I have chosen to write about 4 different adverts, these are the Sony Ericsson W800i mobile phone, Witch face wash, Seeds Of Change pasta sauce and an NHS stop smoking advert. I feel that all of my adverts are very eye-catching but all in their own way. In the Witch advert, the first thing that strikes your attention is the writing, it stands out on this page because it is bold and it is a white text on a green background. You also read on in the writing because as you go down the page the writing gets bigger and the writing then leads you onto the picture of the woman at the bottom of the page.
Once you have looked at the woman’s face you are intrigued as to what she is doing and which product she is selling. Because the picture of the woman is only of her face you automatically think the advert is selling a face product, but which one? On the other hand, the NHS advert it is the picture that arrests your attention first, this is because they use very strong graphics and the picture takes up almost the whole page.
I think the picture of the heart makes you want to read the writing at the side of the page as you are wondering what a dead heart is doing on the page as you read your magazine as it isn’t exactly normal! The first thing that catches your eye in the Sony advert is also the graphics, you tend to look at the picture of the floating phone first but this picture also leads you on to look at the wires which are attached to the phone. When you first look at the wires they just look like wires which have been randomly placed but when you look closer you can see that there is a picture inside the wires.
This picture is of a man playing the guitar; I think this is very clever as the guitar relates to the music available on the phone. Although all of my things that arrest your attention first in my other adverts are either pictures or words, in the Seeds Of Change advert it is a mixture of both. I feel it is a combination of both the background and the writing; this is because they both blend in with each other but you still read the writing as it is a different colour from the background.
You wouldn’t guess that the advert was for pasta sauce until you saw the jar of sauce, the background is somewhat psychedelic and that is the reason why you want to look at this advert rather than any others in the magazine. In all of my adverts the visuals interact with the words but some more than others. In the Witch advert the writing infers an invigorating experience when it says “Tinglier than a snowball in the face”, this experience is also what the woman is projecting.
The company’s slogan is “Pure Skin Refreshment” which also links to the picture of the woman as she also looks like she is healthy looking and refreshed. She also looks rather pleased in the picture so this refers to the writing because I think you would have a pleased look on your face if you would have just met a ‘dashing ski instructor’ and maybe she would like a relationship which is why she looks so happy. So at the end of the advert you are left to guess whether she has fallen for the ski instructor or she is just using Witch foaming face wash to make her have such a happy expression on her face.
The picture in the NHS advert looks like a healthy heart (of a non-smoker? ) wrapped in other people’s smoke not necessarily wanting to be but it shows you the smokers influence on someone else’s healthy heart. This relates to the writing because the writing is about second hand smoke. But also in the advert it says “Avoid other people’s smoke like your life depends on it… Because it does”, this is saying that you could die from second hand smoke and the picture is of a healthy heart of a non-smoker who has died. The whole advert is saying that not just smokers die.
At the top of the page on the Sony advert the very first piece of writing says “The Soundtrack to you Life”, notice how the words ‘soundtrack’ and ‘life’ have capital letters on them, this is to draw and focus your attention on these two words and make you think of them when reading the entire advert. In addition, “The Soundtrack to your Life” relates to the phone having music on it, but without even reading the description of the phone you know that with this new phone you can listen to music, which is what they set out to do as they know read are more inclined to read the bigger writing rather than the small print.
“The Soundtrack to your Life” also implies that all you need in your life is one of these phones and finally the person (made from wires) is playing a guitar and is wired up to the phone, this shows that the phone produces music and he also looks like he is enjoying himself(as you could do with the phone). In the Seeds Of Change advert, the majority of the writing on the page is green, green is also a colour you would associate with basil and with organic products (they are ‘green’, good for the environment and for you).
In the advert it also says “100% organic” which refers to the product but there are people naked lying on basil, this makes you think that everything is 100% pure and natural; the people also look like angels which suggests to you that the food is very angelic and good for you, as well as maybe making you feel like an angel for buying/eating it because it is good to buy it and because it is good for you. The picture of the clock (set at 3am) also relates the writing where it says “picking basil at 3am” and “a really good alarm clock”.
All of my adverts have quite a lot of words in them; the Sony and the Witch advert have around 70 words in them whereas the seeds of change and the NHS advert have approximately 50 words. But just because an advert has more words in it, it doesn’t mean it is more or less effective in my opinion. And the adverts with more words tend to not have as many big words in them and of course I feel the big words are more effective because it is what you look at first.
In the Sony advert I don’t think you have to look at any of the words to work out what it is selling but as soon as the read the words at the top of the page “The Soundtrack to your Life… THE W800i WALKMAN PHONE” you know that it is a phone that can hold music so I do not think you need to read on. From the picture in the NHS advert you know that it is maybe telling you about heart disease and when you look even closer and see the smoke you think that it’s telling you something about the links between smoking and heart disease.
But it’s not until you read the text on the left hand side that you find out that it is actually about second hand smoke, and even then you need to read on to the smaller text to see that it is telling you about how second hand smoke can cause heart attacks. So yes I think you definitely have to read on in this advert. In the Witch advert, as soon as you see the product in the top left corner and the woman in the bottom right corner I don’t think you need to read on as you know what the page is advertising unless you would like to read the text and find out how invigorating and refreshing the product is.
