Students analyse the persuasive language, images and design techniques of advertisements and consider how they target and position an audience

What this dot point is asking

Advertising is the part of the media that openly wants something from you: your money, your attention, your habit. This dot point asks you to analyse how advertisements persuade, and how they target a particular audience. The skill is to take an ad apart, name the techniques in its language, images and design, and explain how each works to make you want the product. Reading ads well is also a life skill: it makes you a harder audience to manipulate.

The answer

An advertisement is a small, dense persuasive text. Every element is chosen to move you toward an action. Analysing one means slowing the ad down, because it is designed to work on you fast and below conscious attention.

How ads persuade

Ads draw on a familiar set of persuasive techniques.

• Emotive appeal: making you feel happy, safe, envious or afraid, then linking that feeling to the product.
• Aspiration: showing the life you could have, so the product seems like the way to get it.
• Authority and testimony: an expert, celebrity or "real customer" vouching for the product.
• Repetition and slogan: a short, memorable line that sticks and stands in for the brand.
• Urgency: limited time, limited stock, act now, which pressures a quick decision.
• Imagery and colour: bright, warm, attractive design that makes the product feel desirable before a word is read.

Each technique has an effect, and your analysis names the technique, points to where it appears, and states what it does to the audience.

Targeting an audience

Ads are aimed. An ad for a sports drink uses different language, images and music from an ad for a retirement fund, because it targets a different audience. Notice the signs of targeting: the age and look of the people shown, the setting, the slang or formality of the words, where and when the ad appears. Targeting tells you who the ad thinks its audience is and what it assumes they want, which is part of the representation you analyse.

Reading ads critically

A critical reader separates what an ad claims from what it shows. An ad rarely says "this product will make you popular"; it shows popular people using it and lets you make the link. Notice the gap between the feeling the ad creates and the actual product. Notice the fine print, where claims are quietly qualified. The point is not that all advertising is dishonest, but that it is persuasion, and a careful audience reads the persuasion rather than absorbing it.

Examples in context

Consider an original print ad for a phone. It shows a young person laughing with friends at a sunlit beach, the phone barely visible in their hand, above a slogan reading "Stay close". A weak analysis says the ad shows people having fun. A strong analysis reads the technique and the effect: the ad uses aspiration, representing a warm, connected life and linking it to the phone, while the slogan "Stay close" implies the product, not the friends or the beach, is what keeps people together. The ad targets young buyers through the age of the models, the casual setting and the social promise. The product itself is almost absent, because the ad is selling a feeling and letting the audience supply the link.

Common mistakes

Try this

• Take any ad and list three techniques it uses, naming the exact word, image or design feature for each.
• Work out the target audience from the people shown, the setting and the language, and write one sentence on what the ad assumes that audience wants.
• Identify the feeling the ad creates and write a sentence on the gap between that feeling and what the product actually does.