Advertising, Marketing and Magazines

What Advertising, Marketing and Magazines covers

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines is examined in Component 01, Media messages. It covers the codes and conventions of print advertising, then three campaigns in turn: Dove's Real Beauty and Beautifully Real Moms campaign and its representation of motherhood and the maternal body; River Island's Labels are for Clothes campaign and its representation of diversity, disability and self-expression; and Shelter's charity advertising, its direct call to action and its representation of homelessness and housing insecurity, with the media language of each advert and the social and cultural contexts of all three. It also covers The Big Issue: the street paper model and its market position, the media language of its front covers, its alternative representations, and its social, cultural and political contexts.

The 15 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Codes and conventions of print advertisingRecall questions on straplines, mode of address, typography and anchorage, camera angle and direct address, mise-en-scène and lighting, calls to action and layout, persuasion through connotation, and the conventions of beauty, fashion and charity advertisements and campaigns.Open →
• Dove, Real Beauty and the Beautifully Real Moms campaignRecall questions on Unilever's Dove brand, the 2004 Campaign for Real Beauty, the 2018 Beautifully Real Moms campaign for the baby care market and its photojournalists, the commercial value of a social stance, and the femvertising and inconsistency criticisms.Open →
• Media language in the Dove advertRecall questions on natural light, domestic setting, the absence of retouching, physical contact in the composition, and what a small product presence signals.Open →
• Representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the Dove advertRecall questions on how the Dove campaign represents motherhood and the maternal body, its countertype and claim to realism, the values it invites and the anxiety it addresses, criticisms that it curates and commodifies authenticity, and differing audience responses.Open →
• River Island and the Labels are for Clothes campaignRecall questions on River Island as a high-street retailer, the 2018 anniversary campaign Labels are for Clothes, the wordplay in its strapline and its casting, why it was called a milestone, earned media, inclusive advertising, and the risk of criticising labels.Open →
• Media language in the River Island advertRecall questions on the River Island advert's strapline presentation, plain backgrounds, casting as media language, direct address, group composition, styling and posture, bright even lighting, minimal copy, the logo and the repeated strapline.Open →
• Representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at River IslandRecall questions on how the River Island campaign represents disability, body shape, race and self-expression, positive stereotyping, inspiration porn, tokenism and commodified identity, under-representation in fashion, and how different readers interpret it.Open →
• Shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to actionRecall questions on what Shelter does, who its campaign addressed and why that is unusual for a charity, and how addressing people at risk changes the media language.Open →
• Media language in the Shelter advertRecall questions on the domestic interior, the desaturated palette, the single figure, and how second-person address and imperative verbs drive a call to action.Open →
• Representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the Shelter advertRecall questions on the dominant stereotype of a homeless person, hidden homelessness, homelessness as a process, poverty porn and agency, the political attitudes carried by representations of homelessness, and why the Shelter advert shows a home rather than the street.Open →
• Social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaignsRecall questions on the social and cultural contexts of advertising, body positivity, pressure on new parents, diversity in fashion casting, UK housing after the 2008 crisis, advertising regulation, brands taking social positions, and the purposes of the Dove, River Island and Shelter campaigns.Open →
• The Big Issue, the street paper model and its market positionRecall questions on The Big Issue's founding in 1991 by John Bird and Gordon Roddick, how vendors earn, a hand up not a handout, social enterprise, street selling, niche magazines, its content mix, independent ownership, weekly schedule and the international street paper movement.Open →
• Media language of a Big Issue front coverRecall questions on The Big Issue's masthead and cover layout for street selling, cover lines and puns, political cover images, typography and colour, direct address, house style, price and vendor information, intertextual covers and cover portraits.Open →
• Alternative representations in The Big IssueRecall questions on what an alternative representation is, how the magazine represents homelessness differently from most news media, and the place of vendor self-representation.Open →
• Social, cultural and political contexts of The Big IssueRecall questions on the social conditions The Big Issue addresses, vendors' earning opportunity, its engagement with housing and welfare politics, cultural content, its public sphere and agent-of-change roles, editorial independence, the declining use of cash, and readers who buy to support vendors.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Advertising, Marketing and Magazines further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Real Beauty (2004) vs Beautifully Real Moms (2018)

  Real Beauty (2004): Dove's long-running campaign arguing that the narrow idealised images sold by the cosmetics industry do not reflect ordinary women, showing varied ages, sizes and skin tones. Beautifully Real Moms (2018): Dove's baby care campaign, shot by Pulitzer Prize-winning female photojournalists, setting mothers as they actually are against the picture-perfect images conventional in that market.

• Rough sleeping vs Hidden homelessness

  Rough sleeping: being without shelter on the street, the visible form the public most readily pictures. Hidden homelessness: having nowhere settled of one's own, such as sofa surfing, temporary or emergency accommodation, or a place that is unsafe or overcrowded.

• Anchorage vs Mode of address

  Anchorage: written copy that narrows an image's many possible meanings down to the single reading the advertiser wants. Mode of address: the relationship a product sets up with its reader, through the tone of the copy and the look and posture of the people pictured.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the function of a strapline in a print advertising campaign?

   Model answer

   It is a short, memorable line carrying the campaign's central idea, repeated across every execution so that separate adverts are read as one campaign.

2. 2

   Define the term mode of address as it applies to a print advertisement.

   Model answer

   Mode of address is the way an advert speaks to its reader, through the tone of the copy and the look and posture of the people pictured, which sets the relationship the reader is invited into.

3. 3

   Explain how typography communicates meaning before a word of the copy has been read.

   Model answer

   The weight, case, spacing and style of the lettering carry connotations of their own, so a heavy uppercase sans-serif reads as blunt and urgent while a fine serif reads as refined and traditional.

4. 4

   What is anchorage in a print advertisement?

   Model answer

   Anchorage is the way written copy narrows an image's many possible meanings down to the single reading the advertiser wants.

5. 5

   Explain how the choice of camera angle positions the viewer in relation to the person photographed.

   Model answer

   A low angle looks up at the subject and lends them status, a high angle looks down and can suggest vulnerability, and an eye-level angle meets the subject as an equal.

6. 6

   Why is direct address to camera so common in advertising photography?

   Model answer

   Eye contact imitates a personal encounter, so the reader feels individually spoken to and a relationship with the brand appears to have been established.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines revision questions

What does Advertising, Marketing and Magazines cover in OCR A-Level Media Studies?

15 subtopics: codes and conventions of print advertising, dove, real beauty and the beautifully real moms campaign, media language in the dove advert, representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the dove advert, river island and the labels are for clothes campaign, media language in the river island advert, representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at river island, shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to action, media language in the shelter advert, representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the shelter advert, social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaigns, the big issue, the street paper model and its market position, media language of a big issue front cover, alternative representations in the big issue and social, cultural and political contexts of the big issue. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Advertising, Marketing and Magazines organised?

By the OCR H409 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.