Compare a 2002 Mercedes Benz advert with a 1959 General Motors advert.

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Textual analysis – comparing a historical text with a modern text.

Compare a 2002 Mercedes Benz advert with a 1959 General Motors advert

The MB (Mercedes Benz) advert is very bland and plain, with no picture of the car at all. The basis of the advert is trust in the quality of the MB advert. Contrastingly, The GM (General Motors) advert is dominated by a large painting of the GM car.

The MB brand has an image of quality and longevity in its cars. MB don’t need to heighten their image in society so they can use abstract adverts that will boost sales more than they will increase the status of the MB brand.  However, GM had not as strong a brand as MB does now. Therefore it had to use text such as “nothing outside your home returns so much in pleasure, comfort and convenience as a new General Motors car.” This was used to attract more people to the car. The GM car targets the B, C1 and C2 market. MB adverts usually target the socio economic groups A, B and C1, however this advert targets the same audience as the GM advert (B, C1 and C2.) This is because it is advertising second-hand MB’s that people outside of MB’s usual target audience.

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The light silver that is used in the Mercedes advert is the stereotypical colour of a MB. This helps the audience to recognise this as a MB advert before they see the small MB logo. The logo is placed in the bottom right hand corner of the advert. This is a powerful position for a logo because readers will see it as they turn the page. Differently, there is no specific logo of GM used in the GM advert apart from the small, hard to see logo on the painting of the car. This entices the reader to read ...

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