In my experience, the easiest mistake to make in Media Studies is to think that there isn't much to write about for adverts that look really simple. We've all done it - stared at an advert with nothing but a picture of a flower and a bit of writing and thought 'how am I supposed to squeeze an essay out of that?'
It would probably be unfair of me to expect all of you to interrogate a piece of advertising if I wasn't willing to do it myself though. So tonight, I bit the bullet, picked a charity advertisement at random and wrote a Media Studies essay about it. I hope that the essay below will show you that, once you have the technical terminology (which you all now have), all you really need to do to write an advert analysis is look very closely at every single aspect of your subject and think about how every single detail goes towards reaching its audience.
Below, is approximately 1000 words written between the hours of 19:13 and 20:38 on the topic of the Childline advert at the top of this page.
What media devices have been used to make this Childline advert have an effect on its audience?
Despite its apparent simplicity, there are a wide variety of compositional devices at play in this Childline advert. The text-type of the advertisement is a poster. The audience in this case, is children, as Childline is a charity which offers a helping hand to children in difficult situations. The purpose is simply to inform young people that there is somebody that they can call, and to let them feel that, by speaking to Childline about their problems, they will be able to solve them.
The designers achieve this purpose in a variety of ways. Firstly, they employ the most common convention of the ‘charity-ad’ genre – the striking picture. At a first glance, the picture denotes a smiling, happy boy, dressed smartly in his school uniform. Behind him, stands another boy, visibly paler with sunken eyes, no smile and a tear running down his cheek.
When we look more closely at the picture, we see that this is in fact the same boy stood in both the foreground and the background – the designers have photoshopped two photographs of the same boy to make it look as though he is standing behind himself – the happier version in front of the unhappy one.
The connotations of this image are quite clear – Childline are saying: behind the happy, confident face that many children show to the world around them, there is often a hidden, insecure, unhappy person who does not dare tell people how miserable they feel. There is a similar message behind the NSPCC ‘sexual abuse’ campaign, in which the happy faces of abused children are shown as ‘masks’ which have been hung up.
The composition of the image in the Childline advert is particularly interesting. If we look at the background, we can see a fairly standard ‘school-photograph’ backdrop. This has been chosen because ‘school photographs’ are an experience which all British school-children share. It is also a time when every child is asked to smile, regardless of how they are feeling – an idea which certainly ties in with the theme of ‘putting on a brave face’ in this poster.
This presentation of the picture as a ‘school photograph’ is heightened by the cut-off corners of the main image. The poster makes the photograph look as if the corners have been tucked into the type of cheap cardboard frame which come with school photographs, which adds a sense of verisimilitude and increases the impact of the photograph on its audience.
We also see that the jumper worn by the child is the same colour as the grey background he stands in front of. One may interpret this in a number of ways. Firstly, we may see it as a sign that the child has a desire to ‘fade into the background’ and be ‘normal’ by not drawing attention to their problems. One may also argue that the clothing and the background have been designed to look as visually bland as possible, so that our main focus is drawn towards the contrast between the two faces.
Another connotation of the dominant use of grey in the colouring of this picture, is that the world of the victim has been drained, and he is left in a dull, miserable world in which nothing is exciting, nothing is interesting, all that matters is that he pretends to be fine.
The writing directly beneath the picture is highly effective. The caption reads ‘IF YOU’VE BEEN BULLIED, YOU DON’T HAVE TO HIDE IT ANY MORE.’ By contracting ‘you have’ to ‘you’ve’ and ‘do not’ to ‘don’t’, the language of the poster has been made informal and more friendly. The message sent out by this informal language, is that the audience of children are being spoken to by somebody they can be comfortable with, somebody who cares about them, and somebody who is more interested in their wellbeing than upholding the formal rules of grammar.
The inclusion of ‘any more’ at the end of the sentence is also a strong device. Putting ‘any more’ at the end of a sentence indicates that the child shown in the picture could make a new start and change their life if they called Childline. The audience therefore, is made to feel like a call to Childline will make their problems go away too.
The use of the word ‘you’ is an equally effective tool of the charity advert. By speaking to a specific second person, the audience of the advert feels that they are being directly addressed. The word ‘you’ is like a finger pointing out of the page at whoever is looking at it.
The combination of a sans-serif type face and writing which is entirely in capitals creates an interesting dimension to this advert. Capital letters and sans-serif fonts both achieve the result of making a piece of text look bold, striking and, if you imagined it read aloud, would encourage a confident, firm voice.
This creates a strange combined effect with the friendly, informal language of the text. The words themselves suggest that Childline are friendly and there to make your life better by being understanding and nice. The capital letters and bold font however, suggest that Childline are confident, powerful and uncompromising about the fact that they will deal with bullying issues, no matter what it takes.
Finally, at the bottom of the poster, in the corner, we have the logo and phone-number for childline. The font used for ‘Childline’ has rounder edges and appears more cartoon-like than the rest of the text in this advert. This subtle cartoon iconography is reinforced by the fact that the logo and phone number are surrounded by comic-style speech-bubbles and there is a small picture of a phone with a smiley face next to them.
This relatively light-hearted logo and phone number in the corner serve an interesting purpose in the advert. Our primary focus was the disturbing image of the boy, then our attention falls to the plain, angular caption just beneath it. After this however, we are drawn to this comparatively ‘fun’ little logo and phone number in the corner. This immediately makes us feel like Childline is a possible release from a horrible situation, as it is the only visually ‘friendly’ thing on the entire poster, tucked away in the corner for us to see after we have been upset by the picture of the bullied child.
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