Ten Things Tuesday - Blatant Advertising

In my public speaking class, we’ve been discussing the variety of ways we as consumers are under a constant barrage of messages trying to persuade us of SOMETHING, often using sex, implications or suggestions of lack of some thing or quality, invitations to get on or off particular bandwagons, ideologies, etc…

We get a great many magazines into our household, from National Geographic, to Mother Jones, to Time and Newsweek, and my family and I are always on the hunt for the juicy ads (not, however, the most blatantly sexual ones) that we can sit around and deconstruct.

Most of these came from a Google search, but three of them came into our home in one magazine or another. I LOVE great ads with powerfully delivered messages, so this has always been one of my favorite classroom conversations because I get to provoke the students into thinking and really considering realms of things they take for granted without ever delving into the layers of meaning. The lightbulb moments: what I teach for.

I begin with vodka advertising…

1. SKKY Vodka. This one kills me on so many levels. As a piece of advertising art/propaganda (WHERE is that line?) the lines, the burgeoning focal point, the colors, the attitudes, the contrast in attire and those implications, the manner of the grip on the bottle, the building clouds… (source)

2. Absolut Vodka. Wholesomeness? (source)

3. Here we have for death in a bottle, brilliantly mocking the absolut ads. (source)

4. Three Olives Vodka: Sex in a glass with a side of British jingoism. (source)

5. Instant party vodka…

6. Belvedere Vodka. THIS one is slightly different from the print ad husband ripped out of I wish I could recall which magazine. In the print ad, the bottle is placed so that it aligns with the lines on the jeans and is, for all intents and purposes, that which extends from these rarely worn, upscale jeans. I am looking forward to using this ad in class l and hope to maintain an academic conversation without too much guffawing. Once I get the more obvious commentary out of the way, I am going to focus on the words used, the implications of the position of the woman, the color scheme, her expression, etc… Very rich, this one is.

7. An ode to an Absolut master of visual manipulation…. (source)

Now, leaving vodka behind, let’s look at other sources of visual directives for message delivery…

8. Straight to the point, eh? (source)

9. This is a classic and I anticipate a lot of conversation about assumptions, implications and stereotyping. (source)

Finally, here is one that I couldn’t NOT include. I have SO many to choose from if I wanted to focus on a sexually-directed message, but politically-driven advertising is a rich source. This one will need explaining to some of my less-than-aware students, but the message is pointy enough to discuss, particularly as we have already looked at length at the Nazis and the propaganda machine.

10. Straight to the gut. (source)

Happy Tuesday!!

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