Analysis of previous newspaper advertisements.

The first advertisement that I decided to look at was for students. The company were advertising 20% off of salon services for all students with valid ID. Although it is unrelated to what I wish to advertise, I found it hard to find something similar to what I wanted to do. It appears that newspaper advertising is not very popular for TV programmes and films. I believe they tend to stick to magazines, adverts around public transport, television and billboards. The advert that I am analysing is very simplistic, this is why I chose it. The background is black and there is a picture of a young woman on the right hand side. This immediately advertises it to any student, and we quickly learn their target audience. The text is all in white and there is not too much, so it does not over power us. It gives the basics of the offer and contact numbers. What I particularly liked about this advert was its simple colour theme of black and white; I think I will follow this through to my own advert.

The next advertisement that I looked at was very similar to the first. It was advertising a sale in a shop. It used the same colour scheme as the first, black background and white text. The two colours seem a convention of newspaper advertisements. There is an image of a woman on the left hand side, rather than colour as above this image is in black and white. I think that the placing of this image, on the left as a pose to the right works better than on the right. Because of the limited space for information, I think it is important to draw the eye to the picture first, capturing the audience’s attention primarily, and then they can move on to looking at the text. I think that there is a little too much text on this advert though, and readers may find this boring. The placing of the picture I particularly like, and I may decide to carry this convention in my own work.

The last advert that I looked at was for Falcon Ford car. This was my favourite ad of the three. I liked the use of the picture as the background and the text over laying it. I think that this causes the advert to be very eye catching. It uses only one image, and quickly sums up the subject of the advert, the new car. Again the picture dominates our eye primarily, and we are then drawn to the text. The use of text is also minimal, so that the reader stores this information quickly in their short term memory. I liked the use of the important details in the text being in bold, so that they capture our attention quickly. They have Photo shopped in stars to the passenger seat, implying that the car is of star quality. This is reinforced beneath with the use of 5 images of stars between the words ‘FALCON, AWARDED….FOR SAFETY.’ From this we see that the advert really plays on the safety aspects of the car, making it ideal for families. The use of an image as the entire background of the advert worked really well, and I think I will use this in my own work. This will also save me the time consuming element of cutting the image of my subject away from the background of the photo.