Hello!
We recently finished a project called The Medium is The Message. It taught us all about advertising and how it influences the world. The driving question that persisted throughout this project was

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

I will try to answer that question in this blog post.

In this project we had a lot of Milestones that taught us about advertising, it’s effect, and how to use it well.


Here they are:

In this Milestone we watched the  Apple advertisement Welcome Home. It was 4 minutes long and featured moving walls powered by hydraulics. Our task was to analyze and dissect it. 

Here’s the paragraph that I wrote about how I interpreted this video. 
I think that the message of the advertisement ‘Welcome Home’ is that you can rise above your troubles. They are trying to tell you that the Apple HomePod – the product that is being advertised – can make you feel happy and uplifted even after the most tiring day, and it  can help you can do the impossible. Mostly they are trying to get across that you- the consumer – should buy their product. I think that they are marketing the Apple HomePod towards busy people who don’t have a huge amount of time or who need help in their everyday life. They want those people to watch their ad, think about the amount of effort and care that went into it, and think that the HomePod had the same amount of care put into it to make it the best it could be. Basically, the point of the ad is to make people want to buy their product.

In this Milestone we were learning about demographics – particular groups within a population that have something in common (age, race, gender, religion, etc.). We interviewed a person in a different demographic as us, and then compared their answers to ours. I chose to interview my dad – we are different genders and ages. It was interesting to see how our answers varied. 
Here is the interview that I did, and the reflection I wrote afterwards.

My dad and I see advertisements in different ways. He is in a completely different demographic than me – he is a middle aged man, and I am a teenaged girl. For example, he sees ads in different places, and did especially when he was a kid. He likely saw ads on posters, billboards, on TV, at bus stops, and heard them on the radio. Now, I see them on YouTube, apps and games, and all over the place online, as well as the previously mentioned ways of seeing them. He also interprets them differently. He might see a shampoo bottle and think of it as “women’s shampoo”, while I would look at the same bottle and not see which gender it’s advertised at, because I am in a time and culture in which ‘gender’ is a very broad term, not just limited to women and men, and so a shampoo bottle for women could be for pretty much anybody. We both, however, have been won over by the power of advertising, as shown in the examples below. I think that even though the advertisements themselves, and how we interpret them, is changes over time, the power of advertising is timeless.

  1. Do you collect any ads or advertising products? (e.g. Coca-Cola, Starbucks mugs)

I don’t collect any ads, but my dad gets Gears of War merchandise because he works on that game, and he sometimes brings home some for my sister and me.

My dad says:

“No.”

He does have Gears of War merchandise, but he says that he doesn’t actively collect it; it’s given to him.

  1. Do you have any clothing with a visible designer name? (e.g. Old Navy) Give examples.

My mum works at Arc’teryx, so I have me some of their jackets. I probably have other clothes with brand names on them. For example, at some point my dad brought home an Xbox shirt, but I can’t think of many other items with clothing designer names on them. I usually don’t pay much attention to what brand my clothes come from, because I don’t have much interest in those kinds of things, but I’m sure I have some sort of brand name on a jacket or shirt somewhere.

My dad says:

“No. I specifically choose clothes without brands on them. I do have Arc’teryx clothing, and several pairs of SmartWool socks.”

  1. Do you have any clothing with a visible designer logo? (e.g. Nike) Give examples.

I have an Arc’teryx jacket, like I said, and I probably have some shoes that have a Nike logo on them. I also have a hoodie with the logo of my diving team logo on it, but that isn’t a clothing brand. 

My dad says:

“Didn’t I just answer that question?”

He has some Arc’teryx jackets and a polo shirt with a penguin on it from Original Penguin. He also has some Adidas sneakers.

  1. Have you ever bought any products based solely on advertising? Which and why?

I don’t think that I have bought many products based on advertising. However, I have walked into Cobs, seen a sign for Cranberry Custard Danishes, and then bought a Cranberry Custard Danish. (Those things are delicious.) I already know about those from previous experiences though, but the ad was a reminder. I’ve also seen recommendations for books on the backs of other books that I’ve finished reading, and then taken those books out from the library, though I’m not sure if that counts as buying the product. Generally I don’t just see an ad for something and then buy it. Though I did do that once. When I was a bit younger, my sister and I liked to play this cupcake making game where you got to decorate virtual cupcakes that you baked. I really wanted to have all of the different icings for the cupcakes, so we pitched in and paid $10.00 for them. I really regret that purchase now, but that is an example of when I bought a product based on advertising.

