Writing 201: Advertisements
Hello everyone! Your favourite alien Limax once more, Vivian! Here to tell you this is once again not me writing 😀 Anne is in charge once again! Unfortunately we kinda discussed things about my world and one thing led to another and now we have checks notes more than 100 ads for a megacorp in my universe. And well, ads in books are often boring so Anne is here to help make yours exciting! Vivian out! Trust Anne.
What is an advertisement?
Thanks Vivian! Well, as I do teach this, it is class time! Everyone get in your seats. Yes, Bob, you too, sit down! Class in session!
Ahem. So what are ads? In general, advertising is anything that attempts to persuade you to do, act, feel, think, be, perceive, comply, etc, in a way that is in line with the desires of the commercial entity. Isn’t that a super broad definition? Well, yeah. Ads come in all forms and can do all sorts of things. I’m leaving it purposefully vague just because there are so many types. Sometimes we don’t even recognize advertising, and that can be dangerous. Everyone is bombarded with ads anytime you engage with the media or the outside world, and you have to be aware of it! If you just blindly go through life, you’ll end up buying and believing what other people tell you. While that’s fine for Bob, you want to do better! And if you’re setting up your own ads in a fictional world, you absolutely have to know how ads influence people and how ads are designed if you want to be even a little bit realistic. Just because it’s a medieval tavern or a futuristic hologram doesn’t mean there isn’t advertising trying to twist people to do what they want!
(Vivian: Trust ads)
Purpose
Knowing what ads are for isn’t exactly brain surgery. Even Bob knows! Bob? Want to share with the class?
Bob: Sell you stuff to make money, duh!
Right! Well, that’s a major reason. It’s actually a little more complicated, but Bob gets the gist of it. Let’s take a fictional ad and look at its purpose in a little more detail. Hopefully we can move beyond Bob’s take to see everything ads do in our world!
Imagine this:
A commercial opens with a frazzled woman with red hair and sloppy clothing and five screaming children running in circles around her. She’s on the phone trying to ask a question about her cable bill and keeps repeating the question, but keeps getting a robot. Then the scene switches to a calm brunette in sharp clothing and one child sitting nearby reading a book. She’s on the phone and asks the same question, but gets a human who answers it, acknowledges that a mistake on the bill was made, and offers to refund the money. A voiceover states: “With X Cable Company, you’ll be able to talk to real people who can give you real help.” Then the website, a phone number, and a graphic showing their latest deal comes up on the screen as a call to action to tell people exactly what to do as the company’s jingle plays.
This is loosely based on an ad I saw so long ago that I have no clue what it was for, so I’ve of course added a ton of details. I kept the key details and trust me, they weren’t what the company wanted me to remember. I’ll give you a hint though: all I remember was the subtexts and not the explicit purpose, and if you’re making an ad, you generally want the opposite! However, when writing an ad, you want to devote equal time to both, so this is a great example. By the way, since this is based on an American ad and I’m American, I’m going to analyze it through that lens.
(Vivian: Trust not Americans)
Explicit Purpose
For most ads, Bob’s explanation pretty much sums it up: buy this, do that, vote for this person, etc. Companies need to turn a profit, after all, and the explicit purpose of most ads is a direct plea for whatever will help them most, usually in the form of money or power.
(Vivian: Or just change public opinion on something, that matters too… propaganda.) Gosh, everyone has all of these plans for world domination! I’m just happy with my quiet little corner of the world, but I guess not everyone can be perfect! 😜
Most ads put their plea for money or power into a call to action at some point, usually the end so that the audience remembers that most and is mostly likely to act. In our example ad, the call to action and explicit purpose is the website and phone number, and the graphic of the promotion provides something specific to look up or ask about once you’ve gone to the site or called.
Okay, so most ads have a clear purpose and lead up to a call to action. What about those ads that seem completely unrelated to the product or person they’re promoting? You know, the ones where you’re engaged, but you have literally no idea what the ad is for until the very very end? How do they fit in?
Those ads are quite fun, and generally are used to either associate a commercial entity with an idea or emotion, or connect them to some type of credibility to promote brand awareness. You’ll get a lot of pathos (emotional appeals) and ethos (ethical appeals) with these ads, which I’ll get into later. Don’t worry, I’ll give examples!
