Posted: February 19th, 2016

produce your own advert – including image AND text – for a specific product, campaign or service of your own choosing (it could be anything: a fashion advert for a glossy magazine, a billboard poster for a new perfume, a flyer for an election campaign, promotional material for a new nightclub, part of an animal rights campaign etc.)

1) Drawing on AT LEAST TWO approaches to semiotics covered during the first half of the module, produce your own advert – including image AND text – for a specific product, campaign or service of your own choosing (it could be anything: a fashion advert for a glossy magazine, a billboard poster for a new perfume, a flyer for an election campaign, promotional material for a new nightclub, part of an animal rights campaign etc.)
Your essay must then consist of the following elements, though in an order and emphasis of your choosing:
1. A short account of the advertising brief you have set yourself, including an outline of the kind of product, campaign or service it is aiming to represent, and the demographic it is targeting
2. An outline of the theorists and theories you have chosen to draw on to respond to this brief (Saussure, Pierce, Baudrillard, Mitchell, Barthes, Lacan etc.). You must choose AT LEAST TWO but you can refer to more.
3. A critical reflection on the ways in which these theories and theorists informed both the process of responding to the brief and the resulting advert.
4. Emerging from this experience, a general evaluation of the gains and losses of a semiotic approach to the production and interpretation of advertising