teachingmedialiteracy

AnalyzingPrintAds

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Analyzing Print Ads

__Justifications for Teaching Advertising Analysis to Adolescents__

Why teach students how to analyze advertising?

Advertising surrounds our students; advertising is unavoidable. Before the school day begins, adolescents encounter numerous forms of advertising. Whether it is on the radio, billboards, newspapers, magazines, TV, or online, students need to be aware of what they are subjected to. We live in a consumer culture and adolescents are very much a part of that culture. In fact, a large number of adolescents have a disposable income since they are still living at home and being supported by their parents. It is extremely critical that we teach adolescents to critically analyze advertising since they are at an impressionable age and are at the heart of developing their individual identities. As teachers, we want to inculcate into our students the importance of thinking critically about the world around them and to adopt ideologies based on their own personal beliefs, values, and attitudes. Today’s adolescents need to develop their own ideologies rather than the advertisement industry telling our adolescents who they ought to be.

Adolescents must understand how to be critical analyzers of advertising and also understand the process and strategy that the advertising industry assumes. The ability to critically analyze advertisements allows adolescents to place advertisements within a particular context and culture. Rather than allowing advertisements to position adolescents as particular audiences, adolescents, engaged in critical analysis of advertisements, will be able to take a step back, distance themselves, and objectively partake in advertisement viewing. Part of learning to critically analyze advertising is learning about the advertisement itself and also the context in which the audience responds to the advertisement.

Teaching our students to be critically analyzers will help them be informed consumers and understand the branding associations that occur in a consumer culture. This will educate our adolescents on the large capitalistic economic system in the United States. One way of teaching this is through the changes and history that advertising as witnessed most importantly with the 19th century industrial revolution. We need to give students the techniques and skills to be better consumers and to overcome the socialization they are subjected to as consumers.

The following is a combination of ideas for the justification of teaching media. It is taken from The American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Media education is likely an effective way to help pediatricians, parents, and children understand and mitigate the potentially harmful effects of images and messages in the media. A first step in media education involves awareness that people get hundreds of messages daily through media, and that these messages can affect their attitudes, values, and behavior. Through media education one becomes “media literate,” which is defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and even produce media products. A media literate person understands that:

• All media messages are constructed — and are constructed for some purpose.

• Media messages shape our understanding of the world.

• Each person interprets media messages uniquely.

• Mass media are often driven by powerful economic and political forces.

Further, media education includes developing skills by which to view and think about media in a more critical way (called critical thinking and viewing) and using creative alternatives to media consumption. With the increasing pervasiveness of the media in the United States and new technology (eg, digitalization, the World Wide Web), recognizing media’s influence on public health is vital. This guide gives pediatricians a brief overview of their potential role in media education, specifically in the practice setting.”

__Interviews__

We interviewed three adolescents about advertising. We asked very broad questions and one can see from their responses, especially the final question, that there is a strong need for education about media, advertising in particular.

Interview #1:

How old are you?

What form of advertising do you think you encounter most often?

Magazines

Where/when do you encounter print advertising the most?

Magazines

What is one of the most powerful advertisements you have recently encountered?

Female models- MTV music videos website

What is an advertisement either a product or a brand that you see repeated most often?

Weight loss- Hydroxy Cut

Where do you encounter print advertisements about alcohol and tobacco?

Posters in stores, magazines

How many brands/types of beer can you name?

Miller lite

Captain

Smirnoff

Bacardi

Golden draft

Michelob golden lite

Premium

How did you come to know different brands of beer?

Billboards or magazines

Have any recent print advertisements caused you to be a consumer or purchase a product?

Interview #2:

How old are you?

What form of advertising do you think you encounter most often?

Pictures

Where/when do you encounter print advertising the most?

Internet

What is one of the most powerful advertisements you have recently encountered?

Politics

What is an advertisement either a product or a brand that you see repeated most often?

