The main targets of these two advertisements are aimed towards the smoking audience. The idea of Advert 1 is to get a smoker to stop smoking because of the consequences. On Advert 2, the idea is to shock or to scare the person into giving up the habit of smoking before they are ‘hooked’ on smoking. Another audience it could be aimed at are people with any kind of addiction, e.g. drugs. This advert will make them think about their own addiction and not just about people who smoke.
The main aim of Advert 1 is to make the smoker feel guilty. The advert is about a man (Steve) who is a smoker and has got lung cancer from smoking; he has got to tell his children this and can’t face it. You can tell from the expression on his face that he is devastated at the fact of his news and is guilty because he has to tell his children the awful news. The text is also very important on this advert because it explains the expression on his face, it says: ‘If you think giving up is difficult, try telling your children you have lung cancer’.
This is very important because it means that even though it is hard to give up smoking, it would be even harder to tell your family that you could die. The main idea or aim of Advert 2 is to scare or shock the viewer or to make them face reality about their addiction and hopefully make them give up the habit. This advert of the man with the huge hook through his lip has this scare or shock factor, the advertisement is supposed to scare or shock the viewer, especially a smoker. This advert also has little but effective text, it reads: ‘The average smoker needs over five thousand cigarettes a year’.
I think the key word here is ‘needs’ because it’s saying that the smoker doesn’t have a choice, they have to have these cigarettes, the smoker is ‘hooked’ and the picture shows this. Also the man in the picture is in pain and I think that this is to show the pain of the effects of smoking, if you smoke then eventually you will be caused pain. The psychological impact of both these adverts to me is very good because it shows smokers basically what they are doing to themselves. It shows you how young you can die, with the consequence of damaging or hurting your family, in this case Steve’s 12 year old daughter (advert 1). The other advert, (advert 2) shows the pain and addiction of smoking represented by the hook going through his lip. Both of these advertisements make you think about you own addictions as well, for example, if you are a fast food addict Steve’s advert will make you wonder what you are doing to your body i.e. basically killing yourself and the hook advert will make you think how strong you are addicted to it.
Three examples of shock advertising from television are: 1. The Cannabis Advert – This advert is about a man who smokes cannabis and the cannabis is playing with his mind. The shock factors in this advertisement are the brains. In the advert a sales assistant is showing a man who smokes cannabis brains and offering him a free ‘instalment’ of these brains and on the back of the sales assistant’s head, there is a huge scar which is quite shocking too. I think the purpose of this advert justifies the methods because the purpose of the advert is to show how cannabis messes with your brain and how dangerous it can be and it is not easy to show the effects of cannabis and I think that this is the only way to get the point across strongly.
2. The Drink – Driving Advert – This advert is about a man in a bar who drinks more than he is supposed to before his is about to drive. He is in the bar with two friends and one of his friends buys him another drink, he refuses the drink at first but then accepts it, then a lady walks past and the women suddenly crashes into the table and is lying dead on the floor, this is supposed to give the impression of a car crash, the man who drinks more than he is supposed to is the driver and the women who is lying dead on the floor is the person hit by the car, the dead woman lying on floor is shocking. I also think that the purpose of the advert justifies the methods because, again, it is showing how serious the effects of drink – driving are. Also, over the years there have been numerous attempts to advertise how severe drink – driving is and there has still been no change so therefore I feel that they had to make such a shocking advert.
3. The Road Safety Advert – This advert is about a teenager who doesn’t pay enough attention to the road and ends up being hit by a car. In this advert a group of teenagers are ‘messing about’ on the side of the road, when one of them decides to cross the road, because he wasn’t paying enough attention he was hit by a car. I think that the purpose of the advert justifies the method because it speaks out to teenagers who are most likely to be in an accident because they do not pay enough attention to the road, because it was a teenager hit by the car in this advertisement I feel that when teenagers see this shocking advertisement they will feel frightened because they will most probably picture themselves being hit by the car making them think twice when fooling around by a road, which is the purpose of the advertisement.