My dad says:

“I’m sure I have. When I was in Grade 2 I really wanted this battery-run ‘Imperial Walker’ toy (a StarWars robot machine thing) based on advertising. I got it for Christmas, but it could only take one step before it fell over. I haven’t done that since I was a kid. We don’t have TV in our house to watch ads anymore, so we don’t see many ads like that. Now I do research before making purchases.”

  1. Have you ever not bought products specifically based on advertising? Which and why?

I usually don’t pay much attention to ads. If I see a bad ad for something, but I want that thing, I’ll still look into buying it. Then again, if I don’t know anything about a product but I see an ad that I don’t like, I probably won’t buy that product later because I will have subconscious negative feeling towards that product.

My dad says:

“I’ve never bought women’s deodorant, even though it’s the same as men’s deodorant, because it’s marketed towards women. It just doesn’t seem ‘manly’ enough. Also things like shampoo and soap marketed towards women.”

  1. List the places where you think you see advertising on a daily basis:

Places where I usually see advertising are:

  • YouTube
  • Billboards
  • Signs in stores
  • Posters and flyers
  • On free apps and games
  • Radio
  • Online (social media, search engine, websites)

My dad says:

“Where don’t you see it?”

  • Billboards
  • Buses
  • Podcasts 
  • Bus stops
  • On an Xbox dashboard 
  • Websites
  • Emails (40 a day)

This Milestone was all about different advertising techniques and appeals. We created a chart with two print ads, two web ads, and two commercials and recorded their use of different techniques and appeals. I used a bunch of ads from McDonalds, which was cool because it’s such a well-known brand. 
I wasn’t able to include the chart in this post, but my teachers have seen it already. (That’s who’s going to be reading this blog post anyways.)


 

 

For a while during this project we were reading The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch. It was about a teenaged boy named Miles who had an interest in marine biology and who lived near Puget Sound. We actually got to visit Puget Sound when we went on a trip to Oregon as a class, but that’s another story. (You can learn more in my reflection on that field study here.) Anyways, in my humble opinion the book didn’t have that much to do with advertising, but our task was to write an analysis on it for this fourth Milestone. 
Here is the analysis that I wrote. 

What did Miles learn about the media and messages?

In The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch, Miles discovered that though the media is very influential over people’s decisions and outlook, you can’t prioritize it over your real life. 

We witnessed his learning in the story because throughout the plot there were references to media and advertising. In the book, Miles appeared on television, in the newspaper, and even did a live talk with the leader of a cult. He learned not to make it his priority, and to focus instead on his personal life: family, his friends, Florence, and spending time on the mudflats. 

Miles was a pretty private, personal character, so being such a celebrity in his hometown really affected him. He didn’t like to share his feelings with other people, and he didn’t really think much about how other people perceived him. He learned that he had to be careful about how he presented himself.

The setting of The Highest Tide was Skookumchuck Bay, a small inlet off Puget Sound. There hadn’t been much publicity about the small community in which Miles lived, so when he discovered the squid and the BioBlitz happened right outside his home, he learned about how much media can influence people’s actions. He discovered that a place can be completely changed by advertising.

The events in The Highest Tide provided opportunity for new experiences for Miles. He discovered that the media has a huge influence on the world around him, and that though it can affect so much, it should not be your focus. You have to consider the most important parts of your life and give them your attention.

For our fifth and sixth Milestones, we did something a little different.
You see, up until this point we had only been doing analyses and reflections on learning that we’d done. Now we had to put our learning into practice by creating real ads for real companies.

For the fifth Milestone, we created advertisements for companies near us, in Deep Cove. My group (Nya, Josh, Dries and me) decided on Cafe Orso.

Step 1: Call Your Business

The first step in our advertising process  was to call whatever company we chose to make sure that they were okay with us even doing this in the first place. Dries made the call.
We were rejected.
It was very surprising. We were mad for a bit. But eventually we got over it and went back to the drawing board.
After a bit of research, we landed on a small shop named Covert Cafe. A few of our group members had been there before, and they said it was nice.
We repeated step one. I made the call this time. They said that they would be happy to help us with the project! We were finally able to move on to step two.

 

Step 2: Interview!

