广告作品分析advertising analysis

Some Key Questions 一些关键性要包含的问题

What exactly is being advertised?

Where and when did the ad appear?

Why might it have appeared there and then rather than elsewhere?

What appears to be the intended audience?

What suggests this?

In what ways does it utilize features of the particular medium used (poster, television, film, radio or magazine)?

What graphic mode(s) is/are used (e.g. still photography, drawing, animation, live action)?

Describe the overall design.

Where is it set in space and time?

Who are the participants?

What do they do?

What key objects are featured?

What part is played by words (choice of words, typography/voiceover)?

What part is played by the use of sound and/or light?

Which features are foregrounded and which are backgrounded?

What significance might all of these features have for the intended viewers/readers/listeners?

What key inferences must the viewers/readers/listeners make to make sense of the ad?

What intertextual references can you discern (to other ads, to other genres, to other people etc.)?

How else does the ad seek your involvement?

With what is the product associated?

What does the product seem to symbolize?

What does the ad seem to suggest about gender roles, class/status, age, ethnicity or self-identity?

What cultural assumptions and values seem to be involved?

What use is made of humour, and to what effect?

What do you regard as the most likely preferred interpretation offered in the ad?

What scope does there seem to be for alternative interpretations?

Concluding Remarks 结束语

What aspects of the ads has your approach revealed?

What are the limitations of your approach?

What features of the ads has it tended to downplay?

How could such limitations be overcome in future studies?

What have you learned from the exercise?

Television Commercial Analysis 电视商业广告作品分析

Companies appeal to consumers in many different ways to persuade them to buy their products. Review the list of common advertising strategies below. Then, select a TV commercial from this link to analyze.

Prior to your analysis, write a one-paragraph description of the commercial, assuming that your reader has not seen the ad before. Do not begin analysis here; instead, just include an objective description of the ad.

After your brief summary and description of the commercial, generate an additional 2-3 paragraphs analyzing the ad's significance to the product or service it is associated with. To generate material for your analysis, ask yourself the following questions:

What advertising strategies are used and what ideas or messages are either explicitly or implicitly associated with the image or images? (e.g. The beer bottle in the middle of an upscale party. What does this association therefore imply?)

Discuss the differences between the amount and kind of text versus graphics. Does the text take advantage of vagueness, ambiguity, over-generality, or emotive meaning to deceive or manipulate?

Are there any hard-to-recognize or hidden images that are meant to have a subtle effect on the viewer? What do the images say about what the viewer should be like or want to have? What do the images say about what is good, desirable, normal, acceptable?

Where applicable, discuss colors, angles, and technical tricks.

Ask yourself who is the ad's target audience? Who would it appeal to most?

What is the intended effect on this audience? Does it achieve this desired effect? During what kind of a television show would this commercial be airing?

Do the method and content of the ad relate to any bigger social issues (obsession with thinness, obsession with money, glamorizing illegal/violent behavior, any abnormal/dysfunctional human relations, etc.)?