Exploring Culture: The Influence of Ads
Purpose of Exercise: This exercise works well with an Ad-buster paper or project, or other cultural analysis/textual essay. It considers visual rhetoric, arrangement, and the images/text that motivates audiences in certain ways. Students examine the influence of the various media around them through freewriting analysis, and also practice describing the visual rhetoric of a ‘text’ as they analyze it.
Description: Students evaluate and freewrite about a particular advertisement from a magazine. Bring a selection of magazine ads or features to the class, or ask students to come prepared with some of their own.
Suggested Time: 20 minutes to a full class period
Procedure: Choose one ad to project on the overhead. Remind students that real people are inventing (have invented) these ads with a target audience in mind.
Ask the class questions like:
"What is the ad selling?"
"What kind of visual stimulation are they using?"
"Who is the audience?"
“What lifestyle does the ad sell or promote?”
"What elements are emphasized and what is the relationship between the parts of the ad?"
"Where do your eyes travel to first? Is that important?"
"What parts of the ad do rhetorical work?"
"What does the ad invite you to imagine might result if you...buy the dress, drink the Bacardi, etc.? Do you become cool?"
"Are there any ethical consequences we should consider here?"
“What type of magazine might this ad appear in?”
Prod the class to begin thinking critically about how the ad tries to work on a potential market demographic. When you feel they have the idea, pass out a selection of ads and ask students to choose one from among them. If you asked them to bring their own magazine, ask them to select their favorite ad. Forming groups of 2-3 students is fine, if you don’t have enough ads to go around.
Allow them to study the ads while you explain the purpose of the exercise. Remind them to consider what you’ve talked about as a class on the first ad, and apply these same questions to their own ad. You may write or project your key questions on the board.
Allow the class about 5-10 minutes to freewrite on all the rhetorical elements that they pick up from the ad, considering the function of each element in promoting a sale, and reaching a demographic. Tell them to feel free to diverge into some other area that the ad stimulates.
Afterwards, ask the students to share their analyses and the discoveries they made. How does that make you fell about these companies? What about persuasive writing? How much are we responsible for our own critical thinking? And can we blame the companies for capitalizing off our absence of critique?
Did anyone diverge? (Let them read aloud) Anyone get any great ideas about something you’d like to write about?
If you use a platform like Twitter, you might challenge students to post screenshots throughout the week of ads which exemplify the elements you discussed in class.