Sunday, February 24, 2013

Week4 Anti-drug commercial


This is an anti-drug commercial which is i found in Google. The words this advertisement give immediately moves me, make me empathized with the author. The advertisement tells audience something under the image, like the happiness from family before use drug, the painful and scare the teller fell now. What else you can feel from that image? What kind of compare you can get from that commercial? Is it an useful advertisement for anti-drug?

8 comments:

  1. I am responding to the question concerning the issue of this being a useful advertisement or not. Many times rhetoric is very important in the relevance, validity, and ability to be believed by the audience. Personally, in this case, I do not believe this is a useful advertisement. By my judgement, I see this to be a poster ad, and a unrealistic portrayal of the likeliness of this to happen. The image of the girl being very happy in her graduation picture is way more powerful than the words in the image. The large wording of runaway is there, but it does not stand out as much compared to the image. With this, it is very hard to imagine this girl all sick and sad, so it seems like it is unrealistic of real life. Secondly, the picture is placed on a nice countertop, one revealing the life of a good middle class family. Seeing that, it seems as if this is fake again. The living conditions look very good, and this combined with the great image of joy make it very hard to imagine this bright , young girl as a runaway. The ad should consider making their message more eye-popping, and making the good in the image less clear to the audience. With those ideas, this ad does not seem like a very useful one in persuading the audience against meth.

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    1. I agree with Jacob's idea of this commercial seems unrealistic. This commercial does focus on the happy graduation photo. Besides, Jacob observes pretty carefully. We can tell the social-economic status of the family by noticing the furniture, decoration in the room, which I didn't notice before. By combining the family and her sister's situation, I'm curious and suspicious of her reasons to use drugs. That's another reason for not persuasive.

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  2. I'm responding the commercial using prompt 6. Looking through the commercial, the background all seems fuzzy. Thus, the graduation photo stands out. Through the photo, we can tell how joyful, proud, confident the girl is when she graduates. By comparing the words in the commercial and the happy photo, I can feel the strong contrast used by the author. It aims at the adverse effect of using meth, leading to lose family. This commercial is special, because, most anti-drugs commercial are dark and negative. This one is using the contrast effect to illustrate. However, the words are not strong enough. "Runaway" seems a little unspecific. We don't know what happened to her sister exactly. We don't know how is she right now. Therefore, it's not persuasive enough.

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  3. I am responding to this post using blog prompt 1. The Montana Meth Project effectively got their message across about one of the possible consequences of meth. The picture as well as the words are clearly the focus point in this advertisement. The fact that the picture of the girl is one from graduation is important. Graduation shows the girl's maturity and she comes off as intelligent. Also, the word "Runaway" is not only larger than the other words, but its placement is effective as well. "Runaway" is centered directly over the picture of the girl which acts as a label for her. When the viewer sees the picture of her they see her label as a runaway at the same time. The contrast between the mature woman and the title of being a runaway is the shock that the creator intends. When the viewer sees the woman's appearance they are surprised to immediately then realize that she became a runaway due to meth.

    The background of the advertisement is interesting because it is almost completely faded out or blurry. The creators of the advertisement might have chosen to do this because it removes any extraneous details that would distract the viewer from the main message displayed in the advertisement. The picture in the foreground compared to the blurry background might also be connected to the fact that the family is trying to think of their sister/daughter the way she was originally. This girl is a runaway presently and the family wishes they can have her back and remove her from the blurry and unpredictable future that currently lies ahead of her. The picture in the frame and her old self in general are the main focus because the advertisement wants to show that meth is extremely powerful and can drive people away from who they are even if they doubt they will ever be effected.

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    1. Adam, I agree with a lot of the claims you have made regarding the advertisement. This isn't the most shocking or gut-wrenching anti-drug ad that we have seen thus far, but I also believe that it is quite impactful. The most interesting thing that you have stated, is not about the focus of the ad, but is about the background. I would have never thought of analyzing the bluriness as the "blurry future" the girl now has that she is on meth. I believe this is a very good way to go against the grain of the ad and after reading your comment the ad has even more meaning than it did at face value.

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  4. To response to this picture, firstly, I want to say, I do not think this is a useful source neither because when you see this picture, you cannot imagine what happened to this beautiful girl caused by meth. And also, there are beautiful settings as a background, which do not make viewers have a strong feeling about meth. Second, I do believe that the creator chose a beautiful girl as a main character of this picture because girls seem to be much easier to get hurt and be to addicted to drugs. Anyway, this picture could be a good one in Meth project, but it seems not a good source to analysis.

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    1. I agree that the picture does not convey the negative message about meth very well because of the cheerful colors in the background. It is also hard to visualize what happened to girl based on the picture.

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  5. I feel that this ad could be pretty effective depending on how you look at it. Yes it seems the photo is placed in a nice home and she is a pretty girl, but I feel those factors could be used to prove that it can happen to anyone, even people we do not expect. The author decides to use a photo of the victims graduation rather than just a normal picture. This is useful because it shows that this girl had a bright future ahead of her, and the use of drugs is potentially throwing it all away. I think this entire ad shows how powerful the effect of drugs has on a person, because in reality why would a pretty girl who has a loving family, proper living arrangements and a diploma run away from that?

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