Teaser

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the language of advertising and journalism, a teaser [ ti Bildz ein ] or marker is a short text or image element that is intended to encourage readers to read on, listen to, see and click. It is often on the front or first page of a medium and indicates the actual contribution there.

Derivation and meaning

Marker

The German verb anreißen describes colloquially the attracting of customers "in an intrusive way"; the associated noun Anreißer stands for the person who “loudly advertises”, the product “serves to catch customers”, and (in the relevant meaning here) the short text that “should arouse interest in the following article”.

Teaser

The German word teaser (like mobile phone ) is a sham Anglicism - in English one speaks of lead paragraphs , not of teasers , and so-called teaser campaigns are advance advertising campaigns.

The English verb to tease means "tease, irritate", the associated noun teaser means "tough nut to crack, brain teaser , tough nut". The more recent German meaning relates to the field of marketing : A teaser is an “advertising element that is intended to arouse the customer's curiosity (e.g. a small film, music or text excerpt)”, but also “as an eye-catcher on a website graphic element used ”.

Teasers should arouse potential customers' curiosity and entice them to take certain actions. Imprints on sales letters should encourage people to open the envelope, for example the following sentence: “This letter tells you how you can make a fortune in no time at all.” The word is also used in company sales. Here, the teaser is the usually anonymized brief description of an offered company, which is sent to a group of possible interested parties for initial information. Interested parties who have been won will receive the Memorandum of Understanding with further information by signing a confidentiality agreement .

Front page of a daily newspaper - the markers are placed in the lower half of the left outer column.

journalism

Print journalism

In the print media one traditionally speaks of the teaser, but increasingly also - with the same meaning - of the teaser. This always means a short text, "which should arouse interest and arouse curiosity about a detailed presentation". Tickers are a few lines short, sometimes syntactically incomplete; in the newspaper industry, they are clearly arranged on the front page, be it under the newspaper header or in the left or right outer column. The typographically highlighted block of text between the headline and the article is usually not referred to as a marker, but as a preamble or lead .

Online journalism

The function of the teaser in online journalism corresponds in principle to the function of the teaser in print journalism: A short text on the home page acts as an introduction to a detailed article on a subsequent website.

“The teasers on the homepage or on a topic overview page are called teasers. They refer to an article and are intended to provide orientation about the content as well as entice users to click. "

Teasers can be differentiated according to their length: Even if there is only a short sentence on the entry page that is intended to encourage further reading, one speaks of a teaser. However, the teaser can easily reach the length of a full-blown lead. Many news sites use the headline or first sentence of the post as a teaser. This assumes that the article itself was written according to journalistic principles: The first sentence must contain the most important thing, the core message. The journalistic W questions - who does what, when, where, how and why, as well as: where does the information come from - are taken into account.

Teasers can also be classified according to their content function:

  • Summary teaser: As a striking lead sentence, it reproduces the information core of the following message.
  • Teaser in question form: It requires the question to be repeated and an immediate answer in the following text.
  • Announcement teaser: It describes what follows as clearly as possible, but without revealing too much.

Teasers based on the cliffhanger principle are widespread in online journalism, but are also viewed critically.

Radio

In radio broadcasting , a teaser is, on the one hand, the headline of a news item. These headlines are often read at the beginning of the broadcast, teasing the actual news. On the other hand, the radio teaser is an element of the on-air promotion , with which the presenter indicates an upcoming program element .

Movie and TV

In the film and television industry, this is understood to mean both the first short commercial for a film (not to be confused with a trailer ) and that part of a film or television play that is shown before the opening credits . The latter is also known as cold open or cold opening (English for "cold opening"). In both cases, the teaser is intended to arouse the viewer's curiosity and encourage them to watch the advertised film or to continue watching the film that has started.

A teaser can have different lengths: from one to ten minutes, in individual cases even more. The best-known example of the use of teasers is provided by the films in the James Bond series, which since Greetings from Moscow have always started with a teaser before the actual opening credits.

Today, most television series, especially those of US origin, start with a teaser. This often consists of a compilation of important scenes from previous episodes, also called recaps (from English recapitulation : "repetition", "summary") in order to rebuild a previously created tension or to provide explanations for a better understanding of the new episode. However, a cold opening is often used.

Demarcation trailer

The term trailer , which is to be distinguished from the teaser, describes a short advertising film for a film that has already been created from its image material. Normally, in contrast to the trailer, there are no film excerpts to be found in the teaser, but mostly material specially prepared for the teaser, which is intended to arouse the audience's curiosity about the upcoming film.

Delimitation cold open

The part shown immediately before the opening credits of a film or TV series is called a teaser . The stylistic device of immediately entering the action is called cold open and is used to introduce the viewer directly into the action, to build up a first arc of suspense or to present a first cliffhanger , which is intended to encourage the viewer to follow up on the action. The terms teaser and cold open are also used when, in contrast to the longer opening credits, a short title sequence lasting just a few seconds is shown beforehand. Crime series in particular often use this stylistic device to introduce the crime itself.

Historical

Since the advent of the private broadcasters in Germany, teasers and trailers have been created for almost every television production in the course of pre-productions, with the teasers being broadcast a few hours until immediately before the broadcast and the trailers usually starting around a week before the actual broadcast date of the same time or topic Broadcasts and messages are attached; this is especially true for your own live broadcasts.

Before that was unusual in public television ; There were announcers for evening program planning. However, in the early days of German color television, the few color productions in everyday black and white, which dominated both in terms of the lack of color reproducibility of the existing screen and the majority of broadcast minutes, were given short teasers of around ten seconds by the television companies for information and as an incentive to buy prefixed. In the first a color rosette graphic with the central lettering: "in color" opened up - accompanied acoustically by a fanfare; Instead, on ZDF , rotating glass cubes were shown in which - like in a prism  - the light was faintly colored.

See also

literature

Web links

swell

  1. Duden online : anreißen (as of July 26, 2018).
  2. Duden online : Anreißer (as of July 26, 2018).
  3. Peter Terrell, Veronika Calderwood-Schnorr, Wendy VA Morris, Roland Breitsprecher: Collins German-English, English-German , Klett, Stuttgart 1981, p. 679.
  4. Duden online : Teaser (as of July 26, 2018).
  5. ^ Michael Brückner: Advertising letters. Text modules for perfect mailings , Redline, Munich 2013 6 , ISBN 978-3-86881-513-9 , p. 234.
  6. Gunter Reus: Journalistic jargon . Introduction on journalistikon.de (as of July 26, 2018).
  7. a b c Gunter Reus: Anreißer . Dictionary entry on journalistikon.de (as of July 26, 2018).
  8. Markus Reiter: Heading, opening credits, caption . Halem, Cologne 2009 2 , ISBN 978-3-7445-0147-7 .
  9. ^ Gabriele Hooffacker: Online journalism. Writing and designing for the internet. A manual for training and practice . Econ, Berlin 2010 3 , ISBN 978-3-430-20096-7 .
  10. ^ Christian Jakubetz : Crossmedia . Halem, Cologne 2017 2 , ISBN 978-3-7445-0267-2 , p. 46: “The fact that some online offers have meanwhile switched to withholding certain information from the reader in teasers according to the cliffhanger principle [...] is probably exclusive owed to the fact that you want to encourage the user to click further. There is no real, relevant, journalistic reason for this and certainly not an online-specific one. "