Posted: September 16th, 2017

essay about Ad

*For Peer Evaluation. Details will be given in class. If you do not have your essay uploaded by the
deadline then it will not be possible to put you in a group for peer review/the Evaluation Essay! Do
not miss this deadline!
DESCRIPTION
Advertisements do much more than just help us to make informed choices as consumers or push us to choose
their products. They convey messages about us as individuals and as a society—what we are, what we
should be, and what we should want to be—what is ideal. Yet, we seldom think about ads beyond our initial
response to the product being pushed. If we are to be active, thinking consumers and society members, we
must make a decision to decide what messages we will and will not accept; we must turn on our “filters”—
turn on our brains—and analyze what the images and products we are buying say to and about us.
In this essay, you will analyze an advertisement by breaking it into pieces and carefully studying those pieces
in order to understand the messages—both implicit and explicit—in the ad and how and why they are
conveyed.
PURPOSE
This essay offers the students the opportunity engage primary goals and skills of EN100, including:
 Analysis
 Rhetorical knowledge
 Critical thinking, reading, and writing
 Using textual evidence
 Organizing ideas logically and effectively
 Writing effective thesis statements
REQUIREMENTS
Select a print or video ad to analyze. The advertisement does not have to be current (analyzing an older ad
might be fun), but you do need to be able to discuss the original context of the ad. Your ad should be
compelling and complex, with multiple layers of meaning. Ads that are cute or funny but very simplistic
will not work for this assignment.
Your analysis should include—
 A specific, engaging introduction with a clear, concise, and complete thesis statement.
 An organized description of the ad. This may be 1-2 paragraphs. Include lots of specific, concrete
detail! After this point, description should be minimal. This section is only description, without
discussion or inferences. Consider who is in the ad (is it anyone famous?), color, space, placement of
people/objects, models used (race, gender, class) and what they’re doing, use of text, etc.
In the body of your essay, you should consider the following questions (not necessarily in this order):