This Anti-drug poster I found via Bing. In this poster, we can tell the huge contrast of the baby between the two pictures. What rhetorical methods does the creator use? Do you think they are effective? In what ways does the creator of the poster use color effects to persuade? What is significant about those choices? Do you think this poster persuasive?
I am responding to the questions Christie asked. For one, I do not think this poster is persuasive at all. The author uses shock value, and yes the resulting baby is very shocking but there is no way this ad could relate to anyone. That could be surprising because millions of people have children but I have never heard of a case where a baby became addicted to meth. The author attempts to use a white background with a beautiful smiling baby in the first photo, and a blurry background with a psycho addict baby in the next. But even with the blood and dark eyes it is not enough to scare a viewer in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI am responding using prompt question number 1. I do agree with monique about the ad not being persuasive at all. Again, this ad does use shock value to grab some attention. The intended audience of the ad is parents of the US. The ad is trying to appeal to parents so stay away from the drugs, as it could effect their family life very heavily. The problem with the ad is that it very unrealistic. The ad goes a little bit too far in the fake depiction of a baby after meth use. A very serious message is being portrayed with a fake baby as the attention grabber in the picture. With that, the seriousness of the image and ad goes down a lot. A more realistic picture would help amplify the meaning of the ad. Lastly, there might have been a way to persuade the viewer more. In the image, the positive side portraying the good baby before meth has no attention grabbing affects. The image shows a smiling baby with a dull background. Maybe to amplify the good in the image, the creator should make the good side a little more appealing. I only say this because of the fake bad side. Amplifying either side is possible, but I feel as if the ad had a better portrayal of the good (meaning not using meth) with the fake bad side, the ad could have been much more powerful. A unappealing good side and a fake bad side just make the ad a little less powerful than having a more appealing good with the fake bad portrayal. People are more likely to go to a very appealing good side than an unappealing good or positive side. With no direction given in the ad, people are undecided on the ad and cannot form a memory to the topic.
ReplyDeleteI'm responding to Jacob's post. Jacob has brought up some excellent points to improve the effectiveness of this ad. This picture is not at all effective nor persuasive because it is too fake: The photoshopped image looks fake, and in reality, babies cannot use meth. I think a different but more effective approach from this ad is instead of showing a picture of a baby with the intention of convincing parents about their kids could be using meth, the ad could try to convince adults about the horrendous effects of meth on the unborn babies, and their later development. I think this approach would be more effective, especially to adults who are pregnant, or plan to have kids. If, however, the creator of this ad wants to keep his original message, he/she should use a young teenager instead of a baby, since teenagers are much more likely to do idiotic things than babies. By adding all the good stuff suggested by Jacob above, I think the add then would be much more powerful and persuasive.
DeleteIn response to Jacob's post:
DeleteI agree that the ad uses shock value but I do not think this is an ad that is geared towards parents. Honestly, I think this might be a joke. As Thinh said, babies cannot do meth. The picture does look very fake, which makes it almost completely ineffective. I agree that it is very hard to take this image seriously when the baby looks incredibly unrealistic. The image is very strange because it seems to be warning parents to watch out for their child and keep them away from meth, but the child shown is just a baby. Perhaps they did this in order to remind parents that even if their child is a 30 year old meth user, they are still that person's baby. Overall I agree that the ad is generally ineffective due to a lack of understanding of what the ad is trying to portray.
I am responding to Monique's post. I completely agree that this advertisement is an ineffective one because it is simply too unrealistic. This advertisement targets a large audience because it asks them to consider how they would feel if their own child became addicted to meth. As Monique said, I think that most people that see this advertisement will immediately disregard its message because it does not make sense for a child of that age to be addicted to meth. This advertisement would be more effective if they used a kid that was at least 10-12 years old because that is when a meth addiction might become more plausible. I agree that the backgrounds were used for a specific reason based on lighting. The original white background puts light on the baby's face and is more of a "happy" background. The dark and blurry background is puts more of an ominous light on the baby to show to the bad effects of meth. Overall, I think the creators of this advertisement over-exaggerated the shock value which made it ineffective.
ReplyDeleteTo response to this post, I agree with all comments before. This ad is not persuasive and the creator chose this two babies is just in order to indicate some negative effects of drug abuse. Even though this is a kind of shocked value, it may not make people arise their awareness of drugs, especially for some "parents". The baby on the right is extremely unrealistic. Babies will never be addicted to drugs by themselves at their age. Therefore, this ad is not effective and persuasive to me.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree to all of the comments before stating that this ad is ineffective, I feel as if it is hard for us to judge the effectiveness for others. Because, none of us are parents and are still teenagers, not the targeted audience, the ad may seem ineffective to us when it could be effective for others who are parents. A parent could look at this and be able to compare their child's face to the baby's face in the advertisement and be able to relate more. It is understandable that this is extremely unrealisitc, but it could be used figuratively in order to help parents who are addicted to meth what they could possibly be doing to harm their children. For our audience, it is highly ineffective, but for others it may have more of a meaning.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree to all of the comments before stating that this ad is ineffective, I feel as if it is hard for us to judge the effectiveness for others. Because, none of us are parents and are still teenagers, not the targeted audience, the ad may seem ineffective to us when it could be effective for others who are parents. A parent could look at this and be able to compare their child's face to the baby's face in the advertisement and be able to relate more. It is understandable that this is extremely unrealisitc, but it could be used figuratively in order to help parents who are addicted to meth what they could possibly be doing to harm their children. For our audience, it is highly ineffective, but for others it may have more of a meaning.
ReplyDeleteI'm responding to the questions Christie asked. I think this poster is not very effective. Like Monique said, no baby could be addicted to meth. So this poster could not be aimed at baby. I think the group that this poster aimed at are parents. I agreed to Jacob that the problem of this poster is very unrealistic, so it lack of strength to convince others. I think if there is some change on the poster, this will be more powerful. The picture on the right side can change to a malformation fetus rather than a baby looks like an alien. The color contrast only make the right side picture more scary and unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteI am responding to this using prompt 7. This poster tries to convince the public that drugs are really bad by showing the difference in a baby's body before and after using drugs. However, I don't think this poster is effective because the target audience are too vague. If the target audiences are babies, I have never heard about a baby that uses drugs. As far as I know, even if the parents use drugs, most of them would not let their child use drugs. If the target audiences are parents, it is still not effective because as I mentioned above, no one would let his/her child touch that bad thing. The poster did not tell people why they should fight against drugs.
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