Analyzing an Advertisement

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Analyzing an Advertisement

Advertising is one of the world's foremost businesses. Companies use

this media to communicate their ideas, products and messages to the

general public. This is one type of advert, which is used to draw

people to donate to a cause. It is called an appeal.

This appeal is from Help The Aged, a fairly large charity, dedicated

to helping the older and less able people. This particular advert is

for the SeniorLink pendant, a small telephone pendant that helps

people when they get into trouble where they can't reach the phone,

because they are immobilised.

I will analyse this form of the appeal and elaborate the techniques

and tricks used to convince people to part with their money.

This form of the appeal is a leaflet. Leaflets can be specially

designed to appeal to a particular audience or aspect of society; this

leaflet is aimed at anyone who has money. The purpose of it is to

convince these people that their product is: reliable; fast acting;

state-of-the-art; easy-to-use and most of all, lifesaving. If it

succeeds than Help The Aged will get their reward of a donation that,

in theory, should then be spent on the pensioners.

The advert uses several conventions to convey their tricks and tactics

to the target audience. I will elaborate these as I examine the

advert.

On the first part of the leaflet (The 'Front') we see Vera alive and

well, along with a caption to the picture that, arguably, could be

seen as the title to the leaflet.

The photograph of Vera depicts her as smiling, cheerful and in good

health. From this, empathy is drawn from the audience, giving the

advert a good note from...

... middle of paper ...

... everything is in the right

place, and the things that should stand out do stand out. At every

step of the way they have used persuasive writing, showing that:

Vera survived because of the pendant,

The pendant is efficient and will always work,

Pensioners without a pendant die frequently,

Preventing the deaths is easy: donate money.

On a personal level I wasn't convinced, I saw the IT tricks and

psychological hints as insults, and saw right through them. Perhaps

I'm wrong, and I just am not human enough to see that they really are

doing good in the world.

But, most people would or should give money as it is fairly well

thought through and has pretty shocking facts, if they're true.

I have learned that advertising is a crooked business and has many

ways of persuasion. It does take a lot of thought.

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