Ads and stereotypes

Today’s advertisements, in spite of its creativity and the new modern aesthetics, have all changed to something bigger but slightly less ethical and moral than the photographs we all pas everywhere in our daily lives. These are reflections of current businesses and society, as well as our unnecessary desire to flourish within what we describe a society, the “system”.

Advertisements are the result of people wanting to make money and profit, as well as to be noticed by their peers within the field. A sign of these people trying too hard may be the absurd stereotypical appeals used in ads today. Advertisers will not always listen to every voice of our society. What they call “entertaining and humorous” is only for the people under two-story houses, enjoying life, and feeling comfortable. The exact same material that some believe is funny, can be very offensive to others. What they create are not advertisements, however are bad jokes that mock and reduce the standards of the audiences. It may worsen the stereotypes among the viewers, who have not experienced them, against certain groups of people. Therefore, I believe as an international student ,that advertisers do have the moral duty to avoid making stereotypical appeals in their ads. They must not put all of their work into profit, but to make sure they are not offending anyone. Advertisements must change the method of making an effective ad , and make sure that they follow societies standards.

An Ad Analysis

Looking at this, it is easy to see that the advertisement consists of two people, one being male and the predominant figure being female. The product being advertised can be found in the bottom right corner of the image. We as the audience are looking straight at the ad, and what is easily noticed is how there is a very small amount of text, however they have used quite impactful words to influence you into buying their product. Let’s start off with the fact that the ad was made in India because of the female figure within the image. This model is a famous Bollywood actress, Anushka Sharma. The use of a famous social figure is a common within advertisements and commercials, but it is quite effective because of peoples trust, respect have in these people.  However this also sets societies standards for beauty higher, and this is where we can move on to the meaning, the purpose of this ad. This ad shows us how society thinks highly of those who are classified as beautiful, within this print ad they are focusing on female beauty. We know that this ad is focused on women, which is proven by the female model has been placed more central in the ad. She has also revealed a lot more skin to show how this product has worked and given her amazing skin. Proof of this would be the quote “for visibly smooth, and touchably soft skin”. All this makes the female model empowered, because she has been the focus of this ad.  The male model has been pushed aside, marginalized, meaning he is not as important in this ad, as the female is. This also gives us the idea that women in general should be more worried about having such wonderful skin, the reason why  is how the man has been used to “fill in the gaps”, and the women is showing us her back, which is a large area of her smooth skin. 

Reflecting on a Presentation

We have just completed our first presentation on a Pitch for advertising our product in Language and literature. Today I would like to discuss what we included within our Pitch, what went well and what could have been improved. Within the presentation we attempted to incorporate the idea of pathos, with how families would go there in tough times, or to enjoy themselves as well as the younger generation where they would enjoy themselves and make some new memories. As well as Logos due to giving information about how it was affordable, making it sound logical to eat there when you are facing financial hardship. With what we were given I believe we failed in this aspect due to our decision on context, we had been given the chance to fully choose our context, however this made it harder for our group due to the making of another decision.  We struggled in incorporating the context, which was In America during the 1980s, which would have mace the pitch slightly more interesting due to the time period. We used very few images, one of them being the Uncle Sam post which says “I want you” on it, we chose this to try and make the product relate to the American culture, and that they had just come out of a war. The other images were about the different foods which would give an example of what to expect from Cheeky Chaps Burgers. Moving on I personally believe that we as a group were clear and understandable, when presenting our information, we had tried to make, the animations were and attempt to connect our context to the Pitch, also to make the presentation more amusing. This has shown me that preparation is the key, being able to recite your speech and information without looking at a que card, and a clear understanding of your topic. I have also notice that you need to follow the rubric and what is needed from you to complete the assignment at hand. 

Ethos, Pathos, Logos in terms of Advertisements

When looking into adverts of the modern day, I've notice that there are clear uses of ethos, pathos or logos. The advertisement chosen for this post is a thirty second Hyndai advert. The beginning starts with dads constantly saving their sons from trouble, or stupid situations. This carries on for around 20 seconds with a cheerful song in the background, until it changes to a young man driving his car when he is almost about to crash, but the car stops itself and then the narrator says "now you wont always need dad".  This advertisement uses ethos, with the use of the connection between father and son they are able to make this relate to many people and families, Pulling on the heartstrings of people.