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            Advertising as we know it is dying. Less and less people are buying and using traditional media (TV, magazines, newspapers, cinemas, radio, etc.), in which the traditional types of advertising are present. The age of television, radio, and paper will eventually come to a close; already the Internet is showing itself to be a dominant player in media, in countries that have developed their internet infrastructure to a satisfactory level. We and other companies have tried to keep up with the rise of the internet, by placing banner ads, pop-ups, and video ads, but people are getting around the ‘inconvenience’ or ‘annoyance’ of these ads via ad blocking software, making our adverts useless (since not enough people view them). However, there may be another, less overt way.             To the average person, having to sit through an advert before viewing a video/article, or view a site littered with ads is an annoyance, easily mitigated via ad blocking software. Because this

In my opinion, the answer to this question is quite complicated. In short, I believe advertisements should be held by a higher moral standard, and we should be more wary of them in general. But advertisers aren't people. They are companies, with numerous people in them, with the companies goal being to generate as much profit as they can. Can we honestly fault advertising companies for making decisions (legal ones that is) that give them the most profit? If we want advertisers to be held to a higher standard, I think that we have to develop higher standards first. When companies perpetrate stereotypes, people should take a stand, via actions such as boycotts, if it is that important to them. Consumers as a group can hold impressive amounts of power over companies (assuming they are not monopolies), if they work together, as at the end of the day, companies want to make profit, and consumers purchasing their product is how they do it. There's a phrase I've heard before call

To start off, here's some basic information about the advert. Its target audience is young women, as the main focus of the advert is a young woman, and the product is cosmetic, a product type commonly advertised to this target audience. The cosmetic in question is "Nivea Smooth Milk: Body", a type of moisturizing cream. As the ad is written in English and comes from a German (Western) company, it can be concluded that this advert comes from a Western cultural background. Since Nivea was founded in 1911, it can be inferred that this ad was made in 2011, due to the quote "100 years skin care for life". The ad seems to imply that physical attractiveness is the most important factor in a happy relationship, due to the happy couple featured in the image, and the slogan "For visibily smooth and touchably soft skin" (misspellings came with the ad), which seems to imply to the viewer that moisturizer brought the couple closer together (the image has the

Abel, Ricardo, and I worked in a group (Plus Advertising) assigned to create an advertising pitch for In-tents Camping 's Glamping Trip in Oregon, USA. After some brainstorming, we decided that the focus of the ad shouldn't be on getting people to like going outdoors, but rather on proving that glamping is better than camping. Since most adults who go camping tend to be more 'outdoorsy' people, they would mostly likely not prefer glamping over camping (because they don't mind the discomforts that can come with camping). In our opinion, the target audience that we'd be most successful in was adults with families, as the children of the families would want the comfort that comes with glamping over camping. We felt that our main job was not to get people to be more outdoorsy and go for glamping, but rather prove that glamping is better than camping, and poach some of the regular camping market to add to the glamping market.This led to our choice of appeals. We w

The intended audience of this ad are potential customers for trucks, as the ad emphasizes Volvo's "Volvo Dynamic Steering". By having famed action-star Jean-Claude van Damme preform a split in between two Volvo trucks fitted with dynamic steering, the advert uses both ethos and logos. By having Van Damme, a celebrity famed for similar stunts, they are giving a bit of sincerity and credibility to their advert, as people trust in Van Damme and will more willing to trust the ad as a result, fulfilling the ethos requirement. Van Damme also has a monologue where he details his life, adding to the ethos factor of the ad. To appeal to logos, the ad states that the stunt was set up to test the "stability and precision of Volvo Dynamic Steering", and as the test went on successfully, the viewer therefore concludes that the dynamic steering must be quite good, in order to have been able to achieve that stunt. To appeal to pathos, the ad has Van Damme doing a precarious

Dear Ms. Laura Clark, Your article, while raising a few interesting and worrying points, completely missed the mark. Instead of blasting ‘text speak’ and saying that “ Youngsters are also in danger of growing up with limited vocabularies because they spend so much of their free time on sites such as Twitter…”, perhaps you should look to the parents and authority figures who should be teaching the children about the English language before blaming technology. As a ‘youngster’ myself, I feel that you shift the blame on to text speak too much, and give it unfair credit. It is also rather insulting to observe the generation raising us, cast their responsibility on to inanimate devices, that they themselves gave us. The fact is, is that both teachers and parents share a certain responsibility to teach children to do the right thing. Perhaps the staff should have made a better effort in making sure that the children knew to differentiate their writing styles for different contexts and

