Analysis of Advertisements

Introduction

• For what academic purposes are you analysing advertisements?
• How do your current purposes differ from those of others who have also analysed ads?
• What aspects of the ads will be your main concern?
• What general approach will you adopt (e.g. semiotic analysis, content analysis, linguistic analysis, rhetorical analysis or a psychological framework)?
• Why are you adopting this approach?
• What are the strengths of this approach?
• What published examples of the approach do you know?
• To what extent do these offer useful models?
• What different dimensions do you seek to cover?
• Which advertisements will you compare/contrast and why?
• Are they similar in content (e.g. product), style, intended audience or medium?

Some Analytical Frameworks

There are two main kinds of approaches to describing the content of any media text (such as ads). These are semiotic analysis and content analysis. It is rare for both to be used together since they stem from quite different ideological stances.

If you focus on the act of interpretation, you might explore the theme of active interpretation. Here your concern would be to illustrate how meaning is not 'contained' in the text but is generated in the process of interpretation. You would need to stress what viewers/readers/listeners 'bring to' the ad. This could take one of two general forms, tending to emphasize either similarities or differences in interpretation.

One way to explore broadly similar processes would focus on some of the key inferences which are involved in interpreting the ad. Inference involves drawing on your own existing knowledge rather than simply on what is explicit in the ad. This requires very detailed analysis, perhaps of how you make sense of the ad (though you couldn't comment on similarities without checking this against interpretation by others).

Alternatively, you could focus on diversity of interpretation. Clearly, this approach demands empirical evidence of how different viewers/readers/listeners seem to interpret the ads on which you are focusing. It would be likely to consider such factors as class, age, gender and ethnicity. Note, however, that this may take you beyond the intended audience.

With a psychological focus, you might choose to explore the advertisement's apparent psychological appeals. Those listed here are simply one taxonomy of such appeals. And you would need to investigate how viewers/readers/listeners in the intended audience interpret these.

A quite different stance and associated framework is that of Media Education. Here, you would be exploring key features to which you might wish to draw the attention of others. Such frameworks vary, of course, and you might like to consider how the one offered here differs from those of other media educators. What features does it foreground, and what does it background?

Some Key Questions

This list is very freely adapted from that of Jib Fowles (1996).

• What exactly is being advertised?
• Where and when did the ad appear?
• Why might it have appeared there and then rather than elsewhere?
• What appears to be the intended audience?
• What suggests this?
• In what ways does it utilize features of the particular medium used (poster, television, film, radio or magazine)?
• What graphic mode(s) is/are used (e.g. still photography, drawing, animation, live action)?
• Describe the overall design.
• Where is it set in space and time?
• Who are the participants?
• What do they do?
• What key objects are featured?
• What part is played by words (choice of words, typography/voiceover)?
• What part is played by the use of sound and/or light?
• Which features are foregrounded and which are backgrounded?
• What significance might all of these features have for the intended viewers/readers/listeners?
• What key inferences must the viewers/readers/listeners make to make sense of the ad?
• What intertextual references can you discern (to other ads, to other genres, to other people etc.)?
• How else does the ad seek your involvement?
• With what is the product associated?
• What does the product seem to symbolize?
• What does the ad seem to suggest about gender roles, class/status, age, ethnicity or self-identity?
• What cultural assumptions and values seem to be involved?
• What use is made of humour, and to what effect?
• What do you regard as the most likely preferred interpretation offered in the ad?
• What scope does there seem to be for alternative interpretations?

Concluding Remarks

• What aspects of the ads has your approach revealed?
• What are the limitations of your approach?
• What features of the ads has it tended to downplay?
• How could such limitations be overcome in future studies?
• What have you learned from the exercise?

Some Suggested Reading

• Berger, Arthur Asa (1982): Media Analysis Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
• Berger, Arthur Asa (1991): Media Research Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
• Chapman, Simon and Garry Egger (1983): 'Myth in Cigarette Advertising and Health Promotion'. In Davis & Walton (Eds.), op. cit., pp. 166-186
  
• Cook, Guy (1992): The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge
• Davis, Howard & Paul Walton (Eds.) (1983): Language, Image, Media. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
  
• Dyer, Gillian (1982): Advertising as Communication. London: Routledge
• Fowles, Jib (1996): Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
• Goldman, Robert (1992): Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge
• Jhally, Sut (1990): The Codes of Advertising. London: Routledge
  
• Manca, Alessandra & Luigi (Eds.) (1994): Gender & Utopia in Advertising: A Critical Reader. Lisle, IL: Procopian Press
  
• Myers, Greg (1994): Words in Ads. London: Edward Arnold
• Myers, Kathy (1986): Understains: The Sense and Seduction of Advertising. London: Comedia
• Packard, Vance (1960): The Hidden Persuaders. Harmondsworth: Penguin
• Pateman, Trevor (1983): 'How is Understanding an Advertisement Possible?' In Davis & Walton (Eds.), op. cit., pp. 187-204
  
• Vestergaard, Torben & Kim Schroder (1985): The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
  
• Williamson, Judith (1978): Decoding Advertisements. London: Marion Boyars

Daniel Chandler, UWA
May 1996