The document discusses promotional campaigns created for a brand of mafia-themed hot dogs called Dogfather Hotdogs. It describes two advertisements created - one parodying the opening scene of The Godfather film, and another parodying the character Tony Montana from Scarface. It then analyzes and compares these advertisements to other hot dog commercials from Weinerschnitzel, Wendy's, and Fresh For U Hot Dogs, discussing similarities and differences in concepts, tones, pacing, use of music/sound, conventions followed and challenged.

1. Question 1
Amarjit Singh

2. The Idea
For our media product, we came up with a
promotional campaign for a brand of mafia
themed hotdogs, known as Dogfather Hotdogs.
We thought this idea was fresh, original, and
had a lot of potential.

3. The Idea
We decided to make the play on words for the
product one of the key underlying themes, so
we turned to Francis Coppola’s The Godfather
for inspiration, and decided that a parody of this
would be focal point of the whole campaign.

4. The Idea
With the idea of creating a parody in mind, we
decided to reconstruct the opening scene from
the film, which is regarded as one of the
greatest scenes in cinema.

5. The Idea
Our second advert is not a direct parody of a scene
from a mafia movie, but we aimed to parody the
character of Tony Montana from Brian De Palma’s
Scarface. We used the character’s likeness in a scene
we created, using a scene from Martin Scorsese’s The
Departed as a stimulus.

6. Weinerschnitzel “World’s Most
Wanted Weiner Advert”
When looking at other television advertisements for hotdogs, I
came across two that I found interesting. The first was the
Weinerschnitzel “World’s Most Wanted Weiner Advert”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBsYO0ZAfKE). This advert
features an animated hotdog being chased by a girl; it runs into a
male character’s room, with the girl in pursuit. She grabs onto
something under the covers thinking that she has grabbed the
hotdog, this causes the male character to wake up, and the
hotdog is seen at the end of the bed. After a few seconds of
screaming, a promotional screen appears and the hotdog is
shown running off the screen along with the company logo and
the tagline “World’s Most Wanted Weiner”

7. Weinerschnitzel “World’s Most
Wanted Weiner Advert”
Both of our advertisements differ considerably from
this one, primarily due to our lack of finances, which
led to us being resourceful and utilising whatever we
had access to. This advert maintains a light and
humorous mood throughout, whereas we aimed to
stick to the mafia theme with the tone, and used the
direct parody in the first advert to incorporate humour.
Our second advert has a much more serious tone when
compared to the first, because of the dark, gritty feel of
both The Departed and Scarface, despite our attempt
to lighten the mood with the humour of the parody.

8. Weinerschnitzel “World’s Most
Wanted Weiner Advert”
The Weinerschnitzel advert has a very fast pace, and it
manages to maintain the attention of the viewers,
although I think it would be more effective if it was
slightly slower. Our first advert contrasts significantly
with this as the pace is much slower, I personally
consider it to be too slow. However it was created in
this way to make it suit the theme and the idea of the
Godfather parody. Our second advert has a much
quicker pace than the first and it is more similar to the
Weinerschnitzel advert in that sense.

9. Weinerschnitzel “World’s Most
Wanted Weiner Advert”
One of the key things that stood out to me was the
promotional screen at the end of the
advertisement, and as a group we decided the way
it was done in the Weinerschnitzel advert was
effective, and so we wanted to use something
similar in ours.

10. Wendy’s Beef Hotdog
Another advert that I came across was the Wendy’s
beef hotdog commercial, released in Canada in 1985
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkLULAs68hQ).
The advert begins with a voiceover stating the new
Wendy’s hotdog, it then cuts to several different
popular Canadian characters such as Count Floyd, Sir
John A. MacDonald and the Blue Jay Mascot with the
hotdogs, while a song created especially for the advert
plays in the background which informs the viewers that
along with the beef, they can have cheese and chilli as
additional toppings.