Note: This interview is set in modern day             Pink Floyd’s albums, “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Wish You Were Here”, “Animals”, and “The Wall”, all contain references to social issues. While perhaps most known for their unique and psychedelic instrumental aspects of their songs, Pink Floyd was never a band that shied away from social issues, mainly referencing aspects of the human condition that we’d rather forget, such as greed/income inequality, war (only present in some of their songs/albums), and insanity/mental health issues. Their 1977 album, “Animals” is the most overtly political album in their collection, with lyricist Roger Waters painting a picture of a dark and dystopian society; inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Animal Farm”. Overall, Pink Floyd’s most often detailed social issue seems to be greed/inequality. One of their most famous songs, “Money”, is about greed/the relentless pursuit of money (here’s a link to the lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyri

Language, while an important aspect of our identity, does not shape who we are. Language is a form of expressing who we are. We use language to communicate our ideas to one another. A person has the same personality regardless of what language they speak. In the various texts relating to the concept of mother tongue or bilingualism, the people were not shaped by their knowledge of a different language, but rather, their experiences due to their use of their languages. At best, language can only indirectly influence or define who we are. In “Mother Tongue”, by Amy Tan, Tan’s mother is often treated differently or worse than her daughter, due to the way she speaks. The way her mother spoke also defined her teenage years, with her being ashamed of or thinking less of her mother due to the way she spoke. Her studies of language also suffered in comparison to her studies of science and math, possibly due to the different style of English her mother spoke at home as well. While this may

While English is spoken as a second language more than as a native language, non-native speakers are often stereotyped or assumed to be, unintelligible or incoherent. As shown in Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue", her mother often gets worse service by doctors, department stores, restaurants, stockbrokers, in comparison to Tan. During her teenage years, Tan often had to call places for her mother, as shown in her interaction with the stockbroker, who may have decided to try and cheat her mother out of her money simply because he may have believed that she wouldn't be able to get her complaints through to his boss (due to her English skill level). Even she (when she was younger) had a negative perception about what her mother had to say, due to her mother's "limited" English. The text provides a perspective of how people with observable 'non-nativeness' (in terms of speaking English), can have very different experiences in day to day life, compared to na

My first name, Victor, originates from Latin. It means victor, or conqueror. Its quite a universal name, and is pronounced very similarly in most languages, despite some languages spelling it differently (Viktor). Culturally, it seems to me like the name is more common in 'Latin' countries (France, Italy, Spain, etc.) or Eastern European countries (like Russia), in the form of Viktor, but this is my own personal observation, so it might not be necessarily true. As to how it affects my identity, I don't think it affects it very much. I'm not singled out or anything because of my name (I guess its quite international due to the Latin origin) like the author of that text we read about names in class was. I don't see myself as a conqueror, like my name suggests, but then again, who is a conqueror these days? However, I really dislike losing (who doesn't?), so that has to count for something, right? I guess the international nature of the name could be said to repre

As a Norwegian, I find it quite hard to find a specific cultural stereotype or marker that the world has of us, as we are a small and not very well known country. So instead, I will address a few misconceptions and/or stereotypes about us. I'll start off with one that applies to all of the Scandinavian countries: That we have a sort of rivalry or dislike of each other going on. While we will make fun of each other a lot (e.g. How do you sink a Swedish submarine? Just knock on the door), this is done as more of a sibling thing. In fact, the countries are really quite close these days, basically like siblings. To be honest, I'm not really sure if this is even something that people actually believe and if so it is probably not widespread, but at least you now have some background knowledge. And to be fair, Denmark-Norway and Sweden have fought many wars from the 1500s to the early 1800s. I guess we ended up like Britain and France or France and Germany (France seems to change the

Hello, I’m Victor, a Norwegian grade 11 student interested in various subjects; such as music, history, and writing. I find government interesting, but politics to be both annoying and boring.  I like listening to a variety of different music, such as Rock, Blues, Metal, and sometimes Jazz. It is interesting to observe the different styles of playing and other technical aspects that accompany different genres. I like various TV shows, and do go to the cinema, if there are good movies being shown at the time. I think that language is a very important subject to study, even if your job or dream job is in a subject other than English. Learning more about English or your own language allows you to express yourself better and more clearly. Being able to write better, might help make your writings easier to read and understand, which is good for reaching a wider audience. In my life, language allows me to express my point efficiently and effectively. Since I have only been to English spea