Advertisement Analysis

Order Description

A minimum of 900 word essay from college english writing course.

English Essay Prompt

Advertisement Analysis
“From infancy to adulthood, advertising is in the air Americans breathe, the information we absorb, almost without knowing it. It floods our mind with pictures of perfection and goals of happiness easy to attain… We are feeding on foolery, of which a steady diet, for those who feed on little else, cannot help but leave a certain fuzziness of perception.”
Barbara Tuchman
After reading the Conducting Visual Arguments handout and responding to the questions, write a well-organized and fully developed thesis-driven analytical essay of at
least 900 words in which you do the following:
Choose a print advertisement that has been used within the last 12 months from a popular American magazine that illustrates what Tuchman terms “pictures of perfection
and goals of happiness” and then answer the following questions in a single unified essay. You must attach a copy of the ad to your essay. This should come after your
works cited page.

Identify the ad’s core argument. What claims does it make? Are these claims plausible? Helpful? Harmful?

Who is the target audience? How can you tell?

What is/are the theme(s) of your advertisement?

What current issues/stereotypes are revealed in your advertisement? What type of controversy/stereotypes does it convey or promote? Who does it impact? Why? In what
way? What are the short-term and long-term effects of such advertising on society and the individual?

What is the underlying message to consumers? What does it say about American culture? Our values? Belief systems?

Using the ad you have selected, locate and analyze as many of the 15 Basic Appeals mentioned by Jib Fowles in the handout “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals”. Which
do you think are conveyed in your advertisement? Explain. How do they function to communicate the ad’s core argument? Remember to introduce Jib Fowles to your audience
and explain who is he / why he is credible.

You must analyze the ad in terms of at least five advertising techniques presented in the Conducting Visual Arguments handout (i.e. color, image, layout, text,
placement).

Don’t assume that your reader is familiar with the ad. You must introduce / summarize the ad in your introduction.

You must support your argument with at least 5 outside sources. These must be included in a Works Cited page at the end of your document.

Include a word count beneath the date in your heading (not header).

You may use the Print Advertisement Analysis Worksheet and Finding Ads’ Hidden Messages to help generate ideas for your paper. You may refer to the Advertisement
Analysis Sample Introduction handout for an example of an introductory paragraph for an Advertisement Analysis essay.
do not simply go through the above list of requirements and jot down your responses in chronological order. Your essay should read as a unified whole, centered on a
strong, persuasive thesis. Your essay should not read as a collection of responses to the aforementioned questions/suggestions. These responses should be woven into a
cohesive argument, your essay.