LO1: Analysis of the "#EpicSquads" MoneySuperMarket Advertising Campaign

The primary target audience of the “#Epic Squads” MoneySuperMarket advertising campaign is 35+ adults and the secondary target audience is families with young children, both audiences being C2DE. This is because adults typically look for insurance when life changes happen (like marriage, the average age of which is over 35), children will be entertained by the content of the adverts and the parents will watch and C2DE audiences are more likely to go to budget insurance providers like MSM. The key message of this campaign is “buy our insurance”, shown by the “trendy”, positive people in the adverts who are claimed to feel so positively because of the content included. Methods of advertising used are viral marketing through hashtags (the titular #EpicSquads), audience involvement and a loose narrarive, which have the effect of encouraging sharing to bring the adverts to a viral status, offering a sense of community and empowerment in the audience having a say in the adverts’ content and a sense of familiarity is given from the presence of a typical “face off” trope over the course of the campaign (respectively). Examples of synergy in the campaign are the same characters and similar music being featured across all advertisings, which contribute to a theme of continuity and security that an insurance company, of all companies, will want to carry across.

The campaign was released in the order of introducing the two “protagonists” of Dave and Colin (the dancers), beginning their dance rivalry and adding on to their established dynamic. This is effective as it further appeals to the concepts of narrative strewn throughout the campaign, and provides a sense of comfort to audiences seeing a familiar story structure in the products they consume. The campaign was produced in 2015, which is relevant to certain stereotypes as the focal dancers are queer-coded, given stereotypically “gay” behaviours to some extent. This is important as gay marriage was only legalised a year or so before, something which heavily impacted LGBTQ+ stereotyping and public opinion, making these illusions more acceptable than they may have been beforehand. Technological convergence has helped this campaign as it allows for viral marketing methods to be used via viral marketing. The titular tag “#EpicSquads” is vital to the campaign, and would be impossible to occur without the development of black box devices and Web 2.0. Some legal issues the campaign could have faced are copyrighted music used in the background of these adverts; ensuring that all music was sourced in legal manners would’ve been vital. Moreover, ensuring the exposure of what was claimed to be “sexual content” to minors didn’t occur is extremely important. However, this was the eventually the downfall of the campaign, which was pulled from air after countless complaints that the adverts were “too provocative”. Some ethical issues the campaign faced/could have faced are the representations of groups in the campaign. As earlier stated, the two “protagonists” are gay-coded and ensuring that their behaviours are not trope-y and offensive in order to avoid falling out of public favour.