Wikipedia:Peer review/Cog (advertisement)/archive1

Cog (advertisement)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I'm looking to push this article through the FAC process soon, so any comments on structure, referencing, copyediting, or general fixes would be greatly appreciated! GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 06:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article about an especially clever ad. I remember finding the ad especially entertaining the first time I saw it (or bits of it online). Here are a few suggestions for further improvement.

Sequence

• "On the other end of the seesaw is a 12 V battery." - Should "volt" be spelled out? Can the viewer really tell for sure that it's a 12-volt battery, or is that an assumption? Would "car battery" be better?

Background

• "The stated goal of the campaign was to increase Honda's share of the UK market to 5% within three years and to change the public image of the brand to from dull but functional to warm and consumer-friendly, all on a lower marketing budget than their predecessors had demanded." - Two things: (1) "Percent" or "per cent" is preferred to % in simple cases like this. (2) The "to from" combination appears to be a typo. Probably this should read "... change the public image of the brand from dull but functional to warm and consumer friendly."

• Link "strapline" to Advertising slogan? I had never heard of "strapline", although I could guess at its meaning from the context.

Pre-production

• "Approval for the script took another month, with Honda requesting several specific features of the Accord appear in the final cut... " - Insert "that" between "requesting" and "several"?

• "Approval for the script took another month, with Honda requesting several specific features of the Accord appear in the final cut, such as a door with a wing-mirror indicator and a rain-sensitive windscreen, as the company were looking to highlight these features in sales brochures. - On the other hand, it might be better to recast the whole sentence since the "with plus -ing" construction is somewhat awkward, and the sentence seems a bit too complicated. Maybe: "Approval for the script took another month. Honda insisted that several specific Accord features, such as a door with a wing-mirror indicator and a rain-sensitive windscreen, appear in the final cut. The company planned to highlight these features in sales brochures." Or something like that.

• Do "direct" and "music videos" need to be linked. Most readers already know what they mean, I think.

Production

• "during the moment when the muffler rolls across the floor.[18]) - I think the ref number should come after the end parentheses rather than before.

• "The Accord shown at the end of Cog was, at the time, one of only six hand-assembled models in the world... " - This is a bit ambiguous. Does it mean "car models" rather than models of any sort? Does it mean "Accord models"?

• "Flame artist Barnsley (aka Andrew Wood[20])," - Here I'd move the ref number to right after the comma.

Post-production

• "Even so, the constant movement of parts on-camera meant that there were no good lighting references to work from when the time came to stitch the two 60-second shots into a single seamless piece." - It won't be clear to most readers what a "good lighting reference" means. Could the technical importance of a lighting reference be briefly explained, maybe in a note if adding it to the main text damages the prose flow?

Schedule

• "The full 120-second version of the advertisement aired only ten times in all, and only in the ten days after the initial screening." - Generally, numbers larger than nine appear as digits. Maybe "10 times" and "10 days"?

• Linking "remote control", "documentary", "brochure", and "music video" seems unnecessary.

• "Sales of Honda vehicles in the United Kingdom jumped by 28%... " - I'd recommend "percent" or "per cent".

Awards

• The collapsing list might be better at the bottom of the article. I would think about a horizontal, non-collapsing format and about checking WP:FA for models of how this might be done.

• "It receiving more awards than any commercial in history;" - Should that be "received"?

• "with the jury's chairman Charles Inge commenting" - Generally, it's best to recast the "with plus -ing" constructions. "With" isn't a conjunction.

• "tradition holds that it is bad form for the chairman of the jury to vote for a piece by his own agency." - Since the chair could in some cases be a woman, should this be recast to remain gender-neutral? Maybe: "tradition holds that it is bad form for the chairperson of the jury to vote for a piece by his or her own agency."

In advertising

• "an 30-second animated advertisement for Heinz Tomato Ketchup" - Shouldn't this be "a" rather than "an"?

Other

• I count 20 red links in the article, which is quite a lot. Generally, before heading to FAC with something, I try to create articles for the red links, partly to avoid trouble but mainly to expand the encyclopedia. The total of 20 can be quickly pared down somewhat by eliminating duplicate red links. For example, Sense is redlinked in three places.

• The link checker tool at the top of this review page finds one dead URL in the citations. It's in citation 52.

• To citation 76, you might add "registration required".

• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:10, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! This is exactly the type of thing I was looking for. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 11:49, 17 June 2011 (UTC)