For this assignment, you will select Greenwashed ad (a still image add: NO COMMERCIALS). Your reading of the assigned essays for this unit, our class discussion and activities, and your own personal experience with advertising will aid you in this assignment.
As Jean Kilbourne notes in her article “’In Your Face . . . All Over the Place’: Advertising Is Our Environment,” advertising serves as a form of mediation that not only presents us with products and information, but also influences our behavior, our beliefs, and our choices. For this assignment, you will work to understand the messages advertisements send by analyzing an advertisement of your choice, keeping in mind the ploys that advertisers use to manipulate and exploit consumers. The important question here, as Kilbourne says, is not ‘Does this ad sell the product?,’ but rather ‘What else does this ad sell?’.
For this assignment, you will select Greenwashed ad (a still image add: NO COMMERCIALS). Your reading of the assigned essays for this unit, our class discussion and activities, and your own personal experience with advertising will aid you in this assignment.
You must use two outside sources (Kim S. can be one)
To Write Your Essay:
1. Be sure to describe the advertisement for your audience before you analyze it. Assume, here, that your audience is not looking at the ad and needs to know what it looks like, what it says, what it consists of, and where you found it.
2. Make an argument about what message or messages you think the artifact is sending its audience. Based on your analysis of the graphics, the language, and the target audience, what do you think the ad is selling besides the product? Is it selling the American Dream, a carefree lifestyle, popularity, social status, sex appeal, etc.?
3. To support your argument, tell your audience how the ad is sending these messages. What tactics are the creators of the ad using to send these messages? How do the visual images, the text, the arrangement, etc. help send a particular message?
4. Discuss the implications of the messages the ad sends. How might the messages affect the audience’s beliefs or actions? What do such messages tell us about Americans’ attitudes, values, desires, fears? For example, what might be the result of college students encountering an advertisement for a university that makes it look like one big party and fails to mention the academic side of college? What might be the result of an ad that sends the message that women cannot be successful in both their careers and their personal relationships?
Grading Criteria:
A strong essay will…
· Contain a brief introductory description of the ad.
· Contain a clear, well-supported argument about what messages the ad sends and how it sends that message.
· Discuss the effects of this message on the target audience.
· Include an engaging and thoughtful introduction and conclusion.
· Progress logically and smoothly with appropriate transitions indicating connections between ideas.
· Make appropriate use of sentence structure, word choice, grammar, spelling, and punctuation that enables rather than hinders clear and effective communication.
· Show significant revision of ideas, language, and style from first to final draft.
· Meet the minimum page requirement of 3-4 double-spaced pages.
· MLA format
· Two outside source
Attachments