Basically, ads are just about advancing the company or person in some way. Or at least that’s the explicit purpose… but have you ever watched an ad and felt that it was trying to tell you something subtly, without stating it? Now we’re getting into subtexts!
(Vivian: Trust purpose)
Subtexts
Subtexts are the messages below the surface, and this is where ads can have a huge influence on everything in our world, including our perceptions of reality. Subtexts can fall into a few categories based on how they’re being used.
Surface Level
First, they can just be the underlying messages that are still pretty surface level. For example with our ad example, although it isn’t stated, it’s obvious that not using this cable company is bad, and having it is good. Nowhere in the ad does it actually say that, but it’s pretty strongly implied. This is sort of the first layer of analysis, and it’s where most people stop. If you want to survive in a world dominated by ads, and especially if you want to create one, you’ve got to keep going.
Implied Morality
Let’s look at the ad in a little more detail. If having the cable company is good and not having it is bad, then the things associated with those two states will also line up with good and bad. After all, the goal is to imply that one is better than the other, so we the audience will need signals (I’ll get to how we recognize those signals in a second). First, let’s see what’s being directly compared, as in, what is different. The mood is different, sure, but that’s built up by little details that I’ll also go into more later. The characters are both women, so there’s no implied difference between sexes. However, one is brunette and put together, the other is a redheaded disheveled disaster. The number and attitude of the children is different as well. Obviously the interactions on the phone are also different, but that ties into the explicit message so we’ll ignore that.
So if we assume that the traits in each category imply morality, then it’s good to be calm, good to dress well, good to have a single child, and good for children to read. It’s bad to be frantic, bad to not take care of your physical appearance, bad to have a large number of children, and bad to be unable to handle your large number of children. If we really want to scrutinize, we could say it’s better to be brunette than a redhead.
Stepping back, what you can see is that ads often set up varying levels of morality and “good” versus “bad.” Sometimes it’s obvious, like the ad I created, and sometimes it’s subtler. But always, there’s some version of reality that’s being proposed as being “better’ than something else, and you absolutely need to be aware of this and recognize it in your own lives as well as take advantage of this in the ads you create for your worlds.
(Vivian: Trust morals)
The Little Details
When I listed the traits of “good” and “bad” for my ad, I bet there were some for which you just nodded and said
“Yeah, this is obviously true! Why are you pointing this out?”
I’m pointing it out because not only do we read these cues to understand if something is good or bad, these advertisements create new associations with good and bad. Being calm versus frantic is an obvious one. We all want to be calm. Associating your product with calm is a good thing. So what about the others? Well, they tend to draw on cultural norms. This is American, and the other factors tend to reflect American norms. Now, it also draws on culture and even religion, and all of this is directly related to the audience, but I’ll get to that. In America, it’s important for parents to have their kids under control (I know that’s not exclusively American!). The more children you have, the harder it is to keep them under control, or that’s the popular conception. In addition, while some religions encourage larger families, this ad isn’t aimed at them and is instead aimed at the majority of Americans who view this many children negatively. Two children, sure. Three children, why not. But five children? That’s too many for a single woman to control, and again, children should be under control.
And clothing? That seems like another obvious one–people should dress well–but honestly? If the redhead is at home making a phone call? Why would she need to be dressed up? I lounge around in pajamas all the time, and if I get dressed up, it’s yoga pants and a loose shirt or sweater (okay the pandemic definitely helped me lower my standards, but the point still stands). So why are nice clothes in the “good” category? Why do we view them positively even in situations where they’re not necessary? Well, mostly because of other advertising. Ads bounce against each other in a constantly self-reinforcing feedback loop. Other companies want to sell clothes, so it’s important that people want new, nice clothes. Therefore our culture has been shaped to value this!
That last part is key, and what I hope you take away from subtexts. Ads shape our values. Not necessarily a single ad, though some ads might impact us in profound ways. But the vast shared cultural understanding promoted and often created through advertising. Ads shape how we view reality, how we view interactions with others, how we interpret almost everything. Some ads play on these subtexts and subvert them, usually in a humorous way, and the reason they’re funny is that everyone understands the cultural norm being subverted. When you’re creating ads, you absolutely have to keep in mind that they not only reflect cultural norms of all sorts, even those unrelated to the explicit purpose of the ad, but also that commercial entities can create new norms and inject them into the system.
