I have looked at the ‘sketchers’ footwear advertisement that I found in a J-17 magazine. The ‘Sketchers’ advertisement is on a plain blue background and takes up a whole double page spread. They have used Britney Spears to advertise the footwear so that people are encouraged to buy them because they think that Britney wears them and they want to be like her. On the first half of the advert there are two pictures of Britney Spears, the ‘Sketchers’ logo, the website address and the words ‘Sketchers USA Footwear’. The website was put on the advert to make people go onto the site and look at more of their shoes. They include these pictures of Britney spears to make the trainers more appealing to the audience to make people try and buy their shoes. On the other half of the advertisement there are two more pictures of Britney Spears.
The product is ‘Sketchers’ footwear, the brand name and company is ‘Sketchers’ and there is no slogan. The logo is the letter ‘S’ in a oval shape. The outline of the logo is white, the inside is red and the letter ‘S’ is white. The target audience is teenage girls and women up to the age of about thirty, possibly a bit older. The purpose of this advert is to encourage people to choose their product of footwear to different product. The advertisement shows three different pairs of trainers to show people the variety they offer, and try to suit the customer’s needs. The advertisement uses red blue and white to show that the product is American, although they are also same colours of the British flag. I think this is effective because the clothes and shoes that Britney is wearing stand out from the dark blue background, as they are light blue, red and white. They have a large font size for the word ‘Sketchers’ the logo is the same size as the word and the word ‘footwear’ is in a slightly smaller font, but it still stands out. The website address and the word ‘USA’ are in smaller font but they still stand out as they are in red and white bold font. This advert appeals mainly to teenagers aged from fifteen to eighteen, as they are people who are more likely to go out and buy ‘fashion’ shoes so they can create an image.
There is no open message but I think the hidden message is “if you buy these shoes then you will be as popular as Britney Spears.” Because of this, a lot of people would want to go out and buy these shoes, as they would identify the shoes as the ones that Britney Spears wears.
Britney is wearing skimpy clothing to show sex appeal, giving out another hidden message, which I think, could be “if you buy these clothes and trainers then you will be more attractive.” They are a valuable promise of lifestyle, showing that the shoes will improve your life.
I think that the advertisement succeeds in its purpose because using someone famous to model a product gets more publicity.
‘Sketchers’ make a wide range of shoes from flip-flops to trainers, ranging from black to bright pink in colour, and all the products have the ‘Sketchers’ logo on them. I chose this advert because it appealed to me. I like the layout and I thought that the colour selection was very effective. I also thought that it stood out from other advertisements. My opinion about advertising is that although they can show what is new on sale and tell you about what’s there is on offer, they can make radio stations boring to listen to, and it makes you sit through them when you are watching television. I also think that magazines have too many advertisements. I took an average magazine and counted forty-two advertisements out of one hundred and thirty pages. I like advertisements if they are bright and interesting but I dislike advertisements that are dull and boring.