UNIV 1212: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Analyze and Evaluate an Advertisement
Purpose of Assignment
- The purpose of this assignment is to help students critically analyze and evaluate a television or internet advertisement and the various methods used to persuade viewers to buy products.
Objectives
- The student will show his understanding of an advertisement’s plot.
- The student will be able to critically analyze and evaluate the strength of persuasion methods used in advertisements.
- The student will be able to identify the underlying beliefs, attitudes, and values that advertisement makers assume about their audiences.
- The student will be able to provide suggestions for making the advertisement more effective.
Requirements
Choose an advertisement, then prepare a presentation based upon the following criteria.
- Time limit of 5 minutes for the presentation
- The ad should not be longer than 1 min 30 seconds.
- Prepare attractive slides that add to your presentation. Use a picture, table, graph or diagram on most of the slides.
- Reading from the slides is not permitted and will cause severe loss of points.
Include the following slides in your presentation (the overall number of slides is up to you:
Slide: Analyzing and Evaluating an Advertisement
- Title slide with the assignment name and number , student’s name and ID, instructor’s name, course name, section number and semester and year.
Slide: Outline
Slide: Background of the Advertisement
- What is the product being advertised? Length of the advertisement? The plot? Demographics of buyers (age, gender, income level, race, marital status, other interest groups)?
Slide: The Advertisement
- Imbed the advertisement in this slide and play it or show it.
Slide: Persuasion Tactics
- What tactics are used to make people interested in the product (experts use it, everyone else uses it, clever people use it, repeating the name of the product several times, appealing to emotions, using catchy music, powerful language, etc)? 2 reasoning errors?
Slide: Effectiveness
- What is your final opinion of the advertisement? Is it effective? Why/not? How would you make it more effective?
Slide: Summary
- Summarize the key points from the slides. (Do not repeat the Outline slide here).