(Vivian: Trust subtext)
Mediums
Ads can take any form. Yes, I mean any. Well, I suppose there might be some things humanity isn’t capable of yet, but if it exists, people have used it as an ad. Most people think of the obvious ones, like commercials, web ads, print ads, flyers, posters, billboards, etc etc. Those are easy to create and buy, and the commercial entities have complete control over them. Subtler forms might be product placement. One thing I’ve noticed in two music videos that I like is that Uber is prominently displayed in a futuristic setting on a flying car used to get people to their location in luxury. That’s obviously what they want for their brand if it shows up in almost identical circumstances in two different videos by different artists (Lil Nas X and Doja Cat). Uber is building their brand! Product placement can be a lot subtler, too. Speeches are another medium for advertisement, and unfortunately, the news is also used to advertise various things. Since people generally trust the news, this can be a problem. Some of it is deliberate, if news networks deliberately present advertising as news, but some of it is just newscasters repeating and enforcing cultural norms about society based on propaganda from higher up. And as print advertising drops and everything moves online, clickbait headlines that get people’s attention but don’t represent a story accurately are getting more and more common, even from normally reliable sources. So, Bob, should we trust everything that we hear on the news?
Bob: Of course! They would never try to manipulate me. After all, look at how nicely they dress!
Oh Bob… 🤦 I fear for your future…
(Vivian: This is why extended families suck. Trust family.)
What is the use of advertisement knowledge in writing stories?
Okay, we now know what an ad is and the basics of how they’re used. You’re probably wondering what that possibly has to do with your story! Actually, if you’ve been paying attention, you can probably already guess. Since ads take on so many forms, it’s almost guaranteed that they’re going to show up in your stories in some way. And if they don’t, well, hey, they’re fun to add! You don’t have to include a full-fledged ad or anything (although honestly it would be awesome to have a novel with a commercial break between chapters or something, someone do that please). Just a few brief mentions of ads or slogans or seeing a logo or something can flesh out your world and, as you saw in subtexts, reveal the cultural norms that your world is built on.
(Vivian: Flipping through things on my link as ads flash by Bollocks….)
Most of the ads we have today rely on written language and technology, but what if your story is set when most people are illiterate? What if there isn’t the internet or television? What if there aren’t newspapers to read? Were there just no ads? Of course there were! For as long as people have had things to sell, they’ve had ways to sell them.
(Vivian: Yells and talks on the street corner for a store)
Great job, Vivian! Now everyone knows where to find the best grilled cow tongue in the village! This is actually a great way to get the news out!
(Vivian: EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT IN THE PAPER!)
Vivian…they are illiterate 🤦♀️ Well, despite Vivian’s… enthusiasm for shouting things, zhi points out one great way to get messages out before people read on a widespread level and before we had advanced technology (like the printing press even). Talking spreads news and sells products! After all, word of mouth is also a type of advertising that’s trusted because it comes from someone you know. We still use this today! So just because this is olden times doesn’t mean it’s extremely different.
Besides spoken advertisements, visual ads were common and popular. Can’t read? Well, you can recognize this distinct lion’s head, and if you always see it on your favorite ale, you can start to ask for lion’s head ale. Bam. Advertising complete. Plaster up a few flyers in some pubs to get people asking about it and willing to try it, and you’re good.
(Vivian: Symbol usage that relies on actual pictures of the things involved are called pictograms and many pictograms can be combined into a greater meaning)
It’s such a great strategy. Who needs words when you have things like images and word of mouth, and when you can hear the latest walking the streets and get an earful whenever a politician or poor philosopher gets on a box to spout their views and earn your support!
As you can see, there’s always room for ads, and as you saw in subtexts, ads are essential in creating and maintaining the status quo for a given society. Even if you don’t directly show them, you need to be aware of the role advertising has on your character. And if it’s more primitive, don’t give them a high level of media literacy! A medieval character isn’t going to approach an ad with the same level of skepticism that you would unless you give a great reason for it (which you absolutely can).
