Advertising Analysis

Oct. 11, 2012

Find an advertisement in a magazine, newspaper, journal, online or on television. Using the advertising techniques information from our session on Tuesday, analyze the advertisement.

Who is the intended audience? Young girls

How do you know this? Partially because our culture expects girls to like dolls and there are pink aisles in the toy store devoted to this, and partially because the dolls in the drawing are supposed to be young girls.

What persuasive techniques were used? There could be a lot of techniques being used here. First, I notice the slogan to “shop till you drop” and “Start shopping now!” These slogans identify Bratz dolls with the idea that girls should love to shop. There is a logo for the Bratz brand that has the name and a shimmering halo. I think that this image is trying to promote being materialistic and shallow as a good thing. I also think this ad has snob appeal, it seems to be trying to say that fashionable young girls buy Bratz dolls. It also has emotional appeal to say that girls will be happy if they have Bratz dolls and shop a lot. I’m horrified at this but it also seems to have sex appeal even though it is a product for little kids. It seems to want all the girls to get on the bandwagon of being cool and having Bratz dolls and great clothes. The ad is probably trying to transfer the idea of wealth, fashion, and materialism to the idea of owning a Bratz doll: buy this doll and you’ll have all the purses and diamonds you ever wanted!

Were they effective? I think this was effective to market to the majority of girls but not to me.

How so? The product is targeted towards girls at a young age so they start learning early on to behave like the product suggests. Plus the more materialistic Bratz convinces a girl to be, the more Bratz dolls the girl will buy.

If you were a member of the target audience, would you purchase this product? No.

Why or why not? When I was two someone bought me a Barbie doll and my mom says I took one look and flung it across the room. She also says that when I was given My Little Pony toys, I took them out to the compost pile and pretended to feed them worms. My “teddy bear” for years was a Beanie Baby tarantula that I kept under my pillow and wore in my shirt when I went out. From that point on I have probably been one of the weirdest girls I know. I only recently started to wear a small amount of pink and skirts now that I feel old enough to do it ironically. Most of the time my pink clothes have funny slogans and I wear my skirts over pants. I think girls and guys should be able to do or wear whatever they want, and I don’t think they should be asked to objectify themselves. Bratz is a terrible toy for kids that does not promote this freedom at all.