The Medium Is The Message Reflection Post

The Medium is the Message

This was our first big PLP project this year, called “The Medium Is The Message”.  The driving question for this project was “how does what we hear, read and see influence us?”  I thought this was an interesting question because these are things we do every day and don’t even realize how these actions can affect our daily life. The things we hear, read and see really influence us and change the way we see the world and how we think about products and people.

The first individual milestone in this project was really what kicked off this project and motivated us.  The question was “how do we analyze a text?”.  In this milestone we studied an Apple product, the HomePod mini.  We talked about who the target audience is, the message of the ad and how Apple is using the message to reach their target audience.

In the second individual milestone we had to choose a piece of historical media and were asked to answer 5 questions about it.  We were also asked to think about what we thought the message was, who was the target audience and how it sends that message.  I chose an old 1961 McDonald’s ad.

 Source: YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMzSjBcWJ7g

I learned that historical media can still to this day be very informative and have character.  The message in this ad is that McDonald’s is a fast and easy solution.  This ad is mostly targeting little kids and people who don’t have a lot of time for cooking.  I think this ad is a pretty goofy, colorful and funny environment. The description of this ad is “if you are looking for a way to scare your kids straight into eating healthy, this original McDonald’s commercial might help” and I agree because in some ways this ad is really creepy. The clown and the goofy voice actors are what make me think this.  I enjoyed seeing this old ad.

The third milestone was a historical advertisement review. We were asked to answer questions about an old advertisement. I chose a 1980’s Nestle Crunch commercial. 

 

Source: YouTube 

We were asked to identify who the target audience is an how the message would impact them.  I enjoyed this assignment because it helped me see and realize just how much advertisements have changed.  For example, in today’s world ads are more focused on healthy and nutritious snacks.  However, in the 1980’s snacks were more based on they made you feel while eating them. In today’s world we know how important healthy eating habits are, so there is a big difference in the ads that we see now.

Along with these individual milestones we were also put in different project groups: North, South, East and West. The first thing we were assigned to do as a group was to a pick a local business and interview them about their business so we could create an ad.  We chose Deep Cove Music. We were asked to each individually create an ad for the business. This was a tough but really fun assignment because we learned how to use a specific design ad called Canva which was extremely helpful. You can pretty much create anything in Canva. Here is my individual ad that I created: 

The next thing we did was an in-person interview with masks because of Covid. We used our notes from the interview to design an ad that would please their customers. We sent a follow up email asking a few more questions regarding the ads that we made for Deep Cove Music. We made 2 specific ads to send to them. The feedback we got was that the ads were really great and that they were going to have a tough time choosing. But Brandon chose ad #2 as his favorite. Brandon is the product manager, teacher, band factory director and sound technician at Deep Cove Music. Here is the ad that Brandon chose: 

I think this project overall was very useful. I have learned that media has a massive impact on any person. I feel media has a fantastic way of communicating any sort of message.