Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Blog 4: Canterbury Tale's Rural Academy Theatre Performance

I was at the performance and thus don't have to write a blog :)
Thanks @ Mrs. Genesky for giving us this opportunity!

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Blog 3: Bed and Breakfast | Sloth and Gluttony

First off Blogger deleted my original version of this blog and I was unable to retrieve it so this blog is definitely going to be WAY less quality as I am trying to remember what I wrote before (oh and ya I did think it was my best blog entry... EVER). okay apologies. My rant is finished. 

This advertisement was created by Volker Schrader in Germany in July 2012. 

The advertisement is of mattresses | pillows | blankets arranged to look like toast with bacon and a soft boiled egg. The writing is very minimalistic in order to not draw attention away from the image. On a shallow level the audience will think the advertisement is cool as they probably thought it was real food at first and will admire the technique of the artist.

On a deeper level the advertisement relates to two of the deadly sins: sloth | gluttony. Sloth is defined as reluctance to work or make an effort. What is a better example of sloth than lying around in bed all day? Gluttony is defined as habitual greed or excess in eating. Eating a huge breakfast that you have been thinking about since you booked your vacation seems like a very good example of gluttony. 

The intended audience of the advertisement is middle class or wealthier citizens in anywhere that toast is a seemingly normal breakfast food (Europe and the U.S. to just name two). The audience is most likely middle class or wealthier because they are okay with spending money on a vacation. This advertisement is usable in a wide range of locations such as on a billboard, in a magazine, or on a website because it features not much about the B&B’s ideal guest (such as gender or ethnicity) which could narrow the market. The audience must have the cultural knowledge of acknowledging that bacon | eggs | toast are breakfast foods and thus this advertisement is hinting that the website is for a B&B. Schrader uses the layout of a large background image with very little text to make the advertisement look more like real food. He also uses colors that are close to accurate but not exactly in order to entice viewers to take a closer look. Honestly, it must have taken forever to find the exact shade of blanket and pillow to make a semi realistic breakfast food bed. 

Schrader deceives the audience with the breakfast food actually being bedding but other authors and artist deceive their readers and audiences with hidden biases. Schrader uses the stereotype of bacon | eggs | toast as breakfast foods in order to achieve the effect of the audience that when they look at the advertisement they instantly think of a delicious breakfast and then a good luxurious night's sleep. Additionally as mentioned before this advertisement is appealing to a wide and more diverse audience. This can be seen in mass media through either not specifying gender | ethnicity or specifying a "unique" gender | ethnicity (ie. mixed race family in cheerios' ad, or a hallmark ad featuring a domestic partnership [now most likely marriage] between two women). This type of "hip" "morally accepting" advertising can either represent the bias of the company or what the company thinks the majority of their customers' bias is.

Here are the two other images | advertisements in this set:
This breakfast assortment of eggs | sausage | spinach (?) looks definitely less normal to me (a North American)
Same as the previous image. Pickles | cheese | lettuce (?) on toast does not look appealing nor normal to this American. But I am sure that in the area that these advertisements was used [Germany (?)]. These two other images were of typical breakfasts.



Source: CreativeAdAwards.com