Warm-up:
What are some pervasive ideas that advertising has
encouraged or created in our society?
What have advertisements caused us to accept as normal and important?
Classwork: answer advertising questions about your chosen ad
1. What is the general ambience of the advertisement? What mood
does it create? How does it do this?
2. What is the design of the advertisement? Does
it use axial balance or some other form? How are the basic components or
elements arranged?
3. What
is the relationship between pictorial elements and written material and what
does this tell us?
4. What
is the use of space in the advertisement? Is there a lot of “white space,” or
is it full of graphic and written elements?
5. What
signs and symbols do we find? What role do they play in the ad's impact?
6. If
there are figures (men, women, children, animals), what are they like? What can
be said about their facial expressions, poses, hairstyle, age, sex, hair color,
ethnicity, education, occupation, and/or relationships (of one to the
other)?
7. What
does the background/context tell us? Where is the advertisement taking place
and what significance does this background have?
8. What
action is taking place in the advertisement and what significance does it have?
(This might be described as the ad's "plot.")
9. What
theme or themes do we find in the advertisement? What is it about? (The plot of
an advertisement may involve a man and a woman drinking but the theme might be
jealousy, faithlessness, ambition, passion, etc.)
10. What
about the language used? Does it essentially provide information or does it try
to generate some kind of emotional response? Or both? What techniques are used
by the copywriter: humor, alliteration, definitions" of life, comparisons,
sexual innuendo, and so on? Does the text
take advantage of vagueness, ambiguity, over-generality, or emotive meaning to
deceive or manipulate?
11. What
is the item being advertised and what role does it play in American culture and
society? 12. What about aesthetic decisions? If the
advertisement is a photograph, what kind of a shot is it? What significance do
long shots, medium shots, close-up shots have? What about the lighting, use of
color, angle of the shot? What do the images say about what is good, desirable,
normal, acceptable?
13. What sociological, political, economic or
cultural attitudes or commonplaces are indirectly reflected in the
advertisement? An advertisement may be about a pair of blue jeans but it might,
indirectly, reflect such matters as sexism, alienation, stereotyped thinking,
conformism, generational conflict, loneliness, elitism, and so on.
14. Ask
yourself: Who is the ad's target audience? Who would it appeal to most? What is
the intended effect on this audience? Does it achieve this desired effect? Where
would you find this advertisement and why would it be placed there?
15. Do
the method and content of the ad relate to any bigger social issues (obsession
with thinness, obsession with money, glamorizing illegal/violent behavior, any
abnormal/dysfunctional human relations, etc.)?
Homework: create a graphic organizer to discuss purpose/effect of ad (due Mon), get at least 2 cartoons by Tuesday
