Choose two magazine advertisements that sell the same kind of product but appeal to different audiences (for example, a car advertisement aimed at men and one aimed at women; a cigarette ad aimed at upper-middle-class consumers and one aimed at working-class consumers; a clothing ad from The New Yorker and one from Rolling Stone). Describe the ads in detail so that an audience can easily visualize them without actually seeing them. Analyze the advertisements and explain how each appeal to its target audience. To what values does each ad appeal? How is each ad constructed to appeal to those values? In addition to analyzing the rhetorical appeals made by each ad, you are to evaluate or criticize the ads, commenting on the images they convey of our culture. Along with your papers, please hand in the two ads that you chose to analyze. What you will develop through this assignment is the ability to understand and explain the persuasive power of advertisements.
We will look at the constituent parts of these advertisements—setting, furnishings, and props; characteristics of the models, including their clothes, gestures, hair, facial expressions, and poses; camera angle and lighting; the interplay between the visual images and the verbal copy—and ask how all these parts working together contribute to the rhetorical effect of the advertisement. Along with way, we raise questions about how advertisements shape our sense of who we are and what we v alue.
