Evaluating Advertisements in Print Media

When evaluating an advertising campaign, many factors must be taken into account. What magazines are the advertisements found in? Do they have a certain identifiable demographic. What magazines are the advertisements not found in? Do the changing themes correlate with the target audience of the magazines? Are there any cultural assumptions or certain association of race, class, or gender made in the advertisements? The campaign that I have chosen to evaluate contains a clear cultural racial and gender based assumption. The assumption within the advertisements is that minority groups or those of lower status tend to also be less intelligent and less able to correctly determine what is and what is not a wise choice. In the following essay, the particular advertisement campaign that will be evaluated is the GM Certified Used Car campaign. I will use the association principle to determine the link between product and cultural value. Although every advertisement contains a GM automobile, the brand of each automobile differs from Pontiac to Buick to Chevrolet.

The first advertisement that I have chosen to evaluate is found in the November 3rd, 2003 edition of Newsweek. Newsweek is a weekly magazine that is demographically geared towards the middle-aged to retirement age white male. It is a magazine for the middle class to the upper class individual, who is mainly concerned with politics and conflicts in foreign countries.

The first advertisement features a woman on a street corner in an urban area. Perhaps she is somewhere in downtown New York or another large city. She has made a decision to buy raw sushi from a curbside vendor. It is a sunny, apparently hot day and the sushi does not appear to be on ice or well cared for. Near her is a caption that reads, "Bad Decision". Driving down the road is a couple of years old Buick Century appearing brand new, driven by a white male. The caption by the car reads, "Good Decision: Purchased GM Certified".