TASK: ANALYZING A PRINT AD OR A TV/RADIO SPOT
LANGUAGE: It has to be in ENGLISH (both the ad as well as the analysis)
DEADLINE: FRIDAY 30th MARCH
There's more to advertising's message than meets the casual eye. An effective ad, like other forms of communication, works best when it strikes a chord in the needs and desires of the receiving consumer -- a connection that can be both intuitive and highly calculated.The following questions can help foster an awareness of this process. Use them for class or group discussions or your own individual analysis of ads or commercials.
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, relationships?
7. What does the background 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, comparisons, sexual innuendo, and so on?
11. What is the item being advertised and what role does it play in American/Spanish 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?
13. What sociological, political, economic or cultural attitudes 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.
This site may come in handy when looking for ads. You can even choose the media or the region/country.
Watch this video and pay special attention to the type of language the voice-over uses to talk about the poster KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. (reassurance; feature(s) special and handsome typeface, the only graphic design is; it carried/carries the slogan; it has become a truly iconic images of the ... century; its design so much appeal and resonance ; its design is simple and timeless)
Watch this video and pay special attention to the type of language the voice-over uses to talk about the poster KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. (reassurance; feature(s) special and handsome typeface, the only graphic design is; it carried/carries the slogan; it has become a truly iconic images of the ... century; its design so much appeal and resonance ; its design is simple and timeless)
This advert deals with football, especially with Barclays Premier League (English football league) . In UK people really love football and that is why this ad is targeted for staunch supporters which soccer strikes their chords.
ResponderEliminarThe ad is set on the football ambience and that is why many symbols related to the football appears such as football stadiums, football team logos, pitches, kidney pies (regular food to take to the football), stands, flags, scarves, ticket offices, ... All this symbols try to dive us in the football world of the Premier League.
In the video, what narrator says coincides with the pictures. For example, when the narrator speaks about their kin, in the picture we can see a baby wearing a football T-shirt and a dog. Another example is, in the moment when the narrator talks about his cries (“my cries will be heard from stand to shining stand”), and in the video, we can see the stand of a football stadium.
On not being a print advert, there are a lot of scenes, and each one is different. Let's focus on a particular, exactly, in which appears a person mowing the pitch. In this scene, almost everything is green, except the person. That is why, when you see this picture, you pay attention on the man.
In this advert, any famous person appears but people who represents the football ambience (like a person mowing, in the ticket office, waiting for the bus to go the stadium, …) but not greatly. In general, in the advert appears images of stadiums, typical English houses, …
As I said before, the background (stadiums, typical English houses, stands, flags, scarves, ticket offices, ...) try to dive us in the football world.
The ad shows that football is very important in someone’s life, specially in England. People usually watch the matches of the Barclays Premier League (“With hand on heart, I pledge myself to the Barclays Premier League”.), because football is more than a game, it´s a feeling. It’s a feeling inherited from parents, people “live, breath and sweat football”.
Football means feeling “pride, courage and glory”, going all weekend and eating a kidney pie…
In the ad we can see a typical English town whose houses have a lot of things related to football: an alarm clock, a cushion, a t-shirt and a flag with the coat of arms of different teams of the Premier League, a dog called like a footballer (Ronaldo) and the typical traditions to watch the matches: on the one hand there are people who watch it at home on the sofa and on the other hand there are people who go to the stadium. But the former and the latter live the match with the same passion.
When there are matches there’s no more in the world (“The better half may complain”.). “The team may be defeated”, but the aim of the supporters is going to the “sacred ground” and cheer to get three points.
In the ad there are a lot of themes:
-The family: is very important because being supporter of a team is a feeling inherited from ascending, so football is related with the love to the relatives.
-The culture: watching football implies to feel the origins of the team, his history and the history of the city, and eating the typical food of the city/country (gravy, kidney pie…).
-The passion and the friendship: the supporters of a team share passions and feelings and often become friends.
I think the language gives us information, but it also transmits feelings, because at the beginning the voice of the narrator is calm and slow, but when the match is approaching it becomes faster. It´s a metaphor with supporters’ feelings before a match.
ResponderEliminarMoreover, the copywriter use the technique of humor when he says “the better have may be complain” and another metaphor, because he identify this sport with a religion and the stadium with a kind of church/cathedral (“sacred grounds”).
The item that is being advertised is a sports channel (ESPN) that broadcasts matches of the Premier League.
This channel would be very important in other countries such as Spain, because we love watching football, too. In fact, we have a similar “pay per view” channel, Canal +, where we can see almost all matches.
Although it starts with a panoramic of the typical English houses (the typical English town), the ad continues with close-shots to highlight the things more important to transmit a feeling. For example there are only close-up shots about an alarm-clock of Hull City (The Tigers), a cushion of Everton (The Toffees), the t-shirt of Manchester City (The Citizens) in the clothes line or a flag of Wolverhampton (The Wolves).
There are also this kind of shots in the football stadium, the camera only shows us parts of the stadium: the green grass, the lightening at the top, the terraces empty and then the supporters filling the stadium…and of course the typical food for watching football (the sandwich, the kidney pie…)
All these shots have the aim of identify the viewer with what is he watching.
Besides, I think is very important the colour (that I relate with the weather). It’s very cloudy, what is typical in England, and because of that there are a contrast between the color of the sky and the colorful of the things related to football (grass, flags, t-shirts…), which means that football is cheer.
The ad uses a stereotyped thinking, because there’s no women in it. This, give us the idea that football is only for men and women don’t go to watch matches.
Furthermore, it seems that the advertisement is only aimed at men, because it uses a vocabulary and a kind of feelings very male.
Finally, it also attracted my attention the fact that football is inherited from fathers and not from mothers. Why only from a man? Why not from a woman?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlSSGt938F0