Sprint

Where do you encounter print advertisements about alcohol and tobacco?

How many brands/types of beer can you name?

Bud lite

Miller lite

Corona

English red

How did you come to know different brands of beer?

Have any recent print advertisements caused you to be a consumer or purchase a product?

Interview #3:

How old are you?

What form of advertising do you think you encounter most often?

TV or magazine

Where/when do you encounter print advertising the most?

Magazine

What is one of the most powerful advertisements you have recently encountered?

Stop smoking ad on TV

What is an advertisement either a product or a brand that you see repeated most often?

Alcohol-Bacardi or Corona

Where do you encounter print advertisements about alcohol and tobacco?

Magazines-Cosmo

How many brands/types of beer can you name?

Bud lite

Corona

Miller

Sky

Smirnoff

Vodka

How did you come to know different brands of beer?

Have any recent print advertisements caused you to be a consumer or purchase a product?

__Activities for Analyzing Print Advertising__

In order to help students critically analyze print advertising we have developed a certain group of activities focusing on specific and crucial aspects of advertising. These activities can be used as a sequence in a unit plan for one week or used independently as well.

Activity #1- General print advertisement analysis

Components of Advertising Discourse

Discuss the following criteria with your students and provide examples to illustrate each of the following elements and techniques of advertising.

Substance: The physical media in which the text is displayed.

Pictures: designed to capture people’s attention, perhaps gestures if they are pictures of people, colors, etc.

Paralanguage: Typeface and letter size, words chosen to convey meaning

Situation: The properties and relations of objects and people in the vicinity of the text, as perceived by the participants

Co-text: text that precedes or follows that under analysis and that participants judge to belong to the same discourse

Inter-text: text that that the participant perceive as belonging to other discourse, but that they associate with the text under construction, and that affect their interpretation

Participants: Addressees and receivers of message simultaneously a part of the context and an observer of it.

Function: What the text is intended to do by the addressers and senders or perceived to do by the receivers and addressees.

Once the students understand these concepts and criteria have them analyze print ads for “General design”

Looking at magazine and Newspaper Advertisements

In groups have the students look carefully through a selection of both newspaper and magazine advertisement to find advertisements that they think are effective. Why do they think they are effective? Help students to focus on certain elements of the advertisements, Discuss the following:

Is the message easy to understand?

Are the typefaces (fonts) easy to read or stand out from the others?

How is color used?

(In a newspaper that is mostly black and white - a color advertisement can stand out from the rest. Point out that an advertiser would have to pay considerably more for the color.)

Do they think it would be worth it?

Look in glossy magazines for 'artistic' advertisements,

(pictures from nature, people, clever design graphics etc.)

How has the designer tried to grab reader’s attention?

Making food advertisements look 'delicious' and make you want to eat them!!

Look for very simple advertisements with lots of white space!

Look for magazine or newspaper advertisements that look like articles.

Why would people design advertisements like this?

Have groups discuss and make a list of what they believe constitutes a good newspaper and magazine advertisement.

Adapted From: http://www.teachingonline.org/ADVERTISING.html

Younger students might like the activity of this PBS website Be The Ad Detective

Activity #2- The created need to consume

Discuss with your students the history of advertising and how Advertising has evolved into a created need.

In order to help your students understand the larger context of the consumer culture have them do some research on the purpose of advertising both before and after World War II. Advertisements focused more on providing information about the product and less on the image as newer ads do.

Then, due to the unavailability of early 20th Century print ads, have your students research examples of some print ads from before WWII on the Internet; here is a useful link to search.

Then have students do an Internet search of modern magazines for print ads of the same product or a similar one.

Have students compare the ads. How are they similar? How do they differ? What is the approach or technique for each? What is the targeted audience? What type of information does the ad provide? Do the students notice the created need or the difference in advertising techniques, like for example does the industry portray the object as an object of desire rather than simply provide information of a product and illustrate how the product will fulfill a basic need?

