Analysis of advertisements techniques

Résumé du document

Advertisers use every possible means and techniques to sell all kinds of products, from the cheapest to the most expensive ones, from the most to the least useful. When making an advertisement they make sure that their product will be attractive, desirable, and that it will create the need to purchase it. Among the techniques they use we find glamor, they do not focus only on the products and their use; they try sell a lifestyle and the idea of self improvement. They also sell products which exchange value is higher than their use value using all these techniques. It will be worth trying to shed light on all these techniques and concepts in order to understand the way they are used to make consumers spend their money on specific products, and subsequently apply these concepts to interpret some particular ads.

Extraits

[...] The way the product is perceived depends on the consumer culture. If we consider the same example (diamond versus water) in an indigenous tribe living in the middle of a desert, it is clear that they won't have the same perception concerning these two products. Because of the scarcity of water, they will be willing to pay more on water than on diamonds. Diamonds for this particular tribe do not have the same connotation as in modern societies, they will probably be more interested in the use value, and the notion of luxury is definitely not the same as in a modern societies. [...]

[...] In extra-diegetic gaze, the person depicted in the picture looks directly at the spectator and gives a king of power. Now let us analyze some advertisements based on all these different concepts, and using watches as a linking theme. There are different types of watches targeting different types of consumers. The meanings assigned to each watch are directly related to these specific consumers. Some of them make consumers look cool; others make them look sexy or rich, etc. These watches' exchange value is higher than their use value. [...]

[...] In today's advertisements we find both male and female models and celebrities equally used to create desire, fantasy and envy, and make viewers want to look like them. A striking example could be advertisements for weight loss. Advertisers use extremely well shaped, beautiful and sexy women to advertise drugs to loose wait or fitness centers. By doing so, they try first to catch the attention of women by showing them an ideal shape, the one that will make them desirable and sexy. [...]

[...] It is obvious that the advertising techniques used in our century are different from the ones used in the past. The advertisement in appendix 5 emphasizes this difference. This old advertisement is heavily based on text. As you can see in appendix the name of the brand is accompanied by different slogans. Here we can easily identify two of them: "Accurate to the second" and a "gift that lasts a lifetime". This advertisement focuses on the use value of the watch. It says that the watch is accurate, which is an important feature of watches. [...]

[...] Let us consider an advertisement showing a man and a woman having fun, looking in love, while gambling in a specific casino. Happiness, fun and love are automatically associated with going to that casino. This can be considered as a glamorous and attractive lifestyle by some people. Gaze is another important tool used by advertisers. It can emphasize the notion of desire and glamour; it can convey the notion of power, and many other messages depending on its use. Sturken and Cartwright (2004) define gaze as term used to describe acts of looking caught up in dynamics of desire," (p. [...]