Paper Two:
Contextual Analysis
Assignment:
Interpret and analyze an advertisement from a magazine in order to explain how
the advertisement affects its target audience
Audience:
A group of your peers in a basic college level advertising course
Sources:
A single advertisement from a recent magazine will serve as our main source.
You may not use an advertisement from the internet.
Jack Solomon’s “Masters of Desire: The culture of American Advertising” will
also provide context.
Length:
3-5 Pages, Double-Spaced, 1 Inch Margins, Times New Roman Font, Stapled,
MLA paper formatting
Citation:
MLA Style
Grading:
20%
Due Date:
Peer Review: October 9, 2014
Final: October 16, 2014
Purpose
In this paper, you will analyze a current magazine advertisement in order to determine what
socio-cultural (historical, economic, etc) assumptions underlie the advertisement and what the
advertiser who created it is trying to achieve with it. You will analyze the visual rhetoric of the
advertisement, trying to determine how advertisers are attempting to sell their product.
Advertisers are essentially social scientists; they make it their business to understand the ways
that people interpret pictures, commodities, ideas, moods, attitudes, philosophies, ideologies, and
symbols. This assignment will help you to understand how the larger socio-cultural context,
shapes communication and how a communicative response, in turn, shapes the context.
Writing the Analysis
Your job will be to examine how a particular advertiser is influencing a particular demographic
group (or multiple ones). Things to consider: what is the advertisement’s effect on the target
audience? Whom does it target? What assumption does the advertisement make about its target
group and American culture as a whole? What value systems do the advertisers utilize or
manipulate? What symbols are used in the advertisement to manipulate consumers? It is not
necessary to answer all of these questions nor is this an all-encompassing list. Feel free to ask
other questions that explore the form of the advertisement and the intent of its creators.
Solomon’s ideas should help, but do not let them limit you.
Introduction
Briefly introduce the issues raised by Solomon that relate to the advertisement that will be
discussed in the paper. (Remember you should use Solomon’s theories as much or as little as
you feel necessary. You may choose to not use Solomon at all.) Identify the advertisement you
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will be analyzing; this includes identifying the periodical from which this advertisement comes.
Present your thesis, which should include the specific elements that you will discuss; these
elements should include your notion of the values and ideas the advertiser is attempting to
manipulate.
Body
You need a body section that identifies the target audience, noting and analyzing everything in
the advertisement that reveals who the target audience is. Consider everything: race, class,
socio-economic status, interests, profession, and familial relationships. You cannot say anything
that you cannot prove from the actual advertisement itself.
In each of the other body sections of this paper, you should pick a specific value, belief, fear, or
desire that the advertisers are attempting to manipulate; these elements will be your sub claims.
You should consider the advertiser’s goals or intentions in creating this specific advertisement.
Keep asking yourself, “what values or ideas are they trying to sell me in addition to their product
or service?” Pay attention to color, font, object placement, and size, but remember that while
these items are rhetorical features, they will not form sub claims in and of themselves. For
example, if I argue that the advertisers write the words “Dare to Excite” in red font in a clothing
advertisement, I cannot spend an entire body section discussing why the color red is important.
However, I can discuss, in a body section that focuses on their attempt to manipulate women’s
desire to be sexy, how the color red helps to promote this desire
If you cannot prove a claim with abundant specific evidence from the text, you cannot make that
claim. Be sure to offer analysis of your evidence. Nothing is in the advertisement by accident. .
Your body sections and analysis should examine both the images and text of the advertisement.
Also, remember your critical topic sentences, concluding sentences, and transitions. Again, you
have to be able to point to evidence from the advertisement that supports every claim that you
make.
Conclusion
Reflect on your thesis. You may reflect on the usefulness of Solomon’s theory as a basis for
interpreting and understanding the advertisement. (This depends on the degree to which you use
Solomon.) Consider examining the advertisement as reflective of larger trends in American
advertising in general. Provide suggestions and questions for further research.
*Make sure that you cite all borrowed material.
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