This is our final ad my group made!

Check out my group members’ blogs:  Hayden, Caden, Naomi, Christian, and Keenan

The driving question for this project is, “How does what we hear, see, read and view influence the world around us?” Throughout this project we gathered information and other media to help us build knowledge about what techniques are used to attract people/target audience.

From this learning we were then expected to create an ad around what our assigned business wanted. 

I created many drafts before collaborating with my group and received lots of helpful critique from my peers. Throughout the journey I learned about how to finesse my skills and ideas to the best I could do! In the slideshow is the journey of all of my drafts.

The first of step of this project was understanding the task and discovering out our business. Fortunately, I was surprised to discover that my group’s business was Honey’s as I enjoy baking and I especially love doughnuts.

Once we had a FaceTime appointment set up, everyone had to brainstorm questions about what we should ask our business in the conference with them and present it to Mr Hepburn. For some reason I decided to volunteer to present one of the questions to him (I think I was delusional at the time because I am usually the shy one of the group). The reason we had to talk to Mr. Hepburn  is because he works in the advertising industry and has been doing it for many years. After, we had to create questions (more questions woowoo) our group would ask when talking to the business, keeping the feedback from Mr. Hepburn in mind. We also brainstormed ideas in our specific groups, specifically ideas about our ideas for first ad drafts! Then of course we had the meeting, in the meeting (FaceTime call) we found out what exactly Ashifa (Honeys Doughnuts Manager) wanted for their ad. 

Here is a photo of all of the ideas we made!

Then we started creating our first drafts! These are some of my group members first individual drafts!

Mine got cut off because it was the only landscape one so here it is!

After many long hours (maybe like 10 minutes) I was reunited with my first draft. Quite frankly it’s not very good as I didn’t add in all my ideas…. I completely ignored all of them and I went for a minimalist approach (as you can see because there is nothing there). I like the photo but there isn’t a lot to catch your eyes.

Slowly, we all progressed by getting peer critique from each other, and throughout the process we started connecting with each other more. As we went through this we learned more about the apps and how much our iPads can do as well as learning more about advertising. We learned about having the right ratio of visuals, 70, 20, 10 (70% is the picture?, 20% the text and 10% is the logo). We also learned about the KISS abbreviation, which mean Keep It Simple Stupid (I already knew it, haha), Mr. Hepburn told us to keep this in mind well creating our ads.

Then we ended up coming together as a group and creating our final ad to send to the business. We ended up choosing mine and fixed many things, and made sure to bring in everyone’s voice and input so it was a true team effort, before sending it off to Mr. Hepburn for more critique and knowledge. We ended up getting great feedback and I learned more things to not only help make the ad better but to help my photography skills. I improved many things in my ad throughout all of my drafts but here is my first and last draft close together, I think I’ve improved a lot. You can check out the final ad we sent at the top!  

Also, here is the link to Honey’s website: I am the link to the amazing website.

While we waited for our businesses to get back to us we created an advertisement journal with pictures of all of the ads around us. Personally, this project helped me connect to the driving question the best, since when I learned about all of the concepts of advertising like weasel words and things like logos and ethos, I noticed more of who ads were directed towards and how they attracted attention. Instead of me thinking, “That ad is ridiculous,” or “Why is that ad here I see it everywhere?” I now recognized the hard work that went into it and what they were trying to achieve. When it comes to my completed graph I think I could have done better but I never got out so I had to speed take photos when I eventually did. My Graph is right here in this blue writing.

Lastly, one other thing we did was our historical media analysis! The point of this was to pick a historical ad and analyze it. We did this and ended up having to create a document answering multiple important questions when creating an ad. Doing this I realized older ads are much more different then I thought. Most surprisingly they are sexist. For example, in cigarette ads they say it’s a good idea and won’t affect your health, Also, there are some pretty messed up ads like a pig chopping itself up into salami and some other weird ones. My friend cough cough Hannah cough picked a very interesting  one you can check it out on her blog, it’s highly disturbing (press this to go to her blog).

The ad I picked to analyze is actually a video for Pepsi. One of the things they did to attract attention is quite obvious, using Micheal Jackson. Here is the video link!! Micheal Jackson Pepsi Ad (not Coca Cola) . I don’t have a specific website because I knew about this ad before hand so I didn’t search anything up on a browser.

In conclusion I learned a lot more about advertising then I thought I would. I never really knew all the hard work that went into creating a simple photo. Now whenever I see an ad that appeals to me I don’t just wonder about the product, I also think about how long it took to create the ad. Also I never knew about all the fancy terms in advertising, like weasel words. Whenever I see a bounty ad I immediately think, “Those words are weasel words”, for example, Bounty is basically no different then any other brand for paper towels. Another thing I learned is the different terms for what ads try to evoke. Ethos, logos, and pathos, The one that appeals to me most is probably logos because I like having the facts down then reading reviews before buying a product. The reason ethos doesn’t make me want to buy something is because when it evokes emotion in me its usually not something I necessarily need, or it ends up being about crackers or shoes and then I think it’s ridiculous. I enjoyed this project a lot because I got to do photography and I really enjoy that and I got to connect with my group more!

Your at the end now 🙂