Journal 3

Advertisement
Pg 265 Item 5.3 Got Milk? 2004

When first looking at the advertisement, because I am a girl, I first noticed the guy’s body. I saw how he had toned arms and abs and was immediately intrigued and wanted to look more closely at the picture and read what the advertisement said. I think this is exactly what the point of this advertisement was: draw people in with an attractive man so that they’ll be interested and thus read what the actual message is. That’s a big thing in advertisement: the initial reaction and the first thoughts that you have when looking at the picture. So, after I stopped flipping the pages of Beyond Words due to the half-naked man, I then read the little blurb at the bottom of the page. I come to realize that this is an advertisement for milk and that they are saying that basically, if you drink milk, you might possibly be able to look like this guy and also be able to perform super-human tricks like him. False; but hopefully, this ad will help encourage children of all ages to drink milk in order to have strong, healthy bones.

Photo
Pg 278 Item 5.12 Images from The War
I immediately thought of sadness when I first saw this photo. The lady in the background looks as if she has lost all hope; the child next to her looks as if she is in pain; and the woman on the other side of the child is looking off into the distance as if imagining a happier time. The focal point of the photo however is a man on a stretcher who has obviously been wounded by the war. As a doctor puts an IV into the wounded, there are onlookers surrounding them. This photo makes me think about the war we are fighting now and that although the injuries and fatalities are not published as much as they used to be, this is happening everyday to people. I feel pain in my heart because although I have know no one who is serving our country overseas, I can only imagine the worry and sadness that one’s have who do know someone fighting for our country.

Newspaper Article
Pg 353 Now on Google Maps: You, The Denver Post 2007
After reading this article from the Denver Post, I began to think about how we really are losing all the privacy we have nowadays. We post our entire lives on facebook through pictures and about me’s; we tweet our every move on twitter; and now, we can be seen doing ordinary, daily tasks on google. This actually makes me upset because I feel like nothing will ever be private in the near future. We now live in a world where we want to know what everyone is doing at every single moment in their life- even if we have no clue who they are. We “facebook stalk” people we have only heard about and if you have a blog, well anybody and everybody can read about what you do on a daily basis. This whole thing scares me but I cannot imagine living without it.

Commercial Critique
Pg 421 The Mesmerizing Ad for Headache Gel by Seth Stevenson 2006
While I read this critique, I couldn’t help but laugh. I have seen the HeadOn commercial just about a million times and everything the author was saying was true. The repetition is catchy and doesn’t let you forget the slogan- I mean, come on, who doesn’t know “HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead”. Also the cheesiness of the entire ad due to them spending no money on production caught my attention. And finally, I always wondered what HeadOn actually did for you since in the commercial; they never tell you its purpose- only that you can buy it at drugstores. This critique made me realize that so many people spend hours upon hours thinking of catchy jingles and hiring famous people to promote their product, when actually, all they have to do is repeat a simple phrase over and over to catch your attention.