Print Advertising Coursework: assignment 1

Hi yr 10,

Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. As discussed in the last lesson before the Christmas
break, this term you will be working on your first coursework assignment for the print advertising unit.

The first assignment requires you to analyse two print adverts. I would like you to analyse a print advert selling a beauty product and a print advert that raises awareness e.g. Banardos charity advert. You should all by now have chosen your print advert selling a beauty product. Below are some adverts that raise awareness, that you could choose from, for your second advert analysis.

Homework Due: Friday 3rd December

How might the following products be 'gendered' in advertisements given that both male and female consumers may use the product?

• A Car
• Bottled beer
• Mobile phone
• Deodorant
• Trainers
• Cigarrettes

Here is an example: A car could be gendered as being masculine by having a man dressed in a black suit (this shows intellectual power and authority), getting into a sports car and driving it away extremely fast (this shows the car as a powerful machine).

A car could be gendered as being feminine by having a woman taking her children to school in it.This shows feminine characteristics of a woman being emotional and nurturing as the car is being advertised as a product to use to care and look after her children.

PowerPoint Presentation

 

In your pair you are going to choose one area of representation to explore and analyse. You can choose from the following list:

•  Representations of men
•  Representations of women
•  Ethnic representation
• Representations of the family

In your pair you are going to use the internet to collect at least 10 different print adverts adverts which feature representations of the group you are studying.  In addition you could include print screens of TV adverts!

You are then going to create a powerpoint presentation of these adverts and for each one you will comment on the type of representation you see. For example:

• Do you consider this to be a stereotypical image? If so, what of and why?
•  Do you think that this image challenges the stereotype? Is so, how
• Did the same type of image come up over and over again? Or did they offer a diverse view of gender, race or the family?

The following links maybe useful for finding print and TV advertisements:

www.genderads.com

www.tellyads.com

Representations of Women in Print Advertising



1. Match the five photographs to each of the five female stereotypes.

2. Write a brief explanation for each photograph to describe how the connotations in the image suggested the stereotypes.



Female Stereotypes

Beauty Bunny
She believes that just because there is science in a beauty product, it will work. She is into every new intervention in the beauty industry and reserves her greatest enthusiasm for the latest shampoo or face cream. L’Oreal’s ‘Because I’m worth it could be her catchphrase

Alpha Female
She’s a powerful professional whose main focus in life is her career. She’s definitely in control, but her entire life is work. She is not shown as a mother, a wife or a lover. She can be seen as rather scary.





The Fashionista
She appears in every glossy magazine, such as Vogue and Elle, and is portrayed as someone who is only interested in the way she looks. She wants to know about the new clothes, the new shoes, the new bags and the new lip colour (but unlike Beauty Bunny is not old enough to worry about skin care). She has neither personality nor, intelligence.

The Perfect Mum

We see her every time a household product or an everyday commodity is advertised. Her biggest concern is her children. She has pushed away every need in her life. She’s a mum, she’s not an individual. She’s not sexy or ambitious.

The Granny

She is the perfect Mum fast-forwarded 20 years or so. She has few interests outside her grandchildren.



Key Terms

Dear Yr 10,

Below are the key terms from today's lesson. Make sure you learn and understand what they mean. 

Representation

This refers to the way people, places, events or ideas are portyrayed to audiences in media texts. Sometimes this is simplistically through the use of familiar stereotypes so the audience can see immediately what is meant and sometimes the meanings are less obvious. 

Stereotyping

This refers to the way people are grouped together according to simple shared characteristics,without allowing for individual uniqueness.

Perfume Print Adverts