Advertising :Designing desires
1. View the two exemplars for the assignment
These pages provide examples that illustrate how you will be required to use the big ideas to analyse individual advertisements.
2. Go to Exercise 1
In exercise 1, you will be provided with a sample advertisement. You are required to produce an analysis of this advertisement using the approach described in the two exemplars.
3. Go to Exercise 2
In exercise 2, you are required to select an advertisement which you believe illustrates the principles of the appropriate big idea Once you have selected an advertisement, you must then:
1. Analyse the advertisement to explain how it illustrates the principles of the relevant big idea
2. Alter the advertisement in some way so that it now displays a contrasting meaning
3. Explain and justify the changes

Useful links for ads :
http://adsoftheworld.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/
Scientific realism: Exemplar 1
Two comic masterpieces on DVD
‘Two comic masterpieces’ is a one-third-page advert that appeared in The Weekend Australian magazine (23–24 November 2002).

‘Two comic masterpieces’ is an advert for DVDs of two popular comedy series produced by the BBC: ‘Steptoe and Son’ and ‘Dad’s Army’. Each series was produced—and became immensely popular—in the age of black-and-white television, as shown by the cover photographs. (While modern imaging techniques can ‘colourise’ black-and-white images and can render colour images black and white, these photos are authentic!)
The advert is a simple, but nonetheless effective demonstration of the argument that we always, and inevitably, represent the world to ourselves in particular ways and within particular ‘frames’. The advert ‘works’ by uniting two ideas that are usually regarded as binary opposites: popular or mass culture and high culture. It does so by making two instances of popular culture appear to be part of high culture by ‘framing’ them in a particular way.
Each series was produced as high quality comedy for a broad audience and was, as such, part of the popular or mass culture of its time. Neither series was regarded as part of high culture nor ‘the arts’ and neither had any pretensions to being great art nor great drama. However, this advert ‘frames’ each series in at least two ways that make it seem part of ‘high’ culture:
• The title—‘Two comic masterpieces’
We would normally associate the word ‘masterpieces’ with high culture—(e.g. orchestral music, epic novels and oil paintings). Here, however, it is used to describe two items of popular culture (albeit masterful examples of their genre).
• The body of the advert
This consists of a still image from each series literally ‘framed’. Each is surrounded by the sort of ornate, gilt picture frame we normally see around oil paintings.
This advert may be just a simple (trivial?) illustration of that complex ‘philosophical’ argument about relationships between reality and representation, but it works well, nonetheless. It shows the BBC seeking new value from two successful 1960s products by associating them with the ‘old masters’ of European high culture. By ‘framing’ each series in this way, the BBC invites people who know it already to see it (and enjoy it) differently, and it invites people who don’t know the series to see it in the same light as some of the great work of European culture … rather than as just a piece of ephemeral popular culture.

Scientific realism: Exemplar 2
LCD.WEGA (Sony)
‘LCD.WEGA (Sony)’ is a full-page advert that appeared in The Age: Good Weekend Magazine (4 September 2004).

LCD WEGA’ is an advert for Sony LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) televisions. It ‘works’ by inverting our normal sense of the relationship between reality and representation … in order to assert the realism of Sony’s LCD pictures.
Normally, we regard television as secondary to reality because it is a source of representations, not of reality—it’s not reality, ‘merely’ a representation of it. In this advert, however, television (or, at least, Sony’s WEGA LCD televisions) is ‘more real’ than real life. The young, white, heterosexual couple on the television screen are ‘real’, (literally, life-like), and the young, white, heterosexual couple on the bed are merely representations of ‘real’ people—models of what real people look like.
The text of the advert reinforces the ambivalence about reality and representation in two ways. Firstly, it reduces ‘philosophical’ distinctions between reality and representation to technological distinctions between low-quality and high-quality images:
Sony’s new LCD televisions are the most realistic yet. All signals are processed digitally giving you a crisper, sharper picture.
Second, the text presents experience as a combination of high quality images and high quality design:
And with a sleek compact design, you’re in for an experience that will change the way you see things forever.
This is a paradox: having asserted that realism is merely a matter of the quality of the television images, the text then presents ways of seeing as combinations of television image and television design … reasserting the idea that seeing something always and inevitably involves ‘framing it’.
This is a fun advert, but for all its novelty, its inversion of our normal sense of the relationship between reality and representation isn’t unique. So-called ‘reality television’ programs like ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’ use just the same inversion to assert that they are in a class (genre) of their own. Normally, ‘reality television’ is an oxymoron, because television represents reality—it is part of ‘the media’, which literally mediate our relationship with reality. Reality television programs pretend to show us reality (not to represent it), but these programs are just as constructed as any other, skillfully using techniques of editing, lighting and sound to make it appear that no such techniques are being used.

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