Advertisement Summary - MAC Viva Glam

Our advertisement is for MAC cosmetics, and it’s advertising their Viva Glam line.  The ad states that, “Every cent from the sale of Viva Glam lipstick and lip gloss goes toward helping women, men and children living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.”  It features Rihanna, as the main part of the ad, and celebrity endorsement.  She is wearing the makeup, and promoting the company and its charitable acts.  She is the main focus of the ad, and it is apparent because everything is dwarfed by her picture.  This shows that MAC is using sex appeal to sell their products, rather than advertising the charity more.  Although she is naked, it isn’t in a degrading way.   She is naked in a powerful way to show her strength as a human, which ties in with conquering HIV/AIDS. 

Summary

Melissa Rubin analyzed a Coca-Cola ad and discovered that certain components of the ad reflect the American culture at the time. Seeing how the cola company was attuned to the racial intolerance of the 1950's, Rubin describes the people in the ad as "a white male dominated society in which servicemen and veterans were a numerous and prominent presence." The Illustrations of the ad only depict ordinary white men and very few women, but when the company did occasionally decide to feature a person of color, it was always a famous one. The author also describes how the ad is trying to recognize "patriotism inspired by the war" so that it will evoke positive feelings about the product. The company achieves this by featuring working class men in uniform, and creating an economic/ war related appeal.

Advertisements R Us, Coca-Cola ad

1) Rubin's analysis of Coca-Cola ads proves to readers how the words and graphics of the ads can be representative of life in America at the time they were released. She also accurately analyzes how each component of the ad is persuading consumers to try this product. "Coca-Cola was attuned to white society's racial intolerance and chose this ad to depict what they undoubtedly saw as average Americans." Racism was very relevant in the 1950's, something that Rubin describes as being represented through this all white Cola ad. Also Rubin shows how the ad is persuading consumers to buy the product by describing men in uniform and working class citizens enjoying a Coke, and inviting consumers to do the same, on the front of the ad.




2) Rubin incorporates historical context when she identifies the parts of the ad that reflect life in the 1950's. "A white, male-dominated society in which servicemen and veterans were a numerous and prominent presence." Here, the author is describing the 1950's norms in society and what the art in the ad depicts as average American's. As she stated, the artwork mainly features these kinds of men as the ads reflection of society although a few women are dispersed among them.


3) While analyzing this ad, I might try to answer questions such as: what techniques is the ad using to persuade consumers to buy the product? What is the focal point of the ad and how is it used to draw your attention toward the product? How do all components of the ad work together to make the consumer want to buy this product?


4) An ad that reflects the current American values is a cheerios commercial lately. The add features a mixed race girl helping her father to stay heart healthy by feeding him cheerios. This ad represents two different aspects of American values. On one hand, the little girl has parents of two different races, something that is very common today and accepted in our society as a norm. On the other hand, The ad focuses on the little girl helping her father with his health. Health is a subject of many ads and is very prominent in our society as something that people are working towards, especially when it comes to body image. Even fast food ads are trying to appeal to consumers by making their food seem somewhat healthy. The 1950's Cola ad and the recent Cheerios ad are very different and display a different set of values represented by the eras they came from.

Animal cruelty ads - group questions

1.       All the ads were published by different animal protection/animal rights activist groups. These groups include PETA, Freedom for Animals, Mercy for Animals, and the ASPCA. 

2.       They are intended for animal lovers, and consumers in general who might be unaware of the animal cruelty caused by their everyday products.  They’re meant to persuade and raise awareness.

3.       The PETA and ASPCA ads are targeted toward animal lovers; we can tell this because they use terms like “your dog” and personify the dog by telling the reader he is “waiting to love you.” The other two ads are aimed at consumers because they point out specific stores and products that people use every day that sponsor cruelty.  

4.       The purpose of the ads is to make people aware that their actions, even inadvertently, can affect animals.  They’re meant to raise awareness, and get people to stop using certain products/shopping at certain places.

5.       These ads rely on emotional and ethical appeals, by asking the readers if they support animal cruelty.  They show upsetting images of dogs and animals to evoke emotion out of the audience.  It appeals to rationality by giving facts, and stating statistics. 

6.       The ads, as stated before, use upsetting images as well as bold text to grab the reader’s attention and make them listen, and care.  They use phrases like “Do you support cruelty to animals?” to make the reader think.

7.       They all catch the reader’s attention and make the audience think about how their actions/ choices affect animals.  Also, they disturb the readers.

Personal Narrative

Robyn Harvey

10/20/15

Personal Narrative

            The first time I ever really began to like writing was in second grade. Throughout the year my teacher would give us assignments to write our own short stories, and to include our own little hand drawn pictures. Every time she passed back our graded story’s I would get around 100% and a smiley face sticker or words of encouragement like “Great story! Keep up the good work.” I especially loved showing my stories off to my family as they praised me and said how cute it was that I was a little writer. Writing was the perfect way for me to express myself ate such a young age. I loved being able to share a little bit of my life through the stories I created.

In fourth grade we got a little more in depth by writing book predictions, summaries, and things of that nature. These were my specialty because I knew exactly how to write them in order to get a perfect score. Short stories and small book analysis’s became the extent of my writing knowledge. As my time in elementary school progressed, I kept up the good grades, became a very well rounded student, and my writing had never been better!

