In today’s fast-paced digital world, the ability to communicate effectively—whether through words, images, or a combination of both—is a vital skill. Whether you’re promoting a cause, building a brand, or simply sharing an idea, knowing how to capture attention and inspire action will set you apart in any field.
In this week’s textbook chapter, we examined persuasion theories, like Aristotle’s appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. Persuasion theories allow us to build credibility, connect emotionally with our audience, and present logical arguments that make the message hard to ignore. Additionally, for this week’s website work, we’ll dive into the visual side of persuasion, exploring how elements like color, layout, and imagery can enhance your message, reinforce your brand, and drive engagement.
Assignment, Week 12:
This week we will examine the cultural and demographic aspects of advertisements, as well as the text within the advertisement. I would like you to choose one advertisement you find on the Internet and analyze its persuasive elements. The advertisement must have an image and words. This exercise is aimed at having you delve deeper into advertisement analysis.
- To begin, create a new page, name it “Week 12 Ad Analysis” and add it to your menu.
- Find an advertisement and post a picture of the ad on your new page.
- Then, examine the text and/or caption and explain how the text & image work together in the advertisement. You should approach your analysis from various perspectives, including personal, historical, technical, ethical, cultural, and critical.
Your writing should contain an introduction (background information about the ad), main points of your analysis, and a conclusion (how it is effective and how it could improve). The questions below should be used to help generate your analysis, but by no means are inclusive. I do not expect you to answer all these questions in your analysis. I have just included them here to help generate your thoughts when analyzing your chosen advertisement.
- What is the target demographic?
- What is the general ambience of the advertisement? What mood does it create? How does it do this?
- What is the design of the advertisement? How are the basic components or elements arranged?
- What is the relationship between pictorial elements and written material and what does this tell us?
- What is the use of space in the advertisement?
- What signs and symbols do we find? What role do they play in the ad’s impact?
- 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?
- What does the background tell us? Where is the advertisement taking place and what significance does this background have?
- What action is taking place in the advertisement and what significance does it have? (This might be described as the ad’s “plot.”)
- What theme or themes do we find in the advertisement? What is it attempting to persuade?
- 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?
- What typefaces are used and what impressions do they convey?
- What is the item being advertised and what role does it play in American culture and society?
- 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 sociological, political, economic or cultural attitudes are indirectly reflected in the advertisement?
Finally, please do not forget to screenshot your work and submit it on Blackboard by Sunday at 11:59 PM.