Preliminary Ad Analysis

Preliminary Ad Analysis Powerpoint—This presentation accompanies the following lecture notes. It can be utilized along with or in place of the notes.

Definitions

Visual Literacy: Your awareness of the importance of visual communication and your ability to make meaning out of images and graphics.
Analysis: To break things down into their parts, to examine the parts carefully, to look at the relationships among the parts, and to use this understanding to better analyze the whole (how it functions and what it means).
Rhetoric: The art/study of writing or speaking as a means of persuasion.
Rhetorical Effect: An image has a “rhetorical effect” when it moves us emotionally or intellectually.

Images Have “Designs” On Us

They urge us to:

Buy things
Go places
Alter our behavior (example: red cross advertisement, PETA)
Usually they play on our desires, fears, wants, values, and needs as consumers

Advertisements help construct our:

Cultural values
Self-image
Sense of what is normal or ideal
Ideas about gender, race and class

Questions for discussion:

What do we value as Americans? (wealth, individuality, family, health, spirituality, religion, technology, hard work, etc).
What is self-image?
How do advertisements shape our ideas about gender, race and class?

Parity Products

Products that are roughly equal in quality to their competitors and can’t be promoted through any rational or scientific proof of superiority are called parity products. Examples include: deodorants, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, toothpaste, jeans, etc. Companies need to utilize clever strategies to sell parity products since they are equal in quality. How do companies get you to purchase one toothpaste over another, or one shampoo over another? Clever use of commercials.

People are typically loyal consumers of products. You probably use the same products that your parents use. How do companies try to get you to break your purchasing habits?

Consider what photographs are utilized on your college’s webpage. What type of message is the college trying to convey through these images? Advertisers don’t just want you to buy Nike shoes, they want you to view yourself as a Nike type of person who attributes part of your self-identity to Nikes.

Using Celebrities and Models

Many companies utilize famous celebrities to market products. In theory, companies want consumers to aspire to “be like their favorite celebrity.” They’re marketing the fantasy that if you purchase the product, you’ll lead an exciting and extravagant life just like your favorite celebrity. They use attractive people in their images to try to get us to compare ourselves with the person in the ad. (Think about the ads for power bars, diet supplements, etc.) In this way, advertisements play on our insecurities. If we think we’re fat, we’ll buy a particular diet supplement, or snack food in an attempt to lose weight.