Visual Evaluation and Comparison: Analyzing the Advertisement Industry

Adam Reuss

English 151

Hiland

02/13/05

Visual Evaluation and Comparison: Analyzing the Advertisement Industry

The main goal of advertising is to motivate or persuade people to buy a particular product or service, and among the media used to accomplish this are; radio, television, newspapers, and most importantly, magazines. In order for advertisements to successfully portray a product, they must be directed to the appropriate intended audience. In Rolling Stone and YM magazine, there are two advertisements that display a very attractive person gazing and posing to the viewer. In advertising, we are bombarded by images that have become standard in defining beauty and what is acceptable, and we often don’t realize it. In both of the ads, the person is gazing at the viewer with a look that says “this is the phone for the cool people”. Both ads are for mobile service technology, and each ad is very different from the other. The use of celebrities in advertising is very common. When advertisers choose a spokesperson to promote their product, they use three basic categories of source attributes, which include: appearance, target audience, and slogans. Both of these ads are equally effective in their own unique way. It is important to analyze the effectiveness of these celebrities in advertising in order to gain a better understanding of spokesperson endorsements.

The first ad in Rolling Stone is for Boost mobile, a cell phone service connected with Motorola who appeals to the urban youth. In the ad, a very well known man poses with the cellular phone in his hand as he smirks at the viewer. The popular man is rap star Ludacris, a clear spokesperson for the target audience. Ludacris is in a profile pose with all of his jewelry that shines throughout the black background. The phone is also shining very brightly to stand in with the “bling” to make it seem as if the phone is in the same high class as the jewelry that Ludacris proudly wears. Motorola uses a plain black background with two simple images; Ludacris using the phone and the phone itself. On the second image of the phone, there is a mirror-like reflection of the phone to make it seem illuminating to the viewer. The text on the advertisement says in a huge font “send hot beats to your phone” and then in a smaller, yet still large font “before you turn the page.” This intrigues the magazine reader, because it is telling them to get these sweet ring tones before they turn the page. In the comfort of their own surroundings, whoever is reading this advertisement can order a ring tone by reading the smaller font below the huge white text.

In the second ad, YM has offered its own mobile service an “extreme makeover.” The girl portrayed in this is an animated girl holding a red ymobile phone on the bottom of the ad. There are graphics on the bottom of the ad surrounding the red cellular phone that display some of the options that the consumer can purchase such as: college graphics, accessories, screen savers, games, etc. All throughout the rest of the ad is text with some graphics and a very colorful background. The text is simply listing the new improvements to the ymobile device. It lists the new ring tones, how easy the improvements are, the new content, and much more. The logo is the bullet for each one of these topics on the list to remind the viewer exactly what and whose product they are buying. On the right side of the ad, there is a list of all of the songs that the viewer can download and have as their ring tone. The background is very colorful, easily targeting a young teenage girl who probably is in the middle to upper middle class who could afford all of these accessories to go along with their phone. The background color is a mixture of dark and light purple with a light green blotted on random places. This almost makes

the ad look like a cartoon in a way and not trying to sell something.

Advertising has come to conform to a strict set of codes about beauty. A product isn’t even necessary in an ad and sometimes isn’t included. Advertisers and viewers are so heavily reliant on images that define for us a certain “normal look,” that we don’t even seek to find out about the product. Advertisements are communicators of culturally defined concepts such as success, love, sexuality, popularity, and normalcy. The body image is mainly being shown