EOC Week 11: Class Eval

All in all it was a very good classroom experience. Despite the fact that I did miss two consecutive classes early in quarter due to illness, I worked hard and made an excellent comeback and was truly able to learn what I needed to from this class. First and foremost, the book presented in class was excellent. It was organized and methodical, and easy to read and understand bringing all the necessary concepts together. Lectures and presentations in class (movies) were interesting and relevant to the topics that were covered. One of the major elements which I found to be important was the merging of art and advertising, in a way, once and for all debunking the idea that art has to be separate from capitalism and any form of money making industry all together lest it be considered un-pure by the artistic community. That is simply not the case, and this class did a good job of making that simple fact understood, and the industry itself more appreciated from an artistic perspective. The lectures were concise and to the point given the chapter under study, although I would have liked to see some examples from the professor which lined up more with what the students at this school will understand and are able to reasonably replicate. It is up to us as students to experience it at an appropriate level so that we can grow with the ideas and expand in our own ways. That being said, the class accomplished what it set out to which is give a fundamental understand of the power and scope of the advertising industry. And despite a couple of speed bumps along the way, I believe I did an excellent job of both keeping up with the class, and learning what I needed to. And that being case, I believe I deserve and A.

EOC Week 10: Art Serving Capitalism

Is it possible for advertising to be art? Or is the traditional idea of art, that horribly off-kilter idea of expressionism that ends up as nose piercing or a poorly designed tattoo? It has always been my impression that art for art’s sake is a waste of time. At least from my own personal perspective. Depending on how you look at it, yes, the two coincide, and in fact work quite well together. I don’t subscribe to the idea that art serving capitalism is not art. Ads, marketing, all of these tools that end up on billboards or on Tv, no matter if their drive is to sell a product, the end result, the culmination of the work from various people doing research and trying new and inventive ideas to come up with the final product is in fact art. Because it must be art to tug at the heart strings. It must be art to inspire and pull you in through sheer visual beauty. It must be art to capture your imagination and compel you to action of any kind. It doesn’t matter if that action is buying Kleenex from Wal-mart, or shoes from Nike. The simple fact of the matter is that you took action because you responded emotionally, intellectually, and then physically to something that you saw. In many cases it may not have been pretty. It may have been heart wrenching, or it may have been stupid beyond all recognition. But you acted. And unless the advertisers lied, you were probably happy about it. And the simple fact that you were indeed compelled to act isn’t manipulation, it is an artistic expression that has simply been fine tuned to a very focused frequency, so much so that you didn’t even realize that you needed that new car. But what the heck, you bought it anyway.

So to truly answer the question, do art and capitalism work together? Without a doubt, happily, and forever after…or until trends move us to new and uncharted waters.

EOC Week 9: Triplets

In this clever advertisement for Bolibomba Gum, a Venezuelan brand of bubble gum, the ad campaign theme is exercised in these two side by side pictures. Although the subject of each ad changes, as does the background color, the theme remains clear. In each picture you have a young adult (one male, one female), fit, healthy, and wearing nice clothing. The theme as illustrated by the ad is that no matter who you are (or what you look like) you’re never too old to enjoy bubble gum. And the simple pleasure that bubble gum provides may just be enough to bring out the kid in you. Obviously it is a product for the young at heart, as further illustrated by the humorous child-like faces showing through the enormous globes of bubble gum being blown from the mouths of each person. A very simple and clever ad that speaks well to those who do not take themselves too seriously, and provides an easily repeatable theme to spread out over additional ads (in triplet).

EOC Week 8: Chapter 8 Example

This ad for Rodney Strong Vineyards Merlot does a number of things well when it comes to selling its product to consumers. The first is to make their copy into a sales pitch, without making it too wordy or blocky, and in other words, throwing up a red flag for the reader. It starts out using a light, funny, conversational tone that goes a long way towards making the reader comfortable and engaged. The beginning line “You can take the Merlot out of Sonoma county---in fact it’s highly recommended,” makes the reader feel amused and warm, and doesn’t over sell its product.
“When copy sounds conversational, then the reader feels you’re striking up a conversation, rather than pounding her over the head with a sales pitch.” (Landa, p. 151) It’s followed up by the line “Place Matters. Try ours.” A gentle nudge in the right direction.

