Analysis of Advertisements

I. The first advertisement I will summarize and analyze appeared in Adweek Western Advertising News on June 19, 1989. It is a full-page ad for Financial World magazine; its target audience is not readers, but advertisers. It is plain, almost stark in format, limiting itself to bold black, white, and red text with no illustrations.

The headline (in red) is "Well Read", followed by a short paragraph explaining that this epithet refers to the magazine itself rather than its readers since Financial World is read longer and more thoroughly than comparable business magazines. The ad reads, in part, " Some business magazines are poorly read. Some are well read. Some are very well read. But only one can be first among those who answered "all" when asked how much of the last issue they looked through."

Following this paragraph is a three-column chart listing various publications, the percentage of readers looking the all of the issues of each, and the mean reading time for each. Of course, Financial World, in red, is shown to have the highest rank in each category. The source of this data is cited as 1989 Spring MMR.

This ad is primarily an appeal to reason, insofar as it states apparent facts and has a "serious" visual presentation. However, there seems to be a subtle emotional appeal here as well. In all of its apparent straightforwardness and factuality, the ad flatters its audience (advertisers) by implying that it considers them too intelligent and sophisticated

oke is currently being test-marketed in Spokane, WA, as "Coke II", which is just New Coke with another new name and a new package with a Pepsi-Cola-blue swirl. The performance of Coke II in Spokane has been substantially better than that of New Coke on the national market, but its sales are still a less-than-stunning 2.4% share (Winters, 1990). Analysts say that one of the major flaws in the ad campaigns for Coke is that the main selling point for the new formula has always been that is sweeter and better-tasting than the original formula and Pepsi, but none of the ads ever came right out and said so. The closest thing to an explanation of its taste is the new blue swirl package which alludes to the fact that the product is sweet, like Pepsi (Winters, 1989). There are a few bright points in the New Coke saga, however. First, ever since the introduction of New Coke, Coca-Cola Classic has consistently gained market share and widened its lead against Pepsi, because people were reminded of how much Coca-Cola meant to them. Coca-Cola USA, as a whole, retains over 40% overall market share, compared to Pepsi's 30%. Second, although New Coke is a failure on the national market, it is strong in some regional markets, particularly th

Category: Business - A