Advertising assessment: Learner response

Advertising assessment: Learner response

Create a new blog post called 'Advertising assessment learner response' and complete the following tasks:

1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

WWW:  Q1 is excellent: very close top level. we just need to reach that in Q2 and Q3.

EBI: In Q2, you show good question focus but need more evidence from the texts (unseen/CSP)

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify at least one potential point that you missed out on for each question in the assessment.

01 How are meanings constructed in Figure 1, the Emporio Armani 2010 advert ‘Diamonds’?

• Facial expressions – female models’ open mouths suggest lust, desire.
• Snatched, paparazzi style shot – over-exposed subject, celebrity (intertextuality).

02 Are gender representations in adverts reflective of their cultural and historical context?

• Anchorage text in the Score advert reflects male insecurities in a changing world – repeated references to ‘men’ and ‘masculine’ in design, production and use of the product suggests an acknowledgment that hair cream was seen as a more female product in the 1960s.
• The representation of the male as hunter in a foreign jungle setting suggests a reference to the British Empire and the colonial dominance of the 19th century.

03 To what extent does the Seph

ora Black Beauty Is Beauty advert challenge postcolonial ideas?

• Double consciousness: Paul Gilroy used the term double consciousness to reflect the Black experience in the UK and USA. One aspect is living in a predominantly white culture and having an aspect of identity rooted somewhere else. He describes this as a “liquidity of culture”. He also uses it to highlight the disconnect between black representations in the media and actual lived experience. Often, these representations are created by white producers. Cultural conviviality: This refers to the real-world multiculturalism and racial harmony that most people experience on a day-to-day basis. It is in stark contrast to the racial disharmony and binary view often presented by the media.
• Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty advert
• The advert very deliberately looks to construct an authentic representation of the black experience. This therefore challenges Gilroy’s ideas of othering and double consciousness. Sephora use a range of locations to reflect different aspects of the black community – hair salon, kitchen, bedroom, dressing room. It is inclusive – diversity of gender

3) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 1 (Diamonds advert unseen text). List three examples of media terminology or theory that you could have included in your answer. 

• Low-key lighting, ‘chiaroscuro’, backlighting
• serif font
• Stereotypical ideals of beauty

4) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 2. What aspects of the cultural and historical context for the Score hair cream advert do you need to revise or develop in future?

• Hypermasculine representation reflects traditional view of gender roles in 1950s and 1960s.

• Emphasis on traditional hegemonic masculinity perhaps a reaction against the gains made by

women during the 1960s culminating in the Equal Pay Act in 1970.

• Aggressively heterosexual representation perhaps shows male insecurity in light of the

decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.

5) Now look over your mark, comments and the mark scheme for Question 3 - the 9-mark question on Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty. List any postcolonial terminology you could have added to your answer here.  

• ‘Othering’ or racial otherness:
•  Double consciousness:
• Cultural conviviality: