Advertising assessment learner response

 1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

WWW: Q1 is solid: with a little more depth and textual reference that would be in the top levels. The challenge is reaching that level consistently.

EBI: Revise postcolonialism and Sephora: Q3 is the big weakness here. Question focus and exam technique: this is what holds you back in Q2.

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify at least one potential point that you missed out on for each question in the assessment. 

Q1: • Monochrome (black and white) – stylish, sophisticated, reinforces traditional heterosexual meanings; consistent with aspirational branding. Low-key lighting, ‘chiaroscuro’, backlighting visible in shot – suggests stage lights/spotlights, fashion show? 

Q2: • Representation of female desire arguably reflects female empowerment/third wave feminism. Female sexuality places power with women rather than men.

• Anchorage text in the Score advert reflects male insecurities in a changing world – repeated references to ‘men’ and ‘masculine’ in design, production and use of the product suggests an acknowledgment that hair cream was seen as a more female product in the 1960s.

Q3: • ‘Othering’ or racial otherness: Paul Gilroy suggests non-white representations are constructed as a ‘racial other’ in contrast to white Western ideals.

• The advert explicitly challenges the concept of racial essentialism – it is demonstrating the wide and varied versions of Black beauty across different places, genders and identities. The panel of 12 close-ups towards the end of the advert clearly demonstrates that the idea that different aspects of black culture are ‘all the same’ couldn’t be further from the truth.

3) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 1 (Diamonds advert unseen text). List three examples of media terminology or theory that you could have included in your answer.

• Costume barely visible for female models – flesh on display. Heavily made-up faces – constructed/Photoshopped image. Links to Kilbourne’s analysis of women in advertising.

• Facial expressions – female models’ open mouths suggest lust, desire. Male model makes eye-contact with audience.

• Brand logo – serif font, links to monochrome colour scheme, style, sophistication, tradition. Understated, placed in bottom-left. Product not specified – about brand ‘feel’, aspiration rather than actual product details.

4) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 2. What aspects of the cultural and historical context for the Score hair cream advert do you need to revise or develop in future? 

• The representation of the male as hunter in a foreign jungle setting suggests a reference to the British Empire and the colonial dominance of the 19th century.

• Representation of women in the Score advert reflects the changing role of women in the 1960s to some extent. This is no longer the stereotypical 1950s housewife but still a reductive, exploitative, objectified representation of women.

• Representation of gender reinforces Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performance – dominant/submissive gender roles clearly reinforced in construction of advert.

5) Now look over your mark, comments and the mark scheme for Question 3 - the 9-mark question on Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty. List any postcolonial terminology you could have added to your answer here. 

• Double consciousness: Paul Gilroy used the term double consciousness to reflect the Black experience in the UK and USA. One aspect is living in a predominantly white culture and having an aspect of identity rooted somewhere else. He describes this as a “liquidity of culture”. He also uses it to highlight the disconnect between black representations in the media and actual lived experience. Often, these representations are created by white producers.

• Cultural conviviality: This refers to the real-world multiculturalism and racial harmony that most people experience on a day-to-day basis. It is in stark contrast to the racial disharmony and binary view often presented by the media.