(Vivian: Trust people)
Political Ads
Political ads are definitely an interesting one! Things like political ads are after both money and power, and will sometimes ask for donations, though most want votes (which gets the candidate power, a similar motivation to money). These can be any sort but the most common forms are commercials and political speeches.
(Vivian: Interesting thing to remember here for all writers and worldbuilders is that not all countries have the same laws when it comes to political advertisements. For example, in Sweden, I cannot remember the last time I heard or saw any political campaign by corporations, even in implicit ways.)
One fun American fact, since Vivian gave zhir Swedish fact: by law, American commercials on television have to provide correct information. Truth in advertising, you know? Well, there’s one exception that boggles my mind, and that’s political ads. You don’t have to tell the truth in them! Politicians usually stick to the truth and completely warp it, but they can also just flat out make stuff up and no one can stop them. How is that legal? Well, if the people who have the power to change the laws are the ones benefiting from them, do you really think it’s going to change? Yeah. No way. So they remain the type of ad with a clear explicit purpose of vote for me, don’t vote for the other dude, or send me money. But they do so much more, and a lot of it is really harmful. If you have political ads, you can follow America’s model, Sweden’s model, or create your own. No matter what though, it’s going to be fun, and you’ll see it in subtexts.
(Vivian: Please make up something because it is more fun than your Amerocentric views. It tells more about your world than it tells about you.)
Political ads range from inspiring to fear-provoking and tend to rely heavily on pathos (emotional appeals, I’ll get to it later). At their best, they inspire us towards the greater good and kindness to our fellow humans (or whatever species you have). At their worst, they can be used to divide us and can even lead to genocide. Or at least it’s my opinion that those are the best and worst outcomes. If you buy into the fear, that’s probably what you view as most important. It’s all about the audience and the worldview, and I respond better to positive messaging. These ads are dangerous in how they use emotions to set up a vision of the world around us, and they can be so persuasive that people will buy into the vision even if it’s patently false. I’m not going to get super political and name names or parties, but I mean, just look at the United States right now and try to tell me all of the politicians have views grounded in reality.
In addition to ads from the candidates themselves, there are also subtler ways to spread their messages.
(Vivian: EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT [Cancelled])
Gasp! Did the press somehow get their hands on that damaging information about the other candidate? However could that happen? What a sad thing, they were such a good person, too. Anyway, back to this candidate’s message! …As you can see, leaks can be a great way to destroy a rival, and the news, always eager for clicks and money, jumps on scandals. Remember, you can’t always trust the news!
(Vivian: Trust me though 😈)
Propaganda
This relates closely to some of the things that political ads do, namely building a worldview that may not be an accurate reflection of reality. However, propaganda isn’t limited to politics, and any person or group can take advantage of it. You’ve probably seen some of the awesome propaganda posters and images from the past. The World Wars had some great ones. If you do an image search for propaganda, you can find some fun stuff. Of course, at the time, those images weren’t a quirky fun thing. They were meant to manipulate and fear-monger to get people to believe what they wanted those people to believe.
(Vivian: “Finland's cause is ours! For a greater fight, join the volunteer force.”
Finns may speak a funny language, but they will forever be our siblings of the north in our soul. Together as one north!)
As you can see from that great example, propaganda can work! The push to make Finland’s cause Sweden’s concern has led to Vivian, decades later, feeling kinship with zhir fellow Nordic country. Of course, that propaganda is based on an existing sense of kinship between the Nordic countries. Propaganda can’t come out of nowhere; it can only heighten what already exists and then slowly shift people further and further away. This particular example shows that propaganda can be positive, though! It’s always good to help others and view them as siblings (again, my opinion there as someone who likes peace and friendship).
(Vivian: Propaganda works best when there is a grain of truth to it, second best if there is a general belief that there is a grain of truth ot it)
In terms of the ads themselves, propaganda tends to exaggerate the creative elements in ads, which I’ll get to soon. They play everything up to have a greater impact, or they used to. Caricatures of various figures are common, with features being exaggerated to emphasize whether the person is “good” or “evil.” Today, when people are more media savvy, propaganda is often quieter and more subtle (though certainly not always!). Be on the lookout for messages that play into your hopes and fears perfectly and discourage critical thinking, and in your stories, play up propaganda to get people to do and believe things they otherwise wouldn’t. Propaganda can do a lot for you!
