In
this post, I will be analysing the following print ad in order to see its
cultural and social contexts as well as values considered important and who is empowered
in the advertisement.
As
it can be seen, the advertisement consists of two people, one male and one
female being close to each other. In the bottom right corner we can notice the
product that the ad is promoting. From the point of view of the text present in
the ad it can be seen that it consists of few sentences that are meant to
impact the audience and most importantly that are short and concise so that the
audience could focus more on the image itself. Firstly, it can be stated that
the ad is directed mainly towards the Indian culture and the reason would be
the choice of the models. To be more precise, the female model has been identified
as being Anushka Sharma, known as a famous Bollywood actress. Using a famous
actress for such an ad can be considered as having a big impact since it could
influence the society’s view of beauty and change its beauty standards. Knowing
this brings us to the purpose of the ad. It can now be seen as valuing beauty
and especially female beauty. It is noticeable that in the print ad, the female
model is placed centrally and most important she is revealing most of her skin
with the purpose of evidencing the smoothness that women can obtain by using
the Nivea product. Therefore, this reveals not only the main purpose of selling
the product but also another characteristic valued by the print ad, soft skin. Indian
culture is as mentioned used for the ad’s context, where the empowerment is
visibly owned by the female model, the male model only ‘filing the blanks’ of
the picture. He is marginalized or ignored at some degree, revealing that, at
least for this ad, the beauty and the skin’s aspect of the male is not as
important. But what could be the reason? The reason could be the message that
is trying to be sent. If we think about it, the ad could encourage young women
to use the products in order to obtain a soft skin and therefore becoming
attractive to men, this being the only aspect where the ad links to them. The
way in which the advertisement is presented with the two models close to each
other can reveal another valued aspect which is intimacy. The hint for this is
being given by the relaxed and friendly tone of the print ad. Overall, all
these elements of the ad can be considered as revealing potential views of the
Indian culture towards beauty and differences between the beauty standards regarding
men and women.
Well done Andrei, this was a successful description of what is happening in the advertisement. However, you only skimmed through the surface of why certain things are placed in the advertisement This would have moved from a description to an analysis if you had linked the advertisement with its context and audience- Indian culture.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading you post, I agree with the points you made about the female being the main focus, your points you made about society were interesting. All in all it was a good read.
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