ADVERTISMENTS: Dream or Reality?

In the past few months, some classes of our school have analyzed several advertisments about food and body cult. Each class was devided into some groups; each group has analyzed a different advert.

In the next advertisments we will take under consideration mainly two aspects:

The emotions that the adverts provoke in people. The fact that the images prevail a lot on the text. This is due to the fact that images explain in a better way the aim of the product and they attract the attention.

In the following slides there are some examples…

This ice-cream advertisment has bright colours (mainly yellow) and an amusing picture that attracts kids. In the background there’s an amusement ride made of fresh milk and a cow which is having fun. Besides, the image is used to highlight the richness and the nutrional aspects of the ingredients.

In fact, in the lower part of the ad there is a brief description saying: With fresh milk and high in calcium. Food colouring- and artificial aromas-free. 95 Kcal per portion. “For your kids, all the goodness of milk and a lot of fun”.

The emotions: according to some people of the group it provokes hunger and it makes the mouth water. It gives the idea of having fun while eating.

Let’s pass to another advert.

The image that stands out is the coffee ice-cream, while the writing on the red background on the box highlights the fact that there is more ice-cream than usually. Emotions: Eating ice-cream is always a pleasure and it makes you remember delight moments; a larger quantity of product seems a saving.

The next two advertisments are linked to each other. The first one is a light snack, and the second one advertises pills to lose weight.

These crackers are shown as flowers floating on the water. “Water flowers Mulino Bianco. Crackers low in fat, light and crispy.” “Crackers born from water’s lightness” This stands for the lightness of the product, low in fat, as can be seen in the caption in the lower part. In this advert the image takes up almost the entire page.

It makes you feel relaxed and comfortable, just like the women. It seems like they don’t have any problem and are carefree. The emotions:

“Less fats, less sugar” “2 pills after meals” “It reduces calories” “Don’t give up the pleasure of the table” The female figure takes up one third of the entire advert, while the text underlines the fact that you shouldn’t give up food, because the product reduces the calories and it makes you lose weight. Only in smaller alphabetics you can read that this product helps people to lose weight, if matched with a low-cal diet and physical exercise. This is very important, because if the diet isn’t low-cal, there won’t be any effect. A lot of people don’t know that, so there are no good results. “2 pills after meals” “Don’t give up the pleasure of the table” “It reduces calories” “2 pills after meals” “Don’t give up the pleasure of the table” “Less fats, less sugar” “It reduces calories” “2 pills after meals” “Don’t give up the pleasure of the table”

The woman represented looks like she’s happy and relaxed; the smiling makes us think that she loses weight despite the fact she eats as usual. The emotions:

Let’s analyse the last advert.

This product is a foot care cream and helps people to find a solution to problems caused by excess of weight and dryness. I personally think that this is a way to induce people to buy this product. Above there are lots of feet in healthy conditions. In the middle there are some pairs of flip-flops: they will be given as a present if the product advertised is bought. This happens very often; we can take as an example the offer 3x2: many people buy 3 products, not because they need it, but because one third is free.

To sum up…

You should pay more attention to advertisments, because the images and the texts that stand out are often true only partly; it’s very important to read the smaller writings. Also the presents given together with the products are often low-quality and they weigh upon the price of the product anyhow. Sometimes the “special offers” of big quantities of product are not always a bargain.