(Vivian: Trust propaganda)
Showing Worldbuilding
With all of these options, it should be easy to see how useful ads can be! In terms of building character, you can show a lot about your characters based on what they buy into and how easily swayed they are. Maybe they’re good at ignoring certain types of ads, subtexts, and cultural norms, but they always believe everything their mom tells them, and she isn’t so quick to be skeptical. Or maybe you have a character walking through a market who keeps getting pulled in by people hawking their wares, either because they’re genuinely interested (and easily distracted) or because they’re too polite or shy or conflict-averse that they don’t know how to avoid the salespeople. Maybe you have a military character who absolutely believes in the righteousness of a war even though to an outsider it's clear that the war is unjust and they’ve bought into government propaganda. It’s just such a good way to show a character’s strength of will, morality, and gullibility without smacking the reader in the face with it.
In terms of plot, advertising can play a huge role! For instance, the whole plot might center around an orphan who discovers that they’re actually the heir to the kingdom (a chosen one!) (Vivian: Yet so trite) but they have to earn the support of the people before anyone will take them seriously, so they start a campaign to earn the public trust. They’re advertising themselves. Use the strategies of advertising to make their slow climb into people’s trust realistic!
(Vivian: Trust the heir)
And of course, Vivian’s favorite, the world itself. Societies, as I’ve discussed, use advertising to create and maintain a status quo that keeps people believing what they need to believe and buying what they need to buy in order to keep things going. If you don’t know what’s going on in the ads, you might not know what the underlying cultural beliefs of your people are. Look at your world, and think of a business there. I’m sure you have at least one business, right? Futuristic detective agency? Assassin for hire? Tavern? You’ve got to have something. Think about how they would appeal to their audience and what cultural understandings they would play on to get people to give them money or power.
(Vivian: Ads to maintain the status quo are way cheaper than secret police)
Definitely, and even if your characters want to buck or destroy the status quo, you have to know what that status quo is first! It’s so important to know this part of your world. So design ads. Have fun. I know Vivian and I did when we started designing for one of zhir megacorps.
(Vivian: Trust the megacorp)
Common Elements
Ads tend to rely on the same types of things, and if you’re creating an ad, you can basically put the following common elements in a bulleted list, fill it out, and you’ve most of the way done with the ad. But the first element, and the one that everything else hinges on, is…🚄
Audience
At this point, I hope I’ve persuaded you that ads are vital in any society and you need to pay attention to them. But if you’re analyzing or designing an ad, the first thing you need to ask is who you’re trying to persuade. Without that, you might as well be shouting about grilled cow tongue to a rock! Vivian, I’m sure you’ve tried this. Hardest sale ever, right?
(Vivian: YELL LOUDER UNTIL THEY SUCCUMB!)
I see no flaw in that plan whatsoever! Keep yelling, Vivian! You can do it! But for those of you who want a slightly easier path, you’ll want to choose as specific an audience as you can and then cater your ad to that audience.
As I mentioned at the top, I teach this in the college classroom. Right around this point, I start hearing the same thing.
But Professor Winchell, I want my ad to appeal to everyone!
(Vivian: Appeal to everyone and you appeal to no one.)
To which I say great, most people want universal appeal, but that’s not how you design an ad. Would you really use the same ad to sell something to a toddler, a homeless single mother, a billionaire who just bought Twitter, a senior citizen, people who speak English, people who don’t speak English, people in America, people in South Africa, people who love helping others, sociopaths, etc etc etc I hope you see where I’m going with this. So no! You don’t get to say your audience is everyone! Under absolutely no circumstances should you design an ad with everyone in mind! Would it be great if it worked on everyone? Of course! BUT THAT’S NOT HOW YOU DESIGN THEM!
(Vivian: ….Appeal to everyone and you appeal to no one.)
