How does what we see, hear, and read influence us? This has been the question that we have been trying to answer from the start. To answer this question we have really started diving into the world of advertising by making our own advertisements. For this project me and my group (Cameron, Ronan, Kate, Julia, and Luca) were teamed up with a local business to create our own ads. The goal of this project is to build our understanding of media and messaging so we can answer our driving question.
This slideshow shows all of the drafts that I had to construct and revise to get to my finished product. The main things that changed a lot throughout this ad was the layout and the photos. With every draft something was changed, no matter how small, to make it closer to what our business wanted.
Once my group had our first group advertisement done we got on a zoom call with Mr.Hepburn and got some amazing, specific feedback. He gave us a list of things that we could do to improve our advertisement. Some of the things on this list included marketing the background more simple, getting rid of the clear boxes, and changing out slogan to make it more catchy.
Another important thing that we did in this project was the historical media perspective. In this we had to look back at some advertisements from the past so we could learn some of their techniques and so we could see how ads have changed. By seeing what techniques have changed and what have stayed the same we can know what works and what doesn’t.
This has been a really fun project that has taught me a lot about media around us and how it influences us. Throughout this project I did really well with working with my team (even if I did get a bit bossy sometimes) and taking feedback to make my ads the best that I could. Even though I did well with all that, I still feel like I could have done a lot better if my group and I had worked a bit harder at getting stuff done early and not having to rush it.
So, how does what we see, hear, and read influence us? It influences us by using a number of little tricks. All these tricks, like using pathos, logos, and ethos or using a celebrity, are used to make you think about the product, even if you don’t realize it. It’s like when you hear a little jingle/song about a product and it gets stuck in your head forever. All these things influence us to buy the product, without necessarily realizing it.