Using humor as advertising by Nathan
In my opinion, some of the most effective advertisements are the ones that make me laugh. Humorous advertisements stick in my mind and make me remember a product, thus serving its intended application. For this assignment students will create their own ad. They must pick something from their environment (a class, textbook, school lunch item, etc...) and create an ad for it. Students will be encouraged to explore humor in advertising. What makes an ad funny? Why might it only be funny to some people? What is the best way to reach the biggest audience? Students will show their ads (either print or iMovies) to the class. The class will then discuss what ad was the most effective and why.
Analyzing Advertising - Genevieve
Provide students with copies of magazines such as In Style, Shape, Marie Claire, Allure, Vanity Fair, Family Circle, and People. Divide students into small groups of three or fours and have them look for five ads about food and food products. Once each group has selected their ads, ask them to identify what these ads have in common. Students should identify commonalities in images, ideas, styles/moods, and specific language used. Who is shown in the ads? Who is the product being marketed to? What is the product’s selling point? What are the marketers saying about the people they are trying to sell their product to? Students’ observations can be used in whole class discussion. Ideally students will discover trends in equating food with moral values and guilt – “So good it’s sinful.”
Analyzing Advertising by Elizabeth F. and Steve M.
I really like Maggie's idea below about advertising for a certain product. One sort of twist I thought of that could either be added to or alter the original activity would be to pass out a bunch of items, and then assign the target audience. For example, give the kids a diamond ring (fake, obviously) and then give them a demographic. For example, "advertise this product to a single, African American woman who makes $85,000 a year." Then give them a different target market. "Advertise this product to a 60 year old male, married for 35 years." The students will use either iMovie or Garage Band to create a television or radio advertisement. Then have the students do a write-up. What did they change between the two advertisements? Why? What type of logic is behind each ad? What does the purchasing of your product say about the person who bought it? Do you think your ad will work on your target market? Present commercials in class.
This activity would be really great for analyzing advertising and applying critical lenses to real life. In creating their own commercials, students will hopefully be able to be more cognizant of the marketing tactics that are used to sell products.--
Doctored photos: reflects the need for idealized representations in ads
Videos on advertising (includes Clio Awards)
Advertisers tracking of web use on Facebook and MySpace
Advertising for children on virtual sites
PBS: Mental Engineering: analysis of ads
Hemmy.net: Ads from all over the world
GenderAds.com: extensive resources on gender representations in ads
Antonio Lopez: product placements in the media
Suzanne DeFoe (Fall 2007) Family Circle, Women's Magazine - What's the Message?
Purchase a Family Circle magazine from your local grocery store and identify the most prominent themes on the cover. What are they? How do the accompanying articles support or contradict what you interpreted on the cover? When and how was this publication started? Based on this experience, what message do you think is being sent to society in general, women in particular?
Political Ads-Sara
Students will analyze political ads in order to understand why candidates choose the types of ads they do. Describe to students the following types of ads : Negative (towards other candidates), Warm & Fuzzy (nostalgic or patriotic), Humorous, Scary (using fear/scare tactics). Have students watch TV during campaign season, or if no campaign is occuring, use websites where commercials can be viewed. Here are some examples:
http://www.northwoodsadv.com/our_work/portfolio/tv_reel.html
http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/
Have students note the key messages of several commercials. Have students describe which ads were most memorable and why. Do the commercials provide factual information or do they evoke an emotional response? What type of image is the candidate trying to portray and what are the pros and cons of running issue-free commercials? Have students decide what type of commercial they think is the most effective and why. Finally, have students create their own campaign commercial.
What does it really mean? by Denise
I really like the idea of analyzing real ads next to spoof ads and adbusters is great for this exercise. Using the Camel cigarette ads as an example, I would start off having the kids identify the different parts of the advertising—imagery, copy, logos, style, color, etc. Once we have identified these elements, we can discuss why each of them exists the way they do and what the advertisers are really trying to say. Then, we can brainstorm as to what the advertisers are NOT saying. Being able to read between the lines and see the hidden meanings is so important to understanding media. Once we have thought of some of the things the advertiser might be trying to hide, we will look at some of the spoof ads and analyze those the same way we did the real ads. We can compare and contrast the real and the spoof ads. At the end of the lesson, the students will go back to the brainstorming list of what was NOT said in the real advertisment and use one of these "not said" points to create their own spoof ad.
Adertise this Product by Maggie
Students are given a product, either a bottle of liquid, a can or box, with a notecard stating what it is designed to do (cleaning product, shampoo, eliminate baldness, etc). Students will then create an ad about it, identifying it's target audience, and making an ad for that audience. They will use techniques discussed in class to complete this assignment.