Okay, so rant over, what do you need to figure out in order to design the best possible ad? You want some basics that are generally innate or that you’re born into, such as nationality, age, gender/sex, sexual orientation, race (if in America or a similar world at least), and species (if you have more than one). Do you need to figure out all of those? Nope. Just figure out the ones relevant to what you want to do. Then you want to look at things that people choose for themselves, including some big ones like religion, culture, political affiliation, and any other large-scale affiliations that would be relevant to your ad (is your audience members of the knights guild? Add that!). Finally, look at behaviors and beliefs. Are you trying to change behaviors or beliefs? Then the people who don’t do those things or believe what you want are your target audience, and you’ll make a very different ad than if you’re trying to encourage people or get them to try a slightly new tactic where your audience would be people who do or believe what you want.
You obviously don’t need to get super focused on every single aspect, but get as specific as you can for the best results.
(Vivian: Trust appeals.)
Scene Components
When analyzing or creating ads, there are three things you usually want to figure out before anything else so you have a skeleton of the ad first. I’ll be brief, as they’re pretty self-explanatory.
Character
Who is in your ad? What are their characteristics? Keep in mind that things other than humans can be characters, and that the choice of no characters is also a deliberate choice you can make. For this, look at the list of characteristics above in audience and apply them here. Think of how these characters appeal to your audience. You generally want the “good” side to appear closest to your audience (or, if you’re trying to humanize a group, make them different obviously), and you generally want the “bad” side to be different (this doesn’t indicate prejudice usually, it just signals to the audience that they’re “other”).
Setting
Where is your ad set? Again, the choice of no setting (or a blank background) is also a deliberate choice you can make. The key thing here is to choose a setting that ties into your explicit purpose and your audience.
Action
This one is a little trickier. What actually happens in your ad? If you’re creating an ad, this might be your actual walkthrough. I usually brainstorm and outline, then do a real walkthrough after I’ve filled in details from the next section. One key thing to identify in this section is relationships: how do your characters interact with each other and with the audience? In a still ad, this might focus on gaze: are the characters looking at each other? At the viewer? At the product? What does that say? As always, keep audience in mind.
(Vivian: Trust scenes)
Creative Elements
Now that we’ve established the basics, you’ll want to flesh out your ad a little. If you’re referencing an ad in your book, the following are the types of details you’ll probably include. It’s unlikely you’ll give a detailed analysis of the scene components if it’s just a brief mention. You’ll probably give a snippet of the character, setting, or action accompanied by the details below.
Tone
Tone is the creator’s attitude towards the subject matter. Bob, do you understand? Versus: Bob, do you understand? Versus: Bob, do you understand? Think of it like tone of voice and how subtle shifts in emphasis can change a question from straight-forward to mocking to demanding. Tones can be playful, cheerful, sarcastic, dour, bitter, sad, straight-forward, etc.
Mood
Mood is different from tone! This throws so many people off! Sure, they’re often the same or similar, but not always! Mood is the overall feel of the ad. To compare them, think of mood as what’s going on inside the ad, and tone what’s happening outside the ad. You might get an ad with two people furious at each other in a serious situation, and the mood is angry and tense. However, the situation is actually quite humorous in the grand scheme of things, and you can tell that the creator really had fun making the ad, so the tone might be humorous or sarcastic even though the mood definitely isn’t.
Color
A couple of years ago, I had a student give a presentation on the death penalty in America and why it needs to be abolished. They gave great statistics on the inhumanity and injustice of it. Their powerpoint had a light pink background with yellow and green accents. This was a MAJOR problem, and the reason is color.
The colors you choose are so important, because we as people have strong associations with colors. It’s usually based on culture, so of course keep your audience in mind. But if you’re going for calm and serene, blue is usually the way to go. If you’re trying to signal danger, red is perfect. Yellow is great for energy! Fun side note: red also tends to make people hungry, which is why you see it in so many fast food color schemes! Brightness and vividness are also incredibly important, so PAY ATTENTION to the color schemes or you can completely undermine what you’re trying to do. If you’re talking about a serious, life-or-death topic like the death penalty, you probably want dark, muted colors with black as a major element, not light, cheerful, and energetic pinks, yellows, and greens.
Arrangement
This changes based on medium, whether moving images or still, but it boils down to location and scale. Where in the image are things located (especially in relation to other things), and how big are they (especially in relation to other things). Being in or out of focus also matters. Basically, arrangement dictates what the viewer looks at first, and the order of elements that we look at. Readers in Western cultures read left to right, top to bottom, and we read images the same way. However, our eyes can be drawn to various other places through use of the other creative elements here such as color or text, and as a result of arrangement (is something moving? We’re gonna look. Is it big? Has our attention. In focus? Yeah, you’ve got us).
