Audiences

Target audience

• Channel 4 viewers who fall into the 16-24 age bracket

• Fans of sport

• Those who desire to see more inclusive representations of social groups,

  • Links to C4’s merit ‘appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society’

What ways does the advert target its audience?

Through:

• Personalisation

• Technical codes

• Audio codes

Personalisation

Super Human deals with real, human stories focusing on day to day struggles of being an athlete in training and disabled. The narratives are constructed to encourage the audience to identify with the athletes and their lives

Technical codes

• It includes alot of close up shots, some of which are uncomfortable, e.g the blister.

• It gives the audience access to views in which they may be unfamiliar with, e.g attaching a prosthetic blade. This holds the audiences attention

• The editing cuts between the athletes routines and the cartoon clips lighten the mood and engage the audience through humour

Audio codes

The soundtrack ‘So you want to be a boxer’ . The choice of this upbeat, stirring tune grabs the audience’s attention with its connotations of struggle and hard work paying off.

An older audience will be familiar with the film from which it was taken. Other audio codes suggest struggle, heavy breathing etc.

Visual code

‘To be a paralympian there’s got to be something wrong with you’

• This encourages audience to examine their own misconceptions of disability in the light of what they’ve viewed

Unique selling point

It is the showing of the athletes’ stories

• There is no voice over, the advert is an attempt to give a realistic potrayal of disabled athletes.

To what extent was it successful

It was successful:

• Viewed by 20 million

• The marketing campaign reach 80% of the UK’s population

• The paralympic games attracted 2.6 million viewers

Audience interpretations

• Regular C4 audiences may be familiar with the promotion as the other 2 ads were succesful

• May make some audiences feel uncomfortable:

  • it uses shock tactics to make people aware of the issues disabled people face in their sport/lives, e.g the timelapse of the bruise and the blister getting popped

  • Seeing Kylie Grimes unable to enter a cafe

• Feel that being a paralympian is something to be proud of:

  • ‘To be a paralympian, there’s gpt to be something wrong with you’

  • The encoder aims this to be seen as something positive

Stuart Hall - reception

• Intended - To accept the positive portrayal of paralympians as both ‘Super’ and ‘human’

• Negotiated: May feel distant from the sporting side of the ad, but may be more open to the positive side of the ad, and to examine their misconceptions about disabled people

• Oppositional - Those who aren’t supporters of C4 and its ethos of giving a voice to those who are under represented

Gerbner - cultivation

Audiences may be used to the repeated conventions of disability awareness ads, so they could become desensitised or 'immune' to the intended message over time