Silence Kills...

For one of my blog entries I wanted to write about something other than commercials. No better time than the present!

For this entry, I wanted to focus on printed advertisements. I didn’t want to do too many, so I chose 2 that I will focus on. The 2 that I chose are caught my attention because of their illusions and because of their messages. 

VERBAL ABUSE

First, there is an ad about verbal abuse. The photograph shows a man with his mouth wide open like he is screaming. A fist protrudes his mouth and grasps the hair of a fearful woman. The pain in her face is obvious. She silently pleads for help as he verbally abuses her.

The advertisement had no words, but there was no need for them. The message is clear; verbal abuse hurts as much as physical abuse. The ad is powerful because we know the message without having to read it.

The Media and Stereotypes

Something that was interesting to me was that there are many advertisements similar to this one; however, none of them showed the reverse role. Though many of them showed young boys being verbally abused by adults, they did not show adult men being abuse by women. 

When ads show stereotypical things it makes me realize just how stereotypes come about. The media is perhaps the fastest, most effective way that we communicate in the 21^st century. If they are showing us that it is not OK for men to verbally abuse women, but yes it is OK that women can abuse men, then I believe that we, as a society, have a lot of improvements to make!


More Verbal Abuse Ads (Women)
Verbal Abuse Ads (Children)

Choking ...SMOKING

Another ad that I found interesting came about in Latin America. Regarding demographics, I believe the ad is targeted towards young Latino men. We know this because young men are a more prone to playing sports.

Unlike in the United States, soccer is the most popular sport; therefore, this ad would speak words to many of Latin America’s people. Besides soccer being the most popular sport, we know that this is geared towards Latinos because in small letters “Com cigarro tuda vira cinza” is written, which is Spanish. If translated to English, this means “with cigarettes, your life goes to ashes.”

I looked up the phrase on Google and found this information:

“Brazil has the world’s strictest governmental laws against smoking, consisting of highly visible anti-smoking campaigns, severe control on advertising, and very high taxes on smoking products. Despite these obstacles, the number of smokers in Brazil continues to grow. 

In 2006, there were approximately 44 million smokers in the country, up from 38 million in 1997.

Factors driving this trend include the low price of cigarettes, which are among the lowest in the world; the easy access to tobacco products as well as the actions taken by the powerful tobacco companies to slow down the anti-smoking legislation in Brazil (Eyes on Brazil - Word Press).”

Considering this, I would think that the ad targets Brazilians a large bit.

Cigs crush dreams?

This ad speaks directly to the target group because young Latino athletes would look at this and see that if they smoke, their dreams would fall apart.  If this ad was to be place in the US, they may have football players on the front, because people see athletes as role models. It is a young football players dream to become a football star. The ad shows that smoking is not needed in order to fulfill the desire to become a soccer player and in fact, it will hurt your chances of doing so.

I believe the purpose of this ad is to reach out to the young Latinos before they try tobacco and are already addicted. So in a sense, it is to prevent them from smoking. When young people see that smoking isn’t the “cool” thing to do, they may look at smoking adults differently.