Ad Analysis

Every day we are surrounded by a relentless barrage of advertisements, and most of the time we just try do to our best to ignore them. Rarely do we think seriously about what the ads are trying to accomplish and the strategies they use in doing so. For this assignment, I want you to get together in groups and analyze how magazine ads make meaning in the minds of their readers, using the following list of questions as a guide:

• What is the product being advertised? What does it do? What does it realistically offer to the reader? Apart from "buy this product," what is the central point the ad is trying to make?
• What is the audience for that ad? How can you tell? What assumptions does the ad make about what is "appealing," "good," or "desirable" to that audience? By extension, what is "unappealing," "bad," or "undesirable" to that audience? How does the ad use these values to achieve its goal?
• What are the images in the ad? How does your eye scan the page, and how does that affect your "reading" of the ad? Does the ad use any special visual techniques to grab your attention? Does the ad use any sort of visual "trickery"? What mental associations do you make when you look at the images—what do you think of or feel? What ideas do these images convey? How does it convey them? What are the values behind those ideas, that is, what makes them "good" or "bad," particularly in the minds of the target audience? Does the ad use any widely-recognized symbols (apart from trademarks)? What do these symbols mean?
• Which elements of the ads employ logos, ethos, or pathos appeals?
• In what ways does the ad depart from the reality of the product it is selling? Why does it do this? Does it do this in a believable or convincing way?
• What sense does the ad convey about the company? How does the ad or ad campaign fit into the company's larger marketing strategy?
• How does the ad fail to achieve its purpose? What could be changed in the ad to make it more effective?

For Wednesday, I want you, as a group, to prepare a presentation to the rest of the class on what you have found in your ad analysis. Your presentation should diagram how the ad "works": it should identify the purpose of the ad (again, beyond simply "selling the product"), and it should demonstrate how it goes about achieving that purpose (or not). Please defend your assertions using the ad itself.

• Ad Image #1
• Ad Image #2

This assignment description is licensed by Jim Nugent under a Creative Commons
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