How to Analyze an Advertisement
Workshop Three
How to Analyze an Advertisement
Finding Ads' Hidden Messages
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 your awareness of this process. 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?
2. Study the advertisement’s form. Attempt a simple description of what elements it consists of in terms of elements and formal arrangement.
3. What about technical decisions? If the advertisement is a photograph, what kind of a shot is it? What significance do you think long shots, medium shots, close-up shots have? What about the lighting, use of colour, angle of the shot?
4. What typefaces are used and what impressions do they convey?
5. What techniques are used by the copywriter: humour, alliteration, definitions" of life, comparisons, sexual innuendo, and so on?
6. What is the relationship between pictorial elements and written material and what does this tell us?
7. Does the ad essentially provide information or does it try to generate some kind of emotional response? Or both?
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 signs and symbolic codes do we find? Symbolic codes can involve figures e.g. facial expressions, clothing codes etc. What can be said about their facial expressions, poses, hairstyle, age, sex, hair colour, ethnicity, education, occupation, relationships (of one figure to the other)? What role do these symbolic codes play in the ad's impact?
10. What sociological, political, economic or cultural attitudes are
How to Analyze an Advertisement
Finding Ads' Hidden Messages
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 your awareness of this process. 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?
2. Study the advertisement’s form. Attempt a simple description of what elements it consists of in terms of elements and formal arrangement.
3. What about technical decisions? If the advertisement is a photograph, what kind of a shot is it? What significance do you think long shots, medium shots, close-up shots have? What about the lighting, use of colour, angle of the shot?
4. What typefaces are used and what impressions do they convey?
5. What techniques are used by the copywriter: humour, alliteration, definitions" of life, comparisons, sexual innuendo, and so on?
6. What is the relationship between pictorial elements and written material and what does this tell us?
7. Does the ad essentially provide information or does it try to generate some kind of emotional response? Or both?
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 signs and symbolic codes do we find? Symbolic codes can involve figures e.g. facial expressions, clothing codes etc. What can be said about their facial expressions, poses, hairstyle, age, sex, hair colour, ethnicity, education, occupation, relationships (of one figure to the other)? What role do these symbolic codes play in the ad's impact?
10. What sociological, political, economic or cultural attitudes are