Name that tune by Lisa
Students will choose an advertisement from television, radio, or internet broadcasts of t.v. shows. They will then analyze the audio that accompanies the ad, hypothesizing why the advertiser chose that particular song, sound, or lack thereof. They will identify the targeted audience (age, gender, SES, occupation, etc.), including the activity the audience is most likely to be doing, and decide whether this plays a factor in the audio track of the advertisement. Students will work individually and give a 3-minute presentation about their findings.
Subliminal Messages in Advertising: Are They Real? by Jessie
This activity is entended for older high school students, who have demonstrated maturity. Teachers will select commercials off of yahoo and google video that internet viewers claim have subliminal messages in them. They will also selct adds from magazines. The adds that they choose are to their own disgression--whatever they feel their class can best handle. In pairs, students will closely examine these advertisements. Does it look like there are womens bodies in the ice in the cup? Does it look like the word "sex" is written across the female models throat in a perfume or alcohol advertisement? What do they feel the affect of hidden messages are? The students will present their findings to the class.
Who's My Audience? by Meaghan
Students will work in pairs and choose a particular type of product. They will then find examples of magazine, television, or internet ads of two or more specific brands of that item. The idea is to discover how so many companies with nearly identical products are able to find their little corners of the market and survive as competitors. Examples could be Coke vs. Pepsi, Visa vs. Mastercard, or Nike vs. Adidas. Students must discuss which niche market each brand goes for: who is their target market? Age, gender, socioeconomic status, and countless other characteristics might play into it. Further, groups may come up with a mock product and ad in the same crowded market and make a case for how their product would survive.
"Motivational" Poster by Chris B fall 07
Using motivational posters as a model (you know those ones that have a picture of a couple of mountain climbers and a caption that reads “Confidence: always reach for the top”), students could create their own message based on something they are passionate about. They could use this as an opportunity for social critique or to promote an ideal that they see lacking in their communities. Additionally, this could be an exercise in satire and sarcasm.
Students would find a picture that relates to their topic, focus one a single word and provide a phrase that adds depth to their message. Students would then share their projects to the class and answer questions relating to the content of their work.
Make Your own Ad by Eve and Annie fall 2007
Have students pick their favorite Consumer Packaged Good that does not
currently have an TV ad. For example they could pick Tyson chicken nuggets
or Motor Storm for PlayStation 3 but not honey nut Cheerios or unbranded
items such as lettuce
Have students brainstorm why they like the item so much, especially over
the competition. What is unique about their item, and what is inferior
about other similar products.
Have students take this information and make a commercial via a comic book
like story board. Students much illustrate the shots and character
movements and write all the dialog. When everyone is done have students
present the their commercials and if possible bring in an example of the
product. Have the class discuss whether the ad was persusive or misleading.
Advertising and the Truth by Angela
Students will choose one advertisement, which can be from television or some kind of print media, that they believe is false advertising or that they believe does a phenomenal job of selling something. They will then create a parady (of sorts) of the product in their own advertisement/commercial that exposes the whole truth and nothing but the truth or exaggerates the ad in some way. By exposing the reality, value assumptions, and stereotypes typically portrayed in these ads, students will hopefully be enlightened to the numerous qualities of media representations that bombard us everyday. They will have a chance to look at everything from audience to color to wording to character choice. This activity allows a lot of flexibility, depending upon the enduring understandings that the teacher wants students to get out of it.
Analyzing Advertising by Crystal Bieter
As part of our curriculum, students are expected to evaluate and analyze media. One way that I like to incorporate this standard, is to have students look for ads in magazines, on Youtube, etc and critically analyze the ad looking specifically at what the ad is selling or not selling, who the intended audience is, what techniques they may use to sell their product, etc. They then analyze the ad for it's overall effectiveness and end with a follow-up question: How could they make it better? Students then could create their own ads for fictitious products using Adbusters or create a collage of ads around a common theme and explain it's significance to the class.
Product and Lifestyle
Katie Noack
The purpose of this activity is to pull apart product and lifestyle. Students bring in an example of a print ad or notes about a TV ad or billboard. Then the class discusses the relationship that the advertiser creates between a certain product and a certain lifestyle. What kind of lifestyle is portrayed? What kind of audience would find this lifestyle desirable? What evidence is given that the product creates this lifestyle? If you were to do a spoof on the ad, what kind of alternative lifestyle would you portray with this product?
Who Does Television Advertising Target?
Jarrett Lundquist and Nate Buck
Over the course of a weekend have students watch television at different times of the day paying close attention to how the advertisements correlate with the programing being shown. On Monday, have the students answer these questions or others of a similar nature. What effect does this create, and how do advertising techniques vary from audience to audience? What ads seem to be shown the most/least, and why? Is the student directly influenced by any of these ads and how? Do you think these ads affect your friends the same way they affect you? Use the answers from these discussion prompts to talk about how television advertising carefully targets its viewers. Identify the ramifications that this has for your students, and how they may critically evaluate these types of ads.
