Image (Cause Print Ad) Analysis Assignment Sheet
In general, image analysis essays ask you to analyze the visual rhetoric (means of persuasion) in an image. In our day to day lives, we can analyze the persuasion present in visuals often. Every Super Bowl ad, influencer post, popup, billboard, logo, and even fine art that we encounter is attempting to persuade us in one way or another.
For our analysis essay, you are going to take a cause print ad (see below for specifics) where the purpose is to bring awareness to a cause. The essay must focus on the advertiser, what action they are persuading the audience to take, and how they benefit from that action. Do not attempt to “take on” the ad’s argument and persuade your reader. This is not a persuasive essay. It is an analysis of someone else’s argument.
You should be careful when analyzing ads that seek to combine a cause with a product. For example, the Colin Kaepernick print ad for Nike seeks to use Kaepernick’s cause to sell shoes by aligning the company with his stance. Nike’s choice to sign Kaepernick and therefore support him in his choice is not the only aspect of that ad. Nike expected, and did, financially benefit from this support. In the end, Nike sells shoes (and shirt, and backpacks, etc.)
The Basics
This is the master list of requirements for the essay to not earn a F. If these elements are present, you are guaranteed to make a 50 or higher provided you have not violated AI or Plagiarism policies.
- Ad analysis essay (not persuasive or analyzing the cause being addressed by the ad, for example)
- The subject must be a static ad where the goal is to bring awareness to a cause (stop vaping, don’t drink and drive, etc.)
- 1,000-words long
- In correct MLA format
- No first person (I, me, my, mine), first person plural (we, us, our), or second person (you, your, you’re). Only third person should be used throughout the entire essay.
- Utilize two scholarly, academic journal articles or book chapters
What Is the Subject?
Your subject for this evaluation essay must be a print ad that meets the following criteria:
- The ad must be static (no videos or GIFs), evaluated based on the original context (if you use a retro ad, you must evaluate the ad based on how it attempted to persuade it’s audience, not on how well it would persuade a modern audience), and safe for general college classroom consumption (no sex-based or overtly racist ads, for example).
- The ad’s goal must be to bring awareness to a cause.
- The ad should be one that you can discuss in-depth for 1,000 or more words (remember, assigned length indicates the level of detail expected from your essay).
- You cannot reuse any of the ads in my lessons or this assignment sheet.
The Structure of an Ad Analysis
Your intro should clearly establish the context, audience, and topic of the ad before your thesis. Your thesis needs to be one sentence at the end of the introduction that follows the formula from the lesson videos.
You must have at least three body paragraphs that each address one persuasive element per paragraph (Ethos, Logos, Pathos – these will be addressed in Module 8). Do not combine elements.
Each paragraph should:
- start with a clear topic sentence
- incorporate one piece of source material
- be about 250 words long (this is a rough guideline only)
- The conclusion should address the assertion made in the introduction in light of the evidence provided by the body of the essay.
Who Is the Audience?
Your primary audience for this Image Analysis essay is the kind of person who:
- Understands the fundamentals of persuasion that you do. There is no need to explain Ethos, Logos, Pathos or similar elements, so don’t use these to lengthen your essay. You can, however, use the actual words or just their meaning.
- Is interested in an analysis of how an ad is successful.
This means that you need to consider your writing and your audience from these two perspectives. Your audience will be critical (this means that they think and ask deep questions, not that they are negative), as any thoughtful audience should be, regardless of the product or cause in your ad.
And You? Who… are You?
First, you need to do this without bias. You may agree or disagree strongly with the argument your ad is making, but the second that compromises your analysis, you lose huge chunks of credibility. It’s not that the reader doesn’t expect you to have a personal preference, but that the reader needs to trust that you can put that aside long enough to be objective.
Second, you will need to use two secondary library sources (don’t worry, we will talk about finding, using, and citing sources in the modules before this essay is due). These sources should not be about your subject (the cause) but about persuasion or advertising in general. For example, if your ad uses bright colors, a useful source to support your conclusions could be a book or article about the psychological use of bright colors. You can use more than one secondary source, but you should be careful to only use the secondary source to support your own writing and conclusions. This means that you cannot use this source in your introduction. The introduction’s purpose is to set the field. All the support, both your own logic and secondary source support, should come in the three or more body paragraphs. No block quotes (quotes longer than 4 lines) should be used, and the source material should not make up more than 30% of the total words in the essay. Incorporating secondary source material into the draft will be a significant focus of the grading for this draft.
You must also cite your print ad in addition to including it in the essay.
Last, you need to be a professional in your research, organization, and writing. This doesn’t mean you can’t be funny (that often helps, depending on your audience), it means that you cannot be sloppy. Poor paragraphing, typos (especially in the product name), guessing about things (no, really, don’t do this), and using overly casual or chatty language are all things that will kill the reliability of your evaluation. This is a dangerous spiral to fall into, because, in the end, all of your analysis relies on you being dependable and professional. If you lose that, your analysis becomes a salvage operation with the reader trying to pick and choose what to believe, what to trust, and what to toss aside. The reader should never have to decide this. Even if they disagree with you, the reader should be able to respect your analysis and chalk the disagreement up to different perspectives on the importance of the success of the elements or bias in the ad itself.