I lied. There is actually stuff in between making the phone call and interviewing. We set a date, planned questions to ask, and practiced. (That’s another lie. We didn’t actually practice that much.)
Then we met up. We interviewed the manager of the Covert Cafe, J. Paul Mackenzie.
It went pretty well, and we got a lot of useful information. Dries said that he would come the next day to take photos of cinnamon rolls, which is what the Covert Cafe is famous for.
That’s when things started to go wrong.

Step 3: Take Photos

Dries never showed up to take the photos. He was sick, so it was understandable that he didn’t want to go. But we thought that he’d at least contacted the manager to let him know that he wasn’t coming. He didn’t.
So when I went later, I got a thorough lecture from J. Paul Mackenzie. I don’t blame him, since he’d put all that work into making sure everything was ready. But I only got a couple of photos since all I wanted to do was get out of there. Our group learned a lesson that day: you have to maintain a good relationship with your clients.

Step 4: Make the Ad!

This was the fun part that we’d been anticipating for a while. We finally got to make it! We uploaded our photos to an app called Canva and got to work. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as we originally thought.

Step 5: Make the Ad Again. And Again. And Again and Again.

There is a lot to consider when you’re making an ad. You have to factor in spacing, colours, font, text size, images, contrast and white space to form a balanced ad.
In total we did five drafts of this ad, with peer review sessions in between. It was a gruelling process, but I feel like I learned a lot about the process of making ads.

Here are all the drafts I did on this ad.



  • This was the first draft I did. The photo was from Covert Cafe’s Instagram page because I hadn’t taken my own yet. 

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    This was the second draft I did. I changed the blue to one that matched Covert’s the more, and added my own image.

  • This is the third draft. I acted on the feedback to make the text more readable by changing the colour and size. 

  •  

    This is the fourth draft. I changed the font of the phone number to make it more readable. 

  • The final draft. I added the price, and adjusted the positioning of the photo slightly. 

Now that we’d done that practice round, it was time to move on to the real deal.

The sixth Milestone was very similar to the fifth. The only difference was that instead of advertising for a company in Deep Cove, we were advertising for a company in Oregon.
My group was assigned the Columbia River Maritime Museum, a museum in Astoria full of interesting exhibits about everything from the U.S. Coast Guard to the fish market. On my class’s trip to Oregon, we visited the museum to conduct our interview.

 

Step 1: Interview and Photograph

Again, I lied. We still planned for the interview beforehand. This time, though, the interview was all set up for us already, so all we had to do was ask the questions.
We interviewed a nice Education Assistant named Julia. She was very helpful and answered all our questions. She even sent us an email afterwards to follow up on a question she couldn’t answer, and to thank us for our interview! We really appreciated that.
We also took photos while we were visiting the museum. There were lots of interesting exhibits to photograph, and we got lots of cool shots. It was fun!

Step 2: Make the Ad!

Now that we knew what the Columbia River Maritime Museum was looking for, we got to work on our ads. This one was somewhat trickier that our Deep Cove business, because it’s a lot harder to make a museum look exciting than it is to make cinnamon rolls look exciting. We plunged in, though (do you appreciate my Maritime pun?) and started on the first draft.

Step 3: Make the ad again. You know how this goes

After an Annihilation Session (feedback from Ms. Willemse) we did our second and third drafts. I got the feedback that my ad was informative but boring, so I set out to spice it up.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I didn’t want to make it too busy, or ad too much text, just make it seem more exciting. I think that in the end it was improved though, even though there were a lot of different fonts.
I only did 3 drafts this time, instead of 5. You can see them here.

  • This first draft was actually done before our Oregon trip, so I didn’t have any photos. 

  • This was the second draft. I added a photo. It wasn’t what I originally wanted for this ad, but I liked it better. 

  • This final draft is a bit more exciting. I added some more interesting text, changed the slogan and fonts, and repositioned the photo. 

So this brings us back to the driving question for this unit:

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

I think that it can affect us in all sorts of ways. It always stays with us subconsciously, and can influence our daily decisions, from what bread to buy from Cobs to where to live. We are always seeing advertising in all shapes and forms: on TV, on bus stops and billboards, in the newspaper and in websites, on the outsides of stores and even on our clothing. Even when we’re not looking for it, it’s there in our life, weighing in on our decisions. But as Miles learned in The Highest Tide, we can’t let it control us. We have to take charge of our own life and focus on what really important to us.

Whew! That was a lot of writing. 1294 words! I hope you now understand more about how the medium influences the message, and how the message influences us, and whatnot. Now I’m just confusing myself.

See you guys on the next blog post!

Cheers,
Evelyn 👩🏽‍🦱