11. Wendy’s Beef Hotdog
This advertisement features celebrities that would be
known by their target audience (Canadian people), it
would be impossible for us to emulate that, however
our advertisements feature parodies of two of the most
famous characters in film, Don Corleone and Tony
Montana. Despite the fact that the Wendy’s advert
directly uses the character’s popularity while our
attempts that through parodies, I think that the
attempt to use the popularity of well-known characters
forms a similarity between the two.

12. Wendy’s Beef Hotdog
The Wendy’s advert features a shot of four of their
hotdogs, but with no indication of the company, and
then after a few more seconds of showing the
characters, a screen showing the company logo and
tagline appears. This contrasts with ours as we
incorporate the product into the narrative of the
advert, and decided to show both the product and the
brand in the one promotional screen.

13. Wendy’s Beef Hotdog
Another difference is the use of music and sound;
Wendy’s created an original song for their product,
whereas we decided it would be fitting to the idea if we
used the Godfather theme song. The Wendy’s advert
features the company’s tagline ‘That’s Fresh, That’s
Class’, we decided we would come up with one just for
the product, and so we decided to take a popular quote
from the film as the basis, thus creating ‘Dogfather
Hotdog’s, An Offer You Can’t Refuse’.

14. Fresh For U Hot Dogs
Fresh For U Hot Dogs are an American hotdog
company, who focus promoting the brand online
through Facebook and Twitter. They created an advert
by going through an advertising agency Non Juan. They
create 30 second advertisements for their clients
featuring a puppet Non Juan, who is rapidly rising in
popularity who acts as the unofficial spokesman for the
company. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbjG07MsL4)

15. Fresh For U Hot Dogs
The concept of this advert is completely different to
ours, as rather than having a spokesperson/sales pitch
type of advert, we did a dramatisation. The advert is
very simple with the company logo in the middle of the
screen, with an American flag in the background, and
the national anthem playing behind as Non Jaun talks
about the product in the corner. They appeal to their
audience with the heavy reliance on patriotism, and its
target audience are notoriously patriotic. Our advert
appeals to a much more niche audience, and such a
simple advertisement wouldn’t work as well.

16. Conventions
There are several conventions of television adverts that
we maintained, and certain ones we did not. One of the
conventions is that there will be a close-up shot of the
product or any of the celebrities that featured in the
advert. This is used in almost all food adverts and so we
ensured that this was repeated in our adverts, with the
close-up shots of the hotdogs. The inclusion of this shot
allows viewers to see the product, and encourages
impulse purchases.

17. Conventions
The majority of adverts feature voiceovers,
however as our main idea was the mafia parody, we
decided the voiceover would be used at the end to
state the product and the tagline as we thought it
would be more effective for the ending, and it
won’t affect the presentation of the parody.

18. Conventions
Another convention we kept to was that of soundtrack
use; many adverts feature popular soundtracks and this
helps not only grab the attention of viewers, but also to
create a sense of familiarity. Thinking about the
Godfather and the mafia theme, we concluded that The
Godfather’s Waltz by Nino Rota, used not only for the
introduction of the film, but used in several points
throughout the film, making many call it the theme
song, was the most appropriate choice due to the
popularity and instant association with the mafia
theme.

19. Conventions
Having people from the target audience featuring in the
advert allows the target audience to relate to them and
will make the advert appeal more to them, and
although we aimed to stick to the parody, this resulted
in our advertisement keeping to this convention as we
target males, especially those with an interest in such
films, and both our advertisements only feature male
actors.

20. Conventions
One of the conventions we challenged was that
the majority of adverts have positive, hi-key
lighting. Mafia films, especially The Godfather
are dark and gritty, so we thought using hi-key
lighting wouldn’t suit this, and so we changed
the lighting so that it would suit the idea.

21. Conventions
The product should be the focus of attention in the
advert and we tried to make subtle changes to the
original scene and slot the hotdog in. Although we
don’t necessarily keep it on screen, the ways we make
the product appear draws attention to it. Adverts
feature the company name, logo, product name, and
tagline and so we were sure to include all of these.
Looking at how effective they appeared on other
adverts, we decided to have these at the end.