ADVERTISING
WHAT IS IT?
-
ADVERTISING
Definitions...
1 - “The act of drawing the public's attention to
something”
= < ad + vertere
ADVERTISING
2 - “attempts to persuade its audience to purchase
a good or a service”
ADVERTISING
3- “A form of communication”
ADVERTISING
4 - “Advertising is the structured and composed
nonpersonal communication of information,
usually paid for and usually persuasive in
nature, about products (goods, services, and
ideas) by identified sponsors through various
media.”
ADVERTISING
5 - “a true mirror of life, a sort of fossil history
from which the future chronicler, if all other
historical monuments were to be lost, might fully
and graphically rewrite the history of our time.”
(Harpers' Weekly, 1910s)
ADVERTISING
6- “Advertising is 'capitalist realism'...capitalism’s
way of saying ‘I love you’ to itself.”
(Michael Schudson,
The Uneasy Persuasion, 1984)
Which of these would you call
advertisements and which not?
(A. Goddard, The Language of Advertising)
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...
Examples...


What is being addressed – a product, an idea,
an image?
Who is being addressed?Who are the
addressees? Who are the receivers?
COME AS YOU ARE
VIENI A SCOPRIRCI
SIAMO QUI PER TUTTI
COSI’ COME SEI
Categories of ads

Medium

Product

Technique

Consumer

Context
Text + Context
Context includes...

substance
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage

Situation
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage

Situation

Co-text
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage

Situation

Co-text

Intertext
Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage

Situation

Co-text

Intertext

Participants
(verbal) Text + Context
Context includes...

Substance

Music and pictures

Paralanguage

Situation

Co-text

Intertext

Participants

Function
QUESTIONS
- How does the ad attract attention?
- Does it aim to persuade new customers or to
make them switch brands?
- Where does it appear?
- Does it offer a reason why?
- Does it refer to other discourses?
- Is it oriented to emotions? Does it play on fear?
- Does a celebrity provide an endorsement?
Why?
- What group does it reach?
Exercise...




Try to describe the ads by identifying the
features of context which are peculiar to them
Schweppes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tc7ZB4ywU
I
Old spice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgU
E
Usain Bolt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZcKY9dux6
Q