensing company that can give us fair use of the music, by us paying royalties, e.g. Cameron Mackintosh ltd
• We will be recording both ‘Bring him home’ and ‘Do you hear the people sing’ as they are both
typical of the production, before choosing the audio with the best performance.
• We will have to include signed permission slips for all the (voice) actors used- similar to that of
VoxPops. Therefore it may be beneficial to use the same actors across some of the different
scenes.
• Additionally – especially for the print and audio/visual advertisement – we will have to take great
care not to include any copyrighted items or brands so as to avoid legal complications. We will
also have to secure permission to film in Ringwood School- from the school, which shouldn’t be a
problem as the campaign is being produced to aid the school.
• The content of our campaign will be unambiguously inoffensive so as to avoid said legal
issues/OFCOM problems.
9. Regulatory Bodies
ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) – founded 1962
• A UK self-regulatory organisation within the United Kingdom advertising sector. The body, however, is non
statutory and so cannot enforce law or legislature. Although, its interpretation of said legislature reflects that
of the law and so is very reliable in investigating complaints made about ads and other marketing strains.
The organisation is not funded by the government but by a levy on the industry, and so any advertisements
that don’t conform to the ASA standards will help finance the body.
OFCOM (The Office of Communications) - founded 2003
• The government approved body of regulation for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industry
of the UK. The organisation has legal power and duty to represent the best interests of the UK citizens by
promoting competition and censoring harmful or offensive media. The main areas Ofcom presides over are
licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints and protecting radio-abuse (e.g. pirate radio stations).
BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) – founded 1912
• Whilst the BBFC isn’t predominately focused on the advertising industry, however in the past there was
stricter legislation regarding cinema-advertising, yet from 2016 it now delegates to the CAA in this instance.
Although the BBFC also have to ager-certify any advertisements to be released publically. Therefore any
adverts being produced have to comply and travel through the BBFC machinery in order to be released.
