An analysis of the Government’s media strategies Essay

The governance is extremely concerned over the human relationship between adolescents and do mediciness and, thinking of a personal manner to reduce the number of chanceful accidents and deaths, s in additionl distributed booklets, leaflets, posters, television advertisements and even a web pageboy to accent and educate youngrs today ab push through the risks involved when taking do do drugsss. What these various(a) sources of media take a crap been doing is informing and helping the immature society with the dangers that give nonice take tush when we come into contact with drugs.The brasss let loose To Franks scheme mustiness be analysed in its magnetic coreiveness and whether teenrs fall upon water been let out in Frank or if it is yet a corporate curtain raising set up by men in suits so they do not lose their job. Two different sources of drug information, The defecate and Drugs The Facts assume to be analysed and comp argond to squ ar off whether the y exit actually posture d avouch any effect on teens today. So why has the Government invested so much m 1y, period and military campaign on Talk To Frank? They must want results in return for all their hard work. What both(prenominal)(prenominal) Government promises is a let out future and what makes a better future?Less drug addicts and drug-related crimes and more m whizy that they can spend on beneficial public services. And what is the firmness of purpose to nab rid of all the future drug addicts better drug aw beness in youths. What sets Talk To Frank apart from all the other(a) drug aw beness booklets and leaflets is its quality of writing and ability to communicate to the comely teenager through demonstratey pictures and information that does not bore. It is particularors similar these that can change a teenagers mind concerning drugs in a second and stop them becoming addicted to drugs in the future.So what the Government is doing is both beneficial to tee ns and themselves because they argon doing all they can do to enchant the point across to teens while at the same time, saving profuse money when printing the booklets and leaflets. The economic cost of printing all these colourful leaflets is far cheaper than having to pay for all our mistakes in the future with rehab institutions and all the reclamation that follows. The channelise audience for Talk To Frank is teenagers, but why them? why not young adults or pre-teen children? The causa that they have picked that specific gathering is because they ar, apparently, at the perfect age.Not in like manner old that the campaign is there too late or may have al redey well-tried drugs and not too young that they will not understand what fractional of it is heavy(p)(p) reference to. Another very(prenominal) valid reason that teenagers are the targeted age group is because they are the biggest market consumers. They buy the nigh magazines, They have films made just for them and what do they do more than anything else? They watch TV of course and are susceptible to all the advertisements that play during the breaks. The Government smartly spotted this decades ago and have since been doing all they can to get their products on the market.The teenage market cannot escape it, they thought, we will even bombard them with drug prevention leaflets at school. Fortunately for both them and teenagers alike, the Governments simulated military operation is working, but how? What self respecting teenager would wilfully choose to read a magazine warning them not to take drugs over the more entertainment-based ones. How does the Government manage to get their media products to so many children up and raze the untaught? Quite simply, because they see what makes a teenage magazine sell. They then apply all the desir equal factors to produce something they hoped would encourage teenagers to say no.Their simulated military operation worked. Of course, if ever so y teenager in the country had read a Talk To Frank product, they would be world famous. So why does not either teenager know what Talk To Franks aim is? The reason is, and the Government knows this too, that you cannot put all teenagers into one category. There are frigid opposites in the teenage world and if you aggregation greatly to one kind, you are completely isolating the others. If they decided to use a certain causa of language they could well be appealing to a certain teenager but readiness confuse another.This makes you wonder if Talk To Frank is rattling the best solution and if there was the perfect piece of awareness out there, what would life be like? But in order to get the teenagers of Britain to read Talk To Frank, the straw man get across must be attractive and engaging enough for the teenager to actually pick it up. The ground of one of the principal(prenominal) drug information pieces is The tot. The front cover denotes a faded woolly jumper fabric, in a footslog of dark distorted colours. The main colour, purple, completely dominates the background. Purple connotes being woolly or in a state of wateriness.The background is connoting a drug trip and the fact that they have used purple is a vogue of saying that you are confused with the subject of drugs or you do not know who to turn to. Right in the centre there are the words, in very large bubble typography, The tick with Facts About Drugs create verbally beneath this. The words are all written in etiolate which connotes purity and clarity or maybe even an answer or solution. Around these words there are a series of xvi small pictures drawn in a circle. Each of these represent a different drug, and this is where the use of generic holds from teenage magazines has been introduced.We call this tasters, where the magazine is large-minded you a little see to it at what is going to be inside. Tasters are more commonly used in teenage magazines to give the target audience a n idea of what is going to be on the inside of the magazine. It very cleverly wants the reader to read on without giving away everything on the front cover. The same idea has been used with The check off, because these pictures are giving you a little example of what they are going to be talk of the town or so within in the booklet. They do not tell you what drug each of the pictures represent, making you want to know what each of them represents so you read the booklet.They have used modern methods of attracting teenagers to the booklet. The phrase The Score is old fool around which means to get drugs but now it means to lay down the facts and get straight to the point. This is extremely clever because it is trying to appeal to both types of people, ones that know the old put on and the others, who know it as it is used today. Similarly, the initiatory and most noticeable aspect of the front cover of Drugs The Facts is the background which is to a fault purple, reminiscent of the The Score. So again, this connotes that there might be confusion about drugs and that this magazine is going to give you all the answers.The main title tells you from the beginning exactly what this booklet is going to be talking about. precisely in the vein of The Score, the booklet has used generic features from teenage magazines to draw teenagers in and to get them to read this booklet. One of the tasters that is on the front cover of Drugs The Facts says Problem Page. A problem page is one of the main generic features of a teenage magazine the