The second element is the use of place. This ad tends to strike a pretty good balance between being visually and copy driven. There is a fair amount of copy at the top, but the main focus of the ad is drawn downward towards the beautiful black and white scene of the idyllic Sonoma county (an obviously perfect place to make great wine), accented by the colored bottle of Rodney Strong Wine in the foreground. “An ad that relies on the visual to communicate most of the ad message is visually driven.” (Landa, p. 159). This ad falls into both categories by relying on a specific verbal message, but then shifting the focus downward and allowing the strong visuals of the landscape and the wine bottle to tell the rest of the story/advertisement. The reader is left with a single thing to consider after seeing this message and visuals, “Place Matters. Try Ours.” Well, maybe they should.

EOC Week 8: Authority

“Use the various weights and styles of a font for variation, rather than choosing combinations of two or three fonts. Too many fonts may make a piece look like it was designed by an inexperienced designer.” (Denise M. Anders, DMA, New Jersey)

Maintaining faith amongst a group of consumers is very important, and that begins with how an ad makes people feel about that product. Some products have a great deal of brand loyalty from their customers, largely due to the tone and appropriate feelings that the advertising has conveyed to those customers. Should a particular product suddenly present itself completely differently from how it has in the past, it runs the risk of alienating and losing much of its support base. This can be avoided by unity of design and use of appropriate fonts to make the consumer feel comfortable, and that this is still the same solid product they have come to love. That is what I plan to do with the advertising for iPad.

EOC Final Project: First Thoughts

First thoughts: iPad: relearn your world (relearn…everything. Simplicity, control, life. At your fingertips…literally.)

This particular ad would be designed to highlight the “life-altering” qualities that can be contained within the iPad. Specifically geared towards the elements of everyday life that people see in one dimension such as how they read books, how they watch TV, how they receive digital entertainment in general, and the fact that it can now be brought with you everywhere and is available at the tip of your finger. It’s the first step in a larger technological evolution that will change your life, and it’s worth the tiny bit of effort needed to learn it.

Week 7 EOC: Exciting Ad

In this ad for the new Lion Camp at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, the creators accomplish several elements all at once. The first and most striking is the simple fact that it’s funny. It presents a very human emotion being displayed by an animal (Zebra), doing something that is almost entirely impossible, cringing in fear and desperation to get as high and far away from something as it possibly can by climbing up the back and neck of a Giraffe. Immediately we identify with emotion the animal feels, as we have all felt something similar at times. Then our eyes pan downward and we see why such a ridiculous thing might happen. The Lions have arrived. And suddenly the emotion connected to the add becomes clear. We are both afraid, and excited at the possibility all at once. Bringing us directly into the ad’s design principles:

Composition: This particular ad holds a tall frame, likely useable inside a magazine spread. It makes good use of space with a large amount reserved for an understandable and amusing image, with a small amount of text at the bottom. It is easy to understand and uses its space to communicate both fear and excitement, and the subtle need to experience both.

Negative shapes: The reason this image stands out and is easily recognizable is the simplicity and strong use of negative space around the animals. The animals are beautifully framed on either side by light blue sky allowing the viewer to see the animals and the emotion they evoke.

Visual Hierarchy: The ad begins by leading our eye top and center to the very clear image of the Giraffe supporting the weight of the very frightened Zebra. Our eyes take a moment to register what we are seeing, deciphering the emotion, and then the image leads us down into the header (explaining the emotion we are seeing), the content text, and then where we can go to experience this excitement/emotion for ourselves, the San Diego Zoo.

Illusion: The illusion of this ad helps to promote the emotional effect of the ad, something that we know and immediately recognize to be impossible, but funny and understandable all at once. The Photoshop artist did a beautiful job making the illusion believable, which in turn opens the door for us to look to the bottom of the ad and see exactly why the Zebra (and ourselves) feel the knee-jerk fear and excitement at the coming of the lions.

