In my humanities 8 class we been working on a project about advertising. For every project we do in PLP we have a driving question we are trying to answer. For this project the question was “ How does what we read, hear and see influence us?”. The whole project we were gathering information to answer the question so here’s my answer and the steps what I did to answer it.

How does what we read, hear and see influence us?

Everyday we see advertising. It’s everywhere and is impossible to avoid. So how does it influence us? The most obvious way the media influences us is that we are influenced to buy and do things we didn’t even know we wanted to. But one of the things you make not notice or think of as media is that it influences us to act in certain ways. We act differently than our grandparents. Like with me and my grandmother. She hardly notices the media and she doesn’t give into trends or act anything like anyone my age would. This is because we are influenced by different things. So next time maybe you’ll think more carefully about what your scrolling through on instagram or you’ll notice the billboards you drive by everyday. Because every little thing influences our lives.

For the first part of the project we had to dissect an video advertisement for a Home Pod. We were supposed to figure out why this was an affective ad. I found it was and affective ad because it used abstract shapes, colours and movements which are scientifically proven you make you remember the things more. This happens because our brain needs to process it more than it normally would with ordinary shapes and movements we see everyday.

The next part of my project required me to interview someone in a different demographic than us. I interviewed my grandmother. I asked her questions about how the media influences her everyday life, then I had to awnser the same questions. In the end our answers were very different. For my grandmother the media is hardly a thing. She never really pays attention or thinks about the media. For me the media is everywhere and especially after doing this project I notice it all the time.

Our next assignment was to find six ads, two print ads, two social media ads and two video ads. We were also supposed to find a specific category/brand to take ads from. I picked CoverGirl as my brand. Once we found all the ads we had to dissect each ad. We had to decide what made it special, what’s it’s credibility and what were the advertisers trying to make you feel. CoverGirl, for example, uses celebrities a lot in their ads. So they rely mostly on the credibility of the celebrity.

Along with all the assignments we also had to read a book called The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch . This book was about a dorky teenage boy named Miles. He loves intertidal life and one day while he’s reading he hears a loud sound so he goes to the beach to see what it is. Much to his surprise he finds a giant squid. Because of his discovery he becomes a local celebrity. Every wants to interview him and hang out with him

So as part of our project we had to figure out how the media influenced him and the people around him. In his case the media made it hard for him to focus of his real life and the people who he cares about the most. Every couple of chapters we had to fill out a sheet asking us to ask and answer question about those chapters, we had to pick and adjective that best described him, find a connection to your life, find and important paragraph and we had to pick something new we had never heard of. Doing these sheets helped us with writing the final paragraph.

The next part of our project required us to use our social skills, this is because we had to interview local businesses. This part of the project was completely in groups. Evelyn, Josh and Dries were in my group. Our local business was The Covert Cafe. We interviewed them because part of our project was that we needed to make an ad for a local business. I really enjoyed creating the ad. We had very specific instructions from the manager of the business how they wanted our ads to look. For us the manager said he wanted it to be navy blue and white with a pop of bronze. He wanted us to advertise their cinnamon buns(which are delicious).

The finally we did a ad for a business in Oregon. Our business was the Columbia River Maritime Museum. They are a museum in Astoria, Oregon that highlights the history of the Columbia River. They wanted us to advertise the Coast Guard aspect of their museum.

Our last assignment was to write this blog post!

Hip hip hooray I have completed my first full humanities project!