Larissa Silveira

Thaís Bernardes

AdvertisemAdvertisementent

AdvertisementAdvertisement is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand.

A Coca-Cola advertisement from the 1890s

Something about history...Something about history...

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

Edo period (division of Japanese history 1603-1868) advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine called Kinseitan.

Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.

History tells us that out-of-home out-of-home advertising advertising and billboardsbillboards are the oldest

forms of advertising.

As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers.

In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press.

Printing press from 1811, exhibited in Munich, Germany

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles.

N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.

Designed by N. W. Ayer & Son

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers.

This practice was carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers' eyes.

The Volkswagen ad campaign-featuring such headlines as “Think “Think Small” Small” —ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a "position" or "unique selling proposition" designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer's mind.

It was ranked as the best advertising campaign of the 20th century by Ad Age.

• The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV.

• Marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s.

• At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search engine , started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users.

                                                      

ADVERTISEMENT: a mixed ADVERTISEMENT: a mixed genregenre

Advertisements can be found anywhere: on the glossy pages of magazines, on the gigantic hoardings across the street, on TV and on the Internet. The channel used will obviously also affect the format or packaging of the advert and the structural and linguistic choices. However, regardless of their medium and packaging, all adverts - whether print ads, hoardings, commercials or banners – mix verbal and visual elements.

Furthermore, ads often imitate other genres and masquerade as other kinds of text – for example, a commercial may imitate a James Bond movie, an advert for a brand of healthy food may incorporate a recipe.

Finally, also the register used in advertising is mixed as it conflates formal and informal features, and blends characteristics of written and of spoken English. For example, the sequence of adjectives and premodifiers points to a “writerly” style, while syntactic choices may be more typical of a chatty register (Make a move! Go and get it!).

StructureStructureA print advert is essentially made up of four elements which carry out different functions:

•the headline attracts the reader’s attention;

•the body copy presents the product characteristics;

•the photograph or visual sets up a glamorous background;

•the slogan synthesises the product value and prompts its purchase.

GraphologyGraphology

Pictures are an essential component of advertising as they are meant to enhance the objective and associative qualities of products.

Besides pictures, also graphology – i.e. the page layout and visual aspect of words – conveys connotative meanings.

Lexical creativityLexical creativity“Advertising promotes the new, by making use of a novel and almost revolutionary ‘poetic diction’. New words in ads are very frequent and comply with the rules of word formation”. (Trask 1997: 240)

•AFFIXATION:AFFIXATION: the process of obtaining words from other words by adding affixes (prefixes and suffixes). Examples: historical, prehistory derived from history.

•COMPOUNDING: COMPOUNDING: the process of forming words by combining two or more smaller words. Examples: teapot, armchair, fairy-tale.

•BLENDINGBLENDING: : the process of forming words by combining pieces of other words. Examples: brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog).

Let’s try to discover the meaning of Let’s try to discover the meaning of some slogans:some slogans:

Magnumize your life.

A fresh un-makeup. A fresh un-makeup.

Dare to be Diorific. Dare to be Diorific.

Traffic-stopping lipstick. Traffic-stopping lipstick.

Essensual perfume. Essensual perfume.

Headache-free motoring. Headache-free motoring.

Affixation = Magnum + -ize: make something more satisfactory by eating a Magnum ice-cream.

Affixation = un- + make-up: such light make-up that it almost feels unreal;

Blending = Dior + terrific: Dior make-up is fabulous.

Compounding = traffic + stopping: beauty can have unpredictable effects even on traffic;

Blending = essence + sensual: a sensual perfume;

Compounding = headache + free: driving the right car needn’t be a hassle.

RegisterRegister•Advertising language adopts the syntactic structure typical of spoken language with short, coordinate sentences;• Another distinctive characteristic of advertisements which points again to spoken exchanges is the frequency of orders and exclamations, ‘Buy!’, ‘Use!’, ‘Enjoy!’;•Advertising is well-known for its crafted use of linguistic and rhetorical devices to surprise and entertain the public. The use of rhyme, alliteration and metrical pattern may combine with metaphor and hyperbole to make a promotional message sound particularly impressive;•In conclusion, advertising mixes features of an informal, spoken register (syntactic choices) and of a formal, elaborate style (lexical choices and rhetorical figures).

LET’S PRACTICE!!LET’S PRACTICE!!

ReferencesReferences

Mixed genre advertisement. Available in: <http://www.federica.unina.it/scienze-politiche/lingua-inglese-scpol/mixed-genre-advertisement/>. Access: August 23rd.

WIKIPEDIA. Advertising. Available in: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising>. Access: August 20th.

YOUTUBE. Available in: <http:// youtube.com>. Access: August 23rd.