If you want good terms to use when referring to arrangement, you can look to film for names of shots, like high- or low-angle, closeup or medium shot, etc, to illustrate some of what the arrangement is like. Adobe, in their advertisement for Premiere Pro, actually has really great definitions of terms if you scroll down. It’s one of the best I’ve found for free on the internet (I don’t get any kickbacks btw, I use Adobe but get it for free through my job and I’m not an affiliate).
Text
This one is simple at first glance, but a lot goes into it. Basically, is there text, and what are its characteristics? Part is content: what does it actually say? Is it straightforward and factual? Figurative and metaphorical? Any catchphrases? This counts for voiceover as well as written text on the image. But if it is on the image, look at the physical aspects of the text. What does it look like? Part of this overlaps with color and arrangement, but also look at typography. What font is it, and what does that imply? Serif or sans serif? Serious or silly? Does the brand have a distinct font they always use? Most importantly, how does it make the audience feel?
Music
If you have moving images and not just a still image, music (or the lack) is vital. Keep in mind of course that your audience can mute it, so the ad needs to work without it. But often, music drives home the point in a powerful way, because, like color, we are so easily influenced by it. A few things to pay attention to are the ambient noises and sound effects, whether the music is a known song and how the song/artist are viewed and portrayed, and how the music makes the audience feel. Music appeals powerfully to pathos, which I’m about to talk about!
(Vivian: Trust creativity)
Rhetorical Strategies
So those are the creative elements! We have a ton of information, but audience is key, and there are three ways that all of this appeals to the audience.
Ethos
First and most important, we have ethos, or an ethical appeal. Note: this is not an appeal to the audience’s sense of right and wrong. It’s not that kind of ethics. It’s an appeal that says that the creator of the ad and the information in the ad are credible, trustworthy, and fair. When I teach my students academic writing, it’s important to get sources and authorities who are credible, well-qualified, relevant, and timely. In ads, however, you don’t have to be as strict. Just say “9 out of 10 dentists agree” and you don’t have to back it up in any way. Another great strategy is the use of celebrities. Do they need to be related to the product in any way? Of course not! You just want to associate the goodwill tied to them with your product. Ad campaigns can make celebrities, too. Most people know Flo from Progressive and Jake from State Farm, at least in America in 2023.
I give this as “first and most important” because if you don’t have credibility, you’re sunk in the water. If people think you’re lying or manipulative, or just plain stupid, it doesn’t matter how good your ad is. People won’t buy it. This can be great in stories if you want a failed ad campaign, or if you want something where a public figure is embroiled in scandal and loses their sponsorships and ads with them are now soured. And if you want a successful ad in your stories, make sure the credibility is solid.
Logos
Next are logical appeals. I’m going to be honest, a lot of ads really skimp on this. You can easily have pretty illogical ads or ads that use logical fallacies (and often use them really well!). Logic always shows up, it’s just not always good logic. When ads use logical fallacies (and boy do they), it can be in a manipulative way (political ads and propaganda especially), or it can be deliberate and upfront, used humorously to emphasize how ridiculous they’re being. Logic shows up as deductive reasoning (drawing conclusions from generalized statements or ideas being applied to specific situations) and inductive reasoning (using specific situations and prior knowledge and drawing generalized conclusions from that). Common logical fallacies are slippery slope, problems with cause and effect, false authority, bandwagoning, and false dilemmas. You need to figure out where your world or society would draw the line at lies and manipulation, because where that line is placed reveals significant things about the people making the rules.
Pathos
Here’s the meat and potatoes of an advertisement, the emotional appeals! Advertising is at its core emotional and meant to sway the hearts of the audience. Information (logos) plays a role, sure, but think of the difference between a factual headline and a clickbait one designed to pique a reader’s curiosity and invoke other emotions. That second one is an ad.
