Free example essay on Advertising:
Advertising is a way of getting a message across to a vast number of people. Advertising is normally used to sell or promote a product. It is also used to get a donation for specific charities. Adverts are now getting a bigger audience than ever, the fact that so many channels now advertise as opposed to a few years ago when only ITV advertised. As so many different channels are advertising, advertiser ensure a target audience by televising their adverts on the appropriate channel, one that is designed for their target audience. For example there are a vast number of children’s channels these days so children’s adverts will be shown on these channels more frequently than any other as they are sure of reaching their target audience. One of the most popular formats to advertise on is the television because it is the only format in which you can have full motion with sound. This is obviously the most effective way of getting a message across, it is also very popular because it is so widely available. Nearly every house hold owns a TV and even every work place. Another popular format of advertising is on large bill boards. This costs less than advertising on TV however in a recent survey I took people said that they are just as influenced by the billboards as they are by television, some even prefer seeing the big pictures on a drive to the office rather then sit at home and watch adverts on their TV. Advertisements also show up on newspapers, magazines, radio and even on the sides of some buses and taxis.
There are various different techniques used in advertising to appeal to everyone. Colour is an important factor in every advert. The advertisers have to make sure the colours used in an advert are appropriate for the theme of the advert. The use of colour is not only to show something as being bright or dark, they also need to think about what the connotation of the colour is. The advertisers would never use the colour black in a summer children’s holiday advert because black connotes fear, mystery and anxiety.
A more appropriate colour would be blue which connotes freshness and excitement and is more appealing to kids. Colours are also used in the advert when the product is associated with a colour like ‘Nescafe Gold.’ In the ‘Nescafe Gold’ advert the background is gold and when you get to see the coffee beans they too are gold. This makes people associate gold with Nescafe. Gold also connotes wealth and high class so we subconsciously get told that if we drink their product we will feel rich and high class. When advertising vegetables adverts tell us to ‘eat our greens.’ This is because most vegetables are green but that’s not all. Green is supposed to make people think about the environment as the grass is green and the leaves on the trees are also green. It makes us think we are doing something good by eating vegetables. Often when vegetables are advertised we get shown a big field with perfect green grass.
Another technique used to sell a product is representation. This is when advertisers use one type of person to represents one type of people. With representation it’s not what’s actually in the advert but what everyone and everything symbolises. Normally they would use a tall beautiful blonde female model to represent all the women because that is what society considers beautiful. Like in the L’Oreal adverts they use famous celebrities like Claudia Schiffer many women aspire to looking like that even though she is far beyond the league of average women. They also use her for her perfect hair to show that your hair could become like this when you know that it can’t because she probably spends a fortune on her hair which most of us can’t afford. They would use a handsome, tall, muscular male to represent all the men in this world like when top footballer David Beckham is used to advertise Police sunglasses. They are trying to tell us if we buy Police sunglasses we will all look like David Beckham. Even though this is obviously false people still go out and buy the celebrity advertised product, this encourages the advertisers to use more and more representation. This technique does work but it is very racist as you will hardly ever see a woman of ethnic origin advertising a beauty product regardless of her beauty. Coloured people are often put down in adverts due to the stereo types shown in the adverts. Chinese people are all shown to be performing some kinds of martial arts in a noodle advert and they also have really strong Chinese accents so that we find it hilarious, a normal Chinese person living in England/America who can talk perfect English will never be accepted for these adverts because advertisers want to emphasise that the people are indeed foreign and even have a small joke on their expense to make a memorable advert as people remember amusing adverts rather than the dull ones. The advertisers in return hope that this will help sell their products. However its not only Chinese people that are stereo typed it’s also races like Indian and black people. Indian people are always put in their Indian clothes and not the expensive ones the cheap ones and they also seem to have peculiarly strong accents, this makes people laugh and assume Indian people are all like this. Jamaican people are also shown just relaxing (unemployed??) smoking cannabis and talking in Jamaican slang. Disabled people are also not used in adverts to promote any products, the only times I have seen them being used is when a charity is advertising for donations.
Advertisers make effective use of language in many different ways to promote and sell a product. The advertisers also try to confuse and impress us into purchasing their product by using long scientific language. For instance in a shampoo advert they might say something like ‘The PH level and the vitamins provided by the nutrients and the shomicate working together simultaneously to ensure you get your natural shine and it stays.’ Obviously the standard audience will not have the slightest clue as to what all the words mean. However they will automatically think that if it’s made using all those scientific sounding products it must work wonders for your hair. This technique makes people think that we are being taken care of by the expert scientists and it makes the people feel safe. Language is also used in the other ways like in headlines to catch our attention. Exaggeration is also an effective use of language. Exaggeration is often used by advertisers into making people believe that their product ‘really works’ and is the ‘real deal’ or in some cases they tell us that ‘it a once in a lifetime opportunity.’ Another effective use is with slogans. When we are shopping we think of the slogans like ‘have a break, have a kit-kat’ or ‘marmite, you either love it or hate it. Advertisers also use puns to attract people’s attention. These words with double meaning usually have one meaning referring to the product and the other is normally a humorous one to make us laugh. The chocolate ‘CHOMP’ has the slogan ‘it’s long, hard and guaranteed to satisfy.’ This slogan is describing the chocolate in one meaning whilst using sexual innuendo and describing a penis in the other meaning to make people laugh and remember the product.
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