Advertisers Moral Responsibility

I personally believe that advertisers do have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping people. Why so? One of the biggest problems, even in today's society and developed stage, stereotyping is a massive problems. The media, with the enormous impact media has on a society nowadays, it should feel the need to respect and treat everyone equally. However, due to the firms only being concerned about maximum revenue, the consequences and impact on the non-targeted audience is often neglected. Even if possibly unintentional - like in the Mountain Dew ads by Tyler the Creator -, they leave an impression on the viewers of how an ethnic group/race/etc. is viewed or is essentially supposed to be viewed. In the case of the Mountain Dew ads, they display all criminals as black people, which is a clear indication of stereotyping, and negative critic is easily justified. Despite the motive wanting to exhibit the product as something great and superior, racial bias should be considered and thought through. This is just one example found in the US. Nevertheless, ads promoting stereotypes happens everywhere on this planet. Multiple examples can be thought off the top of my head (e.g. a watch commercial generalising women as complicated and always late). To conclude, to help eradicate or at least drastically decrease the usage of stereotypes, the media should feel a moral duty and responsibility in portraying everyone as equal and unique.

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The ad by the US Army reveals a lot about how a society and/or a nation is meant to view the military. It portrays a young soldier leaping across a dark gap, onto a bright edge. The young soldier is one indication of the intended audience, which is presumably young men starting from the age of 16 and above. What supports and broadens the audience, is the text at the bottom of the ad. It clarifies that anyone interested in a business career has better chances if they join the military. As mentioned before, the soldier leaps onto an elevated, brighter surface. This is imagery and/or symbolism and describes that joining the army guarantees you a bright future. To add onto this, the fact that the camera is angled upwards at the soldier, and all the vectors point towards the sun and brightness, depicts the army as heroic and encourages joining it.

As pointed out in the lower part of the ad, they value teamwork and promote qualities gained through the army. It does so by linking logos and ethos strongly together. And example of this would be "9 out of 10 employers said that they prefer the qualities of determination, good judgement and self-discipline." leading onto the next sentence "Qualities that the army develops." Not only does this depict facts, but also uses them to make the army more credible and useful for the future. This can then again have an emotional impact on the viewer by making them feel proud, thus developing pathos.

Since the army is rooting for itself, the empowered in this ad would be the soldiers. Through the use of a young, fit, male model, it presumably only targets young men who are physically in shape. This also outlines societal norms of the US culture. Typically, the men are present to serve and protect and fight and strive for achieving something whereas the women stereotypically have stay-at-home jobs.

Pitch for "Conflict Zone Shelter"

We were tasked to present a pitch in front of class on certain assigned topics. Alyx and I had the topic "Affordable and easy to build conflict zone shelter". This was quite a difficult topic to prepare, mainly because of the audience and how this would be presented. We finalised the audience to be Governments and NGOs which are currently deployed in conflict zones, and are struggling with housing.

In order for this pitch to work, we had to focus on specific appeals. These were as follows:

• Rational or logical appeals
• Give reasons and explain how product is better than competition
• Need to satisfy curiosity
• Mention how the tent could use recycled material → environmentally friendly
• Price efficiency
• Need to achieve
• Talk in on how the NGOs and governments want to solve conflicts and troubles regarding housing of refugees
• Need for Affiliation
• Talk about how companies who help achieve the goal will benefit by having their company name in the online video

How did these work and why did we choose them? It's fairly simple. We chose these because they are a more professional approach as to choosing a product. We wanted to achieve exactly this with an ad.

The persuasive techniques used were mainly ones relating to professionalism. For example, involving an expert who has been in action in conflict zones would be very convincing to governments and NGOs, as they would bring in first hand knowledge. Another example would be extrapolation, hypothesising that the specific shelter would clear all problems. These were most effective due to the audience they are aimed at. A high-class, professional audience needs expert proof and statistics.

The audience played a major role from the beginning. We knew that conflict zones could only affect one specific audience, as mentioned previously. This meant that we had to think of very concrete ideas and they had to pinpoint exactly what the governments and NGOs want. It also influenced the way we wanted to present our pitch. We needed to behave very confident in order for the company to see where we are coming from and to believe our expertise.

I believe the content was fairly well thought of, as approved by our teacher multiple times throughout preparation. However, changes I would make include: longer preparation time, more confidence, and possibly a different presentation layout to cause the maximum impact on the company we are pitching to.

VW Ad: Darth Vader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGZNocni6zE


To sum up the ad, a young boy dressed as Darth Vader attempts to use "the force" to move and turn on certain objects. After it obviously not working, the father comes home in his new VW Passat and parks the car. The son rushes out and attempts to turn on the car with the force. The dad then turns on the car using the car key leaving the son amazed at his own force abilities.

Since the ad by Volkswagon aims to promote its cars, the intended audience is anyone who is able to drive and is able to afford the car. Using logos, the company increases its audience by listing the price of around $20 000, which for a mid-range car, is a fairly cheap price. While watching this ad, you will notice the music in the background plays music from Star Wars. This could also increase the audience size by using pathos to inflict a nostalgic sensation among viewers. At the end of the video, the ad uses logos by stating statistics and numbers that are listed at the bottom of the screen. This again could cause Ethos by showing positive test results on the CO2 output and petrol consumption. We now all know that the numbers are all faked (VW scandal 2015). However, back in 2011, this all seemed very convincing and for the price of the vehicle, it called for a very decent deal.