fact that they are even considering the main generic features of a teenage magazine is screening how much they want them to read their booklet.They have used teenage slang to suggest that their booklet is laid back and relaxed, almost as if they have copied all the elements that made The Score such a success. On the underlying layout of the front cover, there is an circularize center of attention. This could connote that this bo oklet is going to open you eyes to the problems regarding drugs and how to avoid them. Because their marketing campaign is so similar to The Score, it still is able to catch a teenagers eye but at the same time comes across somewhat younger, to appeal more to the pre-teen market.Not all teenagers will be drawn in by the style that has been used, such as pictures resembling cartoons and slanting words, and this could cost Drugs The Facts when it comes to desirability. Of course, it would be pointless to judge whether the Governments campaign had been working just by looking at the magazines cover so, in order to get a more detailed analysis, we have to look at the features inside. In The Score, there is a feature called plight and it is a completely typical generic feature of a teenage magazine, it also allows us to see what the Government thinks is a good way to entice teenagers to their booklet.Dilemma is a prime example of what the Government thinks of teenagers. They are not goi ng to use characters in a storyboard that are too out of place, otherwise they will not find it believable, ignore the pass on and turn to the next feature. What the storyboard focuses in on is a teenager called Steve who is preparing to go to a party. His mate offers him some speed so that he will learn to relax. Just to make sure they have not unconnected the teenagers so early on, they number the pictures. Of course, nothing bad can ever happen in a teenage magazine storyboard so Steve ends up rejecting his mates offer of speed and has a really great partyEverybody wins and the reader has learnt a valuable lesson. As odd as this may sound, it is far more effective at getting the put across across than if Steve took the speed and ended up in hospital for the iniquity because it leaves the user feeling positive. What happens when not-so positive features are used? The teenager might not understand the plot because it is so different from typical teenage magazines used today and , consequently, not take everything in? This is quite put on and a similar feature used in Drugs The Facts has no title, no colourful storyboard and no cheesy 1960s-style language.What the teenager does get, however is a efficacious real life story on the subject of one teenagers encounter with lighter refills. At the top of the page, and the first feature that catches your eye is the text My virtuoso could have died , with the continuation marks implying that you have to read the main text beneath it to understand the full picture. The main text is the teenager speech in his own words, detailing his own experiences, not what the editor has put in place inside linguistic process bubbles. The teenager is identified as Chris, fourteen, from Leeds, not Mr.Steve One-name. Chris goes on to say that he and some mates began to start sniffing lighter refills at the park, but when one of the gang fell to the floor and escaped death thanks to a passer by, they all stopped sniffing. What makes this so engaging is its subject matter, the fact that something bad happened to a real person, as if it could happen to the teenager schooling. We know that the target audience is teenagers but we have not checked to see whether they are portrayed in the magazine appropriately.If we browse through both The Score and Drugs The Facts, it would be an unpleasant surprise if anyone thought that the way that they are portrayed is the normal way that teenagers dress, talk and behave. Lets say that a booklet has passed the first hurdle of being aesthetically pleasing to the teenager, can they perchance represent teenagers in a well enough manner to make them listen to what the booklet or leaflet has to say? In the majority of the cases it is another teenager speaking to them.Even if it is the editor of the magazine who is speaking on behalf of the characters, the clothes that the characters wear and their average lifestyle must hypothesize reality. No teenager wears faded down pas tel coloured t-shirts inclose into beige khakis with a pair of large, brown boots to top it off. The Government must think that teenagers have the I. Q of a peanut if they are not able to take in large chunks of information and instead, have to be supply small bits that include a great number of slang words, most of which date back to when teenagers were not even alive.All of the work and effort that the Talk to Frank campaign has done on both The Score and Drugs The Facts would all be for nothing if it did not do what it is trying to achieve, which is to get teenagers to read their booklets. They want them to learn more on drugs, so that they are able to make their own decision when it comes to taking drugs. I desire that the front cover of The Score is far better in its presentational devices and attracting a teenagers attention than Drugs The Facts.This is because of the tasters, as well as the rather interesting font, used on the front cover of The Score that immediately get you interacting with the booklet from the word go. This use of immediate interaction makes the booklet considerably more appealing and so a bigger majority of teenagers are going to pick it up and go reading it. I think that the main problem with the Drugs The Facts booklet is that there is too much happening on such a small page and therefore is less appealing. I think they should have done something surrounding(prenominal) to The Score where it is nice, plain and simple.On the other hand, the table of contents of The Score can, at times, seem too simple to keep teenagers interested, they give you a hardly a(prenominal) stories and a a few(prenominal) problems and expect you to love it so much that you continue reading. All the Government would need to do is to combine some of the contents that are in Drugs The Facts such as the questionnaire that tells you what kind of person you are, and the various other quizzes with the method of presenting their information on drugs with the front cover of The Score and they would have a far better booklet.Both booklets seem to lam the mark with what a teenager is looking for in a magazine. However, and this is by and large the same with most other magazines similar to them, both manage to show the pressure that teenagers are under and all the possible factors that makes it worse. It clearly and repeatedly says that drugs are not a means of escape from all of this and at the ends of both booklets is the Talk To Frank help line which, and I quote, offers drop off and confidential advice about any drugs issue, whether its info youre after, advice or just a chat.You can also find out about the services available in your area. Lines are open 24 hours a day. I wondered whether what it was stating was actually true, that they offer friendly advice. I talked to a friend who had phoned up the Talk To Frank help line a few months ago to try and find some answers. He told me that they offered advice, even to the questions that every parent dreads to hear. Does Frank really talk to Teenagers? Yes, and their help line is 0800 77 66 00.