How to Analyze an Advertisement

1. What is the general ambience of the advertisement? What mood does it create? How does it do this?
The ad is trying to set an ambience of remorse and regret. By depicting trees as the lung of planet earth and showing deforestation acting like a cancer that is suffocating the world.

2. What is the design of the advertisement? Does it use axial balance or some other form? How are the basic components or elements arranged?
The advertisement relies heavily on the use of imagery to convey it's message.

3. What is the relationship between pictorial elements and written material and what does this tell us?
The words used in the ad "Before it's too late" summarize the feelings of the image in a very quick attention grabbing message. The words are in small print in the corner because the image is the dominant idea.

4.What is the use of space in the advertisement? Is there a lot of 'white space" or is it full of graphic and written elements?
The ad uses the entire space to grab a viewers attention. The image is such an attention grabber with the trees/lung being destroyed that the space is used to it's maximum potential.

5. What signs and symbols do we find? What role do they play in the ad's impact?
Trees are being used as a victim of deforestation. Killing trees is like doing damage to your lungs.

6. If there are figures (men, women, children, animals) what are they like? What can be said about their facial expressions, poses, hairstyle, age, sex, hair color, ethnicity, education, occupation, relationships (of one to the other)?

7. What does the background tell us? Where is the advertisement taking place and what significance does this background have?


8. What action is taking place in the advertisement and what significance does it have? (This might be described as the ad's "plot.")
Trees are the main way that carbon dioxide is converted back into oxygen, with the use of the trees being shaped into a lung, the message that if we continue to destroy forests, it's the same as suffocating the earth from the air we all depend on to breathe.

9. What theme or themes do we find in the advertisement? What is it about? (The plot of an advertisement may involve a man and a woman drinking but the theme might be jealousy, faithlessness, ambition, passion, etc.)
This ad is from an environmental point of view, it sets a theme of sadness, and regret. It's a warning to those who might not consider a green lifestyle to be pointless.

10. What about the language used? Does it essentially provide information or does it try to generate some kind of emotional response? Or both? What techniques are used by the copywriter: humor, alliteration, definitions" of life, comparisons, sexual innuendo, and so on?
The message is trying to invoke an emotional response to a persons inner feelings about the earth and eco-responsibility.

11. What typefaces are used and what impressions do they convey?

12. What is the item being advertised and what role does it play in American culture and society?
The item being advertised is more of an idea or warning of the things to come, this is especially important in American culture and society today because this is a huge global issue.

13. What about aesthetic decisions? If the advertisement is a photograph, what kind of a shot is it? What significance do long shots, medium shots, close-up shots have? What about the lighting, use of color, angle of the shot?
The photograph itself is a large scale shot, it uses awesome shades of green and brown with a downward angle as if the viewer were god looking down at earth's lungs being destroyed.

14. What sociological, political, economic or cultural attitudes are indirectly reflected in the advertisement? An advertisement may be about a pair of blue jeans but it might, indirectly, reflect such matters as sexism, alienation, stereotyped thinking, conformism, generational conflict, loneliness, elitism, and so on.
This ad is confronting the political and environmental issues that face our world today. Global warming is a huge issue that needs to be taken care of "before it's too late"