Media - Lines of Appeal

1)      The advert I have chosen the controversial, yet humorous Money Super Market advert, which creates the juxtaposition of a man walking down a busy street in extremely short jeans and high heels. Although I find this advert extremely annoying, this was actually voted one of the funniest adverts on televisions, as people release that the connection between the clothing he is wearing, and the fact he’s a man, creates humour. The advert involves ’twerking’ to confused and appalled members of the public, and it actually fits in perfectly to the background music of “Don’t You (Cha)”. Upon first view, I dint actually understand what the advert was meant to be advertising, but the voice over (an extremely popular voice from the X Factor) says that “He just saved money on his car insurance, and now he feels, EPIC!” It implies that despite spending money on an unpopular thing, he still feels happy about spending it due to how much he has just saved, so the advert is meant to signify that if you invest in Money Supermarket, you will always be saving money, and that you will feel as euphoric as the man in the advert does. Obviously they realise that people won’t go into streets dancing like this man does, but they are empathising the point that you will feel incredibly good about saving the money as you’ve just saved so much. The target audience of this advert is the Mainstreamer. The voice over from the advert is the same one from the X Factor, which makes the mainstreamer pleased because they like the sense of familiarity, every Saturday is the X Factor, so the Mainstreamer recognises that the voice over, so will automatically like the advert due to the sense of similarity. 

2)      Tesco’s advert of Every Little Helps is a slogan that sticks into many people’s minds due to the time it was created. It was created in 2009, a year after a big credit crunch hit Britain, and left many in a bad financial state. Acting as the family, Tesco promised to cut their prices, and the slogan is a true representation of how they have catered for people who have financially struggled over the last few years. It’s kind of like Tesco are always there for us and will always cater for those who need help, so they are like the mum of the family, looking out for their kids (customers) if they need help. They want the customers, and their audience to knows this. Thirds, the top half of the advert is the company “TESCO”, which is in a big, colourful font so that it stands out to the audience and it makes it easily recognisable. The bottom half has a much greater amount of meaning to it, “Every Little Helps”. Firstly, the difference in font is important. The slogan looks handwritten rather than from a computer, which gives the audience the sense that it is targeting everyone and that it has become much more personal when presented like this. The “Every” in the slogan symbolises that every single product that TESCO sells has been cut to cater for those who need help when buying their food, so it makes them look like they are helping the audience. The encoders want people to know that they are not alone in the desperate time, and they want the audience to know that they are all in the same boat and they will pull through this bad time together, as one.

3)      There isn’t a specific type of advertisement for this, but the use of shock tactics is constantly being used on cigarette advertisements. In many countries, pro-smoking adverts have a watershed, due to how disgusting the cigarettes are and the damage they cause to healthy, vulnerable people. The packets of cigarettes are actually filled with bad posters of the damage they can cause, including some pretty nasty pictures of what smoking does to your body. Yet despite this, plus several adverts produced by the NHS on a weekly basis, nothing actually works as there are still millions of people smoking, so if the use of shock tactics doesn’t work, then what can work? The addiction that the smokers have is unbelievable, they can’t go for more than a week, sometimes even worse than that, without a cigarette, so the NHS try to produce (along with the manufactures of the cigarettes) the adverts with an unbelievable amount of shock tactics to stop people from smoking. One shock tactic they used on the packet was a picture of teeth after someone had been smoking. It was a disgusting picture of the teeth and the purpose of it is to make people aware of the damages of smoking can be. The more awareness people have about the damage of the smoking is, then more people can stop, which is exactly what the NHS want, they want people to stop smoking. They even dedicated an entire month of this in October, and renamed it “Stop – Tober” to raise awareness about how bad smoking is.

 

4)      An advert that stereotypes against genders is “Yorkie”. Several adverts that this company produced were extremely sexist and were often caught in controversy due to how bad the adverts were. Many adverts included phrases like “Not available in pink”, and “Not for Girls”, which signifies that the chocolate is only for men due to the dominance they stereotypically have. The encoders want the audience to be primarily male, rather than female, but I think it’s just a joke produced by the encoders, as the more controversial an advertisement is, the more popular the ad becomes, which means that more people around the world will see the ad, and will be familiar with the chocolate bar.

5)      An advert that uses intertextuality is Vodafone. In the advert, they are offering free mobile charges to their customers for their phones, however they use Yoda as a character in the advert. This is obviously a reference to one of the most famous TV shows and films, Star Wars. The use of this famous character means that people will recognise the character, and it would create almost a sense of nostalgia. The show was a big hit many years ago, when people see the character they will reminisce about the show, and the character. When more people see Yoda, then more people will notice the advert, meaning that Vodafone have widened their audience by a simple use of a famous character.

6).    An advert that uses an elite person is for Sky Sports, including David Beckham, a big football star that is now famous for his looks, rather than his footballing ability. David Beckham represents a lot of things, he can represent men as stereotypically, men are the ones who are the most interested in football, hence why he represents them, however, women are also interested in David Beckham, as he is considered to be one of the best looking men right now, which is why he's starred in many adverts featuring perfumes and aftershaves. The advert features him running through several scenes, like a montage shot, with him trying to find out the scores for football. When he was spotted, he ran away, and in the end he tells someone that his run was "interesting". The main point of the advertisement is that football, and sport in general, can only be enjoyed on Sky Sports as even the elite people in football watch it on Sky Sports. It also proves how popular Sky Sports is that David Beckham is a regular viewer, so when people see it, they believe that if the program is good enough for elite people like Beckham, then it is good enough for them. The change in scenes is important too, because it changes from summer to inter, which proves that no matter what season it is, come summer or come winter, Sky Sports will always be there presenting football straight to you. When he visits different places, like Leicester and Manchester, everyone there is football mad. The kid playing football referencing Jamie Vardy, or pre match at the Emirates, everyone loves football, and the only way the audience can enjoy football is through Sky Sports.

7).      In the Whiskas advert, they are advertising their cat food to the audience, but there is a reward and punishment catch inside the advert that makes people want to buy the product. The reward in the advert is that feeding your cat with Whiskas cat food will make it a happy and healthy cat with no problems, so it's forcing people into believing that their cat food is the best and cats only want their type of cat food, so it's persuasive writing. The use of a "healthy cat" means that owners want the best out of their cat and want them to live a healthy lifestyle, so more owners are 'pressured' into buying it thinking it will do something to their cat. The punishment, on the other hand, is that if you don't feed your cat with Whiskas, then your cat will be unhappy with the choice you've made because it's the unhealthy option for your cat, it tries to point the blame on the owner by not buying the product. Obviously cats wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway, but people value their cats like they'd value a human, they want the best out of their cat. This is want the encoders want to spread, they want people to buy the product by enforcing this idea that it is what your cat wants, despite the fact that it obviously isn't true, but owners will bow down to peer pressure if they are persuaded often to get he product for the cat, as they will benefit from it due to how healthy it is.