How to make your Christmas advertising more accessible
Let’s start with translation
Translation is the process of adapting content from one language to another. It is essential for spreading new information, knowledge, and ideas across the world.?It effectively allows us to communicate between different countries, regions, and cultures.
How can translation benefit your advertising?
It’s important to make sure your content is translated into different languages all year round to ensure your organisation is accessible. This also gives you the opportunity to gain a wider audience and reach new markets.
Translating promotional materials is definitely worthwhile in the lead-up to Christmas, with the?National Retail Federation estimating that Americans alone will spend between $943 and $960 billion in the months of November and December this year.
As well as this, German retailers are expecting Christmas sales to rise 2% to 111.7 billion euros this year.
Christmas is celebrated in more than 160 countries so it’s essential to make sure your organisation’s Christmas adverts are accessible in multiple languages!?
Let’s move onto captions & SDH subtitles
What are captions?
Captions?display the text that's spoken in a video. For example, a video promoting a Christmas sale.
There are two main types of captions, open and closed captions. Open captions are subtitles that are permanently viewed and cannot be turned on and off, whereas closed captions can be controlled, and turned on or off.??
What are SDH subtitles?
Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, otherwise known as SDH subtitles, are advanced captions designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and their needs.
They describe sound effects and audio such as Christmas songs, and they can also indicate who is speaking and in what tone.?
How can captions/SDH subtitles benefit your advertising?
Captions and subtitles share a lot of the same benefits, including:
-???????Making your Christmas adverts accessible to deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers, and non-native English speakers
-???????Improving your audience’s comprehension
-???????Making your festive advert accessible when viewing in sound-sensitive environments
-???????Increasing views and search-engine rankings
-???????Allowing organisations to reach a wider audience
?
Next up is audio description
A lot of information is conveyed visually in videos, so information may be missed if you cannot watch it. This is where audio description comes into play.
What is audio description?
Audio description is an extremely important service for partially sighted or blind people. A voiceover narration is added to content which describes visual elements of videos, such as scenery, movements and even body language.
Including AD is vital and can be a crucial step towards making your advertising video accessible to blind or partially sighted people.
How can audio description benefit your advertising?
-???????Helps develop linguistic skills among children
领英推荐
-???????Enhances user experience
-???????It allows individuals to experience festive video content without having to view it
-???????Encourages auditory learning
-???????And more…
Finally, let’s talk about voiceovers
What are voiceovers?
A voiceover takes place through recorded audio and is then applied to a video. This voice can be used to give your festive promotion character and life, or it can be used for multilingual dubbing (this is when voiceover actors will be recorded saying the lines of a film in a different language)!
How can voiceovers benefit your advertising?
-???????Professional and unique voices can be useful for branding
-???????Allow organisations to connect, engage and influence their target audiences
?
2022’s Christmas Adverts
?Every organisation has their own individual approach when it comes to Christmas adverts, some use animated videos with voiceovers some even use familiar celebrity voiceovers. Let’s look into a few!
?Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer’s Christmas advert for 2022, is based around a festive fairy who’s on the hunt for a friend and comes across Ducky (Jennifer Saunders) who is?a dog toy that's in need of some Christmas cheer.
?Aldi
This year’s Aldi advert was Inspired by the holiday classic movie, Home Alone, a carrot called Katie is seen sitting comfortably on the plane before realising Kevin isn't there.
?Lidl
Lidl Christmas advert is about a bear who comes to life when a dad accidentally shrinks his Lidl jumper in the wash and his young daughter has the idea to put it on her teddy bear.
John Lewis
This year’s John Lewis advert aims to raise awareness of children in care with the story of a middle-aged man learning to skateboard.
Conclusion
Make sure your adverts are accessible this Christmas by applying translation, SDH subtitles, captions, audio descriptions and more... but make sure you choose the right agency! Click on the link below to our website to find out more about our services.