Week 6 EOC: Make 'em laugh

This very popular commercial first aired at this last year’s Super Bowl. A commercial for Doritos corn chips, it went on to become one of the most talked about commercials of the entire Super Bowl spectacle, which for many years now, has nearly become more of a forum for funny and impressive commercials to entertain the massive TV audience, then it is about the actual football game. Sad? That part’s up to you.

In any case, this commercial worked. I personally heard about this ad from many different sources as part of Doritos ad campaign to have independent film makers come up with the best ideas to sell Doritos.

The humor of this ad comes mostly from the juvenile appeal of physical comedy favored by many American’s. In this ad a selfish jerk of a man is enjoying a bag of tasty Doritos, meanwhile taunting a nearby dog by not giving him any. But hold on, justice/vengeance/retribution is all served as the dog (in a very amusingly human gesture) takes off its anti-bark collar and puts it on the annoying man who refuses to share his chips. The revenge fully unfolds when the dog barks, sending the man into a convulsing set of electric shocks (normally meant to keep the dog from barking).

The humor of this ad comes from several angles. The jerk, clearly deserving of some form of punishment for taunting a poor animal is given his just desserts, at the hands of the very “stupid/helpless” animal he was torturing, no less. Secondly, the humor appeals to anyone who has ever seen an animal abused or mistreated and wished the vengeful wrath of God (or your chosen deity) down upon the abuser. In many ways it is the humor of role reversal. And though the particular topic of animal cruelty is not an amusing one, the thought of someone who deserves the role reversal is. Another element of the humor also comes from the comical element of seeing a dog perform actions (or obviously thinking things through) in a distinctly human manor. It’s an old sympathetic fallacy, but it’s still funny, even today.

EOC Week 6: Jerry Metellus

Take all your experience with you:
Everything that you’ve done with your life before this moment in your career or what have you has a use. You can use all that experience to further what it is that you do, or will do. It’s all useful and relevant. Take the opportunity to learn all you can and use it to you advantage and you’ll be surprise how far you can get.

There’s always someone better or more creative…so arrogance is a waste of time:
It truly doesn’t matter how great or wonderful or creative you think you are. The fact of life is that thousands of people emerge into the same position as you every minute, and there’s always going to be someone who’s as good or better than you are. This is a simple fact and it means that any attachment you might have to your pride or the fact that you might be good at something, drop it. There’s always someone better so the best possible thing you can do for yourself is understand that and work hard to make yourself better, always staying at the top of your game. Arrogance gets knocked off the pedestal, skill and hard work gets supported.

Know your stuff…even if the industry is always changing:
The digital media industry, even fashion and all other facets of design are always changing. In photography you used to have to know your trade well, and whatever you could not accomplish through sheer skill could be done in post production. Now, a photographer doesn’t need photo skills as much as Photoshop skills in order to create good photos. But the fact still remains that good skills and truly knowing your industry is what is going to make you great at what you do. Take your time and really learn what you’re doing, whether that’s photography, design, web design or what have you. You will always be better when you work to learn those fundamentals.

Week 5 EOC: Ad Categories

Endorsements: “Got Milk” Ad campaign. A brilliant and widespread, yet very simple message features a whole slew of celebrities from all different walks of life inspired several generations of children and adults alike to reintroduce themselves to the benefits of drinking milk. The celebrity element of this ad extends itself far beyond the typical celebrity appearances, using references from movies and fictional characters alike, appealing to a hugely diverse target audience who were given the opportunity to understand that they too needed milk.



Demonstrations: “P90X Home workout system.” This program is several years old, I myself used it at one point, but through relentless infomercial based advertising and demonstrations combined with countless positive testimonials and undeniable results, this has become a home fitness juggernaut, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down in the least. Even amongst the professional sports communities and everyday joe’s alike, this exercise program promised a lot and delivered for a marginal payment (compared to your monthly gym membership) and only asked for a little dedication in return.