Ligia Hernandez and Andi Larson
After introducing students to advertising techniques, they will be assigned a small study. Students will observe a child under 8 years old viewing commercials. The students will pay close attention and take notes about the child’s attention, interest, attitudes, and feelings during the commercials. The students should also make note of the type and characteristics of the commercials. After viewing TV, the students will ask the child questions about the commercials. Questions should be both general and specific. The students will find out how the child feels about commercials, which commercials they liked best, and specific questions about various products being advertised in those commercials. After the data has been collected, students should reflect on their notes and try to find correlations between the attitudes of the child and the persuasive techniques used in the advertisements. Students should come prepared to class and ready to discuss and reflect on the power of advertisements especially in young children.
Justin Crum and Rebekah Ignatowicz
Our advertising activity would be a group project. We would have our class form groups with approximately four students per group. These different groups would have to invent their own product and try to market it to the class through a variety of advertisements. Each group would have to market their product through posters throughout the school and make a commercial (if video cameras are available-use them, otherwise a skit works fine too). The students would have to write a response after their activity describing the details of their product and advertisements. Who was their intended audience? How did they adjust their campaign to attract that audience? What worked? What did not work?
Sarah Staples and Katie Houlihan
In this activity I would bring popular magazines to class, and have the students get into groups and find their favorite celebrity advertisements. I would then have the students go home and watch television to find a commercial with their favorite celebrity. I would then have the students present this information to the class: what time they watched the commercial, who they thought was the intended audience, and ask them how these advertisements/commercials made them feel about the product and the celebrity. My unit goal would be for the students to recognize that celebrity endorsed products attempt to prove quality and popularity. This activity would create an environment where students were critical of the media and its purpose in advertising with celebrities.
Sarah Thomes and Emily Peckskamp
I think this lesson could be extremely timely if done during an election year. I would have students bring in different advertisements from the recent political campaigns. I would then have they analyze them looking for patterns. I would especially include a discussion about what makes a valid argument and looking for validity within the advertisements that they have brought in. Then, I would have students role play an election in the class. They would be responsible for creating campaign posters, and, if technology allowed, they could also create short video advertisements through imovie.
Jennifer Sellers and Theresa Haider
I have taught a unit on creating a product and an ad before and the students really enjoyed it. First we looked at different types of ad techniques, such as bandwagon, cause and effect, snob appeal, testimonial, etc. Second, we look at magazine ads and the students identify the different techniques used. They watch some commercials at home and report their findings to the class. Third the students come up with a product that they think they themselves or others would want. They must indentify a target market for their product. Fourth, the students storyboard a commercial for their product and then film it. The students were quite creative and made fun, informative and savvy ads that used the techiniques pretty well.
Abbey Weis and Karen Keller
This Power Point offers information on fallacies of logic. These work well when having students analyze political ads, general advertisements, political speeches/rhetoric, news shows, and print articles. I have used it in class with political adds, and after students are taught the fallacies, they find them in political ads and critique the adds. They also create their own ads that need to have at least three fallacies, and they show their ads to the class. Then, the class analyzes each others ads and applies the fallacies to the ad.
Ad spoof: Project Segue
Another activity to incorporate in the classroom after students have learned advertising techniques and fallacies in argumentation is to show them (if you can get your hands on a copy) the Clio Awards (awards for top television advertisements). Students, then, watch the ads and list which ad techniques are evident in the commercials. An alternative to the Clio Awards would be to tape advertisements from your own television or to access ads from You Tube.
(This Power Point restates information from the Minnesota State Read, View, Listen Grad Standard.)
Sara Speicher & Kerry Newstrom
Political advertising on television
Working alone or in pairs, have the students select a political campaign television ad. Have them fact check and determine at whom the ad is directed. Then, have them remake the political ad in such a way that is truthful and the intended points are easy to comprehend. Make them compare the two and detail the tactics used in the original ad.
Dan Richardson & Nate Schultz
Assignment 1: what are they really trying to say?
In small groups, students look at magazines and pick five advertisements that they think are really strong. For each advertisement, each group answers the following questions on paper:
1. What is the name of the magazine?
2. What product is being advertised?
3. Please describe the advertisement in a couple of sentences--show us the ad with these sentences.
4. "What is the advertiser really selling (shoes--or power, image, popularity, coolness, performance)?"
5. Who do they want to sell to?
6. Where is the advertisement in the magazine? Why?
7. Anything else significant about the ad that you want to comment on?
8. How do you respond to the ad? It works or doesn't work because...?
Small groups choose two advertisements to present to the class--a written copy of each group's deliberation is turned in.
Assignment 2: Don't Be Bamboozled by Ads!
