How to Analyze Advertisements

it has been estimated that the average person is exposed to thousands of advertisements per day due to this constant bombardment of brands we've largely become numb to the side of them which means an advertiser really only has a fraction of a second to make an impact on a viewer using a variety of subtle and not so subtle strategies the goal of these carefully crafted product pitches are to briefly get our attention and weave their way into the back of our minds in the hopes that when we go to the store we'll have a positive association

with a particular brand and thus be more likely to select it over the competition when it comes to analyzing ads it's important to keep in mind that if an ad is well made everything is there for a reason the best marketers are experts of the human psyche and understand how the specific audience they're looking to target is influenced by characters colors symbols text and how all of these elements are arranged on the page let's take a look at a couple of advertisements to see this in action first we have a simple advertisement that upon first

glance seems pretty straightforward a couple of dogs fight over what is presumed to be an article of clothing and the word sale above them gives us the quick impression that this might be a clothing ad but there's a bit more going on here again everything is a conscious choice on the part of the advertiser so it's important to note that they chose to focus on dogs instead of people fighting over a product when you represent humans as non-human creatures this is known as zoomorphism the ad might be using animals to tap into a primal urge

within us that is motivated by the idea of scarcity and the fact that there are two dogs and only one item helps feed into this idea also note that there is a red background again this could have been any color so there's probably a reason they chose red over other options red has many potential associations it's the color of passion but it's also blood and danger stop in reference to stop signs perhaps and research has shown that it induces hunger so with so many possible interpretations we need a bit more to figure out how or

why this is being used specifically in this ad one clue to how the red might be being used are the dogs themselves these aren't just any dogs more specifically their dalmatians now if one were viewing this advertisement the united states there are certain associations we have with dalmatians one of them might be the movie 101 dalmatians but unless there are 99 more of these hidden somewhere in the image this really wouldn't apply however there is another association that is also very common dalmatians are known as the fire dog we are used to seeing images of

dalmatians alongside firemen when they're rushing to the scene of a fire and what are the color of fire trucks red so we might be seeing all these elements coming together the red the dalmatians the word sail in all caps with an exclamation mark on the suggestion of scarcity to give us a sense of urgency and like firemen rushing to a fire the advertiser is hoping we will feel the need to rush to this sale see how even a seemingly simple ad when done well can have a lot of subtlety behind it now let's take a

look at an ad that definitely has some more complexity to it this is an advertisement from around 2010 from a popular company called juicy couture on first glance it may seem like a simple ad we have a model center frame holding a bottle of perfume and the juicy couture logo in the lower right half we see the words peace love near the upper left hand corner under a different and smaller font noting the new fragrance since it says the new fragrance we now know that this is for juicy couture's perfume line and not a clothing

ad which they also sell we might also notice right away that there are a lot of colors colliding in the ad and that the model is surrounded by butterflies the model itself is dressed in a frilly outfit and adorned with a lot of jewelry needless to say there is a lot coming together within the frame here to unpack let's take a little bit of time to do that let's start with the text the words peace love are one of the first things a viewer would notice upon looking at the ad that's because this ad follows

an advertisement layout known as the z pattern where our eyes follow the natural path of reading left to right top to bottom here we follow the text from left to right at the top follow down through the model and end at the juicy couture logo so you can see that there is a clear design pattern here for the layout but the words themselves are also significant you can see that piece love is in a specific font like it's written in graffiti did you notice that next to the juicy couture font in the lower right there

is an ampersand with the same graffiti font so put together the text it is meant to be read as peace love and juicy couture this phrase peace love and is reminiscent of a series of phrases that were popular in the 60s and 70s such as peace love and harmony peace love and understanding and various other incarnations in fact it is still referenced in pop culture today this provides us with the first clue as to what this ad might be trying to do evoke feelings and sentiments associated with the 60s and 70s hippie movement but we

would need to connect more patterns to confirm this well if we look closely we can also see that there are actually piece symbols placed into the advertisement one on the bottle itself another near the top of the bottle and we might even look at her fingers as flipping a peace sign as she holds the bottle itself so now we have a pattern of clear tangible connections to the idea of the hippie movement now that we have this concrete connection it helps us to focus the discussion and we can begin to examine everything else through this