Recognition: “Verizon’s ‘Can you hear me now?’ spokesman.” Due to the use of a single well placed phrase in a very specific and understandable context, Verizon wireless created an instant pop-culture craze with the be-spectacled Verizon everyman, tirelessly trotting the globe to make sure your mobile phone service works almost everywhere. Never mind the near infinite number of comical references made to this pop-culture figure, the statement made its mark, and you would be hard pressed to find someone who owns a mobile phone that doesn’t know the reference.

EOC Week 2: Ethics in Commercials

GoDaddy.com ads have always had a particular “what the hell?” effect for me whenever I’ve seen them. GoDaddy.com is in fact a large, well known internet website hosting service. I have seen their service in use, and being a web design major, all I can really say about the speed and quality of their service is, well, I’m not impressed. But despite what I consider to be a number of shortcomings to their service, speed being the first, ease of use and simplicity of design being two other equally important problems the website provider suffers from, they have managed to overcome this with a very specific advertising campaign.

This campaign, as you may well know, centers around sexually racy depictions of women. That’s it. Upon seeing the commercials you are not endowed with a supreme understanding and appreciation of what the service is, or what you can do there, nor are you any more intelligent or complete as a human being (as I believe should be required by modern day commercials). In fact all you see is the logo of the company displayed in various ways on scantily clad, unrealistically endowed women with a promise to “see what happens next” at godaddy.com. I already knew that sex sells, but I didn’t know that that’s all you need to sell anything at all.

The question of course is not whether these ads are effective (as they obviously are), but whether they are ethically questionable. And I say yes. Of course it is every woman’s right to project her own image however she sees fit within the parameters of what the law allows. What is ethically questionable in my opinion is the portrayal of women as mere objects of physical perfection to be objectified in a society (the USA) that already places far too much importance on physical appearance as a means of social placement. I seriously doubt that young girls growing up want or need the added pressure of growing up with negative self images, but further objectifying these girls once they get there surely isn’t helping. As nice as some of these girls are to look at given the situation, I think we can do without the GoDaddy.com ads, but that’s just me.

EOC Week 1: Volkswagen Lemon Ad

Few advertising campaigns were able to make such a mark on the history of the industry like the one made by Volkswagen in the 1960’s. Not only were the German auto manufacturer’s tasked with the challenge of surmounting strong odds against them, but they were able to do so with style and a lasting impact that changed the face of advertising for decades to come. “How could Volkswagen sell Hitler’s favorite car to the American people only a decade and a half after World War II? This was the question asked of the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1960. In order for them to solve this problem, they would have to find a new way to advertise their products.” (http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=1731)

In order to get past the problems, not only with advertising to a world that still remembered the horrors of World War II, but to break past cultural stereotypes and other barriers, Volkswagen utilized this ad agency to its greatest affect, endearing itself to consumers worldwide in ways that would almost never be repeated. “The large copy printed at the bottom of the ad says “LEMON” which caused the viewer to question his intuitive knowledge about Volkswagen’s high standards. The ad agency successfully caught the viewer’s attention by using self-effacing humor. With any luck, these ads drew you into the joke, and you would read the rest of the copy looking for the punch line.” (http://designhistorylab.com/?p=1755)

Humor, as shown by this legendary ad campaign, would later grow to become the backbone to successful advertising, especially when it came to winning over American consumers, was built upon. Not only that, but the ad itself effectively set itself apart in terms of quality and high standards in ways that American cars could not hope to match. “America loved 1960s Volkswagen Beetle advertising, and with good reason. In an age of blustery pitches glorifying size, power, and prestige, 1960s Volkswagen Beetle advertising was the calm voice for a different set of values. Plus, it made you smile.” (http://www.howstuffworks.com/1960-1969-volkswagen-beetle4.htm) Now we not only see humor (or at least a vigorous attempt at it) in nearly every ad on TV, but we are forced to realize that nowadays the only ads that are truly successful in the modern advertising environment are the ones that truly connect their humor with that of the worldwide market. Humor, plus established and reliable quality, equals a recipe for successful advertising.