Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
As you gear up for writing your first essay, you should consider what makes your ad “newsworthy.” Assuming a reader who’s already interested in modern-day advertising, why is this ad of particular interest? How does it challenge or complicate what we already know about advertising from watching The Persuaders?
To help model this practice, I want you to consider the following ads, all of them cited early in the second segment of The Persuaders, titled “Emotional Branding”:
- Life Buoy soap
- Infiniti
- Nike “I can have impossible goals”
- Benneton
- Chinet paper plates
- Saturn “Homecoming”
- Apple iPod silhouette posters & ads
For each ad in this list, take note of
- What important insight this example offers, according to the documentary’s narrator or one of its experts;
- What prior understanding of the topic helped make this example interesting.
Bring your notes to class for discussion—and as HW to turn in.
Further Reading Download and read Thomas Frank, “The Marriage of Hip and Square,” an excerpt from the first chapter of his book, The Conquest of Cool, that ran fifteen years ago in Harper’s Magazine. As you read, consider the function of Frank’s central example, the advertising guru Bill Bernbach. What important insight does Bernbach offer? What prior understanding of the topic makes Bernbach interesting?