"Activity#3- Alcohol, Tobacco, Adolescents and the context/media"

In order to explore the Situation/context criteria of advertising, explain to your students that where the ads are positioned and viewed plays a key role in the process of advertising.

Here is an activity for your students:

Look for ads of Alcohol and Tobacco in magazines you regularly read.

Write down the amount of ads you find.

Then look for the same type of ads in magazines your parents and other adults might read. Record your findings and compare.

Analyze these in terms of audience?

Where else might you find ads for alcohol and tobacco in print?

How do these impact you?

What is the targeted audience of these ads?

What effect does this have on society?

What effect does it have on you?

Helpful resources:

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University

The Prevention Research Center (PRC) of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation

"Activity #4- The Subliminal"

Identifying subliminal messages in advertisements

The subliminal aspect of advertising incorporates a broad spectrum of tactics that unconsciously penetrates our minds and make us believe certain ideas and desire certain objects. Most of us do not realize the games that advertisements play with our minds and psyches. It is scary to think that one can be manipulated without knowing it. Hence, the importance of teaching our students to be able to critically look at advertisements and to not be a part of this subliminal game.

You may explore this

website to discuss how subliminal works in the unconscious.

Then have your students:

Look up for examples of ads where subliminal messages are present.

Have them discuss their ads with the class and talk about the ‘hidden’ messages embedded in their ads.

Have them express their reactions and feelings towards these ads.

Discuss whether they liked being “tricked” by corporate companies.

Here are some additional resources where they can find further information on subliminal advertising.

Resources from the University of Texas regarding Sublminal Advertising

Subliminal Advertising

20th Century Brainwashing and

what's hidden in the Microsoft's logo

Claims about the power of subliminal advertising

You may want to use this activity we created in [href="http://static2.pbwiki.com/ficons/type_ppt.jpg] Power Point to discuss the subliminal in advertising.

Subliminal Powerpoint

"Activity #5- Discourse/Image"

Identifying image discourses in advertising

Advertisers want their audiences to identify their products with portrayals of certain lifestyles. They want the consumer to believe that if they want to embody a particular image, they need to buy and display the product. This means that the consumer must wear a certain type of perfume, wear clothes of a certain brand or use specific products in order to represent that lifestyle or social status that they wish to portray.

A strategy that is widely used by Advertising companies is the use of Celebrity endorsement. For example, if you are battling with acne and you want to find a product to help you clear your skin, and you see the advertisement where Jessica Simpson is endorsing Pro Activ, you will think: “Wow, she has great skin and she uses this product. I might as well buy it because it works!”

Proactiv

The same phenomenon happens with clothing. For example, New York and Company based their Fall campaign on the popularity of Grey’s Anatomy by using posters of Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey featuring their apparel. People who identify with the characters from the TV series and their lifestyles will be drawn to buy these clothes.

celebrities

Have students look through magazines, billboards, busses and any other type if print media that they can think of.

Tell them to find at least three ads featuring celebrities that they like or can identify with.

Then, discuss the product being advertised?

Would they buy the product if the celebrity were not the one endorsing it?

Have students cut out the celebrity and plug in a picture of an unrecognizable person. Analyze the impact this has on the advertisemnt.

Why did they feel attracted to the ad?

Have them analyze this discussing with the class and then have them write a paragraph or an essay of their reflections of this topic and what do they think the as is aiming at? Was it an effective tactic to use the celebrity?

Discourse

Discourse is then the message and the image that is associated with the product. In new York & Co.’s example, the image is that of young attractive doctors who are very much in love. The discourse in these ads is that of professional life, wealth and romance. And even though the TV series portrays an array of inter racial doctors ranging from Asian, to African American and Latino, New York & CO, decided to go with the discourse of whiteness, choosing the protagonist white doctors for their advertising campaign.

How adolescents are portrayed in the media is also a very interesting topic.