SESSION 9: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
2. EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION:
2.1 BENETTON: What do you think of these Benetton´s ads?
2.2 ANYTHING GOES? Which of these should not be in adverts? Put the worst at the top:
- people smoking
- semi-naked women
- drug users
- men kissing
- famine victims
- religious leaders
- animals
- children
2.3 DISCUSSION: Here are some questions you can try asking yourself before you come to our discussion on Wednesday:
a) What did you think when you read the headline?j) Should the Vatican understand this is the 21st Century and try to understand these ads?
b) What do you think about what you read?
c) What do you think of Benetton’s ads? Have you seen others apart from the ones here?
d) Do you think advertising is an art form?
d) Do you think advertising is an art form?
e) Have you ever been shocked by an ad?
f) What ads can you think of that you thought were very clever?
g) Is it OK to include religious leaders in ads?
h) Why do you think Benetton uses such controversial advertising?
i) Should advertising only feature the actual product, message or service being sold?
k) What do you think of Benetton’s “Unhate” campaign?
l) What do you think the political and religious leaders think about the kissing ads?
m) Should Benetton pay compensation for creating these doctored images?
n) What is “the culture of hate”?
o) Is an ad of the Pope kissing a leading Muslim imam damaging?
p) Is the Vatican making this issue bigger by complaining about it?
q) What questions would you like to ask Benetton’s advertising boss?
r) What do you think his/her replies would be?
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
HIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 9, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions:
- 'Benneton´s publicity campaign is provocative and original.' Express your opinion.
- Anything goes in advertising? Express your opinion.
It is not enough to produce a good article, also it is necessary make it attractive to customers, and publicity is the best way to get it, although not the only one. As a result of this, publicity has become an essential tool for companies which sell something.
ReplyDeleteSo that publicity was effective, it must be direct e striking because people are usually just a few seconds watching, reading o hearing an advert so publicists use all their creativity and imagination to attract people’s interest. This has converted publicity in a kind of art which works with a mixture of other arts, for example photography, music, literature, etc.
Unlike traditional art, publicity does no search for beauty or denouncing social aspects, just tries to get profit somehow or other, sometimes even bad products have a high acceptation because they are adverted by a good publicity campaign, so, a good example of this are misleading campaigns with no scrupulous in which customers are tricked.
Over the last years, the Internet, which has become a new way of communication, fight against TV, the traditionally most important media device, causing that publicity must find new ways to adapt to the former, but they, TV and the Internet, are both useful for companies since people use indistinctly them.
We are in a time where it seems that anything goes, so it would think that it would be the same in advertising. That could be due to want to make the difference among the different advertising companies.
ReplyDeleteThe competition among advertisers is becoming wilder day by day. Everyone needs to increase its consumer rating, so many have come to lose the North, initiating implausible campaigns.
Somebody says once that “From the magnificent to the ridiculous there is only one small step”. In my opinion that is the real reason in the world of advertising that many times one has the impression that anything goes.
Our society is in need of many things, as the values of honesty, respect, sincerity, and why not say it too, of a really ingenious creativity. Thus, in advertisements such as Benetton, we can not remain indifferent, because they are on the thin line of the transgression and always try to arouse a comment from us, in one way or another.
“The important thing is to talk about one, albeit badly”.