There are soooo many ways ads play with emotions that I’m not even going to attempt to explain them, but there are a few good emotional appeals to use. Patriotism can be a powerful one, not just in political ads and propaganda but other ads as well. In America, we get all sorts of ads with the American flag prominently displayed, or ads extolling American virtues, all designed to get us thinking “yes, I love my country, therefore I love this SUV” or whatever the ad is for. Fear is a great one, often used with false dilemma: the world is headed for a terrible disaster and all these bad things will happen unless you do this thing, buy this product, or vote for this person! Sympathy can be powerful when you show a relatable character (human or animal!) in a terrible situation and in need of help, then offer a way to alleviate their suffering. And of course humor is great. If you can make your audience laugh, they’ll associate your brand with happiness and good things, and who doesn’t like that?
The big, big problem with pathos is that there’s a fine line between invoking emotions and manipulating them. A lot of ads get into manipulation, and as long as the audience is fairly naive, it can work. Bob is definitely going to spend less than a cup of coffee a day to save the sea turtles if he sees an ad with sad sea turtles getting ensnared in plastic and harmed in other ways. In addition to naive people, earlier time periods are good for this. But if you have a media savvy or skeptical audience, they’ll notice the manipulation and be completely turned off. Being manipulative destroys your ethos, and ethos is the building block that everything else relies on.
(Vivian: Trust rhetoric)
Brand Cohesion
Okay, you’ve got your ad or ads, you have all the details, you know how you want it to affect your audience and your story… but there’s one more element. How well do the individual pieces reflect the whole? If you have a brand, whether for a product, an idea, or a person, everything used to advertise for them has to be cohesive to some degree. Of course, if you’re trying to show bad attempts at ads, like your chosen one is flailing and giving different messages at different times and contradicting themselves, a lack of cohesion is fine. But if you’re trying to show a functional ad campaign, everything has to tie together.
Taglines and Slogans
Having a phrase associated with a product is wonderful, especially in stories, since you can invoke an entire ad campaign in just a few words. All of the above things all get tied into a neat little bow when a person hears that phrase. “Arby’s: we have the meats” instantly invokes images of sliced meat filling the screen with various shades of brown and the idea of endless meat, exactly what the company wants you to think. “I like Ike,” a political tagline from Eisenhower in America’s history, invokes a friendly, credible feeling of bandwagoning: everyone likes Ike, therefore you should too! In stories, this is perfect because you can have a character say a slogan and not have to go into more details after you’ve established the brand, or just see a fragment of the slogan on something and know what it is, or all sorts of things. It’s shorthand, which is often what you want when writing.
Have you noticed something that Vivian has been doing throughout this post? In the massive ad campaign that Vivian and I came up with, we centered each ad around a single phrase in the structure “Trust X” where X was something specifically tied to that ad. Each phrase is also read by the president of the company, giving a concrete face to the campaign and building significant ethos and credibility. The word “trust” is repeated constantly, with variations, and the president herself is speaking, so the megacorp comes across as reliable and worthy of a person’s money. When we do the practicum on them, you’ll see some specific examples of how persuasive this can be.
Trust is our way
Logos/Imagery
Finally, the visual elements sometimes take on the distinct, repeated form of a company logo or common imagery. This builds cohesion and can act as shorthand as well. Remember before when we talked about lionhead ale? That’s the logo, and represents the brand. In pre-literate times this is essential, but even today, and even in the future, humans and most species are visual creatures. Studies have shown that when people are shown an image and told a slogan or other words/text, they’ll remember the image more often than they remember the words. Include common imagery and try to have a distinct logo that you can incorporate in your stories to quickly show everything about your brand.
(Vivian: Trust your brand)
Summa Summarum
If you’ve read this far, thank you and I hope you’ve learned a lot. Advertising brings your world to life. It’s such an absolutely essential part of our lives, and it always has been throughout history. Neglecting such a vital part of humanity risks coming across as flat, and you can use it to do so many things! Have fun with how you use advertisements, and even if you don’t include it in your stories, I highly encourage using the checklist of scene components and creative elements to write a detailed walkthrough of an ad that might exist in your world. It’s a fun exercise in creativity and helps build out your world so, so much. Have fun!
(Vivian: Trust fun)
Do you have any topics you struggle with or would like to suggest for a future blogpost? We’re open to suggestions!
Copyright ©️ 2023 Anne Winchell. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as the terms for common elements and general suggestions given are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as everything about the megacorp, the “Trust X” slogan, and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
