Ads for Analysis

• Look carefully at these ads.• The goal is to sell the product.• What choices—colors, setting, imagery—do

the sellers make to sell this product?

Pretty young girl

Huge Yellow Letters Dominate

Why a young girl?Why black and white?

Statement makes fun ofValley Girl

Why run an ad that makes fun of a PrettyValley Girl???

Curiosity raised: look at the fine print: Statements like this are mean, and so is saying “It’s so gay.”

Other Data Points:

Importance of words vs picture Words overpower person (implied symbolic insight)

Overuse of like (ridicule language tic)

Tiny box makes us work hard to read it

Use of “you,” second person, intimate

Content of tiny box “names” reader’s thoughts

Yellow on left ties back to content of big yellow letters on right

Thesis:

This ad, from ThinkB4YouSpeak.com, addresses what has become a major problem in American schools: bullying.

Rather than simply invoking a cliché that people should be nice to one another, the ad relies on shock value, since the person featured is not likely to be a person targeted for bullying.

Older man, fishermanSmiling Showing catch

Dried up lakedominateslandscape

Line of treesSunny blue sky

Severely sunburnedarm

WWF & white copy stand out

Thesis

• Images of happy fishermen proudly displaying their catches are commonplace in family albums and resort brochures. However this ad from the World Wildlife Fund uses those images to make a different kind of point. In this ad, the smiling fisherman is positioned in what is clearly a severely compromised natural environment, one that, as the ad implies, will continue to decline unless we tackle global warming head on.

Planets dominate 1/3 page

One of several references to Cost of RV travel

Isolated setting

Vehicle embedded in nature

Night sky

Two people

Physical separation of Passengers from RV

Thesis

• This ad for RV travel uses the unusual image of the planets to sell its product. Although no one travelling in an RV can actually get to the planets, travelling in one of these vehicles, the ad suggests, offers the next best thing: access to a site free of pollution where it is possible to see them in action when they next make rare appearances in our galaxy.