In a unit on reading critically, students learn about 20 different logical fallacies, such as "the bandwagon fallacy" , "circular reasoning", "appeal to fear", "appeal to pity", "either/or thinking". After they have learned such terms and seen some examples of the ways writers use these fallacies to persuade an audience, students can find advertisements that clearly utilize one or more of the fallacies. The idea behind the assignment is to show your ad to the rest of the class and point out how the ad-maker is trying to persuade/fool/bamboozle consumers into buying a product that they probably don't really need. Here is a Powerpoint which defines some logical fallacies.
Advertising
Lisa Seppelt and Adam Iverson
Have students analyze advertisements for beer, cigarettes, and alcohol. Prior to the assignment, have the students bring in old magazines that they read. Have them tear out and count how many times there is an ad for beer, cigarettes, or alcohol. Have the students compare that to other magazines that their parents read. Come to conclusions about advertisements and who these companies are really marketing and how they are marketing. Have students note the things that may glamorize smoking or techniques specifically used to target teens. Next, have students design a survey aimed at finding out which one’s appeal most to high school students and what about that ads make them appealing. Have students survey their peers and analyze results.
Steve, Greg, and Rob
For our assignment on analyzing advertising, we would ask students to keep a journal about their impressions of television advertising. Initially, students will respond to a prompt which asks them about their experiences with advertising - particularly, what ads they often see on television during their favorite programs. Students would then describe the commercials that are typically played on said channels during the periods that they usually watch television. After students reflect on these commercials in a class discussion, the assignment would ask for them to view commercials on channels that they typically would not watch, or during times that they would usually not watch. For instance, if a student typically views primetime network shows, they could focus on commercials played during the daytime soaps, or on cable access; If they normally watch Spike TV, they could view commercials on the Oxygen network. Students would then reflect in their journals about the differences in the commercials as related to the differences in the intended audiences. After, students would engage in a large group discussion about idea of target audiences, and how commercials are often custom made to suit different viewers.
Advertising Saturation
Mary Voigt, Alma Mendez, Pat McGurk
For one day have students write down every time they see a namebrand or label (just so they don't go mad, have them avoid clothes, or just do it on the weekend, or just for a couple of hours, or on a drive or walk in their neighborhood). Have them compare notes when they are done. They should be able to indicate if it was a TV commercial, radio ad, print ad, billboard, logo on clothes, a shopping bag, etc. Ask them to write about the ads that they remember more clearly. Why do they remember them? Was it about what they were doing at the time or something else? Did they like the product or dislike it?
Find out if certain companies were more prominent on lists than others. Where were they when they saw these ads? Are certain groups being targeted? Who are they? Why would advertisers do this? Have students create their own ad campaign complete with types of ads (tv, billboard, print, etc), placement, timing and messages.
Channel One's Days May be Numbered
Millions Spent on Negative Political Ads
Associated Press
By JIM KUHNHENN - So far this campaign, the political parties have exposed voters to nearly $160 million in ads attackingcongressional candidates. How much spent painting a positive image? About $17 million. That's nearly $1 of nice for every $10 of nasty.
The message ingrained in such a disparity in numbers: Don't vote for a candidate; vote against the opponent. Negative ads are the coin of the realm in politics. With one week left in the campaign, voters will continue to be bombarded on television, in the mail and over the phone as political strategists make their closing arguments to a shrinking pool of those who haven't made up their minds.
Under the terms of a 2002 campaign finance law, these messages are independent expenditures that the parties can undertake only if they do not coordinate with the candidates they are seeking to help. This type of spending by the parties on congressional campaigns is 54 percent higher than it was for the same period in the 2004 campaign season, according to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission.
It is also decidedly more negative. In 2004, the parties spent about $6 on ads in favor of congressional candidates for every $5 spent opposing candidates.
At this point, Republicans have spent $87.5 million to oppose candidates and Democrats have spent $72.6 million. But the edge on negativity, according to independent analyses of the ads, goes to the GOP.
Republican use of fearmongering in political ads
Video produced by Dove soap: the construction of false beauty
Mental Engineering PBS show analyzing advertising
An Ad Age chart for the costs of ads on prime time shows.
Article in The Nation: The Google/YouTube relationship as an advertising phenomenon
NEW YORK — To hype the fall TV season, CBS plastered pictures of its shows' stars on postage stamps and across the insides of elevator doors. It laser-coated its eye logo on more than 35 million eggs, and carved the name of a new program, Jericho, into a 40-acre Kansas cornfield.
CBS added those blips to the marketing storm sweeping the nation. Advertising is intruding on more previously untouched corners of life, including novels, hotel shower curtains, school buses and the bellies of pregnant women. Golfer Fred Couples is often followed around the course by a gaggle of woman paid to wear the name Bridgestone Golf, his sponsor.
It's advertising ad nauseam. And it's getting worse.
PHOTOS: Ads are everywhere
"I've never seen things changing as much as they are now," says Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of trade magazine Advertising Age and a 40-plus-year observer of marketing. "Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass."
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