lens for example we have common stereotypes associated with hippie culture such as closeness with nature and we do see a lot of nature represented in the image the butterflies flocking to her are the most apparent but also the clothes she wears seem to represent fur she also wears a butterfly ring and her hair has flowers in it the idea of flowers in the hair is actually another common association with hippie culture now that we've well established the hippie vibe juicy couture is going for here it doesn't seem too far of a stretch to make a

couple more connections that might be a bit more abstract for example drug experimentation is another common association with the hippie movement and if we look closely at the model's eyes they do appear to be constricted this combined with her blank expression we might get the sense of a distant euphoria but what's the drug she's high on well maybe the perfume itself which is placed interestingly inside a container that looks reminiscent to an alcohol decanter bottle if we look at the alcohol as a drug then we might see a subtle suggestion that this perfume will give

you some sort of high or drunk like experience this might seem like a bit more abstract interpretation and it is but in the context that we've already established more concretely that this image is evoking hippie culture sounds plausible doesn't it going further we might look at the swirl of colors all over the ad as evoking a subtle tie-dye effect but the fact that this ad is evoking certain stereotypes of the hippie movement isn't what intrigues me most about this particular advertisement it's the fact that there is actually another layer built into all of this let's

go back to the phrase we began studying the ad with peace love and juicy couture well you may have noticed that the juicy couture font is not written in graffiti like the other words instead this font seems to have a more victorian feel to it which is a font we might associate more with the idea of upper class royalty perhaps what happens if we set aside all the hippie interpretations for a moment and examine the image through the lens of this new font is there anything here that might represent the idea of royalty the bottle

gave us the peace sign so is there another clue there perhaps in fact there is the bottle itself is gold which would certainly evoke the idea of royalty but also we see the peace sign on the bottle is actually wearing a crown and seems to be centered among a royal shield the decanter bottle shape fits in with an upper class feel as well if we shift to the top of the model's head the flowers in her hair are being held in with what could be interpreted as a sort of crown and if you look really

closely at that crown there might even be little diamonds built into it like royalty she has a lot of commodities she's well adorned not just with a crown but lots of jewelry and bracelets she even looks like she may be leaning on some sort of velvet furniture when we look at the fur through this lens well the wearing of fur is also associated with the idea of royalty just in a very different context than we might have interpreted through the hippie lens and i think this is where things start to get really interesting or should

i say juicy because this ad is trying to blend two very different time frames and ideas together although these layers seem to form an interesting blend visually the two philosophies behind these layers would seemingly be in conflict with one another whereas royalty might prize having commodities like rings jewelry crowns a giant gold bottle we associate more minimalism with hippie culture along those lines we see the model is wearing makeup which is something that we also wouldn't associate with hippie culture moreover while the wearing of fur might represent a closeness with nature it also could represent

the destruction of it so what is juicy couture trying to do here well cell perfume obviously but all the butterflies might offer a deeper insight to the purpose of blending these contradictory ideas what do butterflies represent think back to high school biology they begin as one creature and then through the process of metamorphosis they transform the idea here of blending two different time frames from the past and combining them to make something new could evoke a theme of transformation the old becomes the new juicy couture has made an image that appeals to the parts within

their targeted demographic likely adolescent women that can allow them to see what they want if they want to see themselves as a bohemian minimalist who is close with nature they'll see that if they want to feel chic upper class they'll feel that too if they want to feel both minimalist simple and down to earth but also hold value and possessions and an elevated status at the same time juicy couture saying you can have that as well even though that might present some contradictions it fundamentally doesn't matter advertisements aren't about argumentation or logic they're about persuasion

and feeling when it comes to adolescence this is in many ways a time of transformation experimentation finding out who you are so through all of these pieces we can see how this juicy couture ad reaches out to that adolescent audience and provides them a theme that they can relate to hopefully this breakdown can give you some things to think about as you move forward and examine your own images when looking at ads it's a good starting point to try to figure out who the specific targeted audience is the psychology of that audience how the strategies

being used work toward appealing to that audience and the overall theme of the ad you will have to dig a bit to find these elements but that's kind of the point of analysis to dig deeper and reveal those layers and connections to viewers that they could not easily see upon first glance