Essay Purpose Advertisements are arguments. They promote, ensnare, convince, and

Essay Purpose
Advertisements are arguments. They promote, ensnare, convince, and alter our perceptions. The best advertisements work subtly, changing minds and ensuring sales without consumers even realizing how the ads affect them. The worst go about their work obviously, failing to sway anyone because of how transparently they try to do their thing. Your task for this essay is to select an advertisement and analyze how it works.
Requirements:
A strong thesis statement that makes clear what you think your ad’s goal and methods are
12-point font, double spaced, Times New Roman
4-6 pages
An advertisement of your choosing, that you provide the title of. After you read the rest of this page, please see the Picking an Advertisement to Write About page to help you pick a valid advertisement. The basic requirements are:Must be a commercial advertisement, not a print ad, static image, or radio ad
Must have aired on TV or on the internet in the last ten years
Should be one that enjoy or find interesting
Due Dates and Length Requirements:
Rough draft due September 3rd, at least three full pages
Final draft due September 17th, at least four full pages
Prompt:
Select a commercial advertisement and write an essay that analyzes how the advertisement functions. You should aim to answer three questions over the course of this essay:
Who is the target audience for this product?
What does the advertisement do to sell its product to its audience?
Why this advertisement designed this way?
Your thesis should address these questions to one degree or another and should go deeper than “this ad does this to sell a product.”
You will find a rubric attached to the bottom of this assignment, which you should use to guide your writing process. I will refer to it when giving feedback to the draft, and use it to help generate a grade for the final draft.
Structural Starting Point:
When structuring this essay, your introduction should mention the name of the advertisement, along with a brief description of the company behind it and the product it advertises. This should lead into your thesis statement at the end of your introduction.
The next section of your essay, which will like expand over more than one page, should focus on context. You can’t automatically assume your audience has seen this advertisement, is familiar with the product, or can otherwise follow your argument that answers the questions of the prompt without this context from you. You should at the very least describe the ad, and should consider discussing any relevant history about the ad campaign, company, and/or product that you both deem necessary for your audience to know and decide it is unlikely they already know.
Once you have established the context of your advertisement, you should answer the question of the prompt – how does this commercial sell its product to its target audience? You don’t need to go in this order, though doing so is a useful starting point for a draft. This is also likely where you will reference the sources from class.
Specific Paragraph Breakdowns:
For our first essay, I’m going to give a detailed list of the paragraphs you should consider including in this essay, and in the rough order that you should start with. As you revise, you should consider if any of these paragraphs need to be moved, or if you need to supplement these paragraphs with additional information. You will find a similar breakdown in the scaffolding instructions and document, which will help you outline this essay.
REMINDER – read through this whole document, and then do the scaffold. I highly recommend finishing the scaffold before drafting.
Introduction
A good introduction should:
Get your audience invested with a strong hook
Establish some basic context for what your essay is going to be about
Clearly state your argument with a thesis statement
For this essay, this means naming your commercial and the company behind it, establishing what about your commercial is interesting or makes it stand out, and writing a thesis that states clearly what you think the commercial does to sell its product to its audience.
Body Paragraph 1 – Context of the Advertisement
Consider what your audience needs to know about your commercial’s product and/or company, and then provide that information and context. You don’t need to provide a detailed history for either if you can count on your audience already having that information. You don’t need to explain to them what Coca Cola is, or Nintendo, or baseball, for example. Instead, you should use this paragraph to talk about the important context that will help them understand both the commercial and your argument about it.
Note that depending on your choice of commercial, this might take more than one paragraph. For example, a commercial from a foreign country might require a paragraph explaining what the product is and a paragraph explaining some unfamiliar cultural reference points. Similarly, a trailer for a video game might require a paragraph explaining what kind of game it is and a paragraph explaining the company behind it.
Body Paragraph 2 – Summary of the Advertisement
Summarize the content and/or plot of your commercial. You have two goals for this summary; you should make it detailed enough so that someone that hasn’t seen your commercial has enough information to follow your argument, and you should use it to bring attention to the parts of the commercial that are going to be most important to your argument. You do not need to give a detailed shot for shot summary; focus on making sure your audience knows the content of the ad and are focused on the parts of the ad you will be talking about the most.
Body Paragraph 3 – First Argument about how the Advertisement Functions
Connect part of the background, summary, or other context you established earlier to argue how the commercial sells its product to its audience. What elements of the commercial target its intended audience and how?
Some common elements that show up in a lot of commercials:
Humor – explain the joke in detail, as well as the type of humor and how it appeals to its audience.
Excitement – explain what the commercial does to get its audience excited and why
Sex appeal – explain how the commercial invokes sex appeal and why
Sadness – explain what the commercial does to make its audience sad and why
Storytelling – explain what sort of story the commercial tells and how that story sells this product
Company ethos – explain how the company relies on its established history and credibility to sell its product
Facts and data – explain the type of data or other facts that commercial brings up in its favor and how this sells its product
Venue – explain when and/or where the commercial first aired and how that influences its design
Body Paragraph 4 – Second Further Argument about how the Advertisement Functions
As needed, make another connection between the context you’ve established, using the list above as a guide.
Body Paragraph 5 – Third Argument about how the Advertisement Functions
Same as the previous two body paragraphs, talk about a third aspect of the commercial that helps sell its product or idea
Conclusion
A good conclusion reaffirms the points that came before it. Your conclusion for this essay should re-establish the audience you think the commercial is targeting and how, and restate the strongest points of your argument about what parts of the commercial sell its product to that audience.
Other Suggestions and Recommendations:
You should consider comparing your chosen ad to another by the same company, in the same ad campaign, or for a similar product made by another company. Your focus should always be on analyzing the argument of ONE ad, but you can use comparison other ads to further your analysis.
You should NOT judge the ad for its content, even if you find that context objectionable. This is not to say such arguments are invalid, but rather that they are beyond the scope of what this essay is asking for. It’s quite easy to become distracted talking about the ways in which an advertisement is bad and lose track of your task to talk about how the ad functions. You should think twice before writing this essay about an advertisement you find distasteful or problematic. Similarly, you should NOT pick ads that use obsolete methods that today are recognized as sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.
The best choice is an advertisement that you enjoy, and/or one that you feel works especially well on you. This is not a personal essay, but it is an easier essay to write when you are writing about a topic you have a positive emotional investment in.
If you chose an ad for a product, company, service, or idea that you know a lot about, great! Just remember that your audience might not know as much as you, and so you’ll need to include necessary knowledge when you discuss context.