A Food Advertisement Analysis - Essay Example

?[Your full Nov 17, A Food Advertisement Analysis The advertisement, the image of which is given below (“Burger King vs KFC vs McDonald’s Print Advertising”), is from the company named Burger King. It is presenting its new product named BK Super Seven Incher. A meal consisting of this super seven incher, with a medium serving of French fries and a medium glass of Coca Cola, costs $6.25. The advertisement has given full description of its ingredients in its message. The burger consists of a single beef patty which is topped with American cheese, fried onions, and thick steak sauce. The advertisement shows a young girl who is all eager to have a big bite of the burger she is looking at with surprise openly expressed in her eyes. The girl is tip-top, as if she is seducing the people out there to come at the fast food point and have this delightful treat. The media in general and this ad in particular is exploiting people, especially children, by way of sexual appeal and exaggerated messages in advertisements. Since the youth is more attracted toward junk food than adults, and because of the males’ attraction toward sexual content (the sexual innuendo will be described in a later paragraph), this advertisement has made use of the fragility of young minds to sell the product. Young people, such as teenagers, tend to have less-developed ability of decision-making or critical thinking, so they cannot realize what is wrong with what they are viewing, and their minds learn or absorb every act they see. I believe that this specific advertisement is very effectively selling the product by manipulating young minds into getting away from healthy food and turning toward junk meals. Media is exploiting kids to make them their unsurpassed consumers. Children are being affected by the media every day and every moment they sit in front of the television. This eventually affects the whole society. Businesses are now targeting children because they form a huge part of American population today. The idea behind is that kids spend or make their parents spend a lot of money on things like video games, junk food, electronic items, and the like, and thus this spent money forms are great part of the country’s economy. Hence, advertisers and businesses are targeting children because they have an influence over purchasing and making decisions in all small and big shopping. Parents become helpless. When a teenager will see this specific advertisement, he will totally relish the yummy bite of the burger in his dreams, and will bug his parents to allow him to have it one way or another. This is because the message, which will be discussed in a later section, is so tempting that a teenager will not be able to resist the temptation. Companies have started calculating the nagging factor (John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) which determines how much anger or stubbornness kids have to show to their parents in order to persuade them to buy something of their choice. Mass media is manipulating kids’ minds through marketing in schools, public places, homes, and through television, internet and DVDs. Companies present new brands in front of kids and attract them through suggestive content that is shown to them through marketing services. Children get attracted to the sexually suggestive content shown in the advertisements. They are attracted toward buying new brands of cereals, clothes, bedspreads, kids’ furniture, school bags and lunch boxes. Marketers understand the psychology of children and control them. Ethics are not taken into account while marketing the products and this inculcates unethical values amongst the children. They tend to learn violence, aggression, and sexual fantasies, and then try to incorporate these things in their own lives (Strasburger, Jordan and Donnerstein). Also, they learn that they are supposed to get everything they see and then force their parents to provide them with everything they are attracted to. This affects even their health and well-being. Keeping in view young brains’ fragility, this specific advertisement is very successfully marketing its product through the use of sexual appeal and suggestive wording. The type of appeal that the advertiser is using is emotional. This is because there is use of exaggerated messages and words that are likely to exploit people and attract them toward the product. Once again, children and teenagers are easy targets. The ad says, “It just tastes better”, “It’ll blow your mind away”, “Fill your desire with something long, juicy, and flame-grilled…”, “Yearn for more after you taste the mind blowing burger…” These sentences are a mix of emotional and exaggerated messages that very easily attract a hungry stomach toward itself. Life has become so busy these days that people do not find time to stand in their kitchens for hours and cook. People find it handy to spend a few bucks in a fast food point and have a readymade meal in a few minutes. For hungry stomachs and busy minds, such messages act like a yummy treat. Despite FTC’s laws against exaggerated advertising to children, the truth is that children by no means stay away from being affected. One more thing why I believe that the advertiser is using emotional appeal in this ad is that a girl is being shown who is an epitome of sexual appeal. Such sexual or feminine finishes to ads attract a lot of consumers, especially young people. The word “desire” goes very well this emotional appeal. The burger coming into the mouth of the girl resembles blow job experience, which is apt to attract boys. Also, since boys are mostly hanging around in groups around fast food places till late at nights, such ads on billboards and walls are a sure sign that they will read what the ad says. Media, these days, has become so advanced that there is no sense of age related constrictions on content shown in advertisements. TV shows and programs need advertisements to run. When the intended audience is children, the issue of linkage between mental frailty of children and the sensitivity of content being shown arises. Children’s minds are too frail and naive to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy content shown in the advertisements. Sexually suggestive content are a sure thing that an ad is going to be a hit. This makes me believe that the advertiser is making use of unethical strategies, which are promoting something which is not healthy but in such a way that the observer like me cannot even say it unethical explicitly, but in the back of mind thinks that it is not healthy. As far as the external presentation of the ad is concerned, it is nicely presented. The company’s name is given on the top-right corner. The top-left corner has been occupied by the image of a girl. There are two images of seven incher burger. The price is written. The main message is written right in the center, in big font. A large message is given in the lower-right corner in very small font, and it includes the description and ingredients of the burger being advertised. The font here is small because the reader must have stopped to read it after reading the big font exaggerated message. The brown color is the main color of the ad which is quite unattractive as compared to the message and the young, sexy look of the girl. The color gives a dull impression to the overall presentation of the ad. So, I think that the advertiser has not chosen the right color. He might want the reader to pay more attention to the message and the girl. To conclude, the advertisement depicts how media becomes manipulative when it comes to selling products and expanding business. This ad is only an example of this. Message is for people out there to be sensible and wary of what media shows them. Works Cited “Burger King vs KFC vs McDonald’s Print Advertising.” Burger King. Design Your Way, 2013. Web. 18 Nov 2013. . John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Nag Factor: How do Children Convince their Parents to Buy Unhealthy Foods? John Hopkins University, 2011. Web. 28 Nov 2013. < http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2011/borzekowski-nag-factor.html >. Strasburger, Victor C., Jordan, Amy B., and Ed Donnerstein. “Health Effects of Media on Children and Adolescents.” Pediatrics 125.4(2010): 756-767. Read More