Analyse two advertisements, analyse the advertisements in terms of visual presentation, language used in the advertisement, the style and adaptation of their target audience.
In this essay I aim to analyse two advertisements, which I have chosen. I will analyse the advertisements in terms of visual presentation, language used in the advertisement, the style and adaptation of their target audience. Also I aim to give a brief history of how advertising came to be and demonstrate an understanding of how advertisements work.
My brief history is as follows; the first adverts on TV appeared in 1955 when the first commercial network - ITV was launched. In the 1950's commercials were very different than they are today - they were short and repetitive and very innocent not like today's. They relied heavily on Jingles as they stuck in people's minds and reminded them of the product while they were shopping. In the 1960's pocket money started to take because the economy was stabilising of so children had there own money to spend. Advertisers soon picked up on this with adverts aimed specifically at children. Walls ice cream split children into three discrete groups - Adventurers, Hungry horses and little madams and produced an advert for each. The adventurer’s ice creams were shaped like rockets and things and the adverts involved adventure. Hungry horses wanted as much ice cream they could get with their money so the adverts showed large ice creams. Little madams wanted to be awkward and the adverts displayed this with the child getting what they wanted at the end. In the 1960's legislation was passed which meant that advertisers could not tell mothers to buy things or they were bad parents. So the advertisers used words to try to get around this. It also said that kids weren't allowed to pester mum for things. Rowntrees could no longer use there phrase 'don't forget the fruit gums mum' so they changed mum to chum to get around the legislation. This kind of clever word use is still in use toady - Carlsberg probably the best lager in the world. Advertisers also started to use cartoons in their adverts this was for a number of reasons. If children didn't like the presenter of an advert they didn't buy the product so cartoons were used instead of people. They could also get away with more in cartoons - violence, kissing etc. Cartoons still had their limits though as was shown with Kellogg's Tony the Tiger. He started out aggressive with sharp teeth but this didn't work so he was turned into a loveable loser with filed down teeth. In 1965 there was a big leap in advertising when they started using pop songs in the adverts and they also had children imitate the bands, as it was popular. Also toddlers were used for the first time because mums found them cute so they sold products. Another massive leap in 1965 was the introduction of colour television because it meant adverts could present their ideas in a whole new dimension. By the late 70's women were taking more control of there lives and started going to work leaving men at home to do the housework and look after the children. This changed adverts for household products because now they had to be aimed at men as well as women. Advertisers also tried to combine children with comedy to sell to adults by using children with adult voices such as the Frank Bruno/Harry carpenter advert and the Hugh Lawrie/Stephen Fry one. This proved very popular. In the 90's adverts are much less innocent than they were in the beginning with a lot of them having a comedy theme. A lot more subjects are socially acceptable in this time than in the 50's and 60's. However some adverts that used to be allowed have been banned now because of an increased concern in health. Cigarette adverts have been banned because we are now aware that they cause lung cancer. There are a lot more anti adverts such as drugs and drink and there are also adverts that use very hard-core imagery of people suffering to get there message across (Oxfam, NSPCC etc.). Since the beginning of television advertising in 1955, adverts have evolved with the times and are affected by lots of social, cultural and historical events. In fact so much so that adverts from one year can be quite unrecognisable from ones a few years later. So I think that social, cultural and historical events have played a major role in television advertising and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
