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ENGL U102 - Composition II - Keefauver: Assignment

Historical Analysis Assignment

Goal for Session:

  • Demonstrate how to search and find ads
    • Ad Access
    • Advertising Archives UK
    • Stanford - Tobacco Advertising
  • Consider topics that connect to ads
    • Race, gender, sexuality, and/or family values 
  • Find articles that discuss ads and connected topics
    • EBSCO Host Full Text
    • Proquest Full List
    • JSTOR

Assignment:

Analyze three (or more) ads, each from a different decade. The ads you choose must feature a unifying characteristic that makes them comparable; that is, ads for the same product, similar products, and/or same target audience. For example, you might select three ads for Campbell’s soup with housewives as the target audience.

  1. One must be before 1900 - 1940
  2. One from between 1940 - 1980
  3. One from the 1980s - 2020s.

* Ads must be at least 30 years apart.

​​​​Choose your ads from the following industries:

  • Tobacco
  • Alcohol
  • Sodas
  • Prepackaged food (cereal, soup, etc.)
  • Feminine hygiene
  • Personal care products
  • Automobiles

Answer the following questions. 

  1. Do you notice a shift in rhetorical technique after 1929, from fulfilling needs to creating new needs? How is this shift expressed through the visual, textual, and rhetorical elements of each ad?
  2. What do these ads tell us about the historical/cultural context-- the values, needs, fears, and desires (etc.) of their target audiences in each historical moment?
  3. In turn, how do these ads reinforce or reshape their cultural context? If the products featured in these ads respond to consumer needs, how do they also recreate new and different needs/desires?
  4. How do your selected ads reflect the transformation of marketing strategy—from emphasizing quality to fabricating new needs? What do the ads suggest has changed in American culture in the last century, and what does this mean?

Consider:

Be sure your paper makes an overall claim or thesis, supports that claim with concrete evidence, and draws conclusions about the transformation of rhetorical strategies (appeals, etc.) in the series of ads you have chosen. You will need to develop an angle for your essay. To this end, you should examine the uses of race, gender, sexuality, and/or family values in the three advertisements you select.

Example Topic:

  • AD Topic Choice AND Research Topic AND decade
  • Lipstick AND advertis* AND gender
    • Celebrity Culture and selling perfume, makeup, lipstick