Introduction
Texas requires students to study uses of media and how it influences our lives so that we can become a more informed consumer; a critical thinker who can draw conclusions about what people say and do and how media shapes our lives. Viewing commercials and thinking about all they show and teach us in a few short minutes is one way to learn to draw conclusions, make inferences and see stereotyping as used in media.
Task
Your mission is to find awesome, funny, over-dramatized commercials that do the following:
1) Make products look appealing
2) Sell an image
3) Making meaningless comparisons
4) Make "can and may" statements
5) Reduce a commercial down to its basic arguement
6) Study propaganda techniques
7) Tell what the commercial does not state
8) Write a page long report over what you learned by doing this Webquest.
Process
Step One: Making a product look appealing
Advertisers like to make their products look super-appealing, drawing you in by the all the beautiful colors, associating it with a beautiful woman or a wealthy-looking man. They make their products look "cool" or "lit" by using close-up camera shots, playing lively music in the background, and use a famous actress or actor to endorse the product.
View all the following commercials and see if you can find use of these techniques in each commercial.
1) product appeal
2) beautiful woman
3) wealthy-looking man
4) emotional appeal
5) close-up of product to make it larger than life
6) use of a famous actor or actress to make the product more "lit"
7) use of music to appeal
8) humor
9) story elements (plot, suspense, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution)
Now that you have viewed these commercials it is your task to find one commercial on youtube.com that makes the product seem larger than life (it is the only product you need to make your life better than what it currently is).
Exit Ticket for today's work, on an index card: 1) Write your name 2) Write the name of the commercial you found 2) Write down the URL website link exactly as it appeals in the address bar 3) Name the techniques that the commercial uses to make the product appealing (refer back to the list above if needed)
Credits
youtube commercials links