What is advertisement? “In pursuing a mission to make manifest the most deeply felt needs of the broadest number of people, and thereby attempt to hold them in thrall, advertisements take on the status of fascinating cultural documents.” (Advertising and popular culture, 1996, p.167). Advertising is a kind of communication channel. Sometimes, different people can get different messages from the advertisements, with one’s stance, own experiences or other cultural differences. This time, I’d like to compare the 2 print advertisements that I chose: Dr. Dominic and Lacoste.
In the advertisement of Dr. Dominic, it shows a new product of a famous skin care brand. In order to emphasis the product’s characteristic, which is with high moisture, the product in the ad. is coming with some special effect with water, giving a feeling for readers that after using the product, the face will become moisturized. Below the picture, there are text that introducing the features of the product. The reading path for this ad. will first go to the product itself, then move downward to highlighted feature with a bigger font size, then at last the details information at the bottom. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the layout of this ad. is polarized “top and bottom” as mentioned by Kress (1988, p.193). So, the product is what described as Ideal and the text below as Real.
Regarding the advertisement of Lacoste, this is a promotion ad. for its brand new shoes collection. Instead of having ad text, this ad is dominated by the images of 2 pairs of lady legs. There is no other text in the ad. except the shop name with logo on the top right corner and the collection name at the bottom. Without the text describing what products they are selling, what are the characteristics of the products, this ad. can still carryout the brand image of with non-verbal communication and sending the message to their target audience. This gives readers more rooms for imagination. The image and the way to express the photo are important element on getting people involved. There is no such thing as a correct or incorrect interpretation of an ad. (Fowles, 1996). The sensitivity of people, or we can simply say the emption of people will be affected on how the advertisers present their services or products.
And thus, I think both advertisements are successful in arousing people’s attention to their products.
Fowles, Jill, 1996, “Deciphering advertisements”, Advertising and popular culture, London: Sage, p.167-183
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, “Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout”, in Bell, Allen & Garrett, Peter (eds.) 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, Chapter 7, p.186-219
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