Media: A Final Reflection!

Living in a age of change and technological advancements, advertisements are everywhere. From LED billboards to every social media platform you can think of, ads seem to devour our everyday lives. It is clear that what we hear, read, and see influences us on a day to day basis. Media is found everywhere from the local paper to online pop-up ads. It is pervasive and it relentlessly permeates our lives without notice. Through the use of advertising whether it be a print ad, an ad online, or a broadcasted advertisement in the form of radio or visual, we are all impacted in one way or another. Being born in such a media influenced age, I have alway had troubles pondering what life would be like without all of the modern day technology. I found that learning about this topic dramatically swayed my world view on how advertising and the media affects us as people.

vinsky2002 / Pixabay

 

We started the year learning about advertising and how the media affects our daily lives.  I quickly noticed that there was so much to learn about this topic and started to doubt that we would be able to deeply understand how advertising affects us in the limited time that we had. My accusation was not only completely false, but I somehow managed to become a pro on advertising and what makes a good print ad. Although, before creating an advertisement much needed to be done. We started this unit with a great approach. Our first task was to complete an activity that challenged us to answer the question “how do we dissect text”. 

In order to learn how to dissect text in advertising, we began by watching an advertisement called Welcome Home. This example of media was a commercial that features the Apple Home Pod. The commercial starts with dull colours and creates a sad and melancholy mood. The camera follows a  young woman that is experiencing a hard day.  With the help of the Apple Home Pod, she is able to play music that not only changes her mood, but changes her surroundings.  Everything becomes vibrant and the mood quickly changes to upbeat and exuberant. I believe that the main message of the advertisement was to show how the Apple Home Pod will make you happy immersing you in music and lifting your spirit. I also thought that the message of the commercial was to show that even though you can feel small, the device will make you feel powerful and happy. The point of this video was to trigger the viewers’ emotions and persuade them to purchase this product.

 

Although this was the beginning of our media journey, I thought that this milestone put me one step closer to answering the driving question. Now with this new skill of dissecting text and discovering its meaning, it was definitely going to be easier to find the meaning of our future assignments. If you want to see the the welcome home advertisement for yourself, press here.

We then learned how demographics and historical perspective affects the process of advertising.  With the use of advertising surveys, I observed how different ages and demographics affect how an ad is perceived.  I completed a survey with my mother and it became clear that we have completely different values when it comes to advertising. After doing the interview, I observed that the main difference between the interviewees’ answers were influenced by past places, events and issues which impacted them in their previous years. For example, my mom, Leslie, said that she does not like buying lots of clothing because she knows they will just end up in the landfill. I believe that she thinks this way because of her years of experience in the world and her knowledge of how manufacturing effects the earth.  Her values have changed as she’s gotten older. Her beliefs and world views about purchasing items based off of ads has changed alongside some of the other people in her demographic. I also learned that what’s happening in the world at the time also affects advertising and its historical perspective. For instance, because of the environmental crisis, advertisements are going to reflect people’s values.

 

 

 

Next, we explored different techniques and appeals.  The exercise that we completed for this topic consisted of matching print ads with the techniques used. I found it very interesting how all ads use techniques in some way.  Some of the common techniques that I found to be most convincing were: were different and unique claim, scientific or statistical claim, the testimonial claim, and the plain folks claim. Below I have added some examples of these advertising techniques. The next topic of focus was the advertising appeals. Advertising appeals are also used a lot in ads everywhere. This tasks exercise was very similar to the one of the advertising techniques. Once again we matched the various print advertisements with the appeals used. I found that the most successful appeals were the reassurance of worth appeal, sense of power, and a sense of roots.

To further our knowledge about the tools of advertising, we learned about the pathos, logos, and ethos persuasion techniques.  Pathos is the appeal to emotion, logos is the appeal to logic and reason, and lastly, ethos is the appeal to character and credibility.  I learned most about these persuasion techniques by dissecting various Nike ads.  In the following chart I identified  which tools were being used for each ad. 

 

Our next assignment had a bit more time and work involved, but I was up for the challenge. This exemplified how another form of advertising, the news media, influences the appearances of real life people. For this task we were assigned a novel called The Highest Tide. The readings were split into four different sections where we were required to answer the given questions on the novel sheets. I have attached one of the sheets as an example. The Highest Tide was a very interesting book about a little boy named Miles that becomes the miracle of the summer when he finds rare creatures washing up on his local shores. Throughout the book Miles is continually dealing with the media (which in this case was the press) and has to figure out a way he can use the publicity to his advantage. Miles is a perfect example of how the people in his town thought of Miles as special due to the media.There is no question that the media can have both a positive and a negative effect on the way people are perceived.

Lastly, we took all of the knowledge that we learned in this unit and applied it to creating ads for two businesses.  My first ad was for Deep Cove Music.Deep Cove Music.  After multiple drafts I curated a successful ad that used the mostly pathos and sense of roots, and also appealed to credibility and character.  My second ad was for an Oregon business called Nisa’s Thai on our Oregon Coast Field Study.  I found that I learned the most about advertising and what makes the most  effective ad due to the amount of revisions I received. I find that knowing you can always make your work better is quite useful for life overall. In the end, I was satisfied with my ad and felt that it used our previous learning.

With the knowledge I’ve gained, I have a completely fresh perspective on how media influences my daily life. By understanding the techniques and hooks of advertising, I have grown an awareness to help me understand and control the media’s grasp on my life.  It is now clear that what we see, hear, and read greatly affects our beliefs, values, and wants in our daily life.  Make sure to comment your thoughts or any questions on this post below.

Leave a Reply