Details in Ad. Analysis Essays

Details in Ad. Analysis Essays

Overview

If you are in a writing course, I hope that you have been assigned an advertisement analysis paper to write.  An ad analysis paper will open your eyes to the world around you in ways that you never knew existed, and you will be able to finally determine for yourself whether an advertisement is reliable and valid or if it is simply playing on your emotions and desires.

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Understanding How to Analyze: Seeing Behind the Curtain

The aim of an ad analysis assignment is to take a writer, have him see something in the world that may have become commonplace, expected, or underestimated, and then train him to be able to clearly see the tricks, slogans, manipulations, appeals, persuasions, and lures that typically are overlooked by one who has not been taught to analyze and evaluate.  Being able to analyze something—from cartoons to political ads to commercials, and even down to store-window mannequins—is a skill that is urgently needed in this age of flash images, color-filled, emotional manipulation, and fancy words that really say nothing. 

When considering advertising, you must acknowledge that a good ad produces a ‘need’ in you that would not naturally be there.  Gary Pullman, an instructor who assigns advertisement analysis papers in his classroom, has worked to train his students on being able to see beyond the flash, beyond the emotions, and beyond the gimmicks.  As he writes in his 2011 article:

According to Jib Fowles, to sell products and services, advertisers appeal to one or more of fifteen emotions:

1 The need for sex
2. The need for affiliation
3. The need to nurture
4. The need for guidance
5. The need to aggress
6. The need to achieve
7. The need to dominate
8. The need for prominence
9. The need for attention
10. The need for autonomy
11. The need to escape
12. The need to feel safe
13. The need for aesthetic sensations
14. The need to satisfy curiosity
15. Physiological needs: food, drink, sleep, etc.

In addition, I have found, most advertisements also use a visual metaphor, texts which often involve a play on words and suggests the visual metaphor, and, of course, various visual design elements (such as models, props, color, size, shape, and texture). (Pullman)

With the list above appealing to a reader’s/viewer’s needs and the visual stimulation, catch-phrases, jingles, and flash of an advertisement, one must become very aware of the techniques used to persuade (through an advertisement) to discern what to believe to be true or distorted.  While all advertising has a certain amount of truth to it, often, the package that a product is presented to the potential customers in blurs that truth in such a way that only the lies sell a product.  It is our job, as intellectual beings, to be able to see the truth of an ad as well as the blurred lines. Assessing the ad’s goal, the persuasive techniques, and what is the truth of the product.

If you have been assigned an advertising analysis.  Keep these concepts in mind:

1.       What is the ad selling?

2.      What strategy of emotion is the ad using to create a ‘need’ in the potential customer?

3.      What cultural adaptations are being used to appeal to a specific audience?

4.      Are any visual metaphors being used?  How?  Why?

5.      What colors are being used and why?

6.      What is the placement of the product in the advertisement?  How is the placement used to lure the customer?

The content below contains a detailed list of all avenues to explore with ad analysis.  Please review Arthur Berger’s writing “How to Analyze an Advertisement” to know how to deeply analyze the ad as well as to take stock of your triggers for manipulation by those in advertising.

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This article originally appeared in Issue# 37

Finding Ads' Hidden Messages

By Arthur Asa Berger

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. You may be surprised by the messages and meanings you uncover.

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 (of one to the other)?

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, definitions" of life, comparisons, sexual innuendo, and so on?

11.     What typefaces are used and what impressions do they convey?

12.    What is the item being advertised and what role does it play in American culture and society?

13.    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?

14.    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.

Footnotes: 

Excerpted with permission from Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics by Arthur Asu Berger (Longman, Inc., 95 Church Street, White Plains, NY 10601)

Author Bio: 

Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught from 1965 to 2003. He is the author of more than 100 articles and 60 books on media, popular culture, tourism and related concerns.

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The article “Finding Ads' Hidden Messages” from Arthur Berger’s writing “How to Analyze an Advertisement,”  does not belong to me, nor is it of my own thoughts.  The only content that is mine on this page/handout is the Overview and Understanding How to Analyze: Seeing Behind the Curtain.   Refer to the link for the true location of Berger’s  writing.  J. Dick

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