How does what I see, read, and hear influence me.

5 weeks ago, I was launched into my first project in Humanities, The Medium is the Message, the point of this project was to make an advertisement for a real-world business, in this case, our business was Sweet as Treats, formerly known as Zücker. My group for this project was composed of Myself, Tom, Hannah, Kiera, Francis, and Sofia, we approached the business with a call on the first day, and scheduled our meeting for 4 o’clock on Wednesday, but eventually, is was rescheduled to 3 o’clock on Sunday. This meeting gave us the style, Color, and target audience for the ad. At this point I made my first draft, which can be seen down below

Immediately after, Ms. Maxwell gave me some critique, and I removed the crossbar.

Which resulted in this:

Then I asked Mr. C about the Little Buddies, and the logo that Caroline said that she would send us, and he put it on a group chat, I then added the Logo in the blank space on the pennant, and added the little buddies, which made this monstrosity:

Then I got some seriously major critique from Mr. C, and I added mountains, moved the pennant and changed the background

After that, I was recommended to zoom in on the image, which I did, and that became my final ad.

You can see it all in the slideshow below.

Afterwards, Tom was chosen to make the final ad, as it had the “Deep Cove Feel”

This was it.

15/17 it was relatively good, but I still think that Tom should’ve changed the colour of text in the speech bubbles from a green-blue gradient, to black, so that is pops out more.

Of Course, the Ad wasn’t the only thing we did in this class, we also did a Historical Media Analysis.

I analyzed a Bundeswehr recruitment poster, which was from the time when the Bundeswehr had 6 fletcher class destroyers, it featured a tank, a Z1 class destroyer as well as a futuristic looking plane, each of these had a coloured contrail, and it was all on a light blue background. The ad featured the text Freiden, Freiheit, Sicherheit, as well as the Bundeswehr logo. The analyzed this media specifically, not because I was assigned it, but out of choice, I had seen some other Bundeswaffe, Bundesmarine, as well as Bundesheer recruiting posters, however, the “Freiden, Freiheit, Sicherheit” ad worked as intended and drew my eyes in, this was almost certainly made for West Germans,  who are eligible to join the military, as it implies that they can provide Freedom, Safety, and Security.

We also analyzed countless other ads and media, and did such things as how some aren’t appropriate in modern society, as well as a advertising concept workbook, which in my opinion was fun.

So? How does this answer the driving question?

Well, it helps to know what we did first, in this case, we did everything illustrated above, but, I know that media uses many strategies, such as weasel words (Saying something, but demonstrating something different) or Unfinished Claims e.g. 10 time more absorbent, but what is it more absorbent than? The media uses half truths and deception to lure people in to buying a product after stealing their attention with such things as contrast and bright colours. I believe that I learned a lot about advertising and media in this project, and that media it actively trying to influence you, and on me, it works.

Thank you for reading this blog post