            By the time 6^th grade rolled around, I was enrolled in all of your average middle school courses. I was a straight “A” student taking accelerated math, although English was one of my easiest subjects. Halfway through the school year I got a call from my history teacher asking if I was interested in joining her advanced placement English and History class. I couldn’t believe I was actually being asked to join the advanced class! Isn’t that only for the really smart kids? At first I was hesitant but then I was really excited to be joining a class where I could reach my full potential. Also, two of my best friends were switching classes at the same time which made it even better.

            The next Monday I walked into my new class with my best friends to see the fresh new faces and curriculum awaiting us. After being welcomed by a few friends and familiar students, we took our assigned seats. My teacher was a loud woman of above average height and dark brown hair that scattered across her forehead in the form of bangs. She began with telling us about our first writing assignment of the semester. We were to write a book report on any of the books she had picked out for us and follow her guidelines in the packet she handed out. As the class went on I learned her teaching methods often included yelling important phrases that she didn’t want us to forget. When she was giving us advice for our book report, she enthusiastically banged a chair on her desk while yelling “Don’t switch tenses!” These kind of crazy things are what make her so memorable to this day.

            After reading the guidelines for our assignment, I was getting a little worried. “I’ve never written anything with this much structure and requirements!” I thought. “There’s no way I’m going to get through this on my own, I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Then she said it. The words that sounded so crazy coming out of my teachers mouth that I wondered if she was going insane. “This is an advanced class so you all should be writing at a college level! Yeah, that’s right, this is a college level paper but I expect you are all capable of achieving the requirements.” I could barely hold what I was thinking inside. “College?! I’ve only gotten half way through the sixth grade and she expects college level work out of me? Now I’m officially doomed.”

            The next week, I finally sat down and attempted to start my paper. I read the example paper over and over but still had no clue how to go about writing my own. As usual I asked my mom for help. She was pretty good at helping me but I still just didn’t understand the main concepts that I needed to summarize in each paragraph. I was never taught how to write a paper like this on my own so figuring out how to collect my thoughts and write them down in the correct manner was a real struggle for me. As I went along the writing process for this paper my mom would walk me through each paragraph and help me express my thoughts neatly. After a painfully long period of working on my book report I finally finished and turned it in hoping for the best.

            A few weeks later my teacher handed back our papers and I could barely look. I shook in my boots as I turned the paper over to see my final scores. A solid “B” not bad! However, I was still disappointed in myself because I knew I could never have done my paper correctly, or gotten such a good grade without my mom’s help. I felt like I was failing myself because I was sustaining such good grades and writing so well for so long and then suddenly I was struggling to support myself.

            As time went on I stopped asking my mom for help with any kind of paper and started doing them on my own hoping that I would learn something. It was difficult and ever since then that year I’ve been getting less than desirable grades on my papers. But I had to learn on my own that writing is just a weakness of mine and I have to work harder at it than some other kids. It is mostly difficult for me to wrap my head around certain formats or structures of specific papers. Expressing my thoughts in specific ways can be a challenge especially when most teachers grade a little bit differently and not all of them are going to like my writing.

            After my sixth grade year I began to really dislike writing mostly because it’s hard to like something I’m not good at. I’m sure most people could say the same! It seems like every year I try to write as well as I can and follow the correct guidelines but very little improvement is made. Despite my growing distaste for writing assignments, I continue to try my best and hope that one day I’ll be able to write as well as I once could.

Mad Men

1) Havrilesky's main insight about Mad Men was that the show so accurately portrayed the disconnect between the American dream and reality, or how Americans are constantly in a state of wanting more. She states that "It strains to capture the transformation of the American dream into a commodity that can be bought and sold." meaning that the American dream has become a commercial item that is sought after rather than a humble life that can be lived.


2) Havrilesky establishes her authority to write about the show by demonstrating her knowledge and insight of every season, episode, and character. Readers can clearly see how much she knows about each character and the underlying message about why they are they way they are. 


3) Readers can relate through emotion, mainly empathy, to the characters that the author describes. When analyzing Betty's character, Havrilesky says "But what else can you expect from someone whose closest relations-- overbearing father, paternal but deceitful husband-- have consistently rewarded her for quietly, obediently playing along with their games?" It is easier to feel bad for this character when seeing her through the empathetic eyes of the author, explaining how these factors of the characters life have shaped her.


4) I have never seen the show Mad Men so I have to trust that the author of this article is giving me correct insight.  After reading the article I now understand the basic premise of the show but the author hasn't really made me want to watch the show, mainly because it doesn't sound very fun and exciting but rather archaic and deceitful.

Analyzing consumer oriented websites

I love watching movies more than anything so I chose to analyze Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. At first glance I liked rotten tomatoes more because on the very first page, names of all the current movies are listed with their ratings as opposed to IMDb which only mentions the top 25 on the cover page. However, after further investigation I found IMDb to be more useful when using the search bar to find a specific movie because it gave many suggestions of other similar movies, as well as a clear review of the movie you just searched. Whereas Rotten tomatoes only gives a brief rating and description without going into as much detail, or other movie suggestions. I found the Rotten tomatoes rating system to be more confusing than helpful. They use certain tomato symbols to portray whether a movie was good or bad but it would have been much more useful if there was some sort of key on the side explaining what each symbol represents. Once again IMDb proves to be the most helpful because they use the classic gold star rating system that is familiar and easy for consumers to understand. To improve the rotten tomatoes website I would add a key to their symbols, and make they're search engine and suggestions more affective. The only thing I would change about IMDb is their front page which could be improved my featuring current movies and their ratings.