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The Medium IS The Message!!!

I have learnt all about the media, what kind of message it has, can have, and how to put that message out there. In this blog post I will tell you a little bit about the message.

In advertising, companies have different message that are usually put in images.

Images of advertising are all around us, and sometimes we don’t even notice it.
Like on the bus, there are ads all on the front of the bus, in the bus, even at the bus stop! Most people when taking the bus might be waiting for a while, so that’s actually a great place for an ad. When the bus comes, they see another ad, and they might associate that ad with the relief of the bus coming.

I don’t live in the city, but there are so many opportunities for advertising there. Like on billboards, signs, buildings, buses, sky trains and a whole lot if other things. Whenever I go into a city, I see tons of advertisements everywhere.

Another place to see ads, and the biggest one of all, THE INTERNET! The internet has ads absolutely everywhere. I could open any app I have and probably see an ad. Just off the top of my head, ads could pop up on, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, google, any website, mini phone games, and thats just off the top of my head. Usually for websites it’s usually pop up ads that are at the bottom of the screen. But on YouTube and mini games, the ads are usually full screen and you can’t click out of them. There was this one ad for a Google HomePod that I saw. That was very interesting. The ad had a young lady dancing after what looked like a hard day. She got home, asked the google HomePod to play her a song, and then she was happy again. This ad was very interesting because it got me thinking about target audiences.
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Target audiences are a huge part of advertising. In this particular ad for the HomePod, I think the target audience was probably, people who work hard, or maybe young adults. When thinking about target audiences, you really have to think, if I were a different person, would I want to buy this? For example, if there were a ad that popped on YouTube for a new My Little Pony toy, I think the target audience would be girls between the ages of 4-9. Then the little girls who saw this ad would go to their parent and ask to buy the toy.

Another huge part of advertising is Appeals and Techniques. When making an ad they usually have to have a technique or an appeal. For example, if you were trying to sell cookie dough ice cream, a technique you could use could be the ‘we’re different and unique’ claim. This claim would go something like this: “Have you ever tried cookie dough ice cream from a normal store? Well no need! Our cookie dough ice cream is so much better because unlike other companies we make the cookie dough from scratch, buy it!” There are so many different techniques! For appeals if you were trying to sell an old car for example, you would put something like: “This car is just like your old family car!” This claim would make people want to buy this car, if it reminds them of their old family car.

Another thing in advertising is pathos, ethos and logos.

Pathos: Trying to get an emotional response from the viewer.

Logos: Trying to get a logical response out of the viewer.

Ethos: Trying to build trust with the viewer.

 

Companies will use one of these three almost all of the time to try to get a response from the viewer and try to get them to think more about their products.

A task we did while learning about advertising was making ads!

We (PLP 8) went to Oregon for a week, to do work, and to make ads! My group and I, all made ads for a restaurant called Clarke’s! My first ad looked like this, before we even went to the business:

After we went to the restaurant I made another draft:

To me, this draft still wasn’t good, it was a draft, it seemed to be kind of off, I made another one though that I thought was slightly better:

This one was the one that I was okay with, because it matched the colours and all.  that. But I made another one:

This is my latest draft that I am, so far, most proud of.

 

This whole thing adds up to something that’s very important. The last thing I want to talk about is the Driving Question: How does what we hear, read and see influence us? This is a very interesting question because it affects us in every way. For what we hear, it could be a friend talking about a product, or a celebrity or even a random person that you accidentally eavesdropped on. For what we read, it’s everything! When you read about anything that has to do with an item, that influences you! You read about items and other things, and they almost always pop up into your mind at some point or another. Finally, what we see. What we see is probably the most important thing that does influence us because sometimes we don’t even notice. We could be looking at anything and not noticing that that thing is in fact influencing us, the longer we look at something, the more likely we are to remember that thing when something else comes up. For example, if I was at a bus stop and I was staring at the ad that was for sprite. Then later on in that week my friends and I could be going shopping and they’d ask what I wanted for a drink, I might say sprite, because that was sitting in the back of my mind.

 

Thank you for